
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/5402489.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      My_Little_Pony:_Friendship_is_Magic, Epic_Battle_Fantasy
  Character:
      NoLegs, griffons_-_Character, Original_Characters, Twilight_Sparkle,
      Rainbow_Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie_Pie, Applejack_(My_Little_Pony), Rarity,
      Matt, Lance, Anna, Shining_Armor, Zecora, Flash_Sentry, Prince_Blueblood,
      Natalie_"Natz"_(Epic_Battle_Fantasy)
  Additional Tags:
      Adventure, Grimdark, Crossover, ponyfication, Alternate_Universe, Drama
  Collections:
      Works_Transferred_from_Fimfiction
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-12-11 Updated: 2018-03-28 Chapters: 89/? Words: 483420
****** Arcane Shadow ******
by FlorarenaKitasatina
Summary
     When a barrier between two worlds breaks, it provides an ample
     opportunity for two separated cultures to interact for the first time
     in ages. However, a band of ponies and gryphons on one of these two
     worlds come upon a spoken legend that foretells the end times that
     follow the barrier's destruction—whispers of aggravatingly vague
     omens to come. In addition to this, said group find six mares and a
     small drake from the sister world, each as perplexed as ever as to
     why the barrier broke.
     Yet none know how fast the clock ticks, nor of the forces at work in
     the shadows. Should they fail to stop whoever or whatever is behind
     the mess, a fated tragedy will strike—with all being plunged into
     their final, and darkest hour. But how will the differing groups stop
     the impending calamity, when they have but one meager piece of a
     proverbial puzzle, and such vast worldviews that are radical enough
     to spark fights between them?
Notes
     This has to be my biggest fic yet... oh boy...
     It has a *NEW* cover art, which can be found here http://
     pre00.deviantart.net/620f/th/pre/i/2017/077/e/2/
     cover_by_dragonhistorian-db2oxir.jpg
***** Intro- Frostbitten Bickering *****
There was a place where it snowed day and night, the white ever-growing and the
intensity of the chilling winds as varied as the stars in the cosmos. In this
frozen landscape, which sorely lacked any signs of flora and fauna, if one
looked hard enough they could see four lone ponies and a huge object as they
trudged through the powdery, chilling snow at a rather sluggish pace. In doing
so, they left behind four sets of hoofprints and a pair of tread-like tracks
that quickly filled in with a few fresh layers of snow. The cold winds that
fueled this hellish blizzard had been getting to the lot all the while, but
they still pressed on regardless of the flurry and cold.
At least, until one pony spoke up. “Perhaps we should sleep in the tank for the
night!” cried the one furthest ahead, a masculine voice barely audible over the
howling snowstorm swirling around them. "I can feel my backside stiffening!" he
added, stopping in his tracks and turning around to the other three behind him.
“When will we get to Frostbite Haven?” cried another pony that soon stopped
behind the one complaining, a feminine voice even less audible than that of the
first. “We’ve been walking in circles for the past... shit, I don’t know how
long we’ve been out here!”
“We can’t last in this cold much longer,” complained another feminine voice
that had been an octave higher than the first two, one sounding like a high-
pitched keen at first. This one stopped well away from the duo that had taken a
moment to pause up ahead.
“Alright guys, let’s get in the tank!” yelled a masculine voice almost
completely drowned out by the storm, one of a gruff tone. He stopped and poked
the pony nearest to him with a hoof. “That means you, Leaftail,” he added.
“My name isn’t Leaftail, you midget-horned twat,” the pony who had gotten poked
hissed. She whipped her head to the offending pony next to her, eyes narrowing
to slits as a hint of a smile cropped up on his face.
“Not my fault your mane’s green as pine!” the stallion jeered, a grin growing
on his face that soon faded as he heard the mare that kept trotting on still a
ways up ahead begin to holler once more.
“What did you say, Matt?” asked the second pony, having to scream so he could
hear her. She turned around to the two furthest from herself and the other pony
that had still trotted brazenly onwards. The wind began to howl louder, almost
entirely drowning out the response she got as a result.
“I said, ‘Let’s get in the tank!’” he replied, also yelling louder this time
around. White flecks of crystallised water darted past him at a frantic rate,
almost blurring out the two ponies ahead. He could barely make out a bright,
fiery red something that one of the two possessed, but what that was—or to whom
it had been attached—was almost completely indiscernible, as the forms ahead
were still obscured by the onslaught of whirling white.
“Alright!” cried the second, who then glanced at her side, looking at the pony
who stood closest to her. “Let’s go, you black-coated, torn-eared, rusted
redhead,” she murmured. When she attempted to raise her head, she felt a hoof
touch her shoulder and glanced at it.
“You have a fiery red mane yourself. Your argument is invalid,” the other pony
replied with a bit of snark in his voice.
“Isn’t your backside stiffening, Mr. Red Eyes?” the mare sneered back, turning
back around and seeing a blot of black and another of green behind her.
“Can it, Cream Coat,” the stallion who accompanied her jabbed accusingly. He
too began turning around and spotting the two blots. He felt ice tickling his
backside, and he shivered as a result. “I’m amazed my teeth aren’t c-
chattering,” he mumbled, only to feel a hoof poke him.
“They are now,” the mare groaned, brushing aside her messy bangs sloppily
before putting her hoof down into the snow before she resumed trudging ahead.
“You need to get some insulation for that damn back of yours, especially under
that coat in this weather,” she added.
“All you’re wearing’s a fucking scarf! You shouldn’t lecture me about what I
wear in the damn snow when you practically trot in the nude within this frozen
hellhole!” the stallion shouted, his voice marred by anger.
“Says the burnt orange stallion with the stiffening back!” the mare paused,
pointing an accusing hoof at the stallion for emphasis. “If you start growing
ice, maybe those drills on your damn tank could crack it away!”
“That would be suicide! Besides, you’re a damn unicorn, Natalie—you know fire
magic!” the other pony exclaimed, anger welling up in his voice.
“Fire magic is suicide too, unless you forgot that you have metal fused into
your back?” Natalie retorted, choosing to not turn around to the stallion. She
continued to wade through the snow.
“Fine, you win,” the stallion grumbled, hooves shifting in the snow.
“What’s taking Lance and Natalie so long?” the green-maned pony asked, stopping
to turn around. Now, the snow had completely blurred out the two ponies who
were still at least a few feet behind.
“Dunno,” Matt replied, also pausing to glance behind himself. “Say, Anna, could
you pull out that thing of yours and make the snow stop heaping on us?”
“It’s called a flute, you black-and-white splotchfest on legs,” Anna groaned,
turning to the ‘midget-horned’ stallion she had just addressed.
“Whatever, Horny Bushhead,” the stallion retorted, rolling his eyes even as the
mare glared daggers at him.
“Hey! They're called pigtails, dipshit!" Anna snarled, front hooves spacing out
as she knelt forward in an offensive stance. She rose a hoof and pointed at the
viridian locks for emphasis as she went on, "They're not bushes, Matt! And
besides, you don’t have room to talk—you grow out your mane and tie some bits
of that and your tail into little braids, so I suggest you zip your lip before
an arrow gets plunged into your thick-furred asscheek!”
“Yeah, yeah, just use your flute already and make the blizzard stop. I think
Natz and Lance might be going the wrong way, since at this rate their own
hoofprints are probably filled in,” Matt spoke in a sarcastic voice, rolling
his eyes again and not once looking at Anna directly. “And besides, I’m two
heads and a half taller than you; you couldn’t do much to me anyway,” he added,
the grin on his muzzle spreading just a little more and appearing that much
more smug.
“Fine, you blond-maned asshole,” Anna spat, her horn starting to glow in a
vivid green aura. A wooden flute with intricate carvings appeared from a
flicker of green light and began to float next to her, but the winds were now
whirling with a vengeance. These winds took to forcing more snow to dart past
her eyes to the point she couldn’t even see the blasted instrument, let alone
Matt. “Shit,” she mumbled, “I think we may have to get to the tank already,
because now I can’t see worth a damn.”
“Try to follow my hoofprints. Forget the flute,” Matt ordered, starting to
slosh his way towards the large object that he could hardly see thanks to the
blizzard’s wrath. Anna had also started to push herself towards the thing, her
legs feeling colder and colder by the minute.
“For once, I wish I had thick leg fur like yours, Matt,” Anna mumbled under her
breath, but she could not hear herself thanks to the wind shrieking in her
ears. The mare paused again, lifted a hoof up to the base of her neck, and felt
some wool shift about as she had fidgeted. “At least I have a scarf on me,” the
unicorn sighed. Her ears started twitching as the snow-filled gales kept
assaulting her, along with the rest of the landscape.
She glanced behind herself, and for once the snowstorm had relented just enough
that she could make out a cream-colored body and another of black with bits of
burnt orange and silver. Some small part of her had hoped that the other two
ponies had seen her as she turned to the object and continued to slowly get to
it.
Matt had stopped in his tracks once again, but this time he could see four more
forms approaching him and Anna from the very object he had been attempting to
trot to. When they got closer, he could make out claws on the front limbs,
piercing eyes, and feathered heads adorned with beaks. “Hey, Darkwing, I think
Lance has gone stiff and might need a hand,” he said as the figures got closer
still—until they got close enough that he could see they were a bunch of
gryphons.
“For the last time, you accursed black-and-white half-Clydesdale, my name is
Alexander, not Darkwing!” the gryphon nearest to the pony hissed, a frown
tugging his lips downward. “Just because my body and wing feathers are rather
dreary does not mean you can call me that name, especially when much of your
own body is black-furred! Maybe I should start calling you Cowskin to get the
damned point across!”
The other three gryphons walked past the bickering duo, and one soon stopped in
front of Anna. “What’s wrong, Windwood?” he asked.
“My damn legs are giving out, and I can’t move them worth shit!” Anna scowled,
her breathing hitched and her eyes wide in panic. “I think my horn’s going numb
too!” she added, using her magic to jam her flute between her teeth just as her
horn started to fizz and spark.
The gryphon nodded and got closer to the mare, spreading his wings and flapping
them a few times to start hovering over her. “I’ll hold your bow in my beak,
okay?” he said with a frown, carefully plucking the gem-encrusted weapon off of
the mare’s backside by pulling it out of a sheath with his beak.
He then descended further and wrapped his forelimbs around her midsection,
narrowly avoiding a quiver laden on her body in the process. Once this had been
done, he began flapping his wings fervently, slowly lifting the unicorn out of
the snow and flying towards the object with her in tow.
“You could not be any damn slower if your legs were broken!” Natalie shrieked
as soon as the third gryphon came into her line of sight. Her horn glowed in a
soft blue, and the sod she had yelled at noticed a blur of red fast approaching
him. He simply blocked the oncoming object by shielding himself with a wing
before it had the chance to connect with his head.
“Stop your griping, and stop trying to hit me with your crystal-tipped redwood
staff,” the gryphon snorted, still concealing himself with his wing.
“Well I would if you weren’t so slow, you orange-feathered half-cat parakeet!”
Natalie snarled, eyes narrowing low. She trudged over to him until she stood at
his side, and then clambered onto his back like a child desperately clinging to
its mother, except a bit overgrown for the resulting piggyback ride. He merely
grunted, rolled his eyes, and started flapping his wings, turning around as he
became airborne before flying to the object.
“Are t-the h-heaters on?” the burnt orange stallion asked the last gryphon as
he found himself lifted up by a pair of talons.
“Yes, general, they’re on and the Valkyrie Tank is as toasty as a mild summer
day,” the gryphon answered with a frown on his beak. “Goodness me, I can feel
how cold you are, even through the fabric of your uniform,” he added, and
without another word between them, he carried the freezing sorry bastard with
him as he flew behind the gryphon that had carried Natalie.
Soon, the lot had found that the snowstorm began to fluctuate in intensity once
more, and for a scant few seconds they bore witness to a dull luster of dark
grey, stainless steel with faint traces of a lighter, almost silvery grey and
another grey so dark in color it could have been mistaken for black. The thing
was massive, with about the capacity of a blimp, and fitted with two machine
guns and two drills at the sides, further fitted with a central cannon on top.
The top of this metallic behemoth sported a gargantuan lid-like structure that
stood vertically up at a sharp 90-degree angle, and the gryphons maneuvered
their way inside a hole this lid had concealed. They were careful to avoid
scraping themselves or the ponies they carried against the rim. Once all eight
beings were inside the lid slammed shut on a moment’s notice, and the ponies
moved a few feet from each other before they sat on their rumps, a loud
metallic clang ringing inside their ears and shelter for a good few minutes.
The interior was indeed very warm, and it could qualify as roomy to boot. Eight
more gryphons were inside, all sitting patiently as if they had been waiting
for their fellow gryphons and the ponies to climb aboard for some time. Some
bolted-down gurneys were parked at one corner, and there were varying tools
next to them, ranging from scalpels to chisels, a sink, a cabinet with medical
supplies, and so on.
Another corner had a stovetop that doubled as an oven, some more cabinets lined
with a few wooden plates and bowls, silverware, a few can openers, and a
microwave. There had even been a rotisserie, among other things, and all the
objects in the cabinet were tucked neatly away and held in place by rather
flimsy-looking cages of glass adorned with faint runes.
Between these two object-filled corners, the lot of ponies could see an
assortment of chests, some opened and some closed. One of the open ones had
many bullets and empty shells of varying sizes and calibers, and another had
nothing but arrows formed from a plethora of objects. One of these arrows
seemed as if made of scrap steel and gears, shining a dull copper that rivaled
some of the bullets. A gryphon strode to and opened a third chest; he proceeded
to pull out four thick, ragged blankets that were filthy, but still intact
enough to be useable.
“Damn, I think my horn’s frostbitten!” Natalie complained as soon as a blanket
had been unceremoniously tossed onto her body. She was shivering and snarling
through clenched teeth, “And whose oh-so-bright idea was this, again?!”
“Mine too,” Anna bemoaned, eyes averting towards the ‘midget-horned’ stallion
for a few seconds. “I think it was Matt’s idea…” she added, a frown etched on
her muzzle.
“Natz, Anna, both of you take a chill pill. We’ll get to Frostbite Haven soon,”
Matt sighed, almost immediately getting glared at by the two mares afterwards.
“Oh, ha ha, very funny,” Anna hissed. Her face began turning red in blooming
fury. “You’re only saying that because your horn can’t get frostbitten!” she
exclaimed, pointing an accusing hoof at the stallion.
“Next time we do something like this, we’re dressing like Godcat-damned
eskimos!” Natalie almost shrieked, her voice now an octave higher than Anna’s.
Her eyes narrowed so low it looked as if she’d close them any minute.
The last stallion shook his head as the unfortunate blond-maned pony began to
argue with the mares about the weather and other such trivial nonsense—he
rolled his eyes as that conversation rapidly derailed beyond his comprehension.
His eyes acted as if they weren’t his own, staring rather vacantly at different
things. He soon spotted Anna’s bow as she waved it around in her magic as if it
were a caveman’s club.
“She better not poke her eyes out with that thing. Those gems on that bow could
really do some damage…” he thought for a second before looking over at the
weapon and pushed the thought from his mind. He gave the green-maned mare
another glance, noticing that she had taken out of her quiver to use like an
accusing hoof. And then she loaded the arrow into the drawstring. “Joy, looks
like she's about to shoot Matt with the damn thing. I hope he responds fast
enough to deflect her arrows, if and when she decides to fire them.”
His eyes darted off to a dark-feathered gryphon with a black feline coat that
had tapped at his neck with a talon. “Yes, Jeremy? What do you need, you crow-
jaguar?” he asked, turning his head to the gryphon in question.
The aforementioned ‘crow-jaguar’ chortled, a smile curling up on his beak.
“Your coat, sir. We need to examine thine thin metal wings,” he answered.
“Oh, right,” he sighed and nodded. He raised his front legs to the sky,
pointing his head upwards as well, moving to stand on shaky rear legs like he
had the desire to take off towards the ceiling of the tank. Jeremy raised his
talons and grabbed the stallion firmly by his midsection, while another gryphon
started to hover over them, tugging at the sleeves of the pony’s coat.
Soon, the whole garment came off, leaving him almost bare. This exposed a metal
plate on his back, fashioned of steel and with a thin melting layer of frost
having already accumulated. His wings were also covered in steel, adorned with
copper feathers protruding from small metal spikes. Like his back, they too had
a rapidly-disintegrating layer of frozen water.
“Shall we remove his socks and horseshoes?” the same gryphon who now held the
coat asked, folding up the garment very neatly while he had still been
airborne.
“Nah, leave them on. They make great legwarmers,” the stallion replied with a
rather cheeky grin on his muzzle. Once Jeremy let go of him and backed off, he
thrust his front legs forward, horseshoes producing a brief echoing sound as
they collided with the floor. This caused the still-bickering unicorns to stop
talking and turn towards him.
Natalie was the first to comment on the obvious, and she had a devious smirk
plastered onto her face as she spoke, "Oh look, Lance has no clothes!”
“You have no room to talk, filly—you, Anna, and Matt trotted around in that
snowstorm wearing nothing but fucking scarves. Matt, I can sorta understand
because he’s got fuzz that makes me think he has a woolly mammoth somewhere in
his family, but you? Don’t get me started, Featherbutt,” Lance retorted, his
cheeky grin becoming a smile that looked like it belonged to a great white
shark.
“Oh, what was that? You wanna fight?” Natalie stood straight up, her horn
beginning to shimmer in vibrant orange.
“You heard me, Miss I-Got-a-Shooting-Star-With-Feathers-for-a-Cutie-Mark,”
Lance continued to sneer, his crimson eyes glinting for a split-second in
amusement.
“Listen here, Mister I-Can’t-Fly-Because-My-Wings-Can’t-Lift-Me,” Natalie
began, her eyes narrowing low. Her smile widened into a full-on Cheshire grin
as she spoke. “You best watch yourself, because you’re the only non-unicorn
trotting in this tank!”
“Bitch, you’re outgunned,” Lance immediately replied, using a hoof to gesture
to all of the gryphons present. “I suggest you choose your next words carefully
if you wanna continue this verbal drawl.”
“Ignore her, Lance. She’s probably in heat again,” Matt groaned, rolling his
eyes with a frown on his visage. His remark almost immediately garnered him
another glare from the mare he just spoke of.
“Am not, first off…”Natalie shrieked, and once again, the argument had started
right back at square one. The trio of unicorns began raising hell at one
another, and this time it started getting more physical, because Natalie began
to swing and hurl her staff at the half-Clydesdale stallion. He merely took the
hits like he had been a living sponge, all the while trying to talk sense into
her.
Lance allowed himself to sit on his rump again as the gryphons spread his
wings, raising a front hoof and letting it connect with his face before running
it down the bridge of his muzzle. Once that same hoof dropped and connected
with the floor, he let his eyes wander around until they caught sight of
Natalie’s staff once again assaulting Matt with a whack atop his head. “He
doesn’t look amused,” the burnt orange stallion thought, “his narrowing eyes
and that grumpy frown... yeesh, I hope he doesn’t explode soon.”
His eyes darted off again, towards something that mysteriously appeared from
nowhere to block the oncoming staff. It floated, secured in an aura of gold,
and as the red-eyed stallion took another quick-second glance at Matt, he
noticed that his horn glowed with a similar aura. “Ah, hell, here we go,” he
frowned as his thoughts echoed in his skull, glancing back at the mysterious
something that had appeared out of flat-out thin air.
“Hmm... gold wings for the hoof-guard, rubies, long silver blade with gold
runes encased in red veins…” Lance paused for a bit, silently muttering to
himself this time, “great, he brought out Heaven’s Gate.” Fortunately for him,
none of the unicorns heard him amidst their own bickering, and soon enough bow,
staff, and blade started to clash vehemently. So too had the unicorns
themselves, for that matter—the argument had quickly became a full-on brawl
complete with flailing hooves that lasted for a while.
At least, until Jeremy spoke up as he put a blanket around Lance. “Should I get
out the magic inhibitors again?” he asked, and in that moment, the trio of
arguing ponies stopped fighting to glance at him. Anna had been tightly
sandwiched between Matt and Natalie, who had at that point tried to reach past
her with their hooves in an attempt to slap the other. The green-maned mare
kept them apart with both her hooves and her bow as best she could, using her
magic to grab the sword and the staff to keep them spaced apart too.
“No,” the trio said in unison.
“Alright then. Stop fighting,” Jeremy hissed, a frown on his beak. With that,
the three unicorns broke up and returned to the spots they sat at before the
whole arguing spiel began, taking their weapons with and shooting glares at
him, bitterly mumbling "crow-jaguar" to themselves the entire time. Jeremy
simply chortled at the mutterings, rolling his eyes at the unicorns before
cantering to the chests and digging through them for something.
Lance finally allowed himself a small sigh of relief, as if grateful that
something had been done about the fighting. He glanced at Matt’s blade again,
noticing it had been standing upright due to its owner’s magic. It wasn’t until
the aforementioned stallion had addressed him did he stop thinking.
“Lance, why are you looking at my sword?” asked Matt who had a puzzled brow
raised, using his magic to poke the lone pegasus he addressed using his magic
to poke the red-maned pegasus with a stick that had appeared from nowhere. He
did not bother to get up off his rump to do so as the poking with the stick
persisted.
Lance instantly snapped out of his stupor and blinked a few times as the
question registered in his mind and the feeling of the stick repeatedly
touching him caused his shoulder to twitch. “Uh... to take my mind off of you
arguing with the girls, Matt,” he replied quickly.
“Uh-huh,” Matt hesitantly sighed, slowly nodding his head as if skeptical of
Lance’s words. “Riiiiight.”
“I’m hungry!” Anna interjected in complaint, causing the other three ponies to
look at her in a heartbeat. Her eyes watered, her mouth quivered, and she even
stomped a hoof to complete the child-throwing-a-tantrum look.
“Lovely,” Lance remarked with a frown, and he shot a quick glance at two
identical maroon gryphons and nodded to them. Quickly, they nodded back and
turned to a stove that stood just behind them. A third with gold feathers and
stripes on an orange body rummaged through a big brown sack filled with so much
stuff it would take all four ponies and three gryphons just to lift the thing
from the floor of the tank—let alone sort all the junk within it—and he made
sure to take a flashlight with him as an added precaution.
“What’s taking so long to find food?” asked one of the gryphons at the stove
after waiting patiently for a good thirty minutes.
“We’re... we’re…” the gryphon in the sack began, shaking as if cold as soon as
he emerged from the bag's mouth, “we're out of food!”
Lance immediately rose up onto his hooves, the blanket falling from his hind
quarters and revealing his cutie mark: a missile-shaped object with a red body
that had a great white stripe running down the middle, with said stripe adorned
by a manji. He and the gryphon exchanged just one glance; a panicked face
meeting that of a stone-cold mask which tethered on the verge of breaking. “We
can’t be out of food!” he cried, an eye twitching. “We all had rations
yesterday; I’m sure we have some left still! Keep looking, you canary-colored
tiger!”
The striped gryphon who'd been addressed as a 'canary-colored tiger'
frantically nodded, rummaging through the contents of the sack with twice the
agility he’d had previously. He looked back at the pegasus and shook after
another fifteen minutes, wide brown eyes betraying his nervousness. “I-I just
double-checked. We’re out,” he stammered as he emerged from the sack of stuff
for the second time.
Lance hissed as he briskly stomped his way to the sack and pushed the gryphon
aside with his hoof. Mumbling something about a lout, he too began wriggling
and crawling through the sack's contents. A whole slew of things filled the
sack, like trinkets, more bullets, many valuable gemstones, and a wide variety
of other items. All of this the pegasus dug through in desperation, in an
attempt to find one morsel of food.
He did this once, then twice, then thrice with haste before stopping his mad
digging fit and getting out of the bag with sluggish movements and ragged
breathing. Looking back at his fellow ponies after a total of another forty-
five minutes, he noticed their impatient looks and shook his head. “Yep. We’re
out of food,” he sighed flatly. "Didn't even find a rotten slab of meat or
stale loaf of bread."
“Awww! I don’t want to sleep on an empty stomach!” Anna complained almost
immediately, eyes watering again.
“Just be glad we’re not out there freezing to death, you tan-beige tree stump,”
Natalie groaned, a hoof connecting with her face in short order. "I'm also glad
Lance isn't rambling about the fucking snow this time, like he has for the past
eleven days," she added, running that same hoof down the bridge of her muzzle.
Lance glared at Matt. “I hope this is all worth it when we get to Frostbite
Haven, because we’re buying out the food shops as soon as we arrive!” he
scowled, an eye twitching once more.
“It is,” Matt instantly replied with wide eyes and a hasty nod. He had his
front hooves raised, almost as if the pegasus stood just inches from his muzzle
while trying to mug him.
“Also, we’re investing in three fridges and five more cupboards. We haven’t got
time to be going out there and hunting monsters, especially in this storm we
landed in!” Lance continued, pointing a hoof and waving it at a rather empty
portion of the tank everyone stood in.
A cat appeared in a glimmering blue flash of light. This cat meowed and then
sighed. The feline was blue-furred and missing all four limbs—yet somehow
defying the fact and standing upright on its hips without aid. It sported a
very thick and fluffy coat, and it rubbed its head against Matt’s foreleg and
purred as soon as he set the ends of his front appendages back down.
“Hey, NoLegs. You hungry?” Matt asked, petting the cat with his hoof.
NoLegs nodded and meowed again to answer, before going back to rubbing itself
on the foreleg of the pony it answered whilst purring.
“We’ll get some food tomorrow, I promise,” Matt replied in a friendly tone,
still petting the cat, who kept purring like no tomorrow. With that, silence
filled the air, with the only sound breaking it being the steady whirring of
the heaters and the treads as the tank pressed on through the snow. Two hours
passed before someone chanced a look towards a particular object.
A forest green gryphon moved until he stood in front of a screen that hung
above a control panel laden with keys and a steering wheel. “I see something!”
he cried. His exclamation ended up causing everyone else, cat included, in the
tank to rush to the panel in mere seconds, all three weapons dropping and
clattering to the floor as though nothing more than used bullet shells.
There, outside in the raging snowstorm, something began to hesitantly approach.
What it had been, nobody was certain—all the thing was, to the naked eye aided
by the screen, a far-off silhouette blurred by the howling winds and hellish
flurry of purest white.
The silhouette drew closer yet, and all eyes were still glued to the screen
watching it.
“What is that?” asked one brown gryphon, blinking.
“Not sure, Nathan. Let’s wait till it gets closer, and then we see how it plays
out,” Lance replied, leaning in closer to the screen. Silence filled the tank,
and all were tense as the thing drew even closer.
Brown matted fur stood out against the pure white. A four legged frame lumbered
forward, the limbs ending in dulled yellow claws.
There could be no mistaking it: the beast approaching them had been a bear. The
tranquility still lingered in the tank when the group realized what the
encroaching beast was. And then, the silence broke as fast as it had settled
in, while Matt's eyes began to gleam.
“Sweet! We get to eat after all!” Matt cried in joy as a smile crossed his
muzzle, rushing to the hatch and grabbing his sword with a magic tinged in gold
during the process. As his blanket flew off, he revealed his cutie mark: a
black silhouette of a sword in a pentagram's star-center. His white back legs
propelled him in tandem with his front ones as he got closer to the hatch.
“Yay!” Anna cheered, also rushing to the hatch whilst scooping up her bow. A
sharpened arrow and flute, crossed in an X shape with, a poison ivy vine
wrapping around where both had intersected had been her cutie mark.
“May as well help get the damn thing,” Natalie sighed, also going to the hatch
and casting off her blanket. Her cutie mark was a shooting star, leaving behind
three colored feathers of red, blue, and gold in the wake of its trailing tail.
The trio of unicorns clambered out by levitating themselves in their magic, but
once they let their hooves land in the snow, the bear had stopped well away
from the tank. Anna squinted her eyes and noticed that the beast had leaned its
head down to sniff at something, but she wasn’t quite sure what.
Anna instantly made to trot towards the bear, but a thick-furred white leg
stopped her. She turned to Matt with a frown on her face. “What?” she asked.
“Snipe it from here. It won’t know what hit it,” he answered with a nod.
“I’d have to get closer; the damn snow is obstructing me, and I think the
wind’s gonna turn my arrows sideways before they hit the target,” she replied
with an irritated huff. The leg that stood in her way her dropped, its hoof
landing once again in the snow as the stallion merely groaned.
“She’s right; if the wind picks up any more speed, our manes will get in our
faces at this rate,” Natalie agreed with a nod. “From here, I can hardly see
the damn bear as it is. I’m grateful the tank saw the bear before we did!”
Matt processed this for a moment before smiling. “If that’s the case, then the
bear probably can’t see us through the snow. Ample time to sneak up on the
fucker. Maybe the wind will change direction and help the arrow along.” His
smile widened as he spoke. Cautiously, the three approached the bear, making
their hoofsteps as quiet as possible—easier said than done, since the snow
crunched beneath them as they went. Once they were a good football field's
length from it, Anna paused to squint her eyes again and see the beast.
“Stop. I think it’s found a corpse,” she hissed, her remark causing the two
other unicorns who trotted ahead to turn to her.
“A corpse? Of what?” Natalie cautiously asked, quirking a brow as the wind
shifted to blow her and Matt's tails between their rear legs.
“Dunno—all I see’s a splotch of dark red,” Anna answered, slowly taking out an
arrow from her quiver. The other two quickly got out of her way as she put the
arrow into the drawstring, levitated the bow before her body, and took aim. The
stone bent, flexing like rubber, as the arrow pulled further back until the
string was taut. She fired the arrow once she had been all but certain it would
connect with her target, and it flew brazenly through the still-falling snow
and the winds propelling it.
Against all odds, the winds pushed the projectile onward, causing it to hit the
bear right in the head—instantly, the creature fell over in the snow with the
grace of a wrecking ball. It lay still in the white, nothing more than a brown
heap of fur and flesh.
“Aww!” Matt complained, stomping a hoof in the snow with a pout. “I wanted more
of a challenge!”
“We’re way stronger and smarter than these bears. They really can’t challenge
us,” Natalie sighed, and with that they resumed trotting to the beast. They
stopped once they reached it, only to find what it had been sniffing at
earlier—a half-buried, filly-sized, moon-pale corpse of a very peculiar pony,
if it could be called such. “What should we do with this dead pony?” she asked,
hefting up the bear in her magic with ease, being mindful to avoid the deceased
pony. She could not help but notice a dark red mane laying askew, forming
stringy clumps that rested upon much of the pony's face.
“Those eyes are black and wide open,” Anna began, using a hoof to brush aside
some of the pony’s mane so the other two could see its face, which sported a
torn cheek that formed a half-grin stretching all the way to the underside of
its left ear, “you think it blinded itself?”
“Doubt it,” Matt replied, prodding at the pony’s ribs with his hoof. He noticed
a tattered blue scarf barely clinging to its neck, but nothing more than that
clothing-wise. “Damn, this one’s just skin and bones—it has the thinnest
stomach I've seen yet. How’d this poor thing get out here like this, especially
with just a scarf around its neck?” His eyes trailed to a jutting, almost-
rectangular-but-not-quite protrusion between the thing's rear legs. "Is that...
a dick?"
“It has changeling’s wings. I reckon it flew,” Natalie sighed and frowned,
using some more of her magic to heft the carcass up from the snow. Strangely,
the peculiar pony wasn’t stiff, though it was limp, and it sported dull clawed
horseshoes of steel bearing intricate carvings on its hooves. Its legs were
riddled with tears that exposed sinew and yellowed bone that oddly did not have
any sort of blood on them, indicating that they'd been that way for quite a
while.
The tear on the left cheek was perfectly mirrored by the right, forming a
hellish and unnervingly wide grin that could not have occurred naturally. The
wings she spotted came in two pairs, one behind the other, and both sets barely
held together in thin crimson filaments. They looked as if they'd crumble with
just the slightest touch, having more holes than should be possible, and had a
translucent red tint about them.
Anna trotted around and took a peek between the cadaver's rear legs, before
then doubling back to its face, eyeing the pony's suspiciously red backside and
a set of thin ribs matching in color. She turned to Matt and sighed. “It's a
girl. Matt, you've mistaken the pelvic bone for a dick." She paused to assess
the corpse's front end, eyeing a jagged protrusion that emerged from the
corpse's forehead only matched by mule-like ears that flopped uselessly.
"She has a broken stump on her forehead, her mane and tail are thin and
stringy, her ears are longer than normal, and she has had chunks taken out of
her legs…" Anna paused for a moment. "I think we may have found a dead
changeling queen,” she groaned. “But why’s her mane a dark red, and why is her
skin light grey? Hell, why’s her mouth torn open to the point she has a creepy
grin going from ear to ear?”
“Perhaps she’s been out here a while. I’mma get her horseshoes off her hooves,”
Matt sighed, conjuring some more of his magic to remove said horseshoes from
the mare’s hooves. “Let’s take the corpse with us; maybe Lance knows something
about dead changeling queens.”
A noise caught the attention of the trio, one that sounded like a distant boom
of thunder. They looked around in all directions, but nothing stood out against
the vast white aside from the tank. The unicorns glanced up, yet could see
nothing past the ongoing flurry of snow which once again started to pick up in
intensity, let alone past the darkening grey skies above.
Another rumble shook the skies, this time louder, and the ground lightly quaked
in response. The snow coating it shook as well, all flakes appearing to jump up
and down like the most minute of pebbles.
“Oh, shit, thundersnow incoming!” Natalie shrieked, eyes widening. Her ears
fell flat against her skull as the dreaded ruckus vehemently roared once more,
this time with enough force to shake her and the other two unicorns in addition
to the snow and ground.
The three quickly turned and galloped back into the tank in short order with
their new catch, as well as the dead changeling and horseshoes in tow. They
levitated themselves inside, and hastily threw the bear onto the floor of the
metallic behemoth and the corpse onto one of the gurneys, as well as the shoes
into one of the chests.
Lance approached the lot as the hatch slammed shut. “We’re probably gonna need
his fur,” he said, turning to one of the gryphons whilst pointing at the bear
for emphasis, this one sporting a light grey lion's body and plumage. “Get me
the skinning knife, Quicksilver.”
***** Start of Arc I: Chapter I- Meat, Dreams, and the Barrier *****
Quicksilver nodded and rushed to the sack of goods before rummaging through it
again. After a few minutes, he produced a knife. He tossed it to the pegasus,
who caught it with a hoof. Before the fur had been cut away, along with the
skin, Anna took the time to remove the arrow still lodged in its skull with a
simple tug from her magic. After that, Natalie's horn glowed, and she conjured
a very large ball of flame—large enough to easily engulf the bear.
The process of skinning the damn thing took a hefty fifteen to twenty minutes,
and afterwards, the meat had been cooked to perfection and everyone heartily
dug in. Only the stripped bones and aforementioned fur and skin remained once
the meat had been eaten—many of the organs were also devoured, and those that
weren't had been tossed in the fire to burn away and become ash.
Lance looked Anna with a half-smile, who had just finished her third chunk
greedily. He then looked at the others, who were cleaning themselves from the
meal.
“What should we do with the bones?” Matt asked before burping loudly.
“Make something from them,” Natalie proposed, a faint smile on her face.
“Hang the bearskin to dry. As for the bones, put ‘em in their own box. Maybe we
can ward off crazed spirits with a bone charm,” Lance commanded after giving it
some thought, and a few gryphons did just that in a matter of minutes. The
stallion turned his attention to the dead mare on the gurney and frowned.
“Where’d that small body come from?” he asked. "It looks almost skeletal, and
seems foal-sized."
“That changeling—a girl, I checked—was already lying next to the bear when said
bear fell thanks to my arrow. We figured you’d know something about what caused
her to keel over,” Anna clarified quickly, frowning. She pulled a blanket over
her body, her head resting atop her front legs.
“She had strange clawed horseshoes on her, which I’ve already tucked away in
one of the chests,” Matt added with a nod. “Perhaps she fought tooth and hoof,
but it wasn’t enough for the sorry bitch.”
“Quicksilver, Alexander!” Lance barked in a commanding tone of voice, and
immediately, the two gryphons he addressed looked at him, bodies stiff and
wings ruffling as they stood to attention. He pointed to the corpse on the
gurney and said, “Figure out how that pony—”
Natalie cut him off mid-command as she proceeded to lay down, “Changeling,
Lance! She has four bug wings, a red carapace and ribcage, and a missing horn!”
“Fine!” Lance snapped before continuing, “Figure out how that changeling died!”
The two gryphons nodded and rushed to the deceased changeling and set to work
examining her head to hoof. They prodded at her legs, her ribs, and even at her
face before stopping. “Lack of love and food in general, the cold, and I
believe her missing horn might’ve also been a contributing factor,” Alexander
concluded with a sigh.
“How does the missing horn contribute, exactly?” Lance asked in a slightly
saddened tone, blinking.
“Simple: without a means to channel her magic, she would not have been able to
adequately feed off of love and defend herself. She’d have keeled over in a
matter of days in a condition such as this, and frankly, I’m amazed her corpse
isn’t stiff given the circumstances,” Alexander elaborated with a nod of his
head. "I'm curious as to how rigor hasn't kicked in yet. Maybe this changeling
had glycerol in her blood, but as I've yet to run a proper test... it's just a
hypothesis on my part."
“Must’ve just strived on determination alone to find one morsel of food. I
genuinely feel sorry for the poor bitch,” Quicksilver added with a frown
gracing his beak. “It takes guts to do something like that, with nothing more
than a set of clawed horseshoes to boot.”
“But what explains her red mane and light grey coat?” Matt frowned, laying down
and levitating a blanket over his body.
“This one’s probably albino, or she bleached her body. As for the mane, this
one might've been some sort of nobility—maybe a queen, even,” Quicksilver
replied and shrugged. “Either that or it’s a postmortem thing going on where
the skin—or chitin, in this case—just pales.”
“I see,” Lance sighed as he laid belly-side down on the floor of the tank after
reclaiming his tattered blanket, a content smile on his face. “We’ll bury that
queen first thing in the morning—she deserves that much, at least. For now,
let’s get some shut-eye.” The other soldiers soon followed suit and did the
same. As for NoLegs, he simply slept atop Matt’s back as everyone else went out
like lights.
During the first few hours the group spent sleeping or so, the only sound heard
in the tank aside from the heaters belonged to a few gryphons and the two
stallions, who had been snoring in a semi-silent cacophony. Lance scrunched his
closed eyes as he slept, mumbling to himself incoherently. He rolled over onto
his back, wings spread uncomfortably wide, and a blush came onto his face.
“She's too damn young for me—barely an adult pony...” He paused, nose wrinkling
as if responding to a horrid smell, “... she should know better.” He rolled
over again, his form shaking. The metallic wings flapped once, then twice, as
he babbled on without making even the slightest bit of sense. Rolling over once
more, he started shaking his head in his sleep. “I don’t want Anna..." Another
short pause riddled with a few pants. "I want… Natalie… she has the nicer ass…”
he moaned, hind legs splayed wide and twitching for a fleeting second before
kicking and retracting back under his body.
“Anna… stop…” Lance went on, his face reddening still. He turned over yet
again, shuddering as if the cold outside still assaulted him, letting off a few
pleading whimpers all the while. “Stop it… I'm not interested…”
Natalie woke up, though she only opened one eye. She directed her azure orb
towards the struggling and blushing stallion, who kept mumbling along the lines
of “stop it, Anna” over and over as he tossed and turned. The mare kept very
still, blinking her one open eye every few seconds.
“He’s having a wet dream about Anna. And he's mumbling like a sadsack.
Greeaat,” she thought, still unmoving, save for her eyelids. “Yep. He has a
thing for her. Joy. Though, he doesn’t seem to want this wet dream. Something’s
really off here.”
Lance began panting. “Stop it…” he continued to plead, stretching his rear legs
and kicking at nothing in particular. His fidgeting worsened, and his breathing
turned hitched and shallow. “No no no,” he mumbled, his voice now shifting to
panic whilst his blush faded. “Don’t shoot an arrow at me.” He began scooting
his body away from something, but Natz couldn’t tell what. “You’re creeping me
out with your rambling about sin; stop it already!” his voice rose, yet he kept
scooting. Judging from his current flailing, it seemed to have little effect
over what transpired in his dream.
”Now he’s yakkin’ about something else?” Natalie thought, her eye narrowing and
her brow furrowing as a concerned frown marred her face.
His wings flapped again, and he hollered “I atoned for my sins already, just
don’t shoot!” as his eyes snapped open in seconds, and Lance glanced around to
find the gryphons and Natalie all wide awake and staring straight at him. The
stallion shifted so he could sit on his rump whilst breathing frantically, with
dark red bags forming under his wide and bloodshot eyes which held pinprick
pupils.
He hastily moved a hoof over the barrel of his chest, desperately pawing at it
in a way the red-maned unicorn thought he had genuinely had a serious bout of
pain in that particular spot. She made to speak, but could not utter a word as
her attention turned from the panicked pony and towards another shifting form.
Matt scrambled to his hooves, sending NoLegs yowling and flying off his back as
he got up with haste. He looked at the pegasus, a frown marring his features.
“What the fuck, dude? Why did you scream?” he asked, eyes just as wide.
Lance simply shook on the spot like a leaf in a storm, the look of pure terror
not leaving his face. Sweat already formed, dribbling down his body messily
like liquid bullets. He set his hoof down, jaw working up and down shakily, and
his wings were still splayed wide. His torn ears fell flat on his head.
“He had been having a wet dream. How it went, I don’t have an exact idea, but I
know it had something to do with Anna. Maybe something about her yakkin’ about
sin or whatever,” Natalie answered, shaking her head sadly and groaning
afterwards.
Anna bore a lopsided smile on her muzzle and small, twitching eyes sparkling
with perplexion. Her horn glowed, its sparks creating question marks above her
head. “Why would a simple dream about me end up frightening him? Doesn’t he
like you more, Natz?” she asked, using a hoof to gesture to the only pegasus
present.
“He only wants me for my ass, Anna—you're just the one he had a nightmare
about. How the hell should I know?” Natalie snorted with a shrug as she briefly
glanced at the smaller mare. “All I know is it looked like he nearly shat
himself, and that he didn’t want the dream to begin with.”
Lance hid under his tattered blanket in short order, his form still cringing
afterwards, like a foal who had yet to shed its fear of the dark that housed
the evil boogeymen. “Just go back to sleep, everybody…” he murmured.
One by one, the others complied. This time, though, NoLegs moved next to the
metal-winged pony and curled up. The tank became blanketed in silence once
more, save for the snores of the gryphons and stallions and the heaters as they
generated warmth.
Another bout of dreaming clouded his thoughts, and this time, it granted him
witness to an area comprised of lava and rock that greeted him in the stead of
whatever he dreamt about before arousing everyone else from their rest with his
panicked howling. Had he been inside a volcano?
Lance looked around, seeing himself on a small platform that could barely
support two ponies at best. Where did he stand, and why did it have to be here?
He glanced around again, finding that the tall rock walls bathed in bright
orange and red glows stood separated from his impromptu island by miles and
miles of boiling lava.
The lone pony glanced at his wings and sighed, shaking his head. "No way I'll
be able to get out of here with these pieces of shit plastered on my back.
Feathers are too small, though I doubt they’d generate decent air currents even
if they’d gotten size augmentations," he murmured, his voice rebounding off the
walls as if he’d yelled.
The island and rock walls briefly shook, and the lava began to boil more as it
did. What could have agitated the thick, burning lifeblood of the mountain? A
cool breeze blew past, gingerly touching the pegasus.
"Wait… a breeze?"Lance murmured, glancing around once more with a realization
that something was amiss starting to sink in. "That shouldn't be possible
here..."
A voice echoed, one of a raspy masculine nature. "No rest for the wicked..." it
snarled rather bitterly, as if the words themselves could have somehow been
lathered in layers of horrible venom. This same voice had been loud and
demanding like it belonged to a deity of some kind. Its rasping tone only
further made this voice start to ring in his ears. "A fitting end for one such
as you..."
"Who's there?" Lince cried, glancing around and seeing nothing but the accursed
walls and magma. For a long moment, there came no answer in spite of his
askance, and thus his ears fell flat on his skull.
The lava began to boil more and more, and it gradually began to rise up and up.
A feeling of dread washed over the trapped pony, whose eyes had widened. In a
panic, he began flapping his useless wings whilst jumping about like a hapless
frog. But, no matter what he did and how hard he tried, he could not escape
from the encroaching magma that threatened to swallow both him and the
shrinking island he was bouncing upon to no avail.
"Just accept your fate, you red-eyed cretin," the unseen owner of the voice
shrieked once more, now loud enough to briefly shake the stone walls that held
the magma which cut off all means of escape for the stallion. "You can't—"
A booming, demonic laughter hit his ears and cut off the ethereal voice,
echoing off the walls as if coming from everywhere at once. Lance swiveled his
head around to get another look at his surroundings once more, yet nothing
changed. The eerie cacophony echoed, and this time he detected a creature with
piercing and glowing eyes staring right into his soul standing on the same
shrinking island as he. This same creature let off the unnerving laughter
again, right before rushing straight to him like a missile—and that had been
the moment in which he woke up, form shaking, as another howl left his mouth.
Lance looked around after his rather rude awakening and noticed that his scream
did not arouse anybody else from their slumber this time. Calming himself down
with a few shaky deep breaths, he sighed and looked towards the panel. The
blizzard outside had stopped for the time being, and so did the howling winds
which fueled its onslaught. He blinked, making sure he was seeing correctly.
The screen—and his weary, bloodshot eyes—failed to deceive him.
Lance grudgingly sighed, and curled up to sleep once more. Before he could doze
off, though, a faint moan of discomfort hit his torn ears. He rose up his head
to glance around again and didn’t find the source of the moan. Upon trying to
lower his head so as to rest again, the noise—a bit louder—repeated.
And then came the sound of faint sobbing, accompanied by frantic whimpers that
were equally as hushed.
Once more, he rose his head and was able to detect the source of the sounds
this time around: Anna. The unicorn was shedding tears in her sleep, her face
reddening more and more by the second. Front hooves poised as if chained
together, she desperately shook them as she laid flat on her back.
“Stop… it hurts…” she pleaded, rear legs splayed embarrassingly wide, but
fortunately she had her back end pointed towards the gurneys and away from him.
Lance slowly blinked, rubbing one eye with a hoof wearily.
“Get away!” Anna suddenly cried out, kicking the air frantically. “Get away! I
didn’t sin, dammit!” she shrieked, struggling in such a way the still-sleepy
stallion couldn’t help but feel that something invisible had actually been
having its way with her right then and there. Lance nigh-instantly scrambled to
his hooves and made a beeline to her without a second to spare, shaking her
awake vigorously as soon as he stood next to her and put his front hooves on
her chest. She woke up emitting a high-pitched shriek of her own, breathing as
if her life began slipping away thereafter. He took the opportunity to shift
his front hooves elsewhere, letting them stray up with his eyes locking with
hers in a staring contest.
“I heard the caterwauling. Frankly, I don’t want to know what you were dreaming
about,” Lance half-wearily sighed, gently spreading her forelegs to reassure
her that nothing horrific had transpired whilst she dozed.
Anna shook, sitting up in a heartbeat. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot, and
housed pinprick pupils. She frantically wrapped her front legs around and then
clutched the pegasus tightly, still cringing with complete terror.
“It had… g-glowing eyes…” Anna whimpered like a frightened foal, more tears
leaking from her eyes. “A-And it t-told me… I-I had s-sinned…”
Lance blinked, feeling pain in his shoulders as the unicorn tightened her hug a
bit.
“T-Then… it…” Anna hiccuped, only to stop as thin wings of metal wrapped around
her.
“Please, for the love of Godcat, say no more,” Lance cut her off sternly, but
in a low and gentle tone of voice that could have been mistaken for a whisper.
He had a pretty good idea of what she dreamt of, if her howling and sleeping
mannerisms were anything to go by. The mental imagery did more than enough to
make him cringe at the mere notion of it. Since he too had seen something
sporting glowing eyes in his earlier dream, he began to think that something
had been haunting them.
Did he merely imagine this 'haunting', however? That could have been a
possibility; his sleep-fogged mind must've been playing with him. Whatever the
reason, all he could do was begrudgingly sigh.
The shaken mare was silent for a minute or two as she calmed down. Then, she
let go and curled back up, drying her tears with a hoof once her grip on the
pegasus had loosened. Lance moved away, scooped up his blanket with his mouth,
then returned to her and laid down at the mare's side. He tossed the tattered
cloth over his back like a sack of flour, glancing at his companion as the
thing landed on his metal-infused midsection, covering most of it up. "C-can I
sleep with you?" she asked, still cringing a bit.
Lance thought her request over for some seconds, pursing his lips together and
furrowing his brow slightly. “Just this once, squirt. And don't try any funny
business,” he answered at last, swiftly wrapping a cloth-laden wing around her
as best he could. Anna smiled weakly and snuggled up next to him, falling fast
asleep with her head next to his shoulder. Lance nestled his head between his
forelegs and quickly dozed back off himself, not hearing another peep from
anyone else around him.
A few hours passed and clouds parted, and at the first rays of light everyone
arose like zombies from the grave. A collective series of yawns had been
shared, as was the stretching of limbs and bodies.
After that, Lance had the hatch opened and poked his head out of it, with one
gryphon beneath his back hooves, just barely supporting his form. The moon hung
high in the sky, bathing the entire landscape in a silvery glow. The snow
twinkled like little diamonds, and the tank’s exterior like recently-polished
steel. Beyond the horizon, half-visible, another planet hovered, distant enough
to blur whatever had been on its surface.
The other three poked their heads out as well, supporting themselves with their
magic.
“It’s so amazing…” Natalie remarked, her eyes twinkling as much as the snow. A
wide smile adorned her face.
“Oh my Godcat, it is!” Anna agreed, her eyes also twinkling.
“Look over there,” Matt stated, using a hoof to point at a silhouette some
distance away. The other three directed their gazes to it, using his hoof as
makeshift guidance. “You think that could be Frostbite Haven?”
“Maybe,” Lance replied, blinking.
“If it is, then can we go there now?” Anna asked in a hopeful voice, ears
twitching.
Lance mulled about it it for longer than a minute. “Yes,” he said, dropping
back to the inside of the tank and immediately trotting to the control panel.
The other three dropped down as well, and the hatch closed. Typing in numbers
and letters and whatnot before grasping the steering handles with a new
destination in mind, the burnt orange stallion smirked as the tank’s treads
whirred to life very violently. This caused a cascade of snow to fly everywhere
and twinkle like hail. It sped towards the silhouette in the distance like a
speeding bullet, and it had only been a half-hour before the silhouette became
clearer as the tank came closer to it.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
It was, indeed, a town, and all the inhabitants happened to be cutie-markless
hippogryphs of varying colors and plumage patterns. Some had manes and heads
like ponies, while others had feathers and beaks like gryphons. There were
houses made from ice molded into bricks, and some had signs indicating shops
and the like. Many of these villagers approached the tank as soon as it came to
a stop on the outskirts of their town and watched as four ponies and around a
dozen gryphons clambered out.
“Ponies!” one yellow-feathered hippogryph child shouted, eyes wide.
“With cutie marks!” exclaimed another hippogryph foal, this one with a teal
coat.
"What are they doing here?" a violet-maned filly asked, brown feathers
bristling a bit as an adult hippogryph walked past her.
Matt’s little horn glowed a shimmering gold in color, and from a flash of light
that was also gold came another brown sack that had been as full as he stood
tall. He plopped it in front of the townspeople and undid the drawstring which
kept the sack's mouth sealed. This wound up revealing a lot of gold coins—so
much, in fact, one had to wonder if he made a deal with a king or something to
get this ludicrous amount of money. “Food, fridges, and cupboards. Do you have
them?” he asked.
“Oh, yes we do—we have lots; perhaps even more than everygryph here can manage.
The fridges we have no use for, so you can have them for free—after all, what’s
the point of having electrical appliances if you’re in an environment where
they very seldom get used?” spoke one pure-white hippogryph, a beard of grey
hanging from just behind his beak. He turned to his fellow hippogryphs and
nodded. “Get them whatever they need,” he commanded. "They have paid us
handsomely."
A few more hippogryphs complied with the request, and these were the burliest
males around. They went into one of the igloos that made up the town, just
barely worming their way past the entrances, and stayed within this igloo for a
few minutes before pulling out the requested pieces of furniture one at a time.
With ease and a bit of teamwork and maneuvering, the hippogryphs flew up and up
in pairs, each taking either a cupboard or a fridge in tow. They were careful
to avoid dropping the blasted things, but had some trouble getting the massive
objects past the entrance-hole of the tank. They had to weasel in vertically,
which had been easier said than done despite the bulk of the workers who were
aiding in the transporting of goods.
Eventually, though, a total of five fridges and three cupboards had been loaded
and secured very safely in the tank. Once the hunks of wood and metal were
within the metallic behemoth, the burly hippogryphs flew out of the hatch and
landed gracefully in the snow, taking their places next to the bearded male who
nodded at them.
A few less bulky hippogryphs, all females with duller coats and plumages or
manes than the males, then loaded bags of food into the tank. It had been much
easier for them, since they did not have to worry about contending with huge
pieces of furniture. Lance eyed the females as they passed, though he noticed
their eyes did not show any emotion—in fact, the eyes of said she-gryphs were
as dull as the steel of his tank. Once they left the behemoth empty-clawed,
Matt pushed the sack of gold coins towards the elder with his magic.
For a tranquil minute after the goods had been successfully loaded into the
tank and the bag of coins loaded into an igloo, the villagers headed back to
their igloos and their visitors to their tank, when a great reverberation
echoed in the sky, causing everyone to stop what they were doing. It had been
as though time froze on the spot, rendering each and every pony, gryphon, and
hippogryph stiff as a doornail. Again, and again, the deafening wailings of the
sky continued to drag on, accompanied by the ground rumbling and moaning in
response. Once the cacophony from above died down, all looked up towards the
sky.
Every single set of eyes widened in either amazement or terror as a thin,
shimmering something reflected the light of the moon, rendering those who stood
in Frostbite Haven unable to see the heavens above. It was akin to the whole
expanse of the cosmos itself being painted in a thick coat of white paint, yet
this had just been the start. This whatever-it-was that had muted out the deep
navy that separated land and atmosphere began to shake just as another
deafening roar resounded from above, like it had been connected to the very
earth itself.
“What the fuck is that?!” Matt cried, irises shrinking as he continued to stare
at the anomaly. Another crash, like a bout of thunder, echoed from beyond, this
one loud enough to force his ears to the back of his head just as the snow-
laden ground shook once more.
The hippogryph with the beard blinked, pupils nothing more than meager
pinpricks as he spotted a crack in the something, sticking out like an oasis in
a desert. “That is the barrier between Fantasia and Mythos,” he said, his voice
grim. Another bellow from the heavens shook the town once more, this one
forcing him to sit in the snow lest he lose balance.
“What?” Lance asked, turning to the white hippogryph with a concerned frown
marring his features. The heavens shrieked again, the recent blare making him
glance back up out of morbid curiosity. The crack had widened substantially, to
the point it made the red bags appear under his eyes once more.
The white hippogryph shook his head. “According to legend, whatever has caused
the barrier to crack just now shall herald the end of time as we know it for
both worlds it had separated,” he replied, his voice even more somber now.
“What’s more, there is no stopping it, for whatever has damaged the blockade is
unbearably strong. Such is the way for that which shall smite us all in fire
and destruction.”
Anna stomped a hoof in the snow. “Then we’ll stop it,” she said, eyes
narrowing. Again, the skies let off a cacophony, this one much louder than
before—everyone winced and covered their ears as the cosmos rumbled and roared
as if it were accepting her challenge. The crack widened again, now large
enough to be filled by the entire Haven at least three times over.
“But it cannot be stopped,” repeated the hippogryph, eyes narrowing low as he
turned to glance at the ponies. This time, the sky didn’t cry out in an ear-
splitting echo that had tried its damnedest to rend the very atmosphere
asunder.
“Me and my fellow ponies are gonna find a way—” Anna paused as the heavens
raged once more, this time letting off three claps in rapid succession. The
crack widened with each awful howl from above, leaving an array of jagged
markings that spanned the horizon now. “—and if we can’t find a way, we’ll make
a way!” she finished, and only then did one last vehement crash make its
presence known.
This had been a noise so loud and deafening that the snow beneath everyone
shifted as if it were afraid, almost burying the whole population of the Haven
as well as their visitors in one wallop. This same noise also came close to
drowning out another horrible sound, one very much similar to shattering window
glass that was magnified a hundred times.
Everyone hastily dug themselves out, either using raw strength, claws, or
magic. They unearthed themselves just in time to see the white cracked thing
that blotted out the whole sky shatter into a million rapidly-vanishing pieces,
and once the heavens were cleared of the mysterious debris, the entire
population of the town stared at the ponies in unison.
The bearded hippogryph went slack-jawed, eyes widening for a second before his
face instantly hardened. “You fools!” he exclaimed, pointing an accusing talon
at Anna specifically. “You cannot hope to best whatever has just broken the
barrier that has kept Fantasia and Mythos apart!”
The whole lot tensed up in unison, but Anna did not so much as falter. She
remained dauntless, even as every set of eyes belonging to the hippogryphs
focused on her. “I intend to keep my word,” she spat simply.
“You ignorant little pony,” the bearded hippogryph snarled, shaking his head
like a father disciplining his troublesome child. “There is no hope for the
brazenly foolish, and you are the most foolish I’ve seen yet. Why, I highly
doubt your wretched cutie mark can help you!”
“I will lay my life down if that’s what it takes to stop the end of the
worlds,” Anna hissed, not once betraying a flinch of a leg or twitch of an ear
as she continued to stare down the elderly hippogryph. In that moment, Natalie
stepped forward, taking an unflinching stance next to her fellow mare.
“I’ve laid my life down just trying to survive. I have nothing to lose—I will
help my fellow unicorn stop the thing that shattered the barrier,” she growled,
a frown creasing her cream-colored brow.
Matt trotted up, quickly flanking Natalie. “I can also attest to this. I ain’t
gonna sit by while the horrible, ‘unbeatable’ thing lays waste to everything
around me,” he stated in a firm tone of voice.
Lance let no second go to waste as he trotted up as well, flanking Matt and the
unicorn mares. “I’m not so sure if there is a 'thing that broke the barriers,'
but if it exists, I'm not going on standby either. In fact, I'm willing to bet
at least a few residents of Mythos feel much the same way. And if my unicorn
companions are gonna fight, then I will fight too—me, and my entire army,” he
remarked coldly, turning to the gryphons who almost immediately saluted him all
at once.
“We will lay our lives for the sake of the worlds, sir!” they barked in unison.
Then, one by one, they flew to the ponies and picked them up before ascending
higher and higher. Once at the desired altitude, they descended into the hatch
with the empty-clawed gryphons following suit. The hatch slammed shut, and the
wheels whirred to life, sending another flurry of snow everywhere as the tank
backed out of the town and veered around it. Some of the hippogryphs shouted
angrily and flew after the Valkyrie, but they had no chance—even at top speed,
they couldn't hope to keep up.
Within minutes, Frostbite Haven had been left in the white dust, and in another
few minutes the tank once again found itself in the middle of a snow-laden
patch of nowhere. White flakes began to fall down from the heavens again,
although this flurry was slow and calm. Once the metallic behemoth had stopped
moving altogether, Alexander opened one of the fridges and found it empty. A
smile curled his beak a bit as he then turned to the corpse of the dead
changeling who still lay on the gurney.
“Quicksilver,” he began, turning to the light grey gryphon with a simple nod of
his head, “we have a corpse to do further autopsy on.”
“Haven’t we done enough autopsy on her?” Quicksilver frowned thoughtfully,
wings fluffing for a second.
“No; she may have had intestinal parasites that rendered her as thin as she is
before she passed,” Alexander snappishly replied with narrowing eyes. He firmly
shook his head. “We’ll have to slice her open.”
The ponies turned their attention to Alexander as he calmly approached the
carcass, and he only stopped once he stood directly next to the damn thing. He
rose a talon up and began prodding at the corpse, lifting one of the legs to
assess the whole set once more.
Still limp, but not stiff. The gryphons blinked. “This is a very peculiar
corpse; not once have any of the limbs turned rigid as ice when they should
have. Why in hell has rigor mortis not kicked in yet?” Alexander sighed,
setting down the leg he held before approaching the changeling’s head. He made
to touch the cadaver’s face with a claw, only to gape as a thin hoof shot up
and met with his talon head-on, stopping it from going any further.
"I... uh... h-how," Alexander stammered, trying to make sense of what had
happened. His brain struggled to process what should not have happened, but did
happen nonetheless.
Then, only when words failed Alexander completely did the lower jaw of the
corpse move, and worse still it distended to an unnatural 90 degrees to emit
something between a yawn and an eerie hiss of displeasure thanks to its
distinct split mouth. The head then twisted upon the neck, going a full 360
with sickening cracks throughout before the jaws snapped closed and the muzzle
of the thing turned squarely upon Alexander to regard him seemingly
judgmentally.
Several seconds of silence passed before the corpse stopped twitching
altogether. All stared with wide eyes zeroed in on it, as if expecting it to do
something else—and something else the thing did. A raspy, echoing, and barely
feminine voice croaked out of its mouth, even though the jaws had ceased
moving. “Stop touching me,” the body moaned .
“She’s alive?!” the ponies shrieked in unison, pupils dilating to pinpricks as
the gravity of this situation weighed in on them.
“Yes,” the pale changeling replied, lifting up her head to nod weakly. The
black eyes betrayed a blue spark in their canvases before two orbs of azure
began to glow within the dark voids, a faint white glowing dead center of said
orbs. “I was just napping,” she added, her raised hoof dropping to give way to
a set of legs wobbling before shifting under her frame. This stance was
temporary, though, and soon she made to get off the gurney and stand up on all
four of her legs.
She glanced around, azure orbs dimming as she absorbed her current surroundings
before taking notice of the ponies who kept staring at her in stunned unison.
She trotted to them with a limping gait, rear legs sagging more than her front
ones, only pausing when she stood in front of Matt. She rose a hoof and booped
him on the nose when he leaned towards her, and the bulky unicorn flinched once
her hoof connected with the end of his muzzle. “Hi,” she greeted in a chipper
tone.
“Hi,” Matt replied, but his voice sounded a bit cracked. “Are you a zombie?” he
asked.
The thin changeling shook her head, wings buzzing as she rubbed her chin with
the same hoof she booped Matt with. “No; I never really had any sort of hunger
for as long as I can remember. Never ate a day in my life, in fact,” she
replied.
“Hmm, if she’s not hungry…” Natalie paused, ears twitching as the gears began
to spin in her brain, “wouldn’t that make her... I dunno, a half-ghost or
something?”
“She's not half-ghost; if she was, we'd be seeing through more than her wings.
She's probably a damned wraith,” Lance clarified, a thoughtful frown on his
face. “And all she has on her is a scarf. I'm wondering why she lacks a cloak.”
“Perhaps she hates cloaks?” Anna guessed, shaking her head.
“Guess that would explain a lot,” Alexander scoffed, approaching the thin mare
who still stood in front of the ponies. “Miss, do you have a name?”
“No.” The supposed wraith shook her head again as she turned to the dark-plumed
gryphon. “But I reckon you’d like to call me something to simplify things?”
“Yes,” Alexander replied. He nodded.
“Alright.” The thin mare nodded, eyes moving until they spotted one of the
recently-loaded cupboards. Her blue orbs brightened, and she trotted to the
cupboard that struck her fancy and sat in front of it like a foal looking at
some statue from a long-forgotten era.
“How does ‘Cherry Sunset’ sound?” Anna questioned, and she didn’t have to wait
long for an answer.
The supposed wraith’s wings sprang up, and her form tensed. “No!” she shouted,
turning to the green-maned mare with narrowed eyes. “That sounds stupid!”
“How about ‘Katie Rubywing?’” Quicksilver suggested, whereupon the thin mare
turned to him.
Her glare eased up, and her wings fluttered once. “I like that,” she replied in
a much calmer tone of voice. “It just… clicks, y’know? It has a ring to it.”
***** Chapter II, Part I- Inferno *****
“Why had you been napping in the snow?” Alexander asked the changeling. His
question managed to garner her attention.
“I heard something about a town and a temple in this frozen hellhole, but
couldn’t get there just by trotting,” Katie began, long ears twitching as she
spoke. “I had to take several naps on my way to a place called Frostbite Haven.
The storms were so bad I could not fly, unless I wanted to be thrust head-first
into the snow.”
“Well, that’s funny, because we just left the Haven minutes before you woke
up,” Anna stated as she frowned, taking a second to sigh afterwards.
“Eh, good for me. I heard the hippogryphs there eat weak critters. I reckon I
fall into that category,” Katie murmured while she shrugged, her four wings
folding against her sides.
“But why were you heading to Frostbite to begin with, despite knowing you
could’ve been in danger?” Natalie mused, a thoughtful frown on her face.
“To get directions to the supposedly-nearby temple I also heard about. To put
it simply, only the hippogryphs know where the damn thing’s at,” was the reply.
Katie punctuated her remark with a long, raspy sigh, eyes dimming so much it
was akin to lightbulbs being shut off. “It had something to do with the worlds
ending or whatever, but I don’t know what. Where I heard the rumor wasn't… the
best place for info.” Another pause. "That, and someling like me is always in
danger of something. I'm pretty much a trotting target."
“So, you’re stumped?” Matt questioned, raising a hoof to rub his chin.
“My informant began speaking gibberish when she got to the ‘end of the worlds’
bit.” Katie nodded, orbs once more alight in her black eyes. Her eyes hovered
over to the multitude of chests that were placed at the far end of the tank
opposite from the panel, and she stood up before trotting to them.
“What is she doing?” Lance piped up as the mare opened a chest and peered
inside.
Katie dove into the chest she just opened, rummaging through its contents
before pulling out an hourglass. The wood was quaint, but reinforced by bits of
steel. The sand within the glass had sported all seven colors of the rainbow
with bits of silver and gold throughout. “What’s this?” she asked, wonder
alight in her glowing orbs.
“An hourglass. Now put it back,” Quicksilver groaned, frowning for a second
before the changeling complied with his request...
Katie immediately dove into the chest again before pulling out something
else—an unpolished, though glittering, sapphire in the shape of a rough heart.
“This is even prettier than the hourglass!” she exclaimed, jaw hanging as she
marveled at the gemstone. Because of her torn mouth, the appendage acted like a
door that hadn’t been shut, swinging gently in a non-existent breeze.
“Oh dear,” Alexander sighed, raising a talon and letting it connect with his
face. “Here we go.”
The sapphire had been thrown back into the chest before Katie thrust her head
and front hooves into the wooden container a third time, once more rummaging
through it before producing a strange rectangular stone that sported a pitch
black in color. The stone had been adorned with strange, crimson runes that
contrasted the sable in a way the scarlet appeared to be drastically brighter.
And the rock's runes began to glow as she held the stone in her hooves.
“Oh fuck! Put that back!” Matt shrieked in a voice comparable to that of a
mare's, eyes widening as he took notice of the rock that the wraith now held in
her hooves. When she failed to obey, he galloped over to her and yanked it from
her with his magic, gently putting it in the chest before slamming the
container shut with more magic. He slung his hooves onto her withers, being
careful enough to avoid knocking her down to the floor, and looked her dead in
the eyes.
“Why can’t I hold that black and red rock?” she asked simply, long ears
swiveling so that their leaf-shaped folds faced him.
“Because that rock has dangerous runes inscribed in its frame!” Matt continued
to yell, now glaring at the mare before him. “It could destroy this tank and
all of us in it with dark, arcane energy! Even a hornless mare like you or a
gryphon like Alexander could easily activate it with no trouble at all, and you
damn near triggered its innate magics! You could have killed us in seconds, for
Godcat’s sake!”
“Then why do you have the damn thing if it’s so dangerous?” Katie shot back,
not breaking eye contact with the stallion. In that moment the tank had fallen
silent, her words so simple yet bearing the weight of a very valid point.
After a few tense seconds or so passed, Natalie spoke up. “We have the rock so
nobody else can touch it. After all, that rune-inscribed stone is dangerous. A
fool could’ve used it to destroy anything he wanted it to, but it would kill
them as well.”
“And besides, nobody would think to rob a damn tank blind,” Lance added with a
nod. “Especially one loaded with gryphons and ponies who eat, sleep, and bathe
in the damn thing when the weather’s awry.”
“From here on,” Matt lifted a hoof from Katie’s withers to gesture to all of
the chests as he spoke, “no touching the chests and the stuff inside them.
Capiche?”
The changeling nodded in response.
“Good,” Matt huffed. He nodded back and relinquished his hold on her withers,
getting up and trotting back to the other ponies. Unfortunately for him and
everyone else, she soon took notice of the large sack of goods that sat near
the chests. The sack’s mouth still lay wide open, and her eyes twinkled as
though she thought the damn thing had beckoned her to enter it.
She trotted to it and crawled into the leathery bag full of odd trinkets, yet
again digging through various things like a foal who could not keep their
hooves to themselves. When she managed to unearth herself from the burlap bag
of goods, she brought with her a simple spear crafted of a lightweight metal.
The spear sported two rectangular gaps on its long shaft that were split by a
third piece running down the middle, just large enough for a pair of hooves to
easily slip through and grasp the shaft.
Lance raised a hoof and almost slammed it onto his face as soon as he saw the
changeling with the spear. “Put that back,” he groaned, the hoof running down
the bridge of his muzzle.
“But what is this doohickey?” Katie questioned, using one hoof to gesture to
the spear she held.
“A spear. Now put it back,” Anna snarled, gritting her teeth as her horn began
to glow in a bright green.
“Ugh. Fiiiiiine,” Katie complained, slowly putting the spear back into the sack
of stuff. As soon as the weapon was tucked away in the thick leather bag, she
found herself grabbed by a talon and carried to the gurneys by the scruff of
her neck. She'd been lifted quite easily, and within minutes had been placed on
the same gurney she had rested upon earlier. The hornless mare started staring
at Alexander.
“Don’t touch things that aren’t yours. Now sit there until I can say you can
move,” Alenxander snarled. He did not look away from her until she nodded her
understanding. He strode to the control panel afterwards, stopping in front of
the various keys and buttons when the sound of faint static hit his ears.
Alexander glanced around before spotting a military radio in a little holder a
ways off from the panel, connected by a thick, curly black wire.
Alexander crept towards it with an incredulous brow quirked. Once he had gotten
close enough, he reached up and fluently pulled it from its holder. Now, the
static sounded like it had been producing words, yet he couldn’t be too sure if
it did. He sat down and rose another talon up, the thin claws grasping one of
the small knobs. He began turning it back and forth until he could get
something clear out of the racket it had been making.
“Delta Unit to Valkyrie, Delta Unit to Valkyrie!” a masculine voice came from
the radio, still slightly garbled by static. It had been accompanied by a soft
roar of an engine, as well as a distinct buzzing sound akin to a bee flapping
its wings.
“What’s your status, over?” Alexander questioned, his incredulous brow still
quirked.
“Fast approaching your position. Armin has requested to be dropped off with
you, over,” came the reply.
“In that case, could you take back with you a few extra passengers in
exchange?” Alexander inquired, a frown on his beak. “The tank is getting
crowded, and we’ve picked up what we believe to be a wraith, over.”
“A wraith!” the voice from the radio shouted, “And for what reason did you pick
it up, over?”
“This wraith is very peculiar. She’s more physically… er, lacking, for a
shortage of better words. Her form is perfectly able to move, yet she has tell-
tale signs of starvation and maybe abuse riddling her frame, over,” Alexander
replied, sighing.
“As long as you keep her in check, fine,” the voice from the radio groaned. “Me
and the rest of the Delta Unit are five thousand yards from your location now,
and we’re bringing the transport blimp. Which reminds me, who do you want to
get transported from your unit via the blimp?”
“Excellent. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious in the sky,” Alexander
murmured whilst nodding. “As for your second question, I would like a few of my
fellow gryphons traded off on the blimp. Sans myself, Nathan, Quicksilver, and
Jeremy, over.”
“Roger. We can make the trade-off. Delta Unit, over and out,” the voice from
the radio replied before a ‘click’ sounded from the machine. Alexander nodded
again and put the radio back into its holder, turning away from the panel just
as Lance trotted up to him.
“What's that all about?” Lance asked, thin metal wings shifting—whether in
wonder or concern, the gryphon couldn’t tell. The pony wore an expressionless
mask, making it difficult to determine his current mood.
“Delta Unit’s going to take some of the others out of this tank, and in return
they are also going to deposit Armin in the process,” Alexander answered. His
statement made Lance betray a simple series of blinks, and each time his
eyelids briefly snapped closed, his pupils had widened.
“Delta Unit? What’s that?” Katie asked, her question causing the gryphon and
the pegasus to turn to her.
“I run an army. Delta Unit’s the part of the army that monitors the skies
outside this tank,” Lance replied, one torn ear swiveling towards the panel. A
faint rumble hit his ears as he shot a glance towards the screen, wings flaring
as though by reflex.
Had Delta Unit already arrived, perhaps? Did another earth-shaking clap attempt
to rend the heavens and land once more? All the screen betrayed had been little
more than the now dark grey horizon and snow-laden ground, neither of which
giving so much as a hint to the cause of the noise.
“Is there another storm incoming?” Anna questioned, tentatively trotting up to
the control panel. As if to answer her question, lightning streaked across the
sky outside, its arc going just wide enough to be visible on the screen. She
saw faint yellow crackles rippling through the clouds, barely obscuring golden
dots hiding in the dark masses.
The radio started blaring static once more, and this time it was the pegasus
who took it out of its holder. For a few seconds, the wretched buzzing
continued before fading out as the same voice from before began speaking.
“Change in plans. Major thunderstorm incoming. We can’t move the blimp and our
jets through the clouds without it fucking our radars up, over.”
“Why not?” Lance growled, his eyes narrowing.
“There are lots and lots of ectoplasms that have decided to hijack the clouds.
It’s like a hive of bees is headed our way,” the voice replied, sounding rather
panicked.
“Damn. I guess it’s gonna sweep over me and my unit, then? If that’s the case,
we’re sitting ducks here,” Lance snarled, ears falling flat on his head.
,i>“Exactly,” the voice replied. “Delta Unit, over and out.”
“Shit,” Lance groaned and closed his eyes as he put the radio in the holder,
only opening them when he turned to the other ponies and the changeling who
still sat on the gurney. “Listen up, everybody!” he barked. At this, everyone
turned to him, and he did not speak further until he'd been certain all eyes
were on him. He made extra-sure to look at Katie to see if she paid him any
heed, and her orbs were as glued to him as the eyes of everyone else.
“We’re stuck here for the night, and since there isn’t much else we can do,
we’re gonna have to get some shut-eye right now,” Lance rambled, wings
spreading to full mast. “Get some sleep, we’ll need to conserve energy for
tomorrow!”
Everyone exchanged glances with one another, yet nobody said anything in
protest. Slowly, everyone covered themselves up and laid down on the floor of
the tank, resting their heads in their front hooves or claws. Katie merely
shrugged and laid down on the gurney she'd been parked on earlier.
After all, she hadn’t been told she could leave it yet, so the changeling
figured she might as well sleep on the damn thing. NoLegs hopped up to her thin
frame and curled up next to her on the gurney, purring contently as the lot
within the Valkyrie dozed off.
Soon, though, someone took a trip to the realm of dreams.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Natalie rose onto her legs and glanced around, finding herself within a dark
wood filled to the brim with blackened, dead trees. The whole forest showed no
signs of life; plants had decayed, no wild animals scurried about, and the
skies were as bleak and bleary as the color of the still bark. Instinctively,
she lit up her horn, causing an orange glow to illuminate her surroundings from
the tip of her forehead appendage.
She shuddered, ears flattened against her skull. The mare took another glance
at her surroundings, and her heart sank as she noticed that one tree stood out
from the rest—in that it had a visage: empty eyes staring right back at her,
accompanied by a hollow, tooth-laden mouth. The mouth curled up at the corners,
forming a hellish sneer.
Natalie backed away from the tree with the face, in spite of the fact that it
had been firmly rooted into the greyed reddish-brown dirt. By doing this, she
went and bumped into another tree, gasping in surprise as the bark scraped
against her rump.
She whirled around and gaped. This tree had a face, too. Sweat began to bead
down the pony’s face from her forehead, and a breeze blew past, caressing her
visage and sending icy chills down her spine.
The glow coming from her horn turned brilliant scarlet like her mane, and her
eyes widened as this had happened. “Oh no,” she murmured, legs trembling. “I
need to get out of here…”
Unfortunately, her legs decided it was a good idea as ever to lock up with
numbness on the spot, effectively glueing her to where she stood. All around
her, the trees—faceless and not—remained still, and she found herself unable to
even will her legs to move. It was as if time had frozen on the scene. Natalie
took a closer look at the trees, and noticed that their barky surfaces seemed
to faintly reflect the glow of her horn, as if the wood had been heavily
polished and buffed.
A dense and ominous tranquility settled in the wood, with nothing even daring
to break the thick silence. Even the muted sounds of her own exhales, which
turned more and more shallow the longer she stood idle, failed to register in
her mind.
In the corner of her eye, she could see another tree behind her. “It’s just
like the one I accidentally hit with my rear end,” she found herself thinking.
It seemed to be grinning at her, as though silently taunting her for merely
being paralyzed. Her irises and pupils shrank, while the rest of her eyes
simultaneously went wide.
Only when she felt thin, flimsy wood scraping against her backside did her legs
finally move. The unicorn jumped away from the tree and bolted, the red light
from her horn making the dead hunks of wood stand out from the dirt. Even so,
she almost collided head-first with a tree as soon as she took off galloping,
forcing her to side-step out of the way.
Natalie skidded to a complete halt after a few moments of near-blindly
galloping and looked up as lightning flashed across the sky, followed in short
order by a titanic clap of thunder. Another blast of lightning lit up the sky,
this bolt sharply arcing downward, and the mare stumbled backwards as a nearby
tree found itself struck. She'd been briefly blinded by the blast of light, and
by another as the tree began to burn with a raging fire.
When her eyes managed to recover from the onslaught, she noticed that the
stricken tree had bits and pieces already falling away. The burning spire of
wood snapped at the trunk, falling down almost on top of her. She narrowly
avoided being squished, jumping out of the way of the scorching timber which
now blocked off the path she’d been on.
“Wait a second,” Natalie mumbled as realization set in and her thought
processes halted, almost absentmindedly glancing down at her hooves. She could
now see a worn dirt trail, made apparent by both the burning log and the light
of her horn, and her hooves had been right atop it. Begrudgingly, she turned
around, shuddering as the blaze produced such heat it felt like her posterior
had already started catching flame, and she scrambled away from it for a bit.
Only when she no longer felt heat licking at her heels did she take another
moment to even consider what she had found. “I found a dirt trail…”
The revelation was enough to make her glance up again. Her eyes did not deceive
her. She had, indeed, been staring at a worn-out dirt trail. Natalie began to
trot along it, ignoring the trees that were silently watching her passing form
all the while. As she crept along, lightning struck more trees, sending them
falling and burning onto the path behind her. It'd been like Mother Nature was
desperately trying to convey something to the mare, but she could not for the
life of her figure out what that might’ve been.
Eventually, the unicorn paused in a clearing. The clearing spanned far and
wide, so much so that she could barely see the mass of trees on the other side.
It had been marked by an aged pair of stone walls that glittered with various
gems set into the rock, separated by a flimsy and busted metal gate hewn of
gold.
Beyond that, Natalie spotted a burning mansion that was wide enough to neatly
fill in the entire area between the walls, the fires eating away at the support
beams and wooden surfaces, turning the entire structure black and useless. In
front of the inferno, on a small lawn that the mansion didn't touch, a creature
stood with its form angled. She squinted her eyes, trying to determine what it
was—yet she could not tell what it had been, even with the fires of the large
manor betraying its immediate presence.
It turned its head towards her, its features still difficult to make out. Was
it a pony? A gryphon? Maybe even a changeling?
The thing spoke, its voice hollow, distorted and without a definitive tone or
accent that could give Natalie an idea regarding whatever identity it may have
had. “Looks like the sinner has returned.”
“I…” Natalie uttered, but her voice quickly died in her throat as two brilliant
jade orbs lit up on what she presumed was the creature’s face. They glowed, yet
did not reveal any tell-tale signs of their owner’s appearance. It took a step
towards the gate, it's briefly-raised limb just as indiscernible as its visage.
“You have sinned, little filly,” the thing hissed, taking another step aimed at
the gate. “And you have not atoned for it!” it continued, and its voice rose as
it spoke, now more akin to shrieking metal than anything else.
The mare took a step back, and she tried to speak, yet when her mouth opened
again not a sound came out. She turned around hastily as she felt heat building
up from behind, and her heart began thundering in her chest as bright reds,
yellows, and oranges greeted her.
Now, all that Natalie could see was ablaze, giving off an intense heat that
began stinging her eyes and producing a thick smog that made her start coughing
in moments. Her body became coated head to hoof in thick grey soot, and she
stumbled backwards yet again—knocking open the gate and landing flat on her
back.
She didn't have the slightest chance to move; the thing rushed over to her
prone form in a heartbeat and loomed over her, glaring at her with the glowing
jade orbs as if the orbs were eyes. It slowly rose a limb up high, but Natalie
rolled away like a log before it could connect with her face. She got up onto
her hooves and channelled magic into her horn, firing off a blast of flame that
sent the black creature reeling away.
But as soon as the thing landed on the ground, it got right back up like the
blast of fire did nothing. Its head formed a grinning mouth lined with jagged
teeth, aglow with the same emerald color as the orbs it lit up earlier. Now
paired with said orbs, it looked like the beast had grown a face, albeit a very
unpleasant one. It also seemed to have, somehow, obtained a horn that glowed in
an olive hue.
Flames started circling around Natalie with such speed she had been caught
within a gradually-shrinking island of dead dirt. She whirled her whole body
around, yet there seemed to be no avenue of escape. The fires turned emerald in
color as they kept getting nearer and nearer, almost entirely within inches of
the hapless pony from all directions. The heat had been licking her from all
sides at this rate, the temperature rising and rising rapidly as the flames
inched closer and closer still.
She woke up just before the flames could touch her, eyes wide and breathing
shallow. The mare glanced around, noticing that everyone else had still been
sound asleep and tucked in their blankets. Not even Katie had stirred. In fact,
the thin changeling did not appear to be breathing at all.
Natalie took a few shuddering breaths and slowly rose onto her hooves. Her
blanket fell off of her body, yet she took no notice. Instead, her eyes
wandered towards the control panel, and then to the screen just above the
makeshift keyboard. The snow appeared to have brightened now, and she could
make out a faint tint of orange from the sides of the screen. In addition to
this, the sky had been crystal clear, and painted with a mixture of navy blues
and deep purples with just the faintest of reds.
Natalie turned her attention towards the changeling. Once she noticed the
distinct lack of the typical movements that indicated any sort of breathing,
the sight made something register in her sleep-fogged mind.
“Do you breathe when you sleep, if at all?” Natalie mused in a quiet voice. She
caught sight of a long ear swiveling in her direction, followed by an azure orb
starting to glow within its black canvas.
“Barely. I'm amazed my lungs still work,” Katie answered, lazily widening her
mouth to yawn. She turned to the unicorn and sighed. “You’re up awfully early.”
“Bad dream,” Natalie replied simply, rubbing her eyes with a hoof.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
“You want us to go to Fantasia?” a unicorn mare questioned, trotting through a
lengthy hallway with some other ponies. She quirked an incredulous brow,
amethyst eyes twinkling in wonder and moderate suspicion. A balcony with an
airship began coming into view, and the hall's end had been marked with the
roof stopping just outside said balcony. Marble columns passed her and the rest
of the group as they continued to trot.
“Yes, Twilight.” Another mare nodded, this one with a pristine white coat. “Me
and Luna have prepared this airship for you and your friends to head over to
Fantasia.” She paused to gesture to the nearby airship with a hoof bearing a
golden horseshoe. “Take whatever you need, and return in three days’ time.”
“Well, alright… but what do you want us to do during those three days in the
sister world?” Twilight questioned, her brow still quirked. She kept going
onward to the hall's end, and she could see ponies sporting golden armor lining
either side of the balcony.
“Try to find as much as you can. If you are able, bring some of the native
Fantasians back to Equestria. Because of the barrier that has stood until last
night, we don’t know much about how the sister world is operated. Be very
careful. I know not what lies beyond the border,” the other mare answered with
a grim nod of her head. Now, they were starting to trot past the armored ponies
who stood like statues.
“Alright, Princess Celestia. My friends and I will do what we can.” Twilight
nodded, a determined smile forming on her lavender visage.
“Maybe Fantasia will be as awesome as fighting changelings!” another mare
chirped, this one a cyan pegasus that had been aloft in the air for some time.
“I hope whatever’s in the sister world will be, um, friendly,” yet another
pegasus mare murmured, creamy yellow wings shifting in anticipation.
“Maybe I could throw a ‘the-barrier-has-been-broken-and-we-can-make-new-
friends’ party!” an earth pony cheered, bouncing up and down in place. A very
pink mane bobbed up and down as she jumped.
Yet another mare trotted towards the others from the boarding dock of the ship,
a tied blond mane weaving about in tandem with her movements. “I wanted to tell
y’all that the airship has been loaded with food, water, and some other things
that we might need during our trip,” she stated, a smile on her face.
“That’s absolutely wonderful, dear Applejack,” another unicorn chortled, this
one a very light grey in color. She smiled and nodded her head in
understanding. A frown soon replaced the smile, though. “Yet I am also saddened
that we’re going to have to leave Canterlot shortly.”
Another creature ran up from behind Applejack, this one bearing purple scales,
with a green underbelly and spikes running from head to tail. “Hey, Twilight, I
also loaded some ink, quills, and paper onto the airship. I figured we may need
to write to Celestia in case something happens over in Fantasia,” he said, eyes
beaming as a grin formed on his face.
Twilight’s smile widened. “That’s a great idea, Spike!” She ran up to the
purple-and-green creature and pulled him into a hug with her front hooves.
Another beast jostled onto the balcony, standing upright and sporting thick
brown fur and limbs ending in dulled claws. The yellow pegasus glanced up at
the beast and smiled as it let out a small roar. “Um, girls, is it alright if
Harry comes with us?” she asked. The other ponies turned to her.
“Frankly, I’m surprised Angel bunny didn’t want to go.” The pink-maned pony
shrugged. She eyed the beast and noticed a small white rabbit perched atop its
head. “Actually, I stand corrected,” she added. The mare giggled upon seeing
the rabbit, who merely shook its head and rolled its eyes in response.
“Eh, I’d be fine with Angel and Harry coming with. It’s not like they could
crash the airship or anything,” the cyan mare stated and nodded.
“In that case, who’s going to be driving our ride to Fantasia?” the grey
unicorn questioned, her head tilted slightly. “I mean, none of us have even the
slightest bit of experience regarding one when the driver’s wheel is involved.”
“Rest assured, Rarity, I have already made arrangements regarding the steering
wheel of the airship,” Celestia answered, a warm smirk on her visage. With
that, the group of mares and creatures strode onto the boarding dock of the
ship. All of them waved to Celestia as the bridge retracted into the ship, and
stopped when she waved back just before a wooden door closed.
Within minutes, the airship departed from the balcony and rose high into the
sky. The ponies looked from the windows at the shrinking continent below,
though some looked towards small tables, chairs, the ornately-carpeted floor
that sported a sun-and-moon motif, and a small staircase to the side that went
deeper into the airship. Spike looked towards the walls, which were clad in
floral-designed purple wallpaper.
“I’m not sure if I should be happy that we’re leaving Equestria and heading
into unknown territory,” Twilight murmured and grimaced, frowning in thought.
“I mean, none of us know what to expect, let alone where on Fantasia we’re
gonna be landing.”
“If there are other ponies in Fantasia, we won’t know what they’re gonna be
like,” Applejack agreed with a slow nod of her head. “We can only pray for the
best, Twi.”
Harry let out another growl. The yellow mare added, “Harry thinks it would be
wise to wait.”
“I agree with Harry the bear and Fluttershy. We’ll just have to wait and see
what Fantasia has in store for us,” Rarity affirmed, a small smile on her face.
“But what if we can’t make it back in three days’ time? What then?” Twilight
found herself thinking, rubbing a hoof on her chin. She silently nodded to
herself, yet could not ignore the faint shiver that ran down her spine as the
thought echoed in her mind.
Twilight looked at the cyan pegasus, who trotted up to her. "Hey, Rainbow Dash,
what do you think about all of this?"
Dash rolled her magenta eyes. "Twi, I still think it's gonna be awesome. Heck,
maybe I could get new flying buddies, or find a group of ponies similar to the
Wonderbolts," she replied with a smile.
***** Chapter II, Part I- First Contact *****
“An airship from Mythos? Are you sure of that, Delta Unit?” Lance questioned,
once more holding the radio in his hoof. “Can you describe the damn thing to
me, over?”
“Very purple in color with gold and ivory highlights, and the balloon part is
adorned with a fishtail and fish-like insignia. The ship itself is small, and
adorned with golden fins, over,” the voice from the radio replied.“It is
currently about four-hundred twenty-eight miles from Fantasian soil and
approaching fast.”
“How fast are we talking, over?” Lance snarled, frowning.
“Roughly less than one hundred miles per hour, and seems to be slowing down. It
should arrive in at least two or so hours at its dwindling speed, but it also
appears that the planet's gravity may be fucking with it at this time. That's
about all we could garner from our current location, over,” the voice answered.
“What do you want us to do in the meantime?”
“Hold your fire. Whatever steps out of the ship is mine to deal with should it
land near my current location. For now, keep an eye on it, over.” Lance mutely
nodded to himself and continued, “It’s a good thing the extra gryphons were
taken out of my hooves. It was getting cumbersome to manage everybody.”
“Roger. And keep that Godcat-damned wraith in check, General. You don't know
when she's gonna bite. Delta Unit, over and out,” the voice from the radio
stated before the device began producing a faint static noise. He put it in its
holder before turning to the lot within the tank, now with eight less gryphons.
In addition to this, one extra changeling sporting dog tags in addition to a
black chitin skin, and dark greenish-blue carapace, wings, and ribs was also
aboard. Said changeling was looking intently at Lance.
“What if the Mythonian airship doesn’t land near us, General?” the changeling
with the tags asked, a frown gracing his fanged mouth.
“Hmm…” Lance closed his eyes and rubbed his chin with a hoof. “That’s a pretty
good question. I hope Delta Unit doesn’t go and blow it to bits.” He opened his
eyes and trotted to a closed chest, opening it and pulling out the coat he wore
the day before, as well as a white shirt with a yellow vest and black tie. The
pegasus reached into the chest again, and produced the socks, horseshoes, and a
hat.
“So, you’re gonna get fully dressed?” Matt questioned as the metal-winged pony
slipped on the socks first.
“Whatever is in that airship Delta Unit told me about… if it's sentient, I'm
not sure how in hell it would react to my wings,” Lance warily answered as he
slipped his front legs through the sleeves of his vest-laden shirt, followed
promptly by his coat. “I mean, we don’t know what that thing’s carrying. If
it’s packing Mythonian inhabitants, I’d rather them not ask me why I have metal
fused into my back.”
“I see,” Matt sighed as if in resignation, and he nodded in understanding.
“In that case, should I shapeshift? I mean, if the airship has inhabitants,
maybe they don’t like changelings?” the changeling with the tags questioned.
His inquiry garnered him a glance from the pegasus.
“No, Armin. We already have one who can’t shapeshift due to a lack of a horn,
and besides, maybe the potential folks on the airship like undisguised
changelings,” Lance clarified, putting the hat on his head before slipping his
hooves into the horseshoes. He turned back to the chest a final time and
procured a very peculiar sword that had a built-in revolver chamber and
trigger, in addition to a small saddlebag with a holster sewn into the thick
leather.
“Bringing out the gunblade, are we?” Anna mused, smirking.
The pegasus slung the saddlebag onto his back, slipping the gunblade into its
holster after fastening the small makeshift backpack tightly around himself. “I
might need it.” With that, he trotted over to the panel again and scooped up
the radio. "Delta Unit, any updates regarding the Mythonian airship?"
"It's speeding up because gravity is pulling it down. Right now, it's roughly
one-hundred and seven miles from Fantasian soil. Get behind the steering wheel,
General. It's gonna land quick," the voice from the radio warned instantly.
Lance nodded and motioned for someone else to take hold of the damned thing,
and Natalie rushed up to meet him.
"Natz, you're on driving duty. We got an airship to catch," Lance stated
firmly.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
“We’re landing!” Applejack announced to her fellow ponies on the airship,
looking out the window to see a white landscape fast approaching their
transport vehicle. The airship tilted upwards like a bullet ricocheting off of
water, and with such haste the passengers could do naught but pratfall onto the
carpeted floor. It jilted again, forcing the lot to helplessly slide towards
the hapless pony announcing the ship’s landing.
For a few indeterminate moments, the vehicle remained airborne, circling above
a white patch of land over and over. As it kept on forming invisible circles,
seemingly without end, it gradually decelerated until its speed became little
beyond that of a snail crawling. When it had reached this speed, it descended
down to the earth, landing with a soft thud and throwing snow in its wake.
“Ouch… I think I got whiplash from that,” Twilight complained, slowly getting
onto her hooves. She flinched all the while, as though the ship’s sudden and
inexplicable spasms had damaged her in some way.
“You wouldn’t be the only one…” Rarity agreed, also getting to her hooves with
rather twitchy movements.
Harry got to his feet and glanced around for a minute before approaching a
window and peering out of it. He let off a growl that didn’t quite sound like
it had been marred by any sort of emotion—if anything, the beast had merely
scoffed.
“Um, Harry thinks we’re going to need scarves,” Fluttershy murmured. She
grimaced as she rose onto her hooves, one wing twitching more so than the
other.
“Scarves? Why’s that?” Dash asked, flapping her wings to become airborne. She
hovered over everyone else, an incredulous brow quirked. She flew towards a
window and peered outside, whereupon she saw nothing but vast white land and
greyish-blue skies.
Angel stood up and began thumping one foot on the floor fervently. Fluttershy
turned to him and made to speak when a faint rumbling sound graced her ears.
“What is that?” Spike mused aloud, blinking as the sound registered in his ears
too.
“Maybe it’s a clap of thunder!” the pink-maned mare exclaimed. “Although it’s a
very quiet clap of thunder,” she added.
“Pinkie Pie, if it were thunder, the sound wouldn’t stay for an extra twenty
seconds! Besides, there’s not a single cloud in the sky!” the cyan pegasus
retorted, a frown on her face. The sound began to grow louder, gradually
picking up in intensity.
“If it’s not thunder, then what do you girls think it is?” Twilight inquired,
rubbing a hoof on her chin.
“I’m not sure myself, really,” Rarity replied, shaking her head. “The closest
thing that comes to my mind would be a train.”
“Well, a train can produce that kind of noise…” Twilight idly murmured. She
nodded thoughtfully as she further considered her own remark, setting her hoof
down and trotting around the airship to peer out of each and every window. When
she got to the one that Harry stood in front of, she noticed something in the
landscape of purest white. Amidst the snow, a sheen in the distance betrayed
the faintest glimmer of a dark grey, yet it had been far enough away that she
could not make out much else.
“You see any train tracks?” Applejack sighed.
“No, and I don’t see any terminals or stations for that matter. Yet... I do see
something,” Twilight answered, squinting her eyes in the hopes that she could
see the distant object a little better. It did seem to be getting closer, bit
by bit. As it kept encroaching the airship, some distinct and odd features
began sticking out like thumbtacks in a wall. It had two small machine guns,
two drills that were easily as long as two ponies each, and a main cannon
settled near the top.
“What in the hay is that?” Pinkie asked, bouncing around the lavender mare in
an attempt to glance out the window she had claimed. Now, the rumbling started
to get loud enough to faintly shake the ship itself.
“I’m not sure,” Twilight tersely answered and frowned, barely seeing treads
attached to the object. The cascading snow it had been producing as it
approached, to her chagrin, did nothing more than obscure the rest of the
damned thing. When it got closer, it began circling the airship whilst
maintaining a good distance away, like a hungry cat stalking its prey. The main
cannon had been poised right in the blimp-like vehicle’s direction all the
while, as if it were an accusatory hoof.
A masculine voice droned out from the circling thing, its tone commanding and
its words concise, “Any Mythonian inhabitants, please step out of the airship.”
“It talks?” Fluttershy whimpered, ears flattening against her skull.
“I think we should do what the tread-thing says,” Twilight sighed with a
grimace, seeing the door of the airship open and a long, thick piece of wood
landed in the snow, serving as a makeshift gangplank. The cold air immediately
got inside and began nipping at everyone, sending shivers up a lot of spines.
They started to trot outside, with the lavender unicorn conjuring scarves from
flashes of light and wrapping them snugly around bare necks as the lot moved in
unison. When everyone’s feet and hooves finished settling in the snow, the
tread-thing stopped, main cannon and smaller guns and drills perfectly aligned
with the airship.
“Thank you for your cooperation. We are not enemies and we will not attack
without provocation,” the thing droned out. A lid opened from the top of the
metallic behemoth, from which emerged a pony.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Lance, with the aid of Matt’s magic, now stood on top of the Valkyrie. He
jumped from the side of the tank and landed in the snow, his legs half-sinking
in the crystallized white as a result from the impact. The pegasus frowned as
he pried his legs from the snow and turned to the Mythonians. He made a beeline
for the otherworldly lot, his frown firm.
“What if they attack you?” one part of his mind shouted. “Maybe they’re
pacifists,” another part of his mind objected. He did not sense danger from the
sister world’s inhabitants that had just touched down on Fantasian soil, but
his wings shifted as he reminded himself that things might not play out as he'd
like to hope. Besides, he didn’t know the Mythonian lot, and they did not know
him—it would’ve been best to take some level of caution. A torn ear twitched in
anticipation.
When he found himself within fifteen yards of the ship, he paused. His eyes
hovered over each individual from the airship, and he grimaced as he noticed
two pink manes, a pink body, and another mane of stark rainbow. “There is no
way nature would be drunk enough to make those colors for a set of manes. They
must’ve used dye,” he mumbled to himself, an eye twitching at the thought.
Lance shook his head to clear his mind before continuing onwards. He could feel
the otherworldly tourists watching him intently, and when he yet again stopped
at a mere five yards from them, he could see they had a bear, a rabbit, and a…
“Is that a baby dragon?” he asked aloud.
“Yeah, I’m a dragon, but I’m not exactly a baby,” Spike answered with a nod.
“What is that thing you hopped out of?” Dash questioned.
“That would be the Valkyrie Tank, and I happen to be its pilot. Name’s Lance
Boltwing,” Lance replied in a firm voice, using a hoof to gesture to the tank.
He then turned to the airship and pointed at it. “That airship lacks finesse;
it looks gaudy as hell, and unstable, too! Who gave it to you?”
“Alright. A friend lent me the airship; is there anypony else with you?”
Twilight questioned.
“I ought to have a word with her ‘friend’ for lending her such an airship one
of these days, and as soon as I get the chance to,” he thought for a second
before saying aloud, “They should arrive shortly.” He turned his head towards
the tank, barely seeing his companions start to jump out of the massive land
vehicle. He also saw some flying out, and guessed those to be Armin and the
gryphons. “The lot just needs to get out of the tank and trot here first.”
“Pardon my forwardness, Sir Boltwing, but why do you have a, ahem, tank?”
Rarity questioned. Her inquiry managed to garner the red-eyed stallion’s
attention.
“It’s a great multitasker,” he began with a nod, “in that me and my companions
can eat, bathe, sleep, and even store things in it. It’s especially useful for
a place like what we’re standing in, when it’s nothing but snowstorms every
other day.”
“And… where in Fantasia are we, exactly?” Rarity continued, an incredulous brow
quirked.
“We’re in a frozen hellhole, obviously. Nothing but snow for miles around.
Nearest town’s Frostbite Haven, which me and my companions found before the
barrier cracked and shattered into a gazillion pieces,” Lance answered without
stall. “It’s ran by a whole bunch of hippogryphs. I reckon they even founded
the little igloo town.”
“Um, I just noticed your ears,” Fluttershy piped up, her wings tensing up as
she marveled the torn ears in question. “What happened to them, if you don’t
mind me asking?”
“Nothing too major,” Lance replied like such a thing happened on a daily basis,
and he shrugged his shoulders rather casually. As he did this, the Mythonian
mares flinched a bit. “Was sleeping one night when they were intact, and the
next morning they were like this. Since I was near a plant with sharp thorns at
the time, I suspect that I tossed so much my ears snagged on the plant.”
“‘Nothing too major?’” Twilight parroted, a bewildered frown on her face. “Your
ears were damaged!”
“It happened while I had a few hours of sleep. And besides, I can still hear
perfectly fine with them; just gotta keep them clean and all’s good. It’s not
like the plant tore off the entire right side of my face,” Lance argued,
shaking his head rather begrudgingly. The lavender unicorn backed down, yet she
shared a glance with the other mares and Spike.
Rainbow began to flap her wings, and had in a few seconds started hovering over
her companions as if it were casual. “So, what did you do when you woke up?”
she questioned, crossing her front legs in front of her chest as a perplexed
frown wormed its way upon her muzzle. “With your ears, I mean?”
Lance blinked but once. “Just cleaned them up once I found a river. I guess I
should be lucky; a lot of thorny plants where I had been sleeping at the time
were poisonous. If that plant had poison dripping from its little pricks, I’d
have been a goner.” He shrugged again as the words left his mouth.
He glanced over his shoulder, and he could see a pale grey form with bits of
red hovering over his companions. “Joy, they’re bringing Katie along,” he
thought. “And since that lavender mare almost chewed me out for having torn
ears…” Another thought struck him, and the corners of his mouth twitched as
everyone else from the tank came closer. “I hope none of the Mythonians explode
when they see the wraith that’s shorter than Anna.”
Once the Fantasian ponies, gryphons, and changelings finally stopped behind
their pegasus compatriot, a shrill and rather unified shriek graced his ears.
He snapped his head to the foreign mares and noticed that their eyes were wide
and mouths had been going agape. In the case of the grey unicorn they had with
them, she had her front hooves to her face in horror.
“She’s… she’s…” Rarity’s breath turned hitched and shallow, her shrinking
irises scanning the wraith, “that changeling’s been…”
“You gonna call me ugly?” Katie sighed, orbs ceasing their glow in the canvases
of her eyes as she crossed her front hooves and shook her head sadly. “It’s
fine, really. Almost every pony I met shared more or less the same thought upon
first sighting me.”
Rarity gaped, and her ears fell flat against her skull. “I… wouldn’t dare call
anypony ugly,” she replied, the hitches in her breath less frequent. “I’d say…
you’ve been…” the mare trailed off, words dying in her throat.
Katie’s azure orbs had alighted again, and she rolled them in response. “So,
you’re still calling me ugly,” she groaned sarcastically. “Not that I mind,
anyway.”
Rarity turned her attention to Lance, and her eyes narrowed. “Did you hurt that
changeling?” she cried.
“No, they did not hurt me. All they did was find me out in the cold as I laid
napping, and asked me what I had been doing out here in this winter wonderland.
Hell, they even gave me a warm bed on wheels to sleep on,” Katie answered
before Lance could do so, her ears twitching.
“She kinda already got this thin well before we found her if her protruding
hip, chest, and rib bones are anything to go by. Honestly, we first thought she
had already kicked the bucket,” Anna clarified, using a hoof to gesture to the
airborne wraith for emphasis. Twilight noticed she was the second-smallest of
the bunch, and easily a few inches shorter than even Lance. If Twilight trotted
up to Anna, they'd be staring into each other's eyes.
“But we found out she’s actually a wraith, and since she’s technically dead,
there’s nothing we can do about her condition,” Natalie added with a nod of her
head. “Or, if there is something we can do about her current state, we just
haven’t figured it out yet.”
That series of answers to Rarity’s question did not have any positive impact on
the wide-eyed gaping visages of the Mythonain mares. If anything, they were
more horrified now, if their trembling forms were an indication. “She’s a
zombie!” the group cried in shrill unison, varying degrees of shock fluctuating
from one pony to the next. Pinkie’s jaw hung open, the cyan mare actually
stopped flapping her wings and let gravity land her posterior in the snow, and
Applejack merely started shaking her head in disbelief.
“Pretty much,” Armin piped up with a nod. Only then did the foreign mares turn
to him, and instantly, they narrowed his eyes as if they had nothing but
contempt for his very existence.
“Ladies, what did he do to upset you? My ears and our wraith, I can sorta
understand, but seriously? What did my changeling companion do to make you want
to murder him?” Lance asked simply, the corners of his mouth twitching
downward. The mares eased up their glares, with the lavender one turning to the
red-eyed stallion as a heavy sigh left her lips.
“Five months ago, in Mythos, me and my friends attended a wedding,” Twilight
began. “A whole bunch of changelings invaded the city the wedding was being
held in, and almost came close to not only ruining the occasion, but laying
siege to that city.”
“What made it worse had been that the groom was Twilight’s big brother, and he
wound up mind-controlled by the queen of the changelings who led the attack,”
Spike added, using a claw to gesture to the lavender mare for emphasis.
“And she replaced the real bride using her shapeshifting powers, syphoning off
my friend’s brother’s love for his bride like a leech. But, let’s just say the
real bride arrived and foiled that plan and lent a hoof in driving out the
invaders,” Rarity finished with a nod of her head. “Please do pardon us if we…
look at your changeling companion with a bit of wariness.”
The Fantasian lot exchanged glances amongst themselves, with several brows
quirked.
“Her brother was the groom?” Anna questioned.
“The bride was replaced?” Matt groaned.
“Talk about laying siege and delivering quite the pain to the little sister of
the groom in the process,” Natalie murmured.
“Yeesh, it’s like invading a whole damn city wasn’t enough,” Armin sighed, his
wings buzzing for a second or two.
“Alright, I can understand if you’re wary around my changeling compatriot,”
Lance stated, turning to the mares and nodding in understanding. “I would just
prefer it if you didn’t hit him out of scorn, unless he did something to
actually upset you. Alright?”
The Mythonian mares exchanged another glance before turning back to the
stallion and nodding in unison. The bear that stood with them, though, let off
a low growl that had been punctuated by a snort.
Fluttershy spoke up, “Um, Harry wants to know what kind of pony you are, Mister
Boltwing.”
“Pegasus,” Lance began, but a white and thick-furred hoof grabbed him by the
coat collar and pulled him back before he could speak further.
Matt leaned forward once his companion had been dragged close enough, his
muzzle just inches shy of touching a torn ear. “Say your wings are bandaged,”
he whispered. “I’m pretty sure they’ll buy it.”
Lance nodded, and made to speak before Anna gestured to the bear and asked, “Is
it just my imagination running rampant right now, or did you speak for the
bear?”
“I spoke for Harry. My, erm, special talent is speaking with animals,”
Fluttershy murmured and nodded, a frown on her face. “Is that wrong? If you
don’t mind me asking.”
Anna brought the same hoof she gestured to Harry with to her face and rubbed
her chin. “No, it’s not wrong,” she answered after a minute. “I just… haven’t
seen such a thing before.”
NoLegs meowed, and he approached the Mythonian mares. He had now sported a cat-
sized suit of armor complete with a helmet, a little red scarf around his neck,
and a small knife that had been sheathed and strapped to him. He made towards
Fluttershy and looked at her once he stood in front of her hooves, and he had
begun purring before letting off another meow.
“What is that cat doing?” Anna leaned toward Natalie as she asked, a perplexed
frown on her face as the spectacle unfolded before her eyes.
“Oh? They’re good ponies, just a bit quirky?” Fluttershy asked, leaning down so
she could be eye level with the cat. The blue-furred purring critter nodded in
response. “What about the changeling and the gryphons?” she asked, and the cat
meowed again. “Oh, quirky as well, but just as good?”
“She’s… either crazy, or actually demonstrating her ‘animal-speaking’ talent,”
Natalie murmured, sharing a quick glance with the green-maned unicorn.
“... Oh, so your creator’s sister took away your species’ legs when you…”
Fluttershy trailed off, her mouth and wings quivering in horror. “Oh, I’m sorry
to hear that. I truly am.” NoLegs meowed once more, and the yellow-coated mare
donned a wide-eyed, rather perplexed look. “You don’t mind being legless? Not
at all?”
“That cat is one hell of a tough cookie,” Matt began. His remark almost
instantly caught the attention of the pegasus who had until that point been
communicating with the cat. “Even when he had only been a little bitty baby
kitty, he would not let his situation get the better of him. He learned to
balance on his hips and scooch upright—I dare say, that cat is tiny, but
fierce.”
“I can attest to that. I’ve known that cat for about as long as I have known
Matt,” Natalie added with a nod.
“Matt… who?” Twilight asked, eyes darting to each member of the Fantasian lot,
sans NoLegs who began scooching his little way back to his group.
Matt groaned and used a hoof to gesture to himself. “Me. I’m Matt Bladerune,”
he answered flatly.
“Boy howdy, I reckon you’re the leader of this here group? You are taller than
Lance over there, but just by a few inches! Why, you're just as tall as
Twilight's big brother!” Applejack remarked with a frown. “Say, how strong are
you? You look like a bulky stallion to me.”
“I’m strong enough I could carry him, Armin, and the wraith on my back without
breaking a sweat,” Matt spoke, a grin breaking out on his muzzle. His horn lit
up, and in seconds, Lance ended up plopped onto his backside, followed by
Armin, and then Katie.
“Oh good, you’ve made yourself a Jenga tower,” Alexander sneered, a small smile
on his beak. His smile widened as a new wave of protesting began.
“This is awkward!” Armin complained, his wings buzzing frantically.
“You’re telling me!” Lance barked, using his front legs to cling to Matt’s
neck. It wound up being a tall order to contend with, considering that the
thick blond mane felt slippery, and he had not one, but two changelings upon
his back. Both of whom, plus himself, all being held in a magic aura that
greatly restricted their movements. "This is way worse than visiting a damned
tavern!"
“Make the tickling feeling stop! I don’t like this!” Katie shrieked, her pitch
of voice rivaling that of a banshee’s. Her yodeling elicited a wince from Matt,
and that had been all it took for his horn to cease glowing. For a few seconds,
gravity did not affect those who were held in his magic at all. And, once the
trio of Fantasians who were magically accosted glanced down in unison, it
kicked in with the force of three sledgehammers. This ended up forcing the
bulky unicorn sprawling into the snow with a heap of his compatriots on top of
him.
“Pardon him, it’s just that he can be afflicted by idiot syndrome some days,”
Natalie remarked, lightly kicking Matt in the shoulder with a back hoof. She
did not look at him, instead choosing to look at the other-worlders who were
shaking and had their front hooves covering their mouths.
In that moment, Dash burst into a fit of mad laughter. She held her front
hooves to her stomach, wings flapping madly yet not lifting her even an inch
above the snow during her cackling session. “That was a very bad display of
muscle power!” she howled, laughing between words.
Matt shot a glare at the rainbow-maned pony as she begun to roll about in the
snow as if it were a hardwood floor, but because she'd still been giggling, she
paid him no heed. “You held them up for less than ten seconds! I could do
better than that with my bare hooves while flying at the same time!” she
chortled in mad glee.
“Is she alright?” Natalie asked, turning toward Anna whilst using a hoof to
gesture to the laughing mad pony.
“Considering that she’s now flapping her wings so hard she’s practically doing
loop-de-loops in the snow, I’d lean towards ‘no,’” Anna sighed, shaking her
head. NoLegs jumped up onto her back and meowed, and when Anna turned to him
with a quizzical brow raised, the cat used his tail to point at something like
a hand that had only one finger. She turned back to where the cat had pointed,
and now spotted the lavender mare’s horn glowing.
Twilight used her magic to heft her still-howling companion out of the snow,
and this managed to stop the case of the dreaded giggle fit right in its
tracks. The now-floating pegasus looked at her unicorn friend as her laughter
died down, a brow quirked. “Rainbow Dash, I know that what Matt just did was a
tad funny, but it doesn’t call for that much laughter. I think we’d all
appreciate it if you cut it out,” she chided.
“Nor does it call for a round of insulting jabs, despite his boast backfiring
on him horribly,” Rarity added in a firm tone of voice, despite apparent
amusement glittering in her eyes. “Please do keep the slander to a minimum.”
“While y’all were busy howling and bickering, something’s been bothering me
mighty fierce,” Applejack interjected, quickly garnering the attention of
everyone.
“And what would that be?” Armin asked as he fidgeted for a bit, managing to
disentangle a holey leg from between Matt’s neck and and the barrel of Lance’s
chest.
“If Lance said he’s a pegasus, then where’s his wings?” Applejack asked flatly.
“I get he’s wearing a coat or something, but it should have holes for his wings
to slip through.”
“About that,” Lance paused and grunted as he began to violently wriggle about
in an attempt to free himself of the pony-and-changeling-made pile he had been
unwillingly dragged in. When he had freed himself and stood on his legs, he
frowned before speaking again, “My wings are broken and bandaged. My clothes
are keeping the bandages in a state from which they can’t be unraveled; the
same applies to my saddlebag.”
Alexander quickly caught on to what Lance was trying to do, and immediately
decided to play along.“All of his wing bones are heavily damaged, and he
sustained sizeable flesh wounds on his back, stomach, and midsection.
Unfortunately, as they are now, his wings cannot be exposed to the elements
under any circumstances until they have healed sufficiently,” he added with a
nod of his head, taking a minute to clear his throat. “He does have clothes to
fit his wings through special holes, but sadly cannot wear them for the reasons
I have just stated.”
“So, you’re temporarily grounded?” Fluttershy asked, her wings twitching in a
way that suggested they began aching in sympathy. When the stallion nodded, she
frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“But, will his wings recover properly? Y’know, the way you have them bandaged
now?” Twilight asked, the corners of her mouth twitching like she wanted to
frown, but could not bring herself to do so.
“His prognosis is poor. His wings might never recover properly, and he may be
grounded for life,” Quicksilver answered, a frown on his beak.
“And Matt’s antics aren’t helping in the least,” Lance groaned, kicking Matt in
the shoulder with a back leg, letting off a pained grunt in the process.
Katie made to speak up, but when her lips parted just an inch, she found a
green glow clamping her maw shut and encasing much of her head. She turned her
head to glance this way and that, only to find Anna’s horn aglow with the same
aura. Said unicorn mare shook her head, raising a hoof and moving it in front
of her own muzzle for emphasis.
“Zip your torn lips.”
The wraith nodded in understanding, orbs flickering in their black canvases for
a fleeting second. Armin finally managed to wriggle himself free of the pile as
well, and dusted himself off before backpedaling from the half-Clydesdale
stallion. “Oh no, he’s pissed,” he murmured upon spotting a very grumpy frown
on the stallion’s white muzzle. As soon as the aura around Katie’s maw
vanished, Matt sprang up onto his hooves, grabbing Katie with his magic and
immediately sending her sailing into the air like she’d jumped on a trampoline.
“Welp, there she goes!” Natalie exclaimed upon seeing the thin mare shoot
straight up like a rocket, turning and tumbling about as if she’d been launched
into a high-powered washing machine. At the apex of her impromptu launch, she
kept on spinning and spinning as she came back down to earth.
“You have—” Anna began, eyes trained on the hapless wraith. Matt sidestepped
out of the way, right before the thin mare’s entire front quarters, head and
all, landed and wound up buried in the snow. “—wings…” she trailed off with a
frown.
Matt strode over to her prone form for a few seconds before using a hoof to
grab her vermilion tail and pry her from the snow with ease. “Don’t say a
fucking word about Lance’s wings,” he whispered as soon as her ears were close
to his muzzle. Once the wraith nodded, he let go of her tail, allowing her to
fall right back into the hole she unintentionally made in the snow.
He turned his attention to Rainbow Dash. “And you!” he barked, raising the same
hoof he hefted Katie with and pointing it at the cyan pegasus in an accusatory
sort of manner. “I’d like to see you do better than me while flying!”
“Ha! I could do it ten seconds flat!” Dash snorted, a cocky smile spreading on
her muzzle. She took off into the air, launching straight up, only to U-turn
right back down towards her companions. Before anyone could react, she swerved,
keeping her form above the snow by meager inches. As white crystallized water
cascaded everywhere, she scooped up Pinkie, Twilight, Fluttershy, and Rarity
with her front hooves, balancing them in a wobbling diamond configuration.
The cocky mare ascended once more, shooting upwards at a 45-degree angle, her
companions screaming and doing their best to hold on in the rapidly-
accelerating precarious balancing act. All eyes that belonged to those still on
the ground were trained on her, noticing a trailing rainbow being left in
Dash’s wake.
NoLegs meowed, and Anna turned to glance at him again. Once more, the cat used
his tail to gesture towards something. The unicorn followed it and noticed a
quickly-forming cloud front, one that had been dotted by little yellow blobs
that were hard to make out. Her eyes widened as the clouds began to violently
crackle with tell-tale signs of lightning.
The cloud front did not go unnoticed by anyone else, either. “There’s trying to
prove your claim after watching someone else fail horribly, and then there’s
being a complete fool!” Lance barked, raising a hoof and pointing it at the
sky.
“Not my fault she decided to take off high into the air with her fellow
foreigners in her front hooves,” Alexander agreed, lifting a talon and letting
it connect with his face.
“Hey, where’d these clouds come from? Aren’t pegasi supposed to be in charge of
the weather around here?” Dash cried, eyes widening as she saw the yellow blobs
amidst the clouds. She turned around and made to fly higher into the sky, only
to spot more clouds encroaching and adorned with white blobs.
“I don’t know about you, but I want to get off this crazy train right now!”
Twilight shrieked at the top of her lungs, turning a shade of verdant in the
face. The cold air combined with the high speeds at which her friend dragged
her through had not been doing any good.
Rarity had been screaming throughout the entire ride, clinging to her equally
frantic companions as Rainbow veered away from the second cloud front. She
quickly spotted a third front that sported little, almost indistinguishable,
grey blobs that near-seamlessly blended into the clouds they rode in on. The
ivory unicorn had been about to point this out to her companion, but as chance
had it, the pegasus blundered head-first right into one before Rarity could
utter her warning.
This immediately sent all five ponies flying in different directions as if they
were acrobatic bowling pins.
“Godcat-dammit,” Lance groaned, turning to the gryphons and Armin. He shook his
head and said, “Go fetch those ponies before the ectoplasms decide to ream them
in ways I don’t think they’ll like.”
The gryphons nodded and spread their wings and took to the air, with Armin
likewise launching himself into the sky just seconds later. They raced towards
the falling ponies, wings frantically propelling them onwards. It took them a
minute or so to catch the lot and bring them back down to the snow-covered
earth, and once the gryphons and changeling touched down with frantic and
somewhat-dazed Mythonians in tow, Applejack trotted up to the group.
“With the way their eyes are spinning, I reckon they’re seeing lots of ducks
right now,” Applejack sighed, shaking her head. "Give 'em a few."
“So many clouds…” Rainbow Dash moaned, her head swaying and her eyes spinning
like balls in a game of roulette. When she managed to make her eyes stop
spinning and her head stop swaying, she found a brown gryphon right in front of
her face with a frown on his beak.
“That was very reckless of you; those ectoplasms could’ve torn your wings and
horns clean off and we’d be stuck trying to pry your bloodied remains from the
snow!” Nathan scolded, one of his wings twitching as if it had a mind of its
own that had been irked.
“Ecto… plasms?” Twilight moaned, shaking her head as the imaginary ducks
circling her head managed to cease their existence in her sight. “But I thought
those things were eradicated by the… Cloudsdale pegasi…” she trailed off upon
remembering she stood on Mythos’s sister planet, and a shiver ran down her
spine. “Nevermind,” she mumbled.
The Fantasian bunch exchanged another set of puzzled glances, before Lance
spoke up. “The ectoplasms are a major problem for anything that flies too high
in Fantasia; I’d recommend not going higher than… say, five hundred yards above
ground.”
“Why do they rule the sky here? Did something happen?” Twilight asked, frowning
as she looked to the sky. The ectoplasms, clouds and all, were already
dispersing, their forms fading as if they were but heat-induced mirages in a
desert.
“A lot of things happened; in fact, they’re exactly how my wings got broken to
begin with,”Lance answered with a grim nod of his head.
“Oh, yeah. The ectoplasms tore him a new one,” Armin piped up, nodding his head
frantically.
“Does that mean they also control the weather here?” Applejack questioned,
looking towards the sky, frowning as though the heavens lacked something.
“Unfortunately, yes. The ectoplasms can have every square inch of the damned
Fantasian sky for all I care,” Lance answered, pointing a hoof at the greyish-
blue expanses above for emphasis.
Natalie’s horn began glowing on its own, and she looked at it. Anna glanced at
her own horn, seeing hers do the same. “Okay, what the hell is happening?” she
asked, glancing around in tandem with everyone else that wasn't dazed or buried
in the snow until her gaze stopped in the direction of the Valkyrie—or, more
specifically, the vast area behind it. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened as
meager dots began appearing in the distance, accompanied by the sounds of many
sets of galloping hooves. The other ponies who were still glancing around
noticed her expression.
***** Chapter III- Tensions *****
“Natz, what’s wrong?!” Matt shrieked, his own horn aglow. The only reply he got
had been nothing more than an off-white hoof pointing at the area beyond the
tank. He turned around and his jaw had likewise dropped open upon seeing the
distant dots accompanied by the sound of beating hooves.
“Great, are the hippogryphs of Frostbite coming to maul us all?” Lance groaned,
following Natalie’s hoof towards the tank. His torn ears swiveled, their
irregular and tattered ends as upright as a normal set.
“They couldn’t have followed us with the storm raging last night,” Anna shook
her head, squinting her eyes as she peered at the vast area behind the tank.
Gradually, oh so gradually, the sound of many galloping hooves picked up in
intensity. “And maybe it snowed again and covered the tank’s tracks…”
“Then what, pray tell, could be making that noise?” Alexander questioned,
turning to the green-maned unicorn with a perplexed frown on his beak.
Twilight got onto her hooves, her own horn shimmering in a magenta aura. She
glanced around at everyone else, only stopping when her eyes hovered over Katie
as the wraith pried herself from the snow. The thin changeling shook her head
free of the snow, only for her long ears to stand upright and begin twitching
afterwards. One ear turned its folds to the west and back, and the other ear
turned east and back—these particular movements almost immediately caused her
to quirk a brow.
“Are your ears alright?” Twilight asked nervously, her question garnering a
look from the wraith.
Katie’s eyes had narrowed. “They are alright,” she answered, her hollow tone
now adorned with a faint note of bitterness. She glanced down at the snow and
threw her front hooves into the crystallized white, pushing small mounds aside
with an almost suspicious amount of haste. Twilight watched as the thin mare
frantically dug into the powdery residue, shouting a frantic “Cover me,
please!” as she disappeared from sight.
Anna turned around and spotted the hole, and the snow that’d been pushed aside
in a frenzy. A green aura enveloped the snow piles and heaped them into Katie’s
oversized gopher hole and patted it down so it became even. The magic spread
the snow so thoroughly that it looked as though nobody had dug into it at all,
let alone been launched into it at some point.
She trotted over and glanced back at the tank, plopping her rump down on the
spot just as the distant silhouettes started to become clearer as they
approached. She squinted her eyes and began to make out unicorn horns and black
eyes with glowing dots on frighteningly pale stallion faces, all with colors so
blanched it had been hard to tell whether or not they were white to begin with.
The incoming pale ponies also boasted clawed horseshoes on the ends of their
legs that hacked and slashed away the snow, thus propelling them onward.
“Bunch of armored wraiths incoming,” Anna hissed, her muzzle scrunching as a
frown graced her features.
“Wraiths?” Dash piped up, looking at the green-maned mare with wide eyes.
“Yeah,” Anna confirmed with a nod. "Kinda like our changeling, except in suits
of metal."
“In suits of—they're armored?” Applejack mused, eyelids slanting in worry.
“We won't know until they show up,” Alexander sighed, shaking his head. "I
wonder what they're doing here."
“Well, if they’re armored, like you say…” Twilight’s eyes briefly glanced at
the green-maned unicorn and widened until they were the size of dinner plates
as she paused, “doesn’t that mean the wraiths have might a military force?”
“Doubt it,” Lance answered. He frowned, and he gradually rose a hoof to reach
for his gunblade. “If they do have a military force, then I might want to meet
with their commander.”
“Why do you want to meet their commander?” Dash flew a few feet into the air
and threw her front hooves in front of herself for emphasis.
“It's just Lance being Lance. He wanted to meet you, and met up with
Frostbite's elder yesterday.” Alexander shot the rainbow pegasus a look marred
with a firm frown. "Maybe the wraiths don't have a commander," he joked.
“Then what explains their armor?” Anna questioned in a serious tone, keeping
her eyes focused straight ahead as the thundering of hooves on soft snow got
louder.
“Maybe they just found it lying around somewhere,” Matt replied and shrugged.
He opened his trap to continue speaking when he saw at least a dozen stallions
with horns and black eyes sporting glowing dots dart around the tank like deer.
All of these stallions had sported black tails billowing about like shadows and
sets of rusted, firm knight-like armor of deepest black on their bodies. They
had helms covering their heads, necks, and most of their faces. The backs of
their neck-and-head-covering helms sported openings for their equally dark
manes to fly freely in the wind as they galloped.
The armored wraiths stopped mere feet from the group, and all had their eyes
narrowed as they eyed the pic’-n-mix bunch before them. One of the stallions
took a step forward, this one the only one amongst the troop that had greaves
on his legs.
Matt took a step towards the wraith, horn still aglow in gold. “What do you
want?” he asked simply.
“Listen here, insolent pony,” the wraith with the greaves hissed, orbs of
purple alight with anger, “what me and my fellow wraiths do is none of your
business.”
“Oh really?” Matt skeptically asked, eyeing the armored stallion as his horn
began glowing in a purplish-black aura. The wraith let off a spark of magic
next to him, from which appeared an old and somewhat-rusted spear crafted
almost entirely of metal. He scoffed and let a flash of magic appear next to
his black-and-white frame, and from it he procured the Heaven’s Gate. “Then why
do you draw your weapon?”
“Pot, kettle, black, Matt,” Lance scoffed, the handle of his gunblade resting
in the crook of his foreleg.
“You haven’t the room to yak your claptrap, Lance,” Natalie groaned, a hoof
connecting with her face. She ran the hoof down the bridge of her muzzle before
setting it down and looking at the lot of armored, black-maned stallions that
had all let sneering grins frame themselves upon their muzzles.
The only real differences she could spot between any of them, aside from the
greaves and the spear the one addressing Matt happened to be juggling, were the
color of the orbs set into their black voids. There were some reds and jades,
one set of purple, and another of gold. “Pray tell, why do you guys look the
same?” she asked. “Are half of you secretly changelings?”
Instantly, the whole troop of wraiths snapped their heads in her direction,
their sneering grins morphing into hardened scowls. One raised a horseshoe-
laden hoof and pointed it at her accusingly. “Shut your mouth, insolent
whorse!” he cried, to which Natalie responded with a shake of her head and a
roll of her eyes.
Matt’s eye began to twitch. “Excuse you?” he hissed, both eyes narrowing as a
gleam, cold as ice, flashed in his irises. His lips tugged into a frown, and
one so firm Lance shot him a look before glancing back at the wraith stallions.
“Why did you just call a mare, who you know next to nothing about, a whorse?”
Lance snorted with a huff, a torn ear flicking as he awaited his question’s
response. "For all you know, she could be princess or something."
He didn’t have to wait long. The wraith who shot the insult at Natalie began to
smirk once more, “Because all she’s good for is having cock shoved up her cunt
and getting knocked up.”
Now, Natalie’s eyes narrowed, and she began to glare at the wraith. With a glow
of her horn and a flash of light, she called forth her crystal-tipped staff.
“Why don’t you come over here and say that to my face? I’m right here, and all
ears, you lifeless bastard,” she spat, pointing her staff at the stallion as if
it were her hoof.
The Mythonian mares, including those who had just snapped out of their sky-
high-induced dazes in that moment, exchanged concerned glances. They turned
their attention to the wraith stallion as he waltzed right up to Natalie and
leaned in so close to her their muzzles were just inches apart. “All that
you’re good for is being fucked senseless up the cunt and bearing foals,
whorse,” he repeated in a low whisper, his smile widening into a grin lined
with rotten, yellowed teeth.
Mere seconds later, he received a slap across the face from the staff, and then
another from a cream-colored hoof in rapid succession. He staggered backwards,
almost bumbling into one of his fellow wraiths rear-first, but stopped in his
tracks before his rear could connect with the barrel of the dead pony’s chest
behind him. As soon as he halted, the stallion who’d been whapped proceeded to
merely shake his head to shrug off the minor sting of the onslaught.
“‘Twas nothing more than futile attempts to be anything but a whorse.” The
stallion grinned triumphantly as he decided to chance another glance towards
Natalie. Now, he could make out the veins that started to crop up around her
still-glowing horn, whose aura took on a hue of stark red with bits of yellow
and orange. “It seems we shall have to… correct this insolence, at once,” he
added, and in unison the other wraith stallions nodded their heads and knelt
forwards with orbs-for-eyes gleaming brightly.
Anna summoned her stone-and-crystal bow, and wasted no time in nocking an arrow
and pulling the drawstring taught. The stone flexed and bent to accommodate the
pulled thread, as if somehow malleable. “Sounds like a few dumbfucks want to
pick a fight with us. Oh well; their loss,” she chided with a snort.
“Pick a fight?” Lance mused, reaching under the flap of his saddlebag before
producing a few bullets and loading them into the revolving chamber of his
gunblade. “No, no, no, Anna. I think the words you’re looking for are ‘get
pummeled into the permafrost beneath the snow.’”
Anna sighed, and for a fraction of a second, Twilight could’ve sworn her eyes
briefly flickered with a red glow. She opened her mouth to comment about the
brief change in eye color, but could not speak as the arrow had been released,
whistling through the air in spite of its stone shaft and crystal head and
fletching.
It landed with a dull thrum on the head of one of the wraiths, who let off a
short-lived and unearthly shriek as the projectile cleanly shot through his
skull right beneath his horn. He fell over and twitched for a few seconds
before his form stilled, the orbs in his black sclera fading out like
lightbulbs being shut off.
“Oh, look! Another whorse that needs correct—” another wraith stallion howled,
but didn’t get the chance to finish as Matt thrust his blade forwards with his
magic. Imbued with a white glow, the silver of the sword sliced cleanly through
the wraith’s neck-armor, almost entirely decapitating him within minutes.
The stallion who carried the spear charged brazenly onward, aiming his weapon
right at Lance. Said pegasus stood on his back legs and swung his gunblade in a
low sweep before jolting it upwards with his front hooves, and threw the spear
off. He stilled, grinning as the head of the pike landed in the snow just
inches behind his rear hooves.
“Is that the best you've got? Honestly, I was expecting more from my opponent,”
Lance taunted in a cold tone, removing a hoof from the handle of his gunblade
before slamming it into the wraith’s muzzle and watching as his adversary
stumbled back to land on his rump. Without hesitation, he aimed the gunblade at
the dead unicorn’s head and used the same hoof he just threw in a punch to pull
the trigger.
A vicious crack rang out and the pegasus nearly staggered back from the recoil
of his attack in the process, but stopped himself as said shot had been
followed by another dull crack. The bullet tore a clean hole through the armor
that covered the side of the wraith’s head, and a smile curled on his burnt
orange muzzle. As with the one who got hit with a stone arrow, the armored
stallion fell over in the snow, not a sound escaping from his hollow throat.
Five of the remaining armored wraiths approached Natalie, only to be halted by
a flame-tinted aura that embraced their armored hooves. Natalie donned a firm
frown as white flames began circling her quarry before they found themselves
screaming in pain. The white flames crept up their legs, turning the pale skin
charcoal black in their wake. Within minutes, five more corpses joined the
fallen, adorned with the remnants of pearl-colored embers on their decrepit
forms.
Lance took aim with his weapon again, firing off five more bullets that tore
through armor and felled another five wraith stallions. Now, only one adversary
remained, and his ears were folded onto the back of his head as his mouth
quaked in an attempt to form words. In haste, his horn began glowing, and the
pegasus procured another bullet, loaded it into the gunblade, and aimed his
weapon at the remaining dead pony. He stilled, pausing, as the sod frantically
stripped away his armor; helm, shoes, and all.
“Yeesh, he’s thin as a pencil! Let him gallop with his tail between his legs,
boys!” Anna scowled as the wraith turned tail and began to gallop away. She
glanced at the others and relaxed as they stood down, watching the last
stallion as he retreated. She stood up and trotted towards Lance for a bit
before stopping and using some of her magic to dig up the snow she’d buried the
dead changeling under. As soon as she had been freed from her powdery prison,
Katie clambered out and shook excess snow from her body before flaring her
wings and buzzing them rapidly to become airborne.
Katie ascended for a bit before pausing to survey her surroundings. Almost
instantly, she spotted one last wraith stallion barreling away, and started
flying towards him with her front hooves outstretched before her. “Come back!”
she cried, her voice tinged with mock excitement, “Don’t you wanna play with
me?!” She gained ground on the fleeing dead pony, who took one glance over his
shoulder to see who it was that had tailed him.
He stopped immediately, a frown marring his features, his horn coming to life
with an aura of light beige. “You! You were the one who’s—” his words were cut
off by a scream as Katie lunged towards him like a bullet, her torn maw opened
wide as she drew nearer and nearer to him. Her flight only halted when her
target found his horn clamped down by rotten, pointed teeth with a vise-like
grip.
Pain seared through his head as the sharp, fetid jaw-daggers bore deeper into
one of the crevices of his horn, and the stallion began to jerk and buck his
head wildly in an attempt to shake the mare off. This only resulted in her
teeth drilling deeper, neatly filling in some parts of the nooks of his
forehead spire. The glow from his horn ceased for a second before sparking to
life again, and his body writhed and twitched as sparks of lightning danced
around both their frames.
His struggles and cries became weaker and weaker, until he became nothing short
of a still, smouldering husk in a frozen hellhole. As soon as his attacker let
go of the horn she’d clamped on with her mouth, an arc of lightning immediately
out shot from the stallion's spire and hit her squarely in the face. The attack
sent her careening backwards, forcing her headlong into Matt. Said pony
staggered as the mare connected with the barrel of his chest, and he landed on
his rear as the dead mare slid off him like he had coated himself in butter
before plopping in the snow before his front legs.
“You… you barbarians!” Rarity exclaimed, eyes that had narrowed shooting
fleeting looks at the four ponies and the wraith who had gotten hit with magic.
She waved a hoof at the dead stallions for emphasis as she went on, “I do agree
that they have said some very horrid things—in fact, I'd have probably smacked
them myself for uttering such vile words—but that gave you no right to
ruthlessly murder them, especially the last stallion who had turned and fled!”
“This wouldn’t be the first time we had to kill some wraiths, and those guys
looked about ready to use their shoes to stab us all,” Matt stated and shook
his head in response, which only earned him an aggravated huff from the ivory
unicorn. He turned to Katie and added, “Though, this is the first time I’ve
seen a wraith kill another, and with just her mouth to boot, right as the other
turned tail.”
“She did clamp down on his horn and somehow restrict his mana flow. I guess she
lucked out and got a tooth in one of the grooves of his horn—I’m impressed he’d
still been able to hit her posthumously.” Natalie nodded, trotting to the
wraith mare as she began stirring.
“Why are flying ducks around my head?” Katie groaned weakly, wings stiffening
as they spread wide for a few seconds before falling limp at her sides.
“You’re dizzy, that’s why,” Natalie sighed as she embraced the wraith with her
magic and hefted her out of the snow. Her limbs fell limp, and her head
drooped. “Hey, do you feel any tingly sensations? Like your body’s constantly
prickled all over?”
“No,” Katie moaned in response, one long ear twitching in Natalie’s direction.
“But my everything hurts.”
“Just take it easy, shorty. You need to conserve whatever energy you have
left,” Matt sighed, noticing her ears swiveled in his direction. He stood up
and glanced towards Natalie, “Keep an eye on her, and carry her on your back if
you need too.”
Lance shot a look at Twilight and her Mythonian compatriots and sighed when he
took note of their half-shocked, half-scornful expressions. “I did tell you lot
we wouldn’t attack without provocation. What else were we supposed to do, turn
our other cheek?” he asked in a very blunt tone of voice, his visage betraying
not one flicker of emotion as he sheathed his gunblade and returned to standing
on all fours.
“You could’ve just talked to them and tried to diffuse the fight before it
began!” Rarity groaned, her glare easing somewhat.
“They’re brick walls,” Katie mumbled as Natalie loaded her thin frame onto her
cream-colored backside. “I should know—I tried once.”
“I’m guessing you’ve been around wraiths for a while?” Anna mused, turning to
the thin pony with a quirked brow.
“Only up until a few months ago,” Katie murmured, one ear turning to the archer
in response.
“Personally, and I don’t mean to sound offensive to the wraith-changeling among
us, I’m taking what she just said with one hundred and fifty grains of salt,”
Armin stated, his wings buzzing for a second before resting on his back. He
shot a glance at Katie, then at the fallen wraiths, before turning to the
Mythonian mares and drake. “But then again, those stallions did call Natalie…
something terrible within the first five minutes of seeing her.”
“Eh, it’s nothing new with us,” Lance groaned, gesturing towards the wraith-
changeling with one of his hooves for emphasis. “I think you guys could see
that those wraiths wanted our heads on pikes, right?"
“Lemme get this straight: you guys have actually fought wraiths before?”
Twilight asked, one of her brows rising high until it had been neatly hidden
beneath her bangs.
“We tried not to fight in the past, and look where we're at,” Alexander spoke
up, nodding his head glumly. “I'd rather do away with obviously-hostile
creatures, wraiths and living, than to have my feathers forcibly plucked and my
flesh cooked for dinner."
“Alright, so maybe you did try to be diplomatic, but that still doesn’t excuse
cutting off the mana flow of the last wraith stallion after he stripped himself
bare and tried to flee. Since that resulted in his self-electrocution, I dare
say that was very brutal and slow,” Rarity chided, shaking her head.
“Don’t look at us; direct that ire to the wraith-changeling mare solely
responsible for that, please,” Lance retorted, again using his hoof to gesture
to Katie for emphasis.
“The others stopped when that dude ditched his armor, Rarity; I watched them
the entire time the fight was going on. Heck, even that green-maned mare called
for a halt once he ditched his plates,” Spike piped up, garnering a glance from
the ivory unicorn and smiling as her glare eased up some more. “He’s right;
maybe we should talk with the wraith-changeling about that later.”
“After she recovers from the posthumous backlash of cutting off a wraith
unicorn’s mana flow,” Natalie groaned, chancing a glance towards the thin mare
on her back. “She’s still alert; once she gets a good nap, I feel she’ll be in
a good-enough mood to take a lecture or five.”
“Alright, that I can agree to. It would be improper of me to wake her up while
she’s in a weakened state in order to rattle off all the reasons regarding why
her being barbaric was wrong in the first place. Why, if I did do such a thing
here and now, her ears might fall off trying to keep pace!” Rarity took a few
deep breaths as she spoke, and as each exhale left her mouth, her glare eased
up until it was all but a neutral look, a mask betraying little to no emotion
at all.
“Well, at least everyone’s reached one agreement so far,” Natalie remarked. She
nodded and let a small smile grace her features.
“Alexander, could you do us a favor and bring the tank closer? Not run-
everybody-over closer, but close enough that we could clamber in it without
trotting a ways towards it first?” Lance questioned, turning to the dark-coated
gryphon as the question left his mouth.
“Can do, General,” Alexander replied, spreading his wings and flapping them to
become airborne. He flew off towards the Valkyrie, keeping his altitude low. At
this, the entire Mythonian lot, ponies and non alike, turned towards the red-
eyed pegasus with wide eyes.
“‘General?’” the six mares and dragon asked in unison. Angel and Harry let off
a squeak and a growl, respectively, at the same time the ponies and dragon had
spoken. All sets of otherwordly eyes glinted in askance.
“Yes. In fact, the gryphons and changelings are under my command,” Lance stated
with a nod, gesturing to said gryphons and Armin for emphasis. “I run an army.”
Rainbow let off a low whistle. “Y’know, for a pegasus with broken wings, that’s
quite impressive to have gryphons and changelings as part of an army,” she
said, a perplexed frown on her muzzle. “How in the hay did you manage to pull
that off, let alone get the position of head honcho?”
“It’s a long story,” Lance replied. He gestured to his fellow Fantaisian ponies
with a hoof as we went on, “Matt and Natalie accompany me to make sure I don’t
overstep my bounds as General, and and Anna joined them in rank a few months
ago—around the time the wraiths started running into us, and she was a standard
soldier before then. As for Katie, we’re just dragging her with; look at that
mare, that is not the build of a wraith who knows what in hell she’s doing.”
Twilight’s brows shot right up to hide under her bangs. “And you need at least
two ponies to keep you from overstepping your bounds because…?” she trailed
off, unsure of why a General could even need such a thing in the first place.
“He came close to overstepping a boundary too many, as far as running the army
goes,” Matt answered, a frown set in his muzzle. “He employed me and Natz to
keep him from doing that again, and as he said and we can attest to, Anna
joined in later. As far as the General goes, he’s gonna need as much help as he
can get—someone in his position can never be too careful.”
“Any one of you girls or your drake and animals know anything about the thing
that broke the barrier between the worlds?” Anna piped up, eyeing the Mythonian
lot as she waited for one of the otherworldly visitors to speak up.
“No, but I was thinking I should throw a the-barrier-has-broken-party to
celebrate that the everything in the worlds can interact at last!” Pinkie
chimed, a wide grin spreading on her muzzle. At this, the Fantasian ponies
looked at her with their jaws dropping and their eyes widening.
“Did I hear that right?” Matt mumbled, ears falling flat on his head.
“Yes, you did… is there something wrong with that?” Applejack questioned,
noticing the looks on the Fantasian ponies’ faces.
“Uh, yeah, there kinda is,” Natalie replied, nodding frantically. When Harry
let off a questioning growl and shrugged, she clarified, “There’s something
that’s out to destroy the worlds, but we don’t know what it is. All we know is
the end times are coming, or something of the sort. The guy who told us this
was very vague about it.”
“You're darn tootin’,” Applejack scoffed, eyes slanting in worry.
“That’s what we were told, sadly, and the whole ‘the end is coming’ part is all
we have to go on. Still, we vowed to stop the damned thing before it can
destroy us and everything we know. Put it like this: we’re still stuck on
square one in that regard,” Anna replied, shaking her head. She paused, one ear
turning sideways, as a gradually rising rumble vibrated in the air. The mare
turned her head and noticed the tank getting closer.
Soon, the tank stopped mere feet from the group right in its tracks, its front
just barely touching the rear hoof of the dead wraith that had tried and failed
to shake Katie off earlier. Rainbow kept her altitude low as she flew around
the Valkyrie and scanned its features. “Now that I see it up close and
personal, this looks like a pretty rad vehicle,” she stated as soon as she
landed back in the snow with her fellow Mythonian mares. “Could use a bit of
decoration, though.”
“Bah, the tank’s dark for a reason,” Lance scoffed, his remark garnering him a
questioning glance from the cyan mare. He went on with a snort, “It makes it
hard to see at night if the sky is very dark. But here, in places like this
frozen hellhole, I may need to provide it better cover—snow makes it easier to
see.”
“Good luck pulling that off. Those drills stick out like a cactus in a desert,
regardless of what the time of day is,” Twilight retorted, a frown on her
muzzle.
“You can sit out in the cold and freeze to death before being run over by us
and turned into a pancake or you can get in the fucking tank,” Lance
deadpanned. “Your choice.”
Matt playfully shoved the pegasus into the snow with a hoof, a smirk on his
face. “Like you’d actually run over a bunch of strangers with your tank,” he
chided mockingly. “And besides, you said yourself you wouldn’t be hostile to
the Mythonians.”
“Hypocrite,” Natalie murmured, lightly kicking the fallen pegasus in the
shoulder with a back hoof as he pried his head from the snow and shot stony
glares their way.
“Is it nap time?” Katie moaned, her face buried into the back of Natalie’s
neck.
“I’ll put her in her corner,” Quicksilver sighed, one corner of his beak
twitching to the point it gave him the appearance of a bizarre half-smile. He
spread his wings and flapped them to become airborne and ascended for a bit,
flying around until he hovered over the cream-colored unicorn’s form. He
scooped up the thin wraith in his talons and flew into the tank.
“Is he really that cranky?” Pinkie questioned, pointing a hoof at the red-eyed
stallion as he stood onto his hooves.
“Usually, yeah. Dunno what keeps getting his goat, though,” Anna answered. She
shrugged, giggling at Lance as he turned to glare at her.
“You, shut your piehole,” Lance growled, only to get a cream-colored hoof
shoved into his mouth.
“Don’t tempt her, Lance. You don’t want an arrow stuck in you, right?
'specially not up the ass after it's been tipped with ginger?” Natalie sneered,
turning to the archer and noticing a strange, red glint in her eyes as a smile
curled on her tan-beige lips.
The pegasus’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head with a muffled, “Mm-mm, mm-
mm!”
“Alright then,” Natalie sighed. She nodded and removed her hoof from his maw,
shaking off the scant few bits of saliva before wiping her hoof on the barrel
of her chest.
“How about this: most of us stay in our airship tonight, but one of us stays
with you guys in the tank? Would that make everyone happy?” Spike piped up,
garnering a look from everyone who still stood in the snow.
“I’ll stay in the tank; if it’s rad on the outside, then it has to be rad on
the inside!” Rainbow proclaimed, holding a hoof to her chest as a smile beamed
on her muzzle.
Twilight shot her cyan compatriot a frown and a skeptical shake of her head.
“Are you sure about this, Dash? You saw what the Fantasian ponies did to the
wraiths,” she murmured.
“Yeah, I’m sure. If trouble starts boiling over, I can just fly out of there in
ten seconds flat,” Dash proudly stated and nodded, still smiling.
“Alright, sugarcube, I trust your judgment. Just let us know if they do
something else that’s out of whack.” Applejack slowly nodded as she spoke, a
frown on her face.
“Don’t worry,” Matt beamed, playfully patting Lance’s withers with a hoof.
“We’ll keep Mr. Disgruntled in line, and we won’t do to your friend what we did
to the wraiths.”
***** Chapter IV- Lingering Suspicions *****
“Geez, that’s a big sack. What the hay’s in that thing?” Dash asked, pointing a
hoof at the open-mouthed bag of goods that still sat by its lonesome on the
floor of the tank.
“Things we’ve yet to sort. We’ve already had to yank Katie out of it, and
that’s because she somehow found a spear in that bag,” Anna replied, rolling
her eyes before pointedly glancing at the wraith in question.
“You could say we have Fantasia’s biggest blind bag yet,” Lance agreed, his
wings shifting under his uniform. Fortunately, the cyan visitor had her eyes
fixed on the sack of stuff, and took no notice of his metal limbs twitching.
“So, what do you think of the Valkyrie’s interior, Miss Dash?” Alexander
inquired, his question garnering the rainbow-maned mare’s attention.
“Could use some decorations, maybe a bed or two since it’s big enough to carry
at least a mattress, but other than that, it’s rad,” Dash instantly answered
with a small smile.
“With how fast I drive the tank, a whole bed wouldn’t be practical,” Lance
answered rather matter-of-factly, as if he were speaking an opinion and it had
somehow become part of the gospel. At this, Rainbow Dash turned to him with a
brow raised.
“Even if the bedpost were bolted to the floor, the mattress and sheets and
pillows would fly off if this tank were driven on a hill sloping downward. It’s
as Lance says—it can’t be done unless you want fifteen problems to go with the
impracticality,” Natalie piped up, shaking her head as the pegasus visitor
turned to her.
“What explains the gurneys, then? Don’t those go in a hospital?” Dash mused,
pointing a hoof at the gurneys—one of which had Katie laying on it—for
emphasis.
“I am a doctor, Miss Dash. The gurneys are there whenever the General and his
fellow ponies and soldiers get wounded and need a place to prop up whatever
limb is broken. Sometimes, we find bodies and put them on the gurneys for
examination before we bury or cremate them,” Alexander replied, and when the
cyan mare turned to him with a gape, he smiled in return.
“In fact, our lone wraith here slept on a gurney last night,” Quicksilver added
with a nod, gesturing to the dead changeling with a talon.
“Is that what the bed on wheels is called?” Katie questioned, azure orbs
widening to the size of saucers.
“Yes, my dear, the bed on wheels is called a gurney,” Nathan nodded, walking up
to the wraith and gingerly patting her stringy-maned head with a talon.
“But gurneys have wheels!” Dash protested, waving her pointing hoof desperately
at said gurneys for emphasis. She went on, oblivious to the bored looks the
Fantasians sent her way, “And you guys just said that beds are
impractical—wouldn’t gurneys be the same way?!”
“They would be, if they required blankets and were not bolted to the floor,”
Armin sighed, his wings flaring for a second before snapping shut at his sides.
“Hell, damn near everything in this tank is bolted to the floor.”
Matt blinked before grinning as a faint gurgling sound echoed in the tank’s
interior. “Welp, my belly demands food,” he murmured, his grin going a little
lopsided on his face.
“Don’t ask for giant squid. We ran out of the last few spare tentacles a
frickin’ week ago,” Lance remarked, sending the half-Clydesdale a wicked grin
when he shot his fellow red-maned stallion a glance.
“Nah, I was thinking about eating salmon today,” Matt replied before noticing
Rainbow looking at him with a hoof covering her mouth. The cyan pegasus had
been chuckling at first, before she burst out laughing. The mare doubled over,
wings flapping as laughter rocked her body, as if the exchange between the two
stallions had somehow amused her.
“P-ponies don’t eat squid and salmon!” Dash spluttered, cackling between words.
“Only… only gryphons eat seafood!”
“That’s a crock of shit,” Matt sighed, his remark causing the pegasus to
immediately cease her cackling fit and glance at him. She noticed his horn had
been glowing in a golden aura, and spotted a floating cleaned salmon that’d
been skewered on a stick, gently roasting in flames of yellow. The scent of
cooking fish filled the tank, and the other Fantasian ponies were looking at
their bulkiest member with watering mouths and pleading looks on their faces.
"I am glad Armin brought these via thaumic transport yesterday," he added with
a smile.
Dash gawked, her jaw dropping as three more sizzling, flame-engulfed, impaled
salmon flew towards Lance, Natalie, and Anna. The other two unicorns snatched
the fish with their magic, but were courteous enough to let the fires continue
searing the meat. The Fantasian pegasus, however, simply waited until the
flames receded altogether before carefully clutching the stick that’d been
offered to him with the crook of his front leg. Blowing breaths on the fish to
cool it down a bit, the General took a hefty bite out of the roasted critter, a
crunch resounding from the seared skin as he pulled away and munched
nonchalantly.
“You were saying?” Lance said coolly once he finished chewing and swallowed the
gob of meat. Rainbow’s eyes widened, and one corner of her mouth twitched as
her brain scrambled to work out the scene she’d just witnessed.
Finally, after taking a few seconds to splutter incoherently, the gawking mare
found words, “Okay, you guys have been hanging around the gryphons waaaaay too
much.”
“They’re part of my army. I kinda have to,” Lance retorted before taking
another bite out of the fish.
Matt had already eaten his makeshift seafood kabob, and he wiped his mouth with
the side of his foreleg. He gave the cyan pegasus a level look before deciding
to venture with words, “I’m going to assume much of Mythos is vegetarian?”
“No; just one part called Equestria, which is where I came from. I don’t know
anypony who eats meat with a calm look on his face,” Dash replied, shaking her
head. Her wings betrayed a cringe, and one that the blond-maned unicorn had
been quick to catch.
“Well, we’re in a frozen wasteland at the moment. It’s eat what you can, when
you can, or become a popsicle. I’d rather eat meat than have icicles growing on
the fur of my legs,” Matt stated, donning a firm frown as he spoke.
“You mentioned that gryphons only eat seafood, Dash. How do you know this?”
Jeremy asked, a quizzical brow raised as he prepared a few more fish on the
stove.
“I was… I was friends with one, and she told me,”Dash hesitantly answered,
wings shifting uncomfortably for a minute.
“Was? What happened?” Natalie inquired, taking a bite out of what was left of
her fish.
“Well, she was being… mean to my friends, and I told her off after she crossed
a line too many,” came the reply. Rainbow sat on her rump, rubbing her left
hoof on her right foreleg. “After that, I never saw her again.”
“What’d she do?” Armin piped up, his horn alight with a soft emerald aura. Dash
glanced at the changeling and back to Natalie before noticing a slight glaze in
the red-maned unicorn’s blue eyes. Looking at the other Fantasian ponies and
spotting glazes in their eyes, she turned back to the chitin-covered sod just
as his horn ceased glowing.
The unicorns and pegasus stallion blinked dazedly for a second before the fog
in their eyes faded and they shook their heads in unison to shrug off their
brief bout. Lance turned to Armin and sighed, “Please stop hypnotizing us and
draining some of our love. Reserve that kind of magic for the local monsters.”
“There are no monsters nearby, and you were the closest food source. Besides,
it’s not like love can’t be replenished over time. I didn’t even drain you all
so thoroughly you ended up like Miss Skin-and-Bones over there on the gurney;
it was just like a teaspoon from all four of you apiece,” Armin replied
defensively. He froze when the red-eyed pegasus sent a glare his way, and could
muster no more strength of will than to force himself to nod.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to have changelings as part of an army…” Dash
sighed, frowning as Lance shot her an impassive look.
“You’re not the General of an army, so I suggest you can it while you are
able,” Lance retorted in a cold tone. He opened his mouth to continue speaking
but paused as Jeremy walked past him on his rear legs, a skewered salmon
gripped by a firm talon. The pegasus followed the crow-jaguar’s movements with
his crimson eyes as he approached the wraith on the gurney. “Jeremy, what are
you doing?” he asked.
“I’m going to feed our wraith,” Jeremy replied, turning to his General with an
enthusiastic smile on his beak.
“Good luck with that. She’s said so herself that she lacks an appetite,” Anna
groaned, shaking her head as the gryphon offered the salmon-on-a-stick to
Katie.
Katie looked at the offered treat, a brow momentarily raising as her azure orbs
dimmed a bit. “Thanks, but I’ll pass. Even if I wanted to, I can’t chew it. It
smells good, though,” she spoke in a polite tone. Jeremy shrugged and walked
back towards the stove, putting the salmon on a plate and storing it in a
fridge.
Natalie watched the gryphon put the food away and sighed before turning back to
the wraith. “Maybe clamping on that stallion’s horn was a bad idea,” she piped
up, frowning.
Katie shot an unreadable look towards Natalie; her eyes did not narrow, widen,
nor dim, and her torn mouth did not move for a few minutes. She did not even
purse her lips together as the two kept staring at each other. “I had a hard
time holding on, because my teeth felt like they were going to jam themselves
into my jaw and crack at the same time,” she finally replied. “I don’t even
know how many teeth I have now. I’ll be incredibly lucky to still have my full
set on me.”
“You telling us your teeth are rotting out of your skull as we speak?” Matt
frowned, an ear twitching as the dead mare simply nodded.
“I can’t help it,” Katie argued, eyes narrowing slightly as the words left her
mouth.
Anna closed her eyes and scrunched her muzzle before grudgingly letting out a
long sigh. “Sadly, she’s right. Unless we give her metal teeth or something,
she’ll eventually have to gum things to death,” she groaned.
“Metal teeth on a wraith. Huh. That’s actually something one doesn’t hear every
day,” Alexander mused, a smile tugging at the corners of his beak.
“You aren’t putting metal in my face, thank you. You've already touched me
enough, Doctor Fondles,” Katie snarled, wings flaring and bristling as her tone
echoed with an unnatural hiss. Alexander merely laughed at the remark, but
stopped when the general spoke up.
“Refrain from experimenting on her face. Her split grin’s more than enough
facial mutilation for someone with her plethora of issues,” Lance growled,
shooting Alexander another glare. The dark-coated gryphon nodded in
understanding before noticing that Dash had been looking at his General with a
raised brow.
The pegasus followed his gaze, once more directing his attention towards the
guest inside the vehicle and spoke before Alexander could even open his beak
again, “Dash, sometimes my doctor here gets… creative, and I have to stop him
if I feel he’s going too far.”
“Did he try to do something to your broken wings that would’ve been bad?” Dash
questioned, a hard frown on her face.
“Tried holding them spread out on two separate gurneys, which hurt like hell. I
almost punched him between the eyes,” Lance answered with a nod, his red mane
frizzing just a bit as he made the movement. “Don’t even get me started about
how he wanted to keep my wings on the gurneys.”
“For a pegasus, he does hit very hard. I’m amazed he didn’t straight-up send
that wraith flying back a few feet earlier—y’know, the one he shot immediately
after?” Anna mused as she rose a hoof to rub her chin in thought.
“Maybe the armor the dude was wearing kept him grounded. Either that, or Lance
is part earth pony,” Natalie murmured, looking up at the tank’s ceiling with a
vacant gaze. “Maybe Lance just didn’t throw all of his strength in that punch;
just enough to stagger the bastard.”
“Can’t use my full potential with broken wings weighed down by saddlebags,”
Lance countered, shooting the cream-coated unicorn an incredulous frown.
“Fair enough,” Natalie conceded with a nod. She turned to Rainbow upon hearing
another groan.
“Okay, something’s been bothering me—you guys can eat fish. You eat it like
it's candy. What about things like wheat or corn? You eat any of that?” Dash
questioned, her gaze dancing from one Fantasian pony to the next. Lance
shuddered, turning a shade of verdant in the face, while Matt shook his head
just once. Both Natalie and Anna, though, had one front hoof raised and
accompanying nods.
“I can’t stomach too many things, aside from meat. Bread, milk, eggs, and some
fruits and not too many vegetables I can take,” Lance answered, his voice
faltering and cracking when the word ‘vegetables’ left his mouth.
“I can eat fruits and veggies, I just prefer not to most of the time,” Matt
added with a shrug. “Sometimes I’ll touch them, but only if Natz and Anna nag
me enough.”
“We eat more greens than they do,” said Natalie, using a hoof to gesture to
herself and Anna for emphasis. “If it’s hay, though, not even we will touch
it.”
“Why can’t you stomach things besides meat?” Dash went on, noticing Lance’s
now-green visage.
The stallion’s cheeks blew up like a pufferfish, and he hastily threw a hoof to
cover his mouth before swallowing thickly. A shade of dark evergreen had almost
entirely muted out the natural burnt orange coat color on his face, even
reaching the tips of his torn ears which fell flat on his head. “I… just can’t.
Something—” he paused to swallow again when his cheeks swelled for another
minute, “—must be wrong with me. I can’t even think about it, lest I start
going sick in the stomach.”
Rainbow’s brows shot straight up to the base of her bangs. “So even thinking
about foods besides meat will make butterflies go haywire in your gut?” she
asked, her eyelids slanting in concern. The reply she got had been nothing more
than a nod from the green-faced pegasus, who shifted his legs so he could lay
down.
“Let’s change the subject before Lance explodes in a not-good way,” Natalie
interjected, causing the cyan mare to look at her. “Dash, what’re your
companions like—when they aren’t calling us barbarians or accusing us of
hurting an already-dead changeling who is somehow still able to fly and trot?”
“Which one? We’re talking about five different ponies, a bear, a rabbit, and a
small dragon here,” Dash retorted, one brow lowering while the other stayed
well within a few inches of the hairline boundary. "No, really, which one?" she
asked a second after Natalie failed to convey an answer.
“Any one of them.” Natalie shrugged. She paused for a bit, frowning, before
adding, “Though, I am more interested in that ivory-coated unicorn…”
“You mean Rarity? She’s a dress designer and runs a store called the Carousel
Boutique. She also… flips when she sees things or ponies like the dead
changeling,” Dash sighed, unaware that, as soon as she made the remark, said
changeling had started glaring at the back of her head like her eyes were a
two-piece magnifying glass.
“Dress designer that flips when she sees…” Matt spoke his thoughts aloud but
trailed off, rubbing his chin with a hoof. After a second, he let out a long
sigh, “Sorry, I don’t get it.”
“It was her first time seeing Katie, so maybe her reaction was simply the
natural one?” Quicksilver mused, a half-frown on his beak. "I recall very well
what your reactions where when she suddenly stirred."
“Yeah, pretty much. Honestly, though, I was kinda expecting her to faint on the
spot. I am amazed she didn't,” Rainbow huffed, nodded and shrugged her
shoulders in that order. She’d still been unaware that Katie was fervently
trying to burn a hole in the back of her head with the glare she cast.
Anna’s eyes betrayed a glimmer, and something clicked in her head when that
sparkle came. Her pupils drastically widened as she spoke, “Ooooooh, I get it.
She’s one of those squeaky-clean, overly fashionable, hates-bland-and-ugly-
types, right?”
“‘Hate’ doesn’t exactly cover it, but that’d be a good start on that last one.”
Rainbow nodded once more. “For the love of all that’s holy, I can see her
trying to style his mane,” she added, using a hoof to gesture towards Matt.
Matt immediately flinched, a frown marring his features. “She puts one brush
near my head, I’ll truss up her mane—” he started, but a green magical glow
clamped his mouth shut before he could finish.
“Sensitive about the golden locks, I take it?” Dash asked, turning to the
stallion who had his muzzle held closed with magic that had not been his own.
Matt merely nodded with a grunt, and at this, she continued, “I don’t blame
you. Sometimes, Rares gets a little cray and I have to take to the skies to
avoid her brushes and trips to the spa.”
NoLegs meowed, using his tail to tap at Rainbow’s left front leg until she
looked at him. The legless cat looked at the pegasus and purred as she rose her
hoof to rub his furry cheek. He curled up next to her when she stopped petting
him, still purring, as his eyes closed.
Everyone else in the tank exchanged looks with one another. Then, Lance spoke
up, his voice weak and his face still tinged in green, “I’m impressed that the
cat trusts you.”
“Well, if he’s okay with Dash, then I guess we don’t have much cause for
alarm,” Anna murmured with a nod. She covered her mouth with a hoof to yawn
before speaking again, “Damn, I feel ready to conk out.”
“Something does not sit right with me about her,” Katie snarled in a low tone,
raising a shaky hoof to point it at Rainbow.
“Well, not much you can do about it, even if you wanted to do something,”
Natalie grudgingly sighed, glancing at the wraith and shaking her head. “And
besides, it’s not like she could try anything. Fly out, perhaps, but not like
hand our asses to us beforehand.”
“True,” Katie groaned as she set her hoof back on the gurney and nestled her
head between her forelegs. “Still don’t trust her, though.”
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
“Something about them ponies just didn’t seem right,” Applejack grumbled,
frowning.
“And the eyes of that archer… I could’ve sworn they shimmered red for a
moment,” Twilight nodded, a shiver running through her body at the thought.
“Um, do you think she might’ve been corrupted? Trixie’s eyes glowed red when
she had the Alicorn Amulet…” Fluttershy piped up, looking at Twilight with
shifting wings.
“But that mare’s magic didn’t turn red… now that I dwell on it, corruption is a
possibility,” Twilight sighed, shivering again.
“And the General also had red eyes. Just looking at them made me feel as though
he could crush me under his hoof without a care in the world,” Rarity murmured,
shaking her head in an attempt to rid herself of the thought. “His tone of
voice said one thing, but the eyes… they did not once reflect it.”
“The way he told us about what happened to his ears made me think one o’ two
things is going on, as far as them ears are concerned,” Applejack sighed. Her
remark immediately began garnering the attention of the ponies, bear, rabbit
and drake in the airship.
“And what would those two things be?” Twilight frowned, and her ears fell flat
as the blond-maned mare took a minute to swallow thickly.
“Either he didn’t feel the pain, or…” Applejack trailed off for a second.
“Or what?” Rarity mused, a frown marring her own features.
“Or he’s straight-up lying about how it happened,” Applejack finished, shaking
her head. “How am I supposed to know which is more likely? I wasn’t there when
his ears got shredded, after all, nor when his wings got roughed up.”
“While we're on the subject, how was he able to fight if his wings were broken?
Sure, he didn’t do much fighting with those wraiths, but don’t wounded pegasi
need to rest?” Pinkie interjected, her head slightly tilted to one side.
“Well, he did say his wings were bandaged, a gryphon backed him up on that, and
that wraith tried turning him into a shishkabob. Maybe he just fought out of
necessity,” Spike stated, shaking his head.
“But broken wings and wounded sides would make it hard for a pegasus to balance
on their back legs like he did, especially with that sword-like thing he was
carrying. The only situation I can see where such a thing is possible was if
his wings kept getting broken to the point he just went ‘to Tartarus with it,’”
Twilight countered, her frown becoming more pronounced on her muzzle.
“Either that or he’s lying about that too,” Applejack agreed with a nod.
“Well, we won’t know which scenario has happened until—and I don’t mean to
sound rude in any sense of the word—he takes off his uniform. Either he’s going
to slip up on accident, or he’ll willingly show us the state of his wings. We
only need to wait,” Rarity stated, punctuating her remark with a long, low
sigh.
“But there’s a chance he won’t do either; he was armed when he trotted to us,
Rarity. You ever noticed how slowly he approached, and how many times he
stopped to look around before continuing? He was being overtly cautious,” Spike
interjected before a puzzled frown made its way onto his features. He rubbed
his chin with a claw and added, “Okay, now that makes me wonder: why was he the
only pony that had a full set of clothes? The unicorns and wraith had nothing
more than scarves.”
“One of the gryphons said he sustained serious injuries and needed to keep his
wounds out of the elements. Are you suggesting it’s something else entirely,
Spike?” Twilight turned to the drake as she spoke, a brow raised.
Harry let off a growl, which Fluttershy translated. “Harry says the uniform
could be a part of the whole General business he has going on,” she murmured.
“Well, the royal guards and their captains trot around in armor twenty-four
seven back home; I can certainly see why Harry has that line of thinking.”
Twilight slowly nodded as she spoke.
Angel started thumping his foot on the floor, garnering the attention of
Fluttershy. “What is it, Angel?” she asked, noticing the rabbit making wild
gestures with his front paws. After a few minutes of eyeing the bunny’s
gestures, which ended with a digit held up against the forehead in a way
reminiscent of a unicorn horn, she frowned. “You noticed that Mister
Bladerune’s horn was smaller than his friends’ horns?” she murmured, to which
the bunny set his paw down before nodding.
“That is very peculiar. Maybe it’s just a birth defect?” Twilight mused,
rubbing a hoof on her chin. “We only saw him performing basic levitation and a
weapon-summoning spell—perhaps he has a very limited magical range because of
the smaller-than-normal horn.”
Angel began making more gestures now, rapidly flapping his front limbs as if
they were wings. Fluttershy kept her eyes locked on him as the rabbit began
making more signs, which ended with him pulling the corners of his mouth wide,
resulting in him appearing as though he had the widest grin anyone’s seen yet.
“The wraith with the split mouth? You think she’s pretty odd?” she queried, and
again, the rabbit nodded to respond.
“I’m impressed she can still trot, let alone fly! No changeling, gryphon or
pony should be living in such a state as she is; why, not even Celestia would
let herself stoop so low as to show her bones through her skin and be calm
about it!” Rarity huffed, eyes narrowing as the words tumbled from her mouth.
“Well, as one of the Fantasians said, there’s not much we can do about it. That
changeling was already thin, according to her, and…” Twilight trailed off and
shuddered as she recalled the wraith’s arrant horn stump that sat on her skull.
She swallowed thickly before continuing, “And the wraith did say they gave her
a place to sleep that’s warm, but I don’t know how much any one of the ponies
are telling the truth.”
“At least we’re in the same boat, Twi,” Applejack remarked, eyelids slanting in
worry. “But I want to know what that changeling did to her face that made her
look like her jaw was half torn off like that.”
“Perhaps someone tortured that changeling! Whoever would defile a face, let
alone in such a way the damage is irreparable, has done one of the most horrid
things ever known in the history books! By Celestia and Luna, Discord was
considerably more tame once we freed him from his stone prison!” Rarity hissed,
eyes narrowing lower still. She had begun turning a shade of red in the face,
and her form trembled as her blood started boiling over.
“Or, well… I suppose it’s possible that her wounds were self-inflicted, but I
don’t see why anyone would want to carve into their own face and leave a very
wide scar in its wake,” Twilight mumbled with a grimace, shaking her head
solemnly. “And we still don’t know why she’s… pencil-thin, for a lack of better
words.”
“Queen Chrysalis said that love is food for changelings. The wraith’s broken
horn could’ve been a factor in her starvation,” Fluttershy piped up, wings
cringing.
“That’s possible, Shy. Which leaves two questions: were the wounds self-
inflicted, and if not, then who would do such a thing?” Twilight inquired,
turning to her pegasus friend with a frown on her muzzle.
“Well, whatever it is, I swear I will find who is responsible and dunk them in
tar and feathers!” Rarity snarled, seething rage alight in her eyes as she
stomped a hoof. At this, the others turned to her with flinches and worried
frowns, only to relax as the ivory unicorn took deep breaths with a heaving
chest and gradually calmed down.
“What if the wraith did it to herself, Rarity? What then?” Applejack ventured,
swallowing thickly.
Rarity flinched, ears falling flat on her skull as the furious light in her
eyes faded, replaced only by the embers of a mild irritation. “If she’s the
only guilty party, then... “ she trailed off, the irritation fading from her
eyes until it’d been left with only a numb, distant gleam. “...then I’ll ask
why she’d do such things to herself,” she finished after a few seconds.
“Twilight’s right; nobody would do that, even for the worst of reasons
imaginable. I doubt even a changeling would stoop that low.”
“Hopefully, she’s going to be at least willing to talk about it. But it’s
highly likely she won’t want to. Ponies and changelings and gryphons who
receive split grins are often deeply hurt about how they got it in the first
place,” Twilight sighed rather matter-of-factly, her frown deepening.
“Why’s that?” Spike asked, walking up to Rarity whilst keeping his gaze focused
on Twilight.
“It often goes hoof-in-hoof with violent, traumatic crimes,” Twilight answered
in a glum tone, shaking her head. “And so does having a horn broken off, for
that matter. For all we know, the wraith could’ve been a victim of some violent
attack.”
“But then, how is she still trotting and flying like nothing happened?”
Applejack countered, a hoof on her chin.
“I guess her being dead could be a factor—maybe wraiths just don’t feel
physical pain,” Fluttershy replied, and made to speak once more, only to close
her mouth when Twilight shot her a glance and shook her head for the upteenth
time.
“That’s not possible; we all saw how she reacted after that arc of lightning
hit her. If she couldn’t feel it hurting her and maybe leaving a lingering
tingly sensation afterwards, then I doubt she’d have felt Matt’s magic forcibly
levitating her against her will,” Twilight groaned, flailing a hoof in a
dismissive manner. “What's more, she can clearly speak and groan, when her
lungs and vocal chords should not be working. She looks dead, yet acts very
much alive; heck, she can talk the talk and trot the trot through and through!
All I know is that something is not right with that mare!”
“All I know is that the Fantasian ponies and their wraith confuzzle me to no
end, and normally, I do the confuzzling back home!” Pinkie exclaimed, sitting
on her rump and crossing her front legs together.
“Which is really saying something,” Twilight conceded with a heavy sigh,
closing her eyes as if in defeat. “I’ll be impressed if they perplex us more
than Discord did.”
“Am I the only one who still thinks the ‘end of the worlds’ bit that the
unicorn whose eyes turned red for two seconds mentioned is just a hunk of bad
baloney? Maybe they've been duped really well, which is why they want to stop…
whatever broke the barrier,” Pinkie piped up again, garnering a glance from her
lavender companion.
“You’re not the only skeptical one,” Twilight replied, opening her eyes and
giving the pink pony a weak smile. “Maybe they’re all a bunch of loons and we
just haven’t seen their true inner crazies yet.”
Applejack also grinned, “I done told that orange-maned pony she was darn
tootin’. But she and that other mare said they heard the ‘end of the worlds’
nonsense from some other pony or whatever that talked to their group; they
might be darn tootin’. Meaning the Fantasians we found are just telling us tall
tales they heard from a crazed sheep or something.” At this, the other mares,
the animals, and Spike nodded in agreement, each with smiles on their faces.
Angel was the exception of sorts; at least, expression-wise, as he had donned
an unreadable look as his head bobbed up and down.
Harry growled again and sat on his rear. He stretched his front legs and let
off a lengthy yawn.
“That’s a good idea, Harry,” Fluttershy murmured, stretching her wings for a
bit.
“What is?” Rarity mused, turning to her pegasus friend with a puzzled glint in
her eyes.
“We should sleep and think about all of this tomorrow. I mean, it’s an awful
lot to try to make sense of, with what the torn ears and the wraith and all of
the other things going on. It would be better to rest and talk in the morning.
After all, we have to stay for at least three days and a lot to learn about
this place—if you don’t mind, that is,” Fluttershy answered, laying down and
folding her wings with a small smile on her face.
Twilight shifted her legs and laid down as well. “I get what you mean,
Fluttershy. Maybe a nice night’s sleep should give us all clearer heads,” she
agreed, nodding her head before settling it between her front legs.
“And we got lots of time to sort things out, and maybe the Fantasians will be
less cranky tomorrow,” Pinkie chimed, smile widening as she too shifted to lay
down.
“The less cranky everyone is, the better,” Applejack stated, also curling up on
the floor.
“I concur. I just hope Rainbow hasn’t sparked another fight,” Rarity sighed,
shaking her head.
Angel hopped over to Fluttershy and curled up next to her, ears upright as he
dozed off. Soon, the lot within the airship went to sleep and all fell silent.
Nothing dared to break the tranquility for a good few hours before Spike sat
up, rubbing his eyes with a claw. His vision bleary, the young drake slowly
stood up and walked to a window absentmindedly. Already, the moon began rising
up in the horizon, tinting everything a soft silver-blue. He could see the
Valkyrie, the wraiths that had been slain earlier in the day, and…
“What the?” Spike mumbled, squinting his eyes as he saw two shadowy figures
collide with two more others, one bulky and one he surmised to be the size of
Twilight. Wings flared wide, a halberd-like weapon had been drawn so fast it
reflected the moon’s light for the barest of instants, and the figures engaged
in a very violent scuffle that sent snow flying everywhere—his eyes widened as
he saw more figures rush in from seemingly nowhere and join in the snow-kicking
fest.
When, after a few minutes passed and the snow had stopped getting kicked up in
all directions, the drake saw one of the figures sling another more onto their
backsides like a sack of flour, and a hefty handful more holding the bulky one
at bay. The one slung on the backside of another had still been clutching the
halberd-esque thing as if in defiance.
Whirling around, the drake found that the boarding dock had been closed. On the
opposite side of the ship, a window stood wide open, bringing in the cold
breaths of nightly gales. A darker shadow loomed just outside that window and
closed it in haste, and Spike blinked before he heard another window open just
behind him. The drake felt something that had large, thin digits hold his mouth
shut from behind before a scream could leave his throat.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Angel thumped his foot on the floor, standing next to a snoring Twilight as a
soft drumming filled the air around him. A few long seconds flew by, and the
bunny stopped thumping to catch his breath, chest heaving as exhausted pants
left his small mouth. The unicorn had not stirred even once, and the small
white critter shot a glare at her sleeping form before trudging over to
Fluttershy. Gathering some more strength and a few more breaths, he started
thumping on the floor once more, only stopping after a minute when the pegasus
blearily opened her eyes and dazedly stared at him.
“Oh, my, Angel. Is it morning already?” Fluttershy asked in a sleepy tone,
rubbing her eyes with a hoof as the bunny nodded. He started making wild
gestures again, which ended in one paw held over his head with the pads of the
appendage facing one of the windows. Fluttershy rose to her hooves and looked
around, noticing that one window stood wide open and littered with scratch
marks and the fact that, somehow, her group had now been one member short.
It took only an instant for her to register the fact, and another to register
the open window, but once she did, her front hooves flew to her face and her
eyes went wide. “Oh no, Spike’s gone!” she exclaimed in a hushed tone, whipping
her head around to glance at Angel. “Did you try waking Twilight up?” she
asked, and the bunny nodded with an irritated glint in his eyes.
Fluttershy sucked in a deep breath, and then exhaled before repeating the
breathing pattern a few more times. Yet, no matter how much she breathed in and
out, the growing panic within her refused to cease. “Spike’s gone,” she
mumbled, her form trembling. “Spike’s gone!” she exclaimed, voice rising higher
in both pitch and volume—loud enough to briefly echo within the airship.
“Spike’s gone!” she yelled loud enough to echo in the area outside of the
airship. Her cry of alarm aroused the mares and bear from their slumber, all
standing bolt upright and looking at her with widened eyes.
“Spike’s what? Fluttershy, what’s wrong?” Twilight asked, eyes twinkling in
concern.
“What the hell are you all on about?” a voice called from outside. Turning to
the open window, Twilight trotted to the anomaly and peered outside to find the
Valkyrie’s hatch had opened, with Lance poking his head out of it. The unicorn
glanced around in the airship’s room, and had instantly noticed Spike’s
absence.
“What’s wrong?” Rainbow Dash called, flying out of the tank and hovering next
to the open window within seconds. When Twilight turned to her with pinprick
pupils, the airborne pegasus frowned and made to speak again, only to fall
silent as a lavender hoof rose up to cover its owner’s mouth.
“Spike’s gone, Dash. Spike. Is. Gone!” Twilight answered, voice rising in
tandem with her panic. At this, the cyan mare gaped.
“You mean, he’s not in the airship with you? Like, he’s missing?” Rainbow
asked, her own voice an octave higher. When Twilight glumly nodded, she turned
to the tank and flew towards it, only stopping when her aloft form hovered over
Lance.
The red-eyed stallion shot her an unreadable look. “What are your friends
getting their tails tied in a knot over?” he asked.
“You know the little dragon? Spike?” Dash replied, ears flat on her skull.
“Purple and green, hard to miss unless he was in a crowd of full-grown tall
ponies?” Lance groaned, a brow quirked. “What about him?”
“He’s not in the airship. He just up and vanished!” Dash replied, her voice
rising another octave higher and her forelegs flailing as she spoke.
“Maybe he’s in another part of the airship. That thing does look like it has
multiple rooms,” Lance stated, a firm frown on his face. His eyes widened as
Dash slung her front hooves onto his shoulders and violently shook him like a
piggybank she’d been trying to get money out of.
“It only has one room for me and my friends, one room for supplies, and one
room for the pilot, and he’s not in the room meant for my friends!” Dash
objected, continuing to shake the General until Matt poked his head out of the
hatch and stopped her with a bit of gold-colored magic.
“The little drake may be in the storage room, or sleeping with the ship’s pilot
for all we know. Check in there, and come back once you do. Tell us what you
can or cannot manage to find,” Matt said simply. “Until we know for certain
he’s not in the airship, we can’t do anything.”
“Can’t do anything, or won’t?” Rainbow asked, her voice rising and her tone
marred in an angry growl. Her eyes narrowed low as she waited for the unicorn
to answer.
The response came in mere seconds. “Can’t, until we know for sure. If you want,
we can go in the airship ourselves and search,” Matt answered, sighing.
“I’ll search. You guys would get distracted by whatever they have in that
thing,” Anna groaned, poking her head out of the hatch. She shot Rainbow a look
and added, “Tell your friends I’ll help scour every square inch to help see if
I can spot any whereabouts of the dragon.”
Natalie poked her head out of the tank, facing opposite of the airship. Amidst
the dull, soft grey clouds, she spotted something black rising up and up.
Clambering out of the hatch to stand on the tank, she carefully maneuvered
around the lid of the hatch with a brow raised. “Um, what is that?” she asked
aloud, now noticing that the faint plume of what looked like smoke had appeared
to spindle upwards from the ground in the distance.
***** Chapter V- A Common Cause *****
Anna groaned, eyes narrowed as she scoured up and down the small storage room
of the airship. She lifted whole bundles of fruits from their storage boxes
with her magic, giving the containers a once-over before putting the produce
back where she found it. “Ugh, he’s not in these boxes either,” she seethed,
turning to a stallion decked out in golden armor. “Anything on your end?”
“No, ma’am. No sign of Sir Spike,” the stallion answered, shaking his head. “He
wasn’t in the control room, either.” At this, the archer’s eye twitched, and
her form shook as if bristling with porcupine needles.
“Let’s give the lounge of the ship another go-over; we might’ve missed
something there,” Anna scowled before hastily galloping out of the storage room
and towards the small staircase going up. The armored stallion ran behind her,
and both met five sets of frowning faces and another face that had gone wide-
eyed once they arrived in the makeshift living quarters.
“Was Spike in there?” Twilight questioned, her breathing hitched. Anna shook
her head.
“We’re gonna need to scour this room once more. Surely, he must’ve left
something behind,” Anna sighed, and with eyes flickering in a grudgingly dark
gleam, she trotted around and overturned the small tables and chairs that were
in the room. At least, until she found something that lay underneath the open
window which stuck out like a sore thumb, in addition to claw marks on and
around the sill. “Aha!” she exclaimed, turning to the worried Mythonians just
as she scooped up that very object to present to them with her magical grasp.
“A white feather? It doesn’t belong to Spike...” Rarity trailed off before her
eyes zeroed in on a series of claw marks that stood out on the window sill;
deep gashes in the wood reminiscent of flesh wounds.
“I’m not sure how the hell I missed this, but now that we know it’s here, I
think we can guess how it got in this airship,” Anna stated, her scowl morphing
into a small, almost feral smirk. Her eyes gleamed a faint crimson as the
Mythonians’ eyes darted from the feather, to the mare, to the window sill, and
back again.
“Someone… kidnapped Spike?” Fluttershy whimpered, her eyes going wide as
saucers.
“Yeah. Why they’d go after a little drake, I haven’t the foggiest. But this
feather and those claw marks narrows down the list of possible suspects,” Anna
nodded, briefly jerking her head at the gashes in the wood for emphasis. She
glanced at the armored stallion and addressed him, “You, pilot! Ready the ship
for flight and follow the Valkyrie. I think I know where this feather came
from.”
“Are you sure it’s not from one of Lance’s gryphons?” Twilight pleaded, ears
flat on her head.
“No; none of them are white. Closest one to that color would be Quicksilver,
and he’s all grey,” Anna replied, shaking her head. “I have met someone who is
pure white, however, and that was just days ago.”
“So you know who might’ve kidnapped Spike?” Pinkie mused, making a beeline for
the Fantasian mare until she stopped just inches from the archer’s muzzle.
Anna nodded without hesitation. “Yep. And when we find him, we’re gonna give
him a nice, long talking to—maybe shake some more of the ‘end of the worlds’
thing me and my companions heard from him while we’re at it,” she answered.
“Wait, so the owner of that feather’s the same dude who told you about the
whole ‘end times are coming’ nonsense?” Dash half-shrieked her question, front
hooves flailing to the ship’s ceiling as her eyes went wide.
Anna tsked Dash just once before answering, “Bingo.” She turned to the
airship’s boarding dock and started to trot to it with a confident spring in
her step, but had stopped once the armored stallion cleared his throat.
“Miss, are you going to be riding in the ship, or the tank?” the sod asked, the
faintest of a concerned glimmer alight in his eyes as she turned to him with a
wide smirk.
“Nah, I’m gonna ride the airship. Why do you think I was about to trot out?”
Anna replied in a sarcastic tone of voice. Her smile fell as she added,
“Seriously, though, someone has to tell Lance to get the tank in gear so we can
get a move on.”
“Fair enough. I’ll get the airship ready for takeoff.” The stallion nodded
again and watched as Anna trotted out onto the boarding dock. The green-maned
Fantasian galloped to the Valkyrie and levitated herself to the to the top of
the tank as though she’d been fired from a slingshot. Dropping into the hatch
and landing in the tank on her hooves, she turned to Lance with an unreadable
look.
Lance sat in front of the control panel, front legs lazily slung on the
steering wheel like he’d been sitting in a recliner as he leaned back and met
her gaze. “What’s your report?” he asked.
“Spike is not on the airship, and I found this feather and claw marks on and
near the sill of a window,” Anna reported, levitating the white feather to the
general.
Lance studied the object and scoffed, eyes narrowing low as the feather floated
beneath his scrutinizing glare. “I see,” he groaned, “and to whom does this
feather belong?”
“I have reason to believe it belongs to one of the villagers of Frostbite. It
may even belong to the elder—only part of him that wasn’t white was his beard,”
Anna answered with a nod.
“Well, we won’t know who exactly did it until we hit that hippogryph town
again, or even if a hippogryph was responsible,” Matt snorted, turning to Lance
and giving him a nod. The pegasus nodded back and whipped around to face the
control panel after disentangling his front legs from the steering wheel,
typing into the keyboard frantically. Anna levitated herself and flew upward,
poking her head out of the hatch and waving a hoof as she spotted Rainbow
likewise peeking out of the open window.
“Tell the pilot we’re about to take off!” Anna yelled.
“Alright!” Dash called, closing the window with her front hooves and darting
off to do as she’d been asked. Anna nodded and watched as the boarding dock of
the ship started reeling into its vessel, dropping back into the tank just as
the aircraft’s vehicle slammed shut.
“Is the airship ready to go?” Natalie inquired, her tail twitching slightly.
Anna shot her a look and smiled, “The S.S. Leviathan is locked and loaded.”
Lance gripped the steering wheel with his front hooves, a wide coy smirk
playing on his muzzle. The tank’s treads violently whirred to life, in perfect
tandem with the airship ascending into the sky. Within minutes, both vehicles
darted off northward, with the land-bound one leading the way. In another few
minutes, the igloos of Frostbite started to crop up into view, a faint
silhouette at first. The spindle of black became darker, thicker, longer, and
wider as the tank approached in a steadfast beeline.
“Is that black stuff smoke?” Matt asked, eyeing the dark color that stood out
against the grey skies like a splotch of ink.
“I believe so... Is the town ablaze?” Katie asked, eyes narrowed low.
“Doubt it. You can’t exactly set ice and snow on fire. Hmm… maybe they’re
having a celebration of some sort,” Natalie replied, turning to the wraith with
a shrug.
“But then, if they did kidnap the dragon, why?” Matt mused, frowning.
“Maybe they need a dragon for the festivities. We can only hope it’s not one of
those kinds where the dragon dies,” Anna sighed, sitting on her rump as the
town began getting clearer the closer the tank got. The vehicle halted in its
path an instant before it would have run over one of the igloo houses. The
ponies, gryphons, and changelings hopped out of the still-open hatch, landing
in the snow just as the airship began its landing. As soon as the boarding dock
landed in the snow and the Mythonians trotted out of it, Lance turned to the
mares and animals and cleared his throat.
“Since it’s your friend we’re after here, I’ll let you have a say in how we
should approach the town. Do we walk straight in to find the source of the
smoke, or scour each and every ice-brick house on the closest street?” he asked
in a flat voice.
“Let me go!” a feminine voice called out, one high-pitched and frantic in tune.
“What did I do to deserve this?”
“Get your beak away from me!” another, masculine voice howled, irritation and
confusion rampant in the outcry.
“D-d-don’t make me breathe fire on you! Y-your feathers will get scorched off!”
a third voice warned, this one sounding dreadfully similar to that of Spike’s.
Twilight’s eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. “No time to scour the
houses. Let’s get in the town already!” she cried.
Lance shot a look at his fellow Fantasians. “You heard the Mythonian unicorn,
let’s go, people!” he barked. Nobody needed to be told twice. Without a
moment’s pause, the groups galloped into Frostbite as though they were one,
surging into the nearest street like a torrent of rain. Wings flapped madly,
hooves kicked snow everywhere, muzzles donned firm frowns as the scent of a
bonfire and cooking meat filled their nostrils. The streets were oddly empty;
at least, they were before the group saw a large gathering of hippogryphs
coming into view.
A fourth, masculine voice cried out, but it died mid-wail in a gurgling choke.
The group skidded to a halt on land and in sky, gaping at the sight before
them. The hippogryphs of Frostbite used their talons to tear out a hapless
stallion’s throat, with some more ripping at his stomach and spilling his
organs onto the snow. He struggled and kicked as the uninvited spectators’ eyes
went wide, but his thrashing grew feebler and feebler as blood poured from his
body.
The light soon left his eyes, and he ceased moving altogether. His head tipped
back limply, eyes wide open in a frozen state of pain. Rarity’s hoof flew to
her mouth, and so did the hooves of her fellow ponies—even the Fantasians could
not suppress the urge to hide their mouths with their front limbs, all wincing
in unison.
The dead stallion’s legs were ripped clean off; the front ones were devoured in
seconds by savage beaks and the back ones tossed into a raging bonfire to cook.
The pony’s torso suffered similar punishment; meat being plucked from bones and
more innards strewn about like trash.
The head of the stallion suffered worst; the jawbones were grappled by talons
that pulled them apart at the very seams. His tongue flopped out, and that,
too, had been yanked out. His eyeballs were gouged out, and the brains pulled
apart in pieces from the emptied, bloodied sockets. What little the head had to
offer had been brutally picked off and crammed into waiting mouths, with the
crimson-stained skull tossed aside, whereupon it rolled in the snow before
stopping at the foot of the flames.
The beaks of Lance’s gryphon soldiers scrunched up, Armin’s legs shook as a
scowl set in his face, and Angel shivered at the sight of the carnage. NoLegs
glanced forlornly at the carcass that was once a pony before turning back to
the villagers and using his tail to draw his sword. The cat heard a shuffle
from the left and turned his head to glance in that direction before his ears
fell flat on his head at the new sight he had witnessed.
Held by more hippogryphs to the sidelines were Spike, a dull grey dog-like
creature with golden eyes that stood on his back legs with a club-like tail and
a facial structure akin to a wolf's, and another hippogryph mare who had the
face of a pony and the slit-pupiled eyes of a gryphon. The mare, who was caked
in copious amounts of blood around the muzzle and claws, froze upon seeing
Anna, entranced with the others as the hapless stallion’s bones lay in the
stained white as though forgotten. “Sister! Y-you're here?!” she shrieked, and
only then did the green-maned unicorn turn to the left and take notice of her.
“A gryph with green eyes and a green mane hanging past her shoulders, with a
light brown coat and dark brown talons…” Anna murmured before her eyes went
wide as she took in the sight of the detained hippogryph, and she turned to the
other gryphs with a scowl set in her face. “Let my sister, the dog and the
dragon go,” she snarled, and at once, the villagers turned to her with fresh
blood dribbling down their chins.
“That cunt with a cutie mark is your sister?” one villager spoke, a sinister
smile framed on his muzzle. He shook his head, still grinning, small droplets
of red flying from his face and further staining the snow.
“We were hoping you foolish lot wouldn’t come back to our abode,” another
stallion hissed, scowling. “Oh well. More food for us.” He snorted, and the
villagers donned a unanimous smirk on their faces.
“You maniacs! What did that pony do to deserve such a fate?” Rarity chided,
eyes narrowing low. Before she could open her mouth to speak again, a cream-
colored hoof rose in front of her muzzle.
“Let them go, and we won’t cause any more trouble in this Godcat-damned
village,” Anna growled, summoning her bow and nocking an arrow with her magic
as she jerked her head to the detained group for emphasis. At her demand, the
villagers only chortled in unison.
Katie moved in closer, wings keeping her aloft, but she kept her distance from
the bloodstained hippogryphs. “Let the dragon, mare, and diamond dog loose,
else we’ll free them by force,” she warned. The hippogryph holding the mare
responded by lifting a halberd—one with a golden-colored harp sporting
intricate carvings tied to the middle of the shaft—from the ground and brought
the pointed tip to his captive’s throat. The one holding Spike lifted the drake
with his talons, bringing his beak mere inches away from his neck. The ones
holding the diamond dog procured an array of cutlasses from sheaths strapped to
their bodies and brought them dangerously close to the canine’s chest.
The crowd parted some, and the elder stepped down the makeshift aisle right
towards the groups. He had so much blood staining him not even Lance could tell
what had been feathers and what had been beard. The elder shot Matt a wry
smile, eyes gleaming like that of a predator’s. “Pity you left just days ago,
you foolish ponies,” he spat, still smiling. “We could have made you into
excellent morsels. Though, I suppose it matters not now, since you brought more
bounty for me and my fellow hippogryphs to share.”
Matt took a step forward, summoning his blade and holding it defensively in
front of the Mythonians with his magic. “These mares and their dragon are not
food,” he snarled.
Natalie scanned the villagers, and frowned upon noticing something—or, rather,
a distinct lack of something. “Where are the mares and foals? I could’ve sworn
they were out here when we visited,” she asked.
“We killed almost all of them,” the village elder answered, pointing an
accusing talon at the unicorn who’d asked the question. “They all wanted to go
off gallivanting for those wretched cutie marks! Too bad we’ll have to kill the
green-maned hippogryph over yonder; had she not gotten her mark, she’d have
made an excellent slut!”
Lance shot a look at the captives, frown deepening as he spotted the
aforementioned mare whose eyes flickered with vestiges of fear and panic. He
then turned to look at the elder and the rest of the villagers, quickly noting
the engorged bellies of the winged brutes. “I’m impressed you bastards even
managed to get mares to procreate with you,” he spat.
The elder continued to sneer, oblivious to the glares the Mythonians gave him.
“I used a little method to keep those whorses in line,” he said simply. He
turned to his villagers and flung his talons high into the air before shouting,
“Bring unto me the last foal!”
A burly hippogryph stalked towards the elder from the crowd on his back legs,
dragging with him a screaming, pony-faced, and nigh-featherless filly with a
trussed-up violet mane that kicked and flailed about. The child flapped her
wings, tried grasping at the snow with her talons; anything to get out of the
vise-like grip that held her by the scruff of the neck.
“Let me go! I promise I won’t get my cutie mark! Just don’t hurt me anymore!”
the filly shrieked in desperation, her voice wracked by sobs. The musclebound
hippogryph threw her in front of the elder, who lunged at her with one talon,
pinning her to the snow. The foal stilled as she looked into the formerly-white
hippogryph’s visage, her claws feebly holding onto his tarsus, rear legs
falling slack against the snow.
“Oh shit,” Lance mumbled, eyes widening. His heart stopped in his chest as he
and the others witnessed the elder’s other talon lower itself to the foal’s
groin. The claws were plunged deep into the flesh, and the hapless filly let
out a hoarse, anguished wail as the talon tore deep gashes down her privates
and into her thigh. Natalie, Anna, and Katie froze, and said wraith landed in
the snow as everyone’s eyes widened further still while the filly’s cries
devolved into pained and incoherent sobs.
The foal kicked feebly with her wounded back leg, only to stop and scream once
more as the claws tore into her again, creating more oozing gashes in her groin
and right thigh. “Stop!” she howled, her voice cracking as pain seared through
her body.
“You broke one of this village’s rules, little slut! You have to pay for your
insolence!” the elder cackled, laughing quite jovially at the filly’s
suffering. He raised his bloodied talon and punched her in the face one time,
giving her a black eye. Another punch to the face had her gasping in pain,
coughing as fresh blood trickled down her nose. Her attacker spotted a few
loose feathers clinging to her wings and tore them out, grinning as another
shriek came from his victim.
Discarding the feathers to one side, the bloodied hippogryph laughed, digging
his claws into her tender flesh yet again—and this time, once his claws parted
from the wounds, he grabbed bits of snow and rubbed them into the newly-created
openings, causing the filly to let out screams that rose a few octaves higher.
He ran his talon up, grasping one of her ears, and violently jerked it,
garnering more pained whimpers as his claws ran across the ear’s thin skin as
if searching for a weak point.
“Maybe I could tear that pretty little face off and use it as a cock sleeve,”
the elder hissed in a low voice, eyes alight with a predatory gleam—the gleam
of a sadist.
“I-I don’t wanna be a cock sleeve!” the filly shrieked, once more struggling.
“I-I want to die! Just make it stop!”
At that point, Rarity’s face set in a scowl, ungodly fury alight in her eyes;
the filly’s recent words serving to fuel her wrath. She lunged forward, hooves
outstretched, horn lighting up in magic. She separated the elder from the foal
and sent the hapless filly almost flying into Matt, using some more levitation
to careen herself towards the bloodied hippogryph like a speeding bullet.
Matt caught the foal in his magic and held her as close as he dared, watching
the Mythonian as she landed on the elder’s chest and knocked him down on his
back with almost no effort on her part. She began hitting his face with her
front hooves over and over, blood staining the ivory as his beak broke from the
repeated jabs of her rage-emboldened attack. Spike gawked as the unicorn kept
up with her onslaught, screeching in pure hatred as the elder’s face caved in
from the assault.
“Rarity, stop!” Twilight yelled, lighting her horn in magic. She pulled the
ivory unicorn away, just as the remains of the hippogryph’s head splattered
into pieces from the thorough pounding it had received. The mare flailed
violently, rage still pulsing through her blood, snarling like a rabid animal
and she kept her eyes trained on the elder’s now-headless corpse. “He’s dead,
Rarity! He won’t hurt that filly anymore!” she pleaded, and as if a spell had
been broken, Rarity stopped and slumped in her magical grasp.
The musclebound hippogryph took a step forward, only to stop as Lance, Anna,
and Natz formed a wall in front of Matt with their respective weapons drawn.
Matt continued to hold the scared, abused filly who grasped at the fur covering
the barrel of his chest, whimpering unintelligible pleas into it , blood still
dripping onto the snow from her recent wounds. He turned to glare at the bulky
gryph. “Go ahead, take another step forward. I frickin’ dare ya,” he hissed,
briefly flinching as the filly winced in his grasp.
“I think I was being serious when I said ‘release the hostages’ two times over.
Do that now, and you won’t become oversized pin cushions,” Anna threatened,
conjuring several arrows of stone and crystal from flashes of magic that
briefly exploded around her, all poised like daggers at the villagers. At this,
the hippogryphs begrudgingly let go of their hostages, with the mare snatching
the halberd with the harp tied to it and Spike running towards Twilight as fast
as his legs could carry him.
The diamond dog snorted and knocked the stallions with the cutlasses down onto
their backs with just one swing from his arm, and he walked towards the ponies
in an upright stance. His eyes darted from one member of the gathering of
uninvited guests to the next, until he spotted the wounded filly. “She needs
help,” he said simply. When Matt looked at him, his eyes went wide and he
nodded in response.
Matt turned to the villagers, once again scowling. “You pieces of horseshit
have proved you aren’t worthy of a foal, much less a mare. We’re taking this
filly with us. She deserves far better,” he said. Turning around, he rose a
front leg to hold the now-shaking child, wincing as she gasped in pain before
slowly trudging back towards the tank. Everyone followed him after only a
moment’s hesitation, with Dash hovering next to the Fantasian unicorn, a
worried frown on her face.
“I-I-I don’t wanna be with those bad hippogryphs no more,” the filly whimpered
after just a few more minutes of being carried, curling up in a ball as they
reached the outskirts of the accursed town-turned-bloodbath. “T-they hurt mommy
and daddy, a-and t-tore th-them apart.”
“Should I fly her to the tank? It would be faster,” Dash asked, worry glinting
in her eyes.
“As much as I’d like for you to do that, we can’t risk it. Filly’s traumatized
enough as is; last thing she needs is a high-speed dizzying session to add to
her list of worries,” the blond-maned unicorn answered with a huff. “I can’t
believe we couldn’t get to that stallion in time, though… at least we got this
little girl away from their talons.”
“What are we going to do with her, though? It’s dangerous taking a filly with
us, and we don’t know how she’s gonna react in the days to come,” Lance sighed
as he trotted up to flank Matt.
“I honestly have no idea. She’s gonna need healing, though. That’s something we
can all agree on,” Matt answered with a heavy sigh. He paused as the filly
shivered, and he looked at her before his frown deepened. “Fucking hell, they
plucked all her feathers off,” he hissed, gently pressing the child closer to
his chest.
“Uh, yeah, that’s kinda why I wanted to rush her to the tank!” Dash groaned in
exasperation.
“We’ll fly them both to the tank,” Nathan and Quicksilver stated in unison,
only to wince simultaneously as the filly began screeching.
“I don’t wanna fly! I don’t wanna share the skies with big meanies! I wanna get
away from the meanies, now, before they get me again! I wanna go far, far
away!” the child howled, violently thrashing in Matt’s grasp with renewed
vigor. The stallion sat on his rump and held her struggling form with both his
front legs, careful to leave just enough room to let her kick and punch as much
as she wanted. Everyone else stilled as well, with the exception of the
hippogryph mare who had instead surged forward whilst dropping her halberd.
“Give her to me; she needs immediate treatment,” the winged mare pleaded,
holding her talons outward. Matt begrudgingly complied, carefully handing the
child to the mare with concern lingering on his face. He turned towards Natz
and nodded to the cream-coated unicorn, who had likewise bounded onward with
her horn glowing.
“Shh, hold still for a minute. I’m gonna make those cuts better, okay?” Natalie
spoke in a soft tone, cringing as the filly stilled and looked at her with eyes
alight in fear. Lowering her horn, she carefully aligned the tip with the
child’s stomach before trailing it further down, just over the beginnings of
the most horrid wounds. A soft, white glow encompassed the foal’s hind
quarters, and she whimpered as the glow closed the wounds and the pain went
away. The glow embraced her other injuries, sending a feeling of warmth through
them as they too healed. The aura died in seconds once all of the injuries,
sans missing feathers, had fully healed.
“I-I’m cold,” the child complained, shivering as Natalie pulled her horn away.
“You won’t be cold much longer,” Natalie cooed, raising a hoof and gently
caressing the child’s head with it. “You’re gonna get in a warm place, and
we’ll feed you, and after a good night’s sleep you should feel better.”
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The filly snuggled against Harry the bear, a blanket draped across her
featherless frame. The bear looked at the filly with pity in his eyes, letting
off a soothing growl as she drifted off to sleep. Angel stood next to the
filly, a look on his face so sour he started to turn crimson.
“He’s still mad about the whole thing, isn’t he?” Twilight asked, shooting
Fluttershy a look.
Fluttershy nodded. “I don’t blame Angel if he wants to hit things, considering
what we all saw today,” she answered, her voice glum. “I think I should invest
in a punching bag for him when we get home.”
Pinkie looked at the foal, frowning. Her mane clung to her form as she said in
a saddened tone, “Why would they do that to a filly? All she wanted was a cutie
mark.”
Rainbow put a hoof on Pinkie’s withers, eyes also trained on the foal. “At
least we got her out of that… that… that situation now. It’s gonna be a month
or so before her feathers grow back, though,” she sighed, her voice equally as
glum.
“And probably a few more before she’s mentally well enough to even come to
terms with what happened,” Twilight added, her tone hushed. She turned to Spike
and asked, “What happened? Were you taken this morning, or last night?”
“I was taken from the airship after I couldn't sleep last night, taken to
Frostbite and thrown in a prison-like house with the diamond dog, the stallion
and the hippogryph mare. They all told me they came to Frostbite to find some
temple of some kind, but the hippogryph with the beard told us it was just a
ruse,” Spike, avoiding Twilight’s gaze.
“A ruse?” Fluttershy parroted, worry twinkling in her eyes.
“Yeah, and we saw them kill all the mares and other foals this morning, and
they… they…” Spike shuddered, his breathing hitched for a second. Twilight
trotted to him and wrapped him in her front legs, which he gladly returned with
his claws. “I’m probably not going to sleep tonight.”
“I don’t blame you, Spike. What them hippogryphs did was uncalled for. I have
never seen anyone do something so… awful, and to a little kid no less. Poor
girl’s probably gonna need therapy after this,” Applejack whimpered, nodding
somberly.
“After seeing something like that, we’re all going to need therapy. Especially
Rarity; look at her, she’s a bloodstained mess that hasn't left her spot at all
in the last few hours!” Rainbow huffed, pointing a hoof at the mare in the
corner for emphasis. The ivory unicorn had curled up in a ball, mane trussed up
and scrunched like an accordion, bits of dried red staining the natural purple
like blemishes. She made no sound, save for soft inhales and exhales, eyes
staring vacantly at the wall as though it weren’t really there.
Twilight frowned as she turned to her bloodstained companion, still and stiff
and silent. Her friend shivered for a second before falling stiff again, as if
she had been cold. “Rarity?” she ventured, but felt a hoof touch her withers
and turned to Fluttershy.
“Let her be, Twilight. I know, she just… killed a hippogryph and bashed him in,
but…” Fluttershy trailed off, turning to glance at the sleeping filly. “If she
hadn’t acted, or if any of us hadn’t acted, that filly would’ve been dead,” she
said simply.
“I’d just rather it be one of the Fantasians who’d have taken that hippogryph
out. We both know Rarity isn’t the kind of pony to just snap and murder… yet
she went and did exactly that,” Twilight sighed, shoulders sagging as if she’d
been defeated.
“What’s done is done, as much as it hurts me to say it. There’s no going back
now, Twi. I’m getting the feeling that Fantasia’s… a bad place,” Applejack
sighed, her head drooping.
“And if that’s the case, then I hope—I really do hope—that we ran into the
nicest ponies and gryphons around,” Pinkie bemoaned, tears welling up in her
eyes as she continued to stare at the filly. The foal shifted in her sleep, the
back of her head resting against the bear’s side, mumbling something from her
little mouth.
A light tapping came from a window, and Dash turned to one side of the airship
to see what had caused it. Outside flew the green-maned hippogryph from
earlier, continuing to tap at the glass pane with her claws. She trotted to the
window and opened it, letting the mare land inside, noticing she had been
thoroughly cleaned of the blood that coated her before.
“How’s she holding up?” the hippogryph asked as soon as she folded her wings,
gesturing to the snoozing filly with a talon.
“She’s sleeping snugly against the bear. We fed her apples and carrots and
sweet corn before she dozed off,” Rainbow answered, wings twitching for a
minute. “She… kinda went green in the face, though. Something tells me they fed
her nothing but meat.”
“Figures. My sister’s helping her friends clean out the Valkyrie’s fridges.
They’re starting to think the villagers gave them raw pony and hippogryph
flesh, and honestly, I can see why they’d come to that conclusion,” the green-
maned mare said, and resentfully nodded with a sigh. “My canine companion’s
opting to stay in the tank tonight, and he’s helping with the cleaning.”
“That’s good. Say, why do you have more gryphon features than your sister, if
you two are even related? It strikes me as odd that she lacks any gryphon
features of the sort,” Twilight mused, earning her a glance from the visitor
and a small, weak smile.
“We’re fraternal twins. I just took more after our hippogryph mom, while sis
took more after our unicorn dad,” the mare answered, sitting on her rump and
raising a talon to fiddle about with some strands of green mane.
Twilight pondered the answer for a minute before nodding a bit. “Alright, I can
understand that,” she conceded, turning to the sleeping filly who shifted again
to press her body closer to that of Harry’s.
The green-maned mare turned to the sleeping filly as well, frowning. “I hope we
can rehabilitate her of the meat-eating habit, especially if they fed her
ponies and hippogryphs…” she sighed, frowning.
“I’m… I’m a barbarian,” Rarity mumbled at last, her breathing hitched and
riddled with hiccups. The others turned to her with worried glances. “I’m… just
like them. F-filthy blood’s on my hooves… hideous, disgusting, red blood...”
“B-but… they would’ve… the filly… and S-Spike…” the bloodstained mare went on,
her form shivering once more. “They’d have… they’d have…” Twilight trotted to
her friend with a cautious, gradual gait, only to stop in her tracks and cover
her ears as Rarity threw her head up high and let off a bloodcurdling shriek.
Fluttershy could barely do more than stare in shock, along with the rest of her
friends and the hippogryph mare. “Oh my,” she whimpered, staring wide-eyed as
the red-stained unicorn slumped against the floor, once more unmoving.
***** Chapter VI- Drifting Reflections *****
The filly woke up with a jolt, her form shivering as she sat upright, heart
pounding in her chest with the force of a sledgehammer. Each pulse of blood
shooting through her veins hurt, clouding her senses with a thundering boom
that came and went with each and every beat. Her bare wings shot wide open,
talons gripping the blanket tightly and holding the cloth to her naked chest.
Her ears fell flat against her skull, and she felt tears forming and stinging
at the corners of her eyes. Glancing around, she noticed that the place she’d
been in had darkened, with only meager strands of moonlight breaking the sable
veil with their liquid silver rays. Letting her watery eyes adjust to the
black, she spotted curled up forms not too far away. Some had horns, some had
wings, and one had a small frame with really long ears atop its head and a
grumpy expression.
Angel hopped over to the foal, and his sour look melted when he saw her face,
leaving just the faintest glimmer of concern in his little eyes. He extended a
paw outward, not breaking eye contact with the child as he did so. The child,
in turn, looked at him with trembling lips pulled into a frown, her forming
tears twinkling in the gossamer strands of silver as they threatened to break
free from her eyes.
“Don’t… wanna see another… hippogryph stallion again,” the child whimpered,
shutting her eyes tight and letting the tears fall from her eyes and stream
down her face. The bunny lowered his paw and hopped closer to her, long ears
falling back like loose hair as she dropped the blanket and set her claws down
to the floor. He frowned as he got closer and threw his front legs around the
child’s forelimb, just inches shy of her talon.
The child began sobbing uncontrollably, raising her talons and pulling the
bunny close to her bare chest as her breathing hitched with incoherent words
and hiccups laced throughout. Angel shifted his paws to hug her chest, yet the
foal only continued to cry, her mournful sounds causing her own body to shudder
once more.
Harry shifted, blinking dazedly as he came to. His eyes widened when his brain
registered the crying after a minute, and he turned to the sobbing foal.
Raising his head, he inched his nose closer to her until it touched her
shoulder, only to stiffen as the filly flinched and jerked her terrified gaze
towards him. The bear let off a soft growl and nuzzled the child
affectionately, taking care to avoid touching her wings.
The filly leaned back to rest her head against the bear’s fuzzy bulk, still
clutching Angel as her sobs began to finally hush. The bunny gave a silent sigh
of relief, and turned to Harry whilst using a paw to gesture to the discarded
blanket. The bear nodded and leaned over to clutch the cloth with his mouth,
being mindful of the filly who had snuggled up next to him with the bunny in
claw as he draped it over her form. He nestled his head in his front legs after
covering the child up and dozed off.
The child’s crying fully ceased a few minutes later as she opened her mouth to
yawn, folding her wings against her sides while her breathing slowed. Her grip
on Angel loosened as she drifted off, though her form betrayed a shudder,
barely visible in the moon’s soft light.
Fluttershy opened one eye and watched the sleeping filly, allowing a small
smile to spread across her muzzle as she took in the sight of Angel letting
himself be cradled by her. The bunny turned to the pegasus and gave her a
thumbs up and small grin of his own, and the pony’s smile only widened further.
“I… hope we did the right thing,” Fluttershy whispered, her tone so hushed she
could hardly hear herself speak. “I wonder what color her feathers are… maybe
they’ll compliment her earth brown eyes and pale greyish-pink body,” she
pondered aloud, but her tone had still been near-silent.
Nearby, however, a bloodstained mare tossed about in her sleep.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
“This is… this is odd,” Rarity murmured, turning around to glance at every
possible direction she could. No matter where she looked, mirrors spanned as
far as she could see, forming an elongated hallway of reflective glass. The
hallway stretched wide at the sides and high on above; it could’ve fit three
airships and three Valkyries side-by-side and would still have had some room
for a pony to trot between the vehicles.
Strangely, the mirrors on the floor did not reflect the lone unicorn mare who
stood right atop them, nor did the ceiling mirrors reflect what was below. Even
the mirrors making up the walls showed no image except for the opposing bits of
reflective glass, as though Rarity wasn’t there at all.
The unicorn, quirking a brow, trotted up to one of the walls and gently put a
hoof on the glass. “That’s funny. These mirrors aren’t dirty, and I am standing
in front of one and on top of another. Why do I not have a reflection?” she
mused aloud, her words echoing down both ends of the hall.
The mare took a glance down both ends of the hall before facing the wall she
stood closest to and closing her eyes. Taking in a deep breath, she turned her
head one way but began to blindly trot in the other direction. She went on like
this for a few moments before her eyes snapped open as the distinct sound of a
malicious laugh graced her ears. Whipping her head around, she spotted an ivory
hoof much like her own emerging from one of the walls, the mirror rippling as
if it were water.
Another Rarity tumbled out, landing with her face hitting the floor. The first
Rarity gawked and shook her head as the second staggered to her hooves and
dazedly looked around. The mare who came out of a mirror shot a glance at the
mare staring at her and instantly locked eye contact with her, and the first
noticed there had been something different: the irises were crimson instead of
blue.
“Um, hello?” the blue-eyed Rarity ventured, the corners of her mouth twitching
as she suppressed a frown.
The red-eyed Rarity donned a friendly smirk, one stretching from ear to ear.
“Oh, my, I apologize for staring! How rude of me! How do you do?” she greeted,
extending her hoof out with such speed it’d been like she’d known her blue-eyed
counterpart for some time.
“Oh, no no no, I should be the one apologizing for staring. I didn’t do
anything but watch as you tumbled head first into the floor! I am sincerely
sorry for not helping you up like I should have,” the blue-eyed unicorn
chortled, raising her own hoof and gently shaking the hoof that’d been offered
to her.
She stopped mid-shake, though, upon looking at the hoof she held. Now,
something had been different—namely, the hoof she’d been shaking had somehow
gotten covered in sticky wet blood. Next thing she knew, the other Rarity had
retracted her hoof and bolted before the blue-eyed unicorn even had the chance
to look back up, leaving a trail of bloodied hoofprints in her wake.
“Oh, that was rude,” Rarity mumbled under her breath, turning back to her now-
stained hoof. “But… where did the blood come from? Could that have something to
do with my… doppelganger’s sudden change in behavior?”
Setting her hoof down, she scanned her surroundings once more. Aside from the
trail of blood that led onward, nothing had changed. The unicorn took a moment
to lower her head, slump her shoulders, and draw a heavy sigh before
straightening her posture and following the crimson hoofprints. She attempted
to be careful and avoid stepping upon the red stains that blemished the
polished mirror floor, her trot little more than a slow gait.
Her heart began pounding in her chest as she continued to follow the path of
vermillion, but all Rarity did had been little more than attempt to gulp down
her growing trepidation and press on. Strands of her mane and tail began
sticking out of place as she briefly paused, ears folding back as a malicious
laugh filled the reflective corridor with a series of echoes following moments
after.
Adrenaline coursed through her veins, forcing the mare to squint her eyes as
the mirrors almost instantly turned so sharp they looked to be near-white while
the natural chemical coursed through her. She continually winced as she trotted
on, the delicate clip-clop of her hooves almost as loud as the frantic beating
of her heart. Her horn started glowing, soft blue for a moment before turning a
dark, grayish-maroon. Its light reflected off of the mirrors as Rarity followed
the trail of red hoofprints for minutes—perhaps even hours—on end, only pausing
once she finally took notice of her glowing appendage.
“Unicorn magic doesn’t happen without reason,” she mumbled under her breath,
quirking a brow. “And yet, I did not will my mana to conjure a light spell…
this is certainly odd.” She turned her attention to the trail she had—until
this point—followed, and let off a heavy sigh. “Now that I think about it, this
trail… it stretched on for quite some time. Does it even end somewhere?” The
unicorn shot a cross-eyed glance at her horn again and went on, “My magic is
blue, not a hideous, desaturated red… now I know something’s quite wrong with
this… wherever it is I am standing.”
Turning her attention back to the trail of blood, she leaned forward a bit and
squinted her eyes, raising a hoof above them to keep the light spell from
distracting her. “Claw marks? That other me with the red eyes didn’t have
claws…” her voice died in her throat, her out-loud train of thought immediately
halted, and her hoof shot down and slammed into the floor with a thud loud as
thunder as soon as the words left her mouth. Rarity recoiled, backpedaling a
ways from the trail with semi-flailing legs that writhed like the floor had
been thoroughly greased.
“Blood… claw marks… red eyes…” Rarity mumbled, shuddering as she drew uneven,
hitched breaths. A loud cry snapped her from her thoughts as it shook the
reflective corridor, and immediately, she bolted the way she’d been going up
until her momentary pause. As she galloped madly, she chanced a glance to the
nearest wall, and gaped as a perfect image of herself ran in tandem with her
form through the glass.
But as she ran, the reflection changed. The first look only had the red eyes,
but the second that came moments after sported the wings, slit pupils, and
talons belonging to that of a gryphon. The third glance yielded a trussed-up
mane, ending in stringy, bloodied spindling strands that whipped behind its
head. The fourth glance at the reflection procured a lion’s tail, a crude beak
where a muzzle had been, an engorged belly, and fresh blood dribbling from the
mouth all the way down to the barrel of the chest.
The reflection laughed, the tone belonging to a masculine something and a
feminine mockery of Rarity’s voice, as though there’d been two entities
laughing simultaneously. The horrid sound persisted for a moment longer as the
unicorn immediately skid to a loud halt and backpedaled away.
“A rock in the corridor!” Rarity squeaked, jerking her gaze to the wall closest
to said rock as it began to violently ripple in a manner akin to pond water
that had gotten disturbed. The thing that had been her shapeshifting reflection
clambered out and started growing in size, perching itself upon the rock and
towering over the mare with a feral, predatory gleam in its eyes. The
monstrosity easily dwarfed the airship and the Valkyrie as it spread its wings
wide, leaning in closer to the frantic unicorn as she kept trying to shimmy
away.
“You fool!” it cried, an acrid stench of blood, flesh, and rot halting Rarity
as it assaulted her nostrils and set her stomach churning. “You took that
little slut and doomed her! Had she stayed in her town, she could have been
spared from your barbaric hooves and those equally hideous cutie marks! No
matter. I shall rectify that mistake, here and now!” The thing hissed as it
reared up, raising a talon and thrusting it towards the miniscule unicorn in a
blindingly fast blur of movement.
Rarity sat upright, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs for a few
seconds. When her outcry died down, everyone in the airship looked at her,
including the featherless hippogryph filly, Spike, and the animals. The drake
rushed to her side in an instant, clasping an ivory hoof still stained in dried
red with his claws. The shaken mare took no notice of Spike for several long,
tense minutes, staring straight ahead with a vacant gaze.
A timid voice snapped the mare out of her stupor, “Nice horn-pony, are you
okay?”
Rarity blinked and then flinched, her gaze falling upon the hippogryph filly
who stared back at her with wide eyes and ears flattened on her skull. “I’m…”
she paused to swallow thickly before answering, “I am… I’m okay.”
“What happened? Why’d you scream? Are you really okay?” the filly asked,
frowning as her rear legs shifted beneath her blanket. Rarity stilled, her mind
filling with images of the foal’s torture at the claws of Frostbite’s elder,
but her paralysis had been brief.
Rarity shook her head vigorously in an attempt to clear her mind of the horrid
scenes, her mane flailing every which-way and becoming more unkempt and spindly
in the process. When she ceased her head-jerking, she took a deep and uneven
breath before answering the child, “I just had… a bad dream. A very bad dream.”
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The boarding dock of the airship landed with a thud the next morn, and as soon
as it touched the snow-laden ground, a black-and-white form briskly trotted
into the ship via the dock. Matt’s gaze met that of Twilight’s as he paused
upon finding himself in the lounge. He asked, “How’s the filly holding up?”
Twilight shot a glance at the foal, who anxiously scratched at her bared chest
with a claw. “She’s been fidgety,” she replied as she turned back to the
stallion. “Not in a self-harming way or any other way that would drive me and
everypony else on the ship up the wall, but she’s still worrying us.”
“Pardon us. It’s still our second day in Fantasia, and we’ve been on edge since
we left that town full of bloodied yahoos,” Rainbow chirped in a sarcastic
tone, which garnered a roll of the eyes from the half-Clydesdale unicorn.
“I get what you mean/” Matt nodded, a small smile on his face. His grin fell,
though, when he glanced at the filly. The filly stared back, naked wings
cringing in such a way it looked like they had invisible vibrators tied to
them.
“Where are you taking me, nice horn-pony?” she asked, her voice faltering. In
the same moment she had spoken, the ship fell silent, and all stilled on the
spot.
Matt swallowed thickly, but his gulp did not break the silence. He glanced at
the Mythonian mares and their dragon friend, but all he received were either
shaking heads or worried gazes. Rarity in particular shuddered, her mane
spindly, frazzled, and draped loosely past her withers as she mouthed, “I
haven’t the foggiest idea.”
Twilight closed her eyes, her mind scrambling to formulate something even
resembling an idea. “Would the filly really be safer with us, the Fantasians,
or in a temporary home?” she thought, creases forming along the seams of her
closed eyelids as she drew a near-silent sigh. “On one hoof, she’d be in a spot
where, if I left her with the right pony, she’d be safe and could receive
therapy, food, shelter… maybe even flight training once her feathers grew
back.”
She grimaced as her train of thought churned on, “But on the other, I don’t
know what the Fantasians would do with her—or to her, Celestia forbid—since
she’s not in the best condition. Then again, they’ve taken in a legless cat and
a changeling that shouldn’t be able to trot at all… and what if I brought her
to Celestia as she is now? Since Rarity pretty much lost it the other day, with
how things are now, I doubt the Princesses would be amused…”
Twilight opened her eyes after a few minutes and looked at Matt with as level a
look as she could muster. “I’ve weighed our options regarding the foal,” she
said.
Matt quirked a brow. “And that would be…?” he asked, tilting his head a little.
“The filly stays within the line of sight of everyone got involved with the
mess yesterday, Fantasians and Mythonians alike. She cannot be left alone. Even
if she recovers from her ordeal, she’ll still need some sort of adult figure
who won’t go and… hurt her for simply wanting something as simple as a cutie
mark. While I still have my doubts about you and your folk—I mean no offense
when I say that—I, as the leader of my group, have little choice,” Twilight
answered, ears flattening on her head.
Matt thought over Twilight’s rather long-winded reply for a second or two
before asking, “No offense taken. However, I need to ask: why do you feel you
have little say in… this matter of sorts?”
“If we left her here, in this frozen patch of land, she’d die. If we left her
somewhere on Mythos, she could be guaranteed some safety, but how much I
couldn’t be able to tell you with finality—what if I left her in an orphanage
ran by a horrid pony? What then?” Twilight began, shuddering at the
implications of her own words. She steeled herself and added, “What I’m saying
is, it’s best if she sticks with either one group, the other, or both.”
Matt simply nodded slowly, letting the mare’s words sink in. “I see,” he said
simply. “The hippogryph mare with the harp-halberd-thing told us last night
that you fed the filly fruits and veggies, but she went green in the face.”
“The meanies made me eat parts of mommy and daddy… and then made me eat their—”
the filly could not finish as Spike rushed over to her and clasped his claws on
her muzzle. She began jerking her head wildly, raising her talons in an attempt
to shake the drake off as well as scratch him. The half-Clydesdale turned his
attention to the struggle and noticed that, despite suffering some fast
slashing action from the talons, the drake seemed unfazed.
“Please, please, please don’t finish that sentence around Rarity,” Spike
pleaded, his words causing the filly to halt her onslaught. “We don’t want her
flipping out again.” When the filly nodded her understanding, the drake
relinquished his hold on her mouth and patted her head with a claw. “Sorry for
grabbing your mouth. It’s just that there’s a time and a place for everything,
even if it’s just talking. And talking about... the meanies now isn’t a good
idea.”
The filly nodded again, and shot a glance towards Matt. “Sorry, the dragon’s
right, little girl. I’m afraid that talk is gonna have to wait,” he sighed, his
tone level. He trotted over to her and ruffled her mane a bit with his hoof, a
smile curling his lips as he added, “But in the meantime, we’ll keep the big
nasty meanies away from you. Okay?”
“Okay,” the filly chirped, nodding once more.
Matt nodded back and ruffled the filly’s mane some more before turning back to
the Mythonian tourists. His smile faded yet again, and he sighed, “Whichever
one of you suggested that party, your proposition got me thinking since we left
Frostbite yesterday.”
“About what?” Pinkie asked, jolting up onto her back legs. She crossed her
front ones as she eyed the Fantasian stallion with a curious glimmer flickering
about in her irises. “You want to have that party?”
“Not right yet, all things considered. What I meant was, I’m starting to think
the whole ‘end of the worlds’ gig has gotten to me pretty good, since the
source was vague and we just found out he was a complete fucking lunatic
yesterday. I talked with the others in the tank—including Anna’s supposed
sister and the diamond dog—about it for quite a bit,” Matt answered, frowning.
“And…?” Applejack ventured, quirking a brow.
“Oh, I think I get it!” Pinkie piped up, garnering the attention of everyone as
she spoke. “You’re starting to think the vague legend or whatever it was you
heard is a big hunk of baloney!”
“Something to that degree,” Matt replied, nodding as his horn started glowing a
soft gold. A smile resurfaced on his muzzle as he kept speaking, “Sure, it
couldn’t hurt to check, so I’ll propose something in return. Me and my group
gets to check everywhere we’re able to, and if we find nothing regarding the
‘end of the worlds’ maybe-nonsense, we’ll punch ourselves silly because an old
crazy geezer fooled us and have that party, yeah?”
“Now you’re talking!” Pinkie beamed, eyes glittering in delight as she bounced
over to Matt and wrapped a foreleg around his neck. She turned to
Twilight—unaware that Matt’s horn ceased glowing—with a grin as she asked,
“What you say, Twilight? Deal or no deal?”
Twilight let a smile appear on her muzzle. “I guess we have ourselves a deal,”
she answered. “But would the General of the Fantasian Gryphon-Changeling Army
approve of it?”
As if mere spoken words could summon the devil himself, her ears caught the
sound of another set of hooves clip-clopping on wood. She turned to the
entrance of the ship, and stiffened as she witnessed Lance trotting right
inside with his head held high. “As a matter of fact, I would. And before you
ask, I stood outside the ship the entire time, and Matt just sent me a
telepathic message explaining the whole thing,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“Though, I’d like a day to make further arrangements with my own group and my
army, seeing as we have just one airship, yet two groups. Speaking of, I do
wonder why you and your friends crossed the atmospheric threshold to land in a
sub-zero-at-night hellhole,” he added, shooting Twilight a cursory gaze.
“The friend who lent me this airship… well, she’s a leader, like you,” Twilight
began, suppressing the urge to grimace. “She wanted to know how Fantasia’s
operated, and to bring back any natives if necessary—” she faltered as Lance’s
eyes narrowed just a little bit, “—not-not by force, mind you! She’s not that
kind of leader!”
“Hrm…” Lance rose a hoof to rub his chin before setting it back down. He
quipped, “If this friend of yours was a terrible sort of leader, then I wonder
how the hell she managed to snag an airship. Faulty leaders don’t manage their
power for long before their entire system plummets into the darkness that is
complete anarchy.”
Twilight let out a nervous laugh before speaking again, “I-I see… wou—” A
rising hoof adorned with a horseshoe had been all it took to silence her before
she could finish speaking.
“After my arrangements have been made, me and my group would like to come
along. I, too, need a vessel of the sky. Which, obviously, the Valkyrie isn’t.
Would tomorrow, noon sharp, be good?” Lance asked, though his words sounded
more like a statement.
Twilight frantically nodded. “Y-yes, we can m-manage that,” she stammered.
Lance nodded back. “I guess that settles it,” he said. He heard a masculine
chuckle and shifted his focus to Matt, immediately noticing that the
featherless foal had pranced up to the half-Clydesdale and grasped one of his
furry legs with her claws.
“Why do you have a lot of hair on your hooves?” the child asked, tugging at the
thick fur for emphasis.
Matt looked at the foal with a wide grin, laughing heartily as she stared back
with curiosity alight in her eyes. “One of my pals—the nice pony with the
black hat—thinks I’m part mammoth,” he answered with another chuckle.
“What’s a mammoth?” the child inquired, her ears flicking for the barest of
instants.
“It’s a big fuzzy thing like I am, except three times bigger and it has horns
at the corners of its mouth and a really long, bendy nose. It also has big
ears, large enough that I could fit one of the other ponies inside it with no
problem, and it’s brown all over,” Matt replied, his smile widening.
“It’s good to see that… the filly’s doing alright today,” Rarity murmured,
shuddering as she found herself under the concerned gaze of Applejack. She
flinched as her companion leaned in close to her ear.
“No argument there, but you need a nice and long bath, Rares. And after that,
one of them spa treatments. Land sakes, you need those things so bad I don’t
know how much longer you could do without,”Applejack whispered to the trussed-
up ivory unicorn in a matter-of-factly and worried tone of voice.
“I’m going to need much more than that, although those things would indeed be
nice,” Rarity whispered back, grimacing as another shiver ran throughout her
body. “I hope Celestia doesn’t banish me to the sun or moon or turn me to stone
if, and possibly when, she finds out I’ve killed a Fantasian hippogryph with my
bare hooves.”
“Maybe she’ll understand that you’ve just snapped and did the… it hurts me to
admit, the best possible thing in that mess,” Applejack sighed, nodding her
head and closing her eyes as if in grim resignation. “Sure, it cost
somepo—somegryph his life, but he was gonna end that filly while everypony else
had been rightly petrified by what he’d done.”
The earth pony recoiled, blinking with widening eyes as her tied mane stood on
end. She looked behind her, only to spot Angel yanking at the end of her tail
with his front paws and a sour look on his face. The bunny pointed behind
himself with an ear, and Applejack followed where his ear had been pointing to
the entrance of the lounge. There’d been hooves hitting the wood once more,
although this time it came with a scritch-scratching sound that got louder as
the green-maned hippogryph trotted on board.
A second after that, the diamond dog clambered on, his visage set with an
unreadable look. “Does the filly have a name?” he asked, using a clawed, paw-
like hand to gesture to the featherless foal.
The foal shook her head. “Nogryph got named until they hit a… something or
other. I don’t remember what,” she replied.
“That about answers your question, Fenrir,” the hippogryph mare sighed,
glancing at the diamond dog.
“Well, we can’t just call her ‘filly.’ One of my gryphons came up with a name
for our wraith, so I can safely deduce he can do the same for the child,” Lance
sighed, not turning his head to glance at Fenrir and the green-maned
hippogryph.
“But, whichever gryphon that is, he’s still in the tank,” the mare with cat-
like pupils pouted, sitting on her rump and crossing her front legs together.
Lance turned to the mare, sending her an incredulous frown. “Then, Sarah
Lyregale, how about you name the filly? Don’t give me that look, I heard your
complaint,” he hissed, eyes narrowing low.
Sarah stilled for a minute before setting her claws down, her wings betraying
the tiniest of shudders. Hesitantly, she nodded, and stood up before darting
around the pegasus general and making a beeline for the filly. The foal looked
at her with a quizzical gaze, and the mare leaned in close before donning a
rather forced smile.
The filly then began bouncing in place, flapping her naked wings as a giddy
grin crept up on her muzzle. “I want a name, I want a name!” she cried, beaming
as she kept on jumping.
“You mentioned a daddy, little filly. Did he want you to be named something in
particular?” Matt questioned, his words managing to stop the filly’s bouncing.
The child turned to him with a frown. She replied, “Daddy wanted me to be named
something or other, and now he’s gone…”
“What’d he want you to be named? Can you remember?” Sarah questioned, and the
filly turned to her with a saddened look. The green-maned mare sighed and
patted the foal’s head with a talon. “Listen, I know it’s probably hard for you
to remember your dad and not feel bad for doing it, but could you please… try
to remember what he wanted you named? We don’t wanna name you something that
would make him… come back and haunt us.”
The filly nodded and closed her eyes, scrunching them so tightly it looked like
she’d gotten a headache. Upon opening her eyes ,inutes later, she looked at the
adult hippogryph and answered, “He wanted a Maria.”
“Maria…” Sarah repeated as she raised a talon and rubbed her chin with it for a
bit. “That’s a start… now we need a surname.”
“Well, she’s a gryph like you… maybe it should have something to do with wind?
Maybe the skies, even?” Matt suggested, looking at Sarah with a level look.
“Maybe… but it also has to not be in direct relation to the big meanies who
made her hurt and cry. Something simple, and as distantly related to the
meanies as possible…” Sarah murmured, continuing to rub her chin with her
claws. “Frost is out of the question, as is Snow… and needs something to do
with the sky...”
“Chillclaw?” Lance piped in from where he stood.
“No… not what I’m looking for…” Sarah answered, shaking her head. She thought
for a second longer before her eyes lit up in a spark, and she removed the
talon from her chin to snap her claws a minute later. “Aha! I think I got it!”
the green-maned mare exclaimed, turning to the filly who still looked at her
forlornly. “How’s Maria Icedraft sound?” she asked, and at once, the foal’s sad
look melted into a happy grin, and she proceeded to jump around her with all of
the grace of a grasshopper.
“Maria Icedraft, Maria Icedraft!” the filly chirped as she bounced about,
laughing as she chanted those two words with very child-like glee.
“Now that we settled on a name for the filly, and it seems she enjoys said
name, we’re gonna need to give her something to keep her warm. Not just a
scarf, either, but it’d have to be loose enough that she can comfortably grow
in her new feathers,” Matt stated, grinning as Maria stopped her leaping to
look at him.
Lance also smirked, sitting on his rump as his grin only widened. “And
fortunately for us, maybe that damn blind bag we have in the tank could yield
us something of that nature. If not…” he paused, shifting his glance to Rarity,
“we could always have somepony make Maria the needed outfit.”
“Beg your pardon?” Twilight asked, turning to the general with a brow quirked.
He responded by raising a hoof and pointing it at Rarity.
“I heard one of you’s a dress designer. Surely, designing something for a
featherless foal wouldn’t be a challenge?” Lance retorted, the coy smirk still
plastered onto his visage. The ivory unicorn stiffened for a bit before
hesitantly turning to him.
“Y-you want me… to make a dress…?” Rarity inquired, her eyes widening.
“For Maria, yes. Hell, make something for the wraith, too—considering your
reactions when you first saw her, I’m gonna stretch my broken wings and assume
that much of the population of Mythos is going to react in a similar manner.
The less Mythonian ponies, gryphons, and whatever else sees her in her current
state, the better—until we can figure out just what’s wrong with her and manage
to rectify it, of course. She’d do well with a facial covering, among other
things,” Lance answered with a nod. “And yes, we’ll pay you handsomely for the
outfits.”
Maria rushed over to Rarity and started to leap around the unicorn before
managing a leap that got her high enough to land her on the ivory mare’s back.
When the frazzled unicorn glanced at her new passenger, the foal donned a bit
of a pouting frown and sparkling, wide eyes. “Pretty please?” she pleaded.
“With an apple on top?”
“I’ll… need to take measurements after I get cleaned up and check on my little
sister to make sure she didn’t hurt herself or destroy anything in my absence.
But consider it done,” Rarity answered with a heavy sigh leaving her lips. At
this, Maria beamed at her with a wide grin.
“Yay! Thank you, nice horn-pony!” Maria chirped, flapping her bare wings
excitedly.
“Oh, shoot! I’m gonna need to check on my sis, too! I hope she took care of
Winona while I was gone!” Applejack exclaimed, looking at her haggard friend
with widening eyes.
“And I need to check on Scoots! Who knows what she could’ve done in the last
few days!” Dash cried, also turning to Rarity with dilating pupils. A feminine
‘ahem’ grabbed the attention of the trio and they darted their heads before
their unified gaze fell on Sarah, who had been looking at them with a small
smirk on her face.
“Worried about your sisters, I take it? Don’t worry; I understand, my own
sister worried me a lot until yesterday,” Sarah chimed in, her wings shifting a
bit as she spoke.
“Why say that?” Applejack ventured, frowning.
“Me and my sis took separate paths when we were barely teenagers. It’s a long
story, and I was worried she’d gotten hurt after we parted ways,” Sarah
answered, standing up and angling her body whilst flaring the wing attached to
the side that faced the Mythonians, revealing to them her cutie mark.
“It’s a… halberd with its shaft jutting between the strings of a harp? With
what looks like a breeze weaving around the two? What’s it mean?” Rarity asked,
eyeing the rather peculiar mark.
“Long story,” Sarah replied bluntly, closing her wing and sitting down on her
rump.
***** Chapter VII- Cacophony *****
“I just noticed that your feathers start out light brown, then go to a regular
brown, and end in a green that’s a little dark at the tips of the primaries. Is
there a rhyme or reason behind that?” Twilight mused, trotting over and
pointing a hoof at one of Sarah’s closed wings for emphasis.
“It’s a hippogryph-and-gryphon thing. Unless the gryph is really old, or
straight albino, they’re gonna have these kind of wing patterns. My wings are
actually pretty dull, if you compared me to one of Mr. General’s male gryphon
soldiers side-by-side. I guess it has to do with the fact that I have
ovaries,”Sarah answered, briefly flinching for a moment.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be heading back to the Valkyrie now. The boarding
dock let in too much cold air for my liking, and it’s bad for my broken wings,”
Lance sighed, and with that, he turned around and trotted out.
“I guess I’ll follow him. Since his wings are broken, he has to be helped up
into the hatch. Good thing I know levitation,” Matt sighed. He briskly trotted
out of the airship, his mane and tail whipping about in a fleeting gale as he
made his exit.
“I’ll go check on sis. I hope she didn’t go into heat,” Sarah groaned, standing
up on her back legs and walking out. She’d been stopped by Fluttershy, however,
before she could set hoof on the boarding dock. “Yes?”
“Um, why do you walk on your back legs, and is your sister’s heat cycles that
worrying? If you don’t mind answering,” Fluttershy ventured, looking at the
hippogryph with a frown on her face.
“In order, sometimes my talons hurt from walking on all fours for an extended
period and I’d rather spare them more agony, and it makes it easier to fight
with my harxe when push comes to shove. My sister’s heat cycles are… bad, to
put it mildly. Or at least, that held true until we separated; it may not be
true anymore though,” Sarah sighed, grimacing.
“What’s a harxe?” Twilight questioned, quirking a brow. The hippogryph shot a
glance over her shoulder and smiled.
“You saw the halberd with the harp tied to the shaft? That’s a harxe, and yes,
I invented that word,” came the answer. Sarah resumed walking upright out of
the airship, her tail and mane gently swaying as she went down the boarding
dock.
Fenrir made to stand next to a window and lean back into a wall, eying the
Mythonians with an unreadable look still framing his visage. “It would seem you
lot and the native ponies are, for a lack of better words, vastly different.
The smells you exude as we speak are not ones I am familiar with, with the
exception of the dried blood,” he murmured in a low tone, his ears jutting
upright and standing as stiff as mountain peaks.
Applejack watched as the diamond dog crossed his arms and replied with worry
flickering in her eyes, “How do we smell different from the Fantasian ponies? I
don’t rightly get what you mean, except for the blood bit.”
Fenrir scoffed and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply before answering, “You all
smell fresh and clean for starters, whereas the ponies in the tank smelt like
they had dirtied their hooves so much I’d assume they’ve been doing just that
since foalhood. The wraith reeks of… halted necrosis—she should be rotting to
the very bones if she has them, yet she isn’t. The gryphons’ feathers, though,
gave me… mixed results. I’d attribute that to meticulous preening.”
“By ‘dirtying their hooves,’ what do you mean?” Rainbow questioned, shooting a
glance at her fellow mares. Her companions shrugged and shook their heads
before turning their attention back to the diamond dog.
“They’re seasoned fighters, the whole lot, with the exception of the wraith. I
doubt she could hold so much as a melting candle in a dampened cave filled with
monsters,” Fenrir answered with another scoff. “A changeling that thin has
little to no fighting chance; in fact, playing possum would most likely be her
only means of staying intact for another day. The general… he had another scent
wafting about him.”
“That scent being...?” Twilight trailed off, a frown worming its way onto her
muzzle as she fell silent.
Fenrir answered after a few moments passed by, “He reeked strongly of metal—of
blackened steel, iron, and brass. Whether it’s from his weapon and ammunition
pouch, or something else entirely, I cannot say for certain.”
“Maybe his horseshoes had something to do with that scent. Perhaps they’re made
of metallic alloys,” Twilight replied, raising a hoof and rubbing the side of
her forehead with it. “But then, how’d he get his hooves on those shoes, let
alone the Valkyrie?”
“I’ve asked him that myself. He would not answer,” Fenrir groaned, shaking his
head. “The general asked me to spend the night with you bunch in the airship.
He said something about a compromise.”
“It was my idea, but now he reversed it,” Spike piped up, immediately finding
himself getting a glance from the dog.
“Oh? And what was the idea?” Fenrir mused, his lips curling into a half-smile.
“Humor me, small drake.”
“Yesterday, when everyone started to fight and things began boiling over, I
suggested that one of my friends spend the night in the tank. Rainbow Dash took
that offer, and it seems Lance is having you spend the night with us,” the
drake answered, grinning sheepishly. “When we first landed, things got off to a
very rocky start, and it came to a head after some wraith unicorns showed up
apparently looking for trouble.”
“They called one of the Fantasian unicorns—the one with the orange
mane—something foul, and the wraith unicorns… got a thrashing they likely won’t
forget, to put it in eloquent terms,” Rarity added, shuddering partly from the
temperature in the ship dropping thanks to the open dock, and partly from a
repeat of that scenario playing about in her mind.
“Wraith unicorns…” Fenrir parroted, blinking as the words left his mouth. “What
did they look like?” he ventured, tapping a claw against his upper arm.
“They all had armor, black manes, pale coats, and those creepy glowing eyes
like the dead changeling has. But one had greaves on his legs and carried a
spear, and the rest had strange horseshoes sporting claw-like extensions,”
Twilight answered, shifting her back legs so she could plop down on her rump.
“Are wraiths scary?” Maria inquired, getting another look from the diamond dog.
“Most wraiths are, usually, at least appearance-wise. As for fighting, it
depends on the individual involved, and almost all wraiths I have met prior to
this very week would go out with their heads held high if it meant taking down
a single living pony, gryphon, or whatever else that so much as breathes,”
Fenrir sighed, shifting his stance so he could stand upright without the aid of
the wall. “How many got thrashed?”
Twilight made a rejoinder, “Around a dozen or so. The last one took off his
armor and fled, but the dead changeling flew after him and killed him by
clamping on his horn with her mouth. One of the Fantasian unicorns believes she
cut off his flow of mana and it backfired on him with lethal results.”
“That is… something I have not heard of before. I find myself more perplexed by
the minute,”Fenrir remarked, his half-smile fading.
“Big doggy, why do you look grumpy?” Maria questioned, staring straight up at
Fenrir’s face from where she sat on the floor. The diamond dog looked at her
for a few moments, as if judging her with his expressionless visage.
“I’m not grumpy,” he answered coolly after another minute, “I’m just thinking
to myself. That is all.”
“What are you thinking about?” Maria persisted, her wings twitching as she
spoke.
“A lot of things. Things a filly like yourself… would have a difficult time
understanding,” Fenrir replied, moving to kneel in front of the filly before
patting her head with a paw-like hand. “Put it like this, little one: I am very
confused at the moment.”
“Ah, okay,” Maria murmured, nodding and smiling at the diamond dog.
Fenrir nodded back and glanced up at Twilight, letting a small smile crop up on
his muzzle. “Would you have something that Maria can play with? I have a
feeling she will eventually get bored, with so little to do in this airship,”
he said, his tone level.
Twilight frowned and released a sigh. “There’s a bit of a conundrum with that—I
don’t know what kind of toys she likes, or has had before… you know, the mess
yesterday,” she answered in a glum voice.
“I had these big sticks that were bendy and prickly, and they looked funny,”
Maria remarked, turning to Twilight. “The meanies kept giving them to me, and I
thought they were swords. Daddy got mad at the meanies because of the toys.”
Twilight proceeded to gawk at the filly. “Wait, the meanies gave you toys, and
daddy got mad? And the toys bended and looked funny?” she all but squeaked her
words out, voice rising several octaves higher whilst simultaneously lowering
in volume. Maria nodded, and her smile fell.
“And daddy told the meanies I couldn’t have the toys. He even hit the bearded
meanie with one, right across the face,” the child added, visibly shaking as
the last bit came out of her mouth.
Spike hopped onto Twilight’s back and leaned in close to her ear. He whispered,
“They gave her dildos, Twi. Dildos with barbs and knots.”
As soon as the words sank in, the color all but drained from Twilight’s gaping
visage. Her mind short-circuited and shut down while she stood there staring at
Maria vacantly. She knew now why the filly’s father got angry, if her words
were anything to go by, which had led to… to…
Her eyes rolled into the back of her head as she stood there for a tense moment
longer before her legs buckled from Spike’s weight upon her backside. The
lavender unicorn collapsed into a heap, legs sprawled out and her entire form
going unresponsive. The other ponies, as well as Harry and Angel, were at her
side in an instant. Fenrir and Maria rushed in not a second after.
“I see whatever it was the drake whispered into her ear had been a tad too much
for her mind to handle,” Fenrir sighed, shaking his head. “I’ve a feeling
things will not go swimmingly when she wakes up.”
“I… second that,” Spike conceded, nodding as he got off of Twilight’s back.
“This doesn’t happen much back at home, and when they do, she gets real mad.
Like, you've no idea how mad Twilight can get.”
“Let us not discuss this further, lest the other ponies find themselves in a
similar state of unconsciousness. Is there anything in the airship that might
distract the filly?” Fenrir asked in a low tone, eyes narrowing for the
briefest of seconds.
“We have papers and quills and ink; maybe it’s a good idea to let her draw
stuff,” Spike suggested, a small grin worming its way onto his face.
“Hrm?” Fenrir hummed, looking at the drake with a brow shooting up. “Why was I
not made aware of this sooner?”
“Well… we’ve packed the papers and quills and ink in case we needed to send a
letter to the friend that’s a leader. But I figured we’d packed enough for
emergency situations, and to keep Maria entertained,” Spike replied, grinning
at the dog sheepishly.
Fenrir’s brow rose even higher. “You… send letters to your leader-companion on
the sister planet?” he inquired, his voice rising an entire octave.
"Yeah," Spike answered, nodding fervently.
"What's paper?" Maria questioned, her remark causing Spike to turn to her as
his face paled.
"I'm afraid to ask why she doesn't know what paper is," Dash interjected,
fidgeting in place.
"I'll just..." Rarity began, shying away from the gathering on unsteady hooves,
"I'll just, er, go get the paper and quills and ink. I shall be back in a
jiffy." With that, she made a beeline to the airship's storage compartment in
such a hurry that her mane and tail appeared to have been whipping in a
nonexistent wind as she went.
"That mare sounds troubled to me. Deeply, deeply troubled," Fenrir sighed,
watching where Rarity had gone whilst shaking his head.
"She... uh, never killed anypony... or gryph, I should say, until yesterday,"
Fluttershy replied, her ears folding back and her wings hanging as though limp.
"Rarity's... trying to cope with the fact."
"Big meanie had it coming. He killed mommy and daddy!" Maria huffed, bare wings
flaring for a moment before languidly folding back at her sides.
"There's no denying that, sugarcube," Applejack sighed, turning to the filly
and trotting up to her. She forced herself to smile and asked, "You still
looking to get your cutie mark?" At the filly's nod, the earth pony continued,
"Well, how about you grow your feathers back, and then me and my pals and the
nice ponies in the tank can see about helping you with that."
Maria donned a grin of her own. "Maybe the nice wing-ponies can teach me how to
fly!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, boy," Rainbow Dash sighed, looking at the hippogryph filly with a fond and
exasperated smile. She turned to Pinkie and mouthed, "She reminds me of
Scootaloo already."
"At least we're not being reminded too much of the meany-pants who hurt her,"
Pinkie mouthed back, beaming in a wide grin.
Dash nodded back to the pink pony, her smile fading a teensy bit.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Rarity scrounged around in the storage compartment, her hooves heavily dragging
along the floor, her breathing once more uneven and raspy. "Must... not
think... about the town of barbarians," she mumbled to herself over and over,
as if it were a calming mantra. She paced back and forth, trying her absolute
damnedest to not dwell on the events that happened the day prior, but no matter
how hard she tried she could not shake off the memory.
She kept at it, though, in as diligent a manner as she could possibly muster.
Given her still-stained frame, frazzled mane, and the way her hooves seemed
hellbent on making new scuff marks in the floor, she hadn't been very
successful. Eventually, though, something came to disrupt her in her solitude,
punctuated by a masculine 'ahem' that echoed from behind. The unicorn whirled
around and spotted the ship's armored pilot, looking at her with a stoic mask
that threatened to break beneath slanting eyelids.
"Miss Rarity, are you not well?" he asked in a level tone.
"No, I am indeed unwell. Just... retreating here for a while to... er, gather
my thoughts," she replied, voice quivering. She let off a nervous laugh as she
whispered to herself in the darkest corners of her mental crevasse, "Thank
Celestia he didn't ask about the blood on my hooves..."
"What's that on your hooves?" the stallion asked, gazing quite pointedly at the
dried red still caking the ends of her limbs and drowning out the ivory.
"Where's a washcloth when you need it?" Rarity mentally groaned before sighing
and replying, "I spilled red ink on them yesterday and hadn't gotten it off
since."
"I see. Carry on," the armored pony said in an uncertain tone before nodding
and taking his leave.
"He didn't seem terribly convinced. I just hope I can wash this hideous red off
before he has the chance to ask again... wait a second, ink..." Her thought
processes halted as she eyed one of the crates, still closed tight. Lighting up
her horn and embracing the wooden container with her magic, she lifted the lid
with ease to reveal entire wells of ink within, stacked near-seamlessly one
atop the other, in neat little rows.
"Almost as hideous as the red of blood... but I'll take sable over deep crimson
any day at this rate. And this time, I think I can make a convincing lie on my
way out," Rarity murmured in her mind, a small smirk splaying out on her
haggard visage. She eyed some more crates before effortlessly prying them open,
revealing a lot of stacked, blank papers and multitudes of quills. At this, her
smirk only widened, albeit a tiny bit.
She immediately frowned, though, upon remembering the other crates in the room.
"I don't want to spill ink all over the essentials, especially if they're in
crates. Why, the ink would drip through the nooks and crannies and I'd have no
excuse for that! I cannot afford to sully even one apple, let alone an entire
casket of them," she mentally chastised herself, shaking her head furiously as
if speaking to another pony that had managed to get on her nerves.
"Hrm..." Rarity began as the mass prying of all of the crates in the room
started, the open containers levitating to her so she could examine their
contents. "Food goes over there, but I have to keep the apples and corn
separate from one another..." the mare went on as she sorted the containers
based on their contents, which took a little less than a half-hour to complete.
Once finished, she strode to one end of the storage room and began trotting to
the other in a slow gait, eyeing her handiwork all the while.
Upon reaching the other end, which took only moments even at the snail's-pace
she went at, she turned around with a flourish and beamed. "I... think I feel
much better now," she murmured to none in particular. She paused upon hearing a
faint, peculiar sound. Her ears swiveled, trying to catch that noise; catch it,
they did. "Who in Eque—in Fantasia could be playing a harp?" she mused, her
horn lighting up and embracing a sheaf of papers, an inkwell, and a few quills
as she spoke.
"Oh, nevermind, I'll ask when I return with the papers and things," Rarity
mumbled, trotting back to the lounge of the ship with the stuff in tow. As she
went, the sounds of the harp grew louder and louder, and she mentally noted
that the tune warbled in an erratic nature, yet somehow remained soothing all
the same. When she made it no closer than three hooves to the threshold between
lounge and storage room, the tune abruptly stopped, a final thrum fading as it
rang in the air.
From where she stood, Rarity could see Twilight rising onto her hooves
languidly, a vacant look on her face as she came to with a vibrantly-glowing
horn. Before her stood Sarah, who frantically started up a tune on the harp
tied to her halberd. A wide-eyed look set into the hippogryph mare's visage as
she plucked at the strings with careful claws, the instrument radiating with
some kind of innate, green-tinted magic.
This new tune betrayed Lyregale's apparent urgency well; the notes were
sporadic and all over the place—not once did the frantic song posses an
instance of harmony. Rather, it seemed to be a chaotic thing, as if its maker
were trying to soothe a dragon that threatened to swallow her up. Twilight's
horn began glowing brighter, and the instrumentalist's ears flattened against
her head as she continued playing her song with a faster gait. Her claws
constantly tethered on the verge of snapping the frail strings all the while
the tune spiraled deeper into the chaos of seemingly-misplaced notes.
The lavender appendage's light shined brighter, to which the harpist responded
accordingly: further devolving the song into an incomprehensible jumble of high
and low notes and pure madness. The harp itself had its own light that began
shining brilliantly, as if Twilight were its competition. The green aura
morphed into lines, adorned with all sorts of musical notes that circled the
vacant-gazed Mythonian and rammed her full force, eliciting a shriek of pain
and a pair of eyes that finally snapped to full alarm.
Twilight's horn ceased glowing, and she stood there dazed for a minute longer
before glaring at Sarah. "What was that for, and how did you get into the
airship?" she growled.
Sarah flinched back, wings ruffling momentarily as she shakily conveyed her
answer, "You were about to have a magic surge, and your friends let me in
through the window."
Rainbow rushed to Twilight with wide eyes and grabbed her by the shoulders.
"Your horn was glowing while you were out, and we didn't want to find out what
you'd do if you weren't stopped!" she cried, her tone worried.
"Is nice horn-pony okay?" Maria piped up, trotting to Twilight with a frown on
her face.
"Er... kind of," Rainbow answered as Twilight opened her mouth to reply. "Just
give her a few."
"I haven't had a magic surge since I was a filly..." Twilight mumbled, ears
folding back. "And earlier, I felt awake, but... like I wasn't there. Almost
exactly like the day I got my cutie mark, in fact."
"Well, at least... whatever you were charging has been halted, even if it
required my music to literally slap you upside the head to do it," Sarah
replied, her smile unsteady as her muzzle quivered.
"Just how were you able to do that, anyway? Don't unicorns use that sort of
magic?" Dash asked, looking at the hippogryph mare with an unreadable look.
"My harxe, blade and instrument... they're enchanted. With the latter, I can
turn my own songs into weapons in of themselves, but they require me to... be
frantic about it. With the blade-and-spear portion, it's more of..." Sarah
trailed off, taking a moment to twiddle her claws awkwardly.
"'More of' what?" Applejack interjected, trotting up to the harpist with a
frown on her muzzle.
Sarah's nervous grin widened. "I'd... rather show you the enchantment than
prattle off about it. It's hard to explain anyway," she answered.
Twilight studied the weapon-instrument-thing for a bit before her horn began
softly glowing. When Sarah started reaching for the harp's strings again, she
sighed and said, "No, I'm not going to have another magic surge. I just want to
sense what kind of enchantments your peculiar weapon has." With that, the claws
stopped just shy of the instrument as the whole thing found itself embraced in
a lavender aura and hovering in front of the Mythonian unicorn in moments.
She continued to gaze at the two-piece object, noting sparks of innate green
magic bursting forth here and there at random intervals from the entire thing.
"Hrm... seems to be imbued with latent pegasus magic on the blade-and-spear
portion, and unicorn magic for the harp's strings. Tell me, does this thing let
you channel its magic, even though you're clearly not a unicorn?" she asked,
turning her attention to the weapon's owner with a brow raised.
"Only the harp does. The enchantments on the blade-and-spear just... I've never
been able to activate them by myself, really," Sarah hastily replied, shaking
her head. "And the harp only activates its magic if I play on random notes; you
couldn't ask me to partake in an organized symphony of some kind to save my own
life."
"Prove it," Dash said simply.
"Give me my harxe back first, and I will," Sarah retorted, her face hardening.
Twilight relented and handed the thing back to the hippogryph mare, who took a
deep breath before she began to play some random piece on the strings. The
notes were in-tune and pitched in accordance, yet inexplicably, they somehow
sounded wrong. As the song went on, the Mythonians started wincing, ears
folding back as if they were listening to a drunk pony with a non-musical cutie
mark attempt to play a violin with one hoof.
The notes continued, sounding more and more grotesque as the gryph continued to
play. The harpist's visage, as well as those of Maria and Fenrir, also morphed
into scrunchy-eyed expressions of anguish as the horrid cacophony played for a
few more agonizing minutes that felt like hours. The song devolved into a
horrid screeching as the harp began glowing, sparking violently until, at last,
Sarah stopped playing.
She dropped her harxe as the thing began sparking all over, her claws shooting
up to cover her ears as the thing released one last shrill note coupled with a
terrible clang as it landed on the wooden floor of the lounge. After another
minute, the two-piece thing ceased glowing altogether, its innate magic fading
into ember-like remnants of emerald.
For another few moments, all went silent, with everyone trying to recover from
the horrid racket the harpist somehow managed to procure with her own talons.
Twilight groaned, her head pounding in pain and blood rushing through the veins
of her cranium. She looked around, eyes darting to and fro until their violet
gaze fell upon Rainbow Dash. The cyan pegasus had her gaze affixed on Sarah,
who was too busy covering her ears to notice she had found herself getting
stared at.
Mustering the strength to ignore her headache for the time being, Twilight
turned to Sarah and proceeded to remark, "A harp is part of your cutie mark;
you shouldn't be able to play that badly."
Sarah removed her claws from her ears. "Come again?" she croaked.
"How did you mess up whatever piece you played that badly?" Twilight
paraphrased, groaning partly from pain and partly in exasperation.
"I've... never been able to play good. Hell, if you took me to a composer and
had me play for them right now, they'd declare me hopeless in the field of
music," Sarah replied, shaking her head. "And the harp's enchantments seem to
react to my playing if I tried to play a piece of music in tune, like the
thing's magic is aware of my terrible performance." Her gaze fell, and she
sighed bitterly. "Frankly, I'm still impressed a harp is part of my cutie mark
to begin with."
"Now that worries me. You have to play notes out-of-tune to make a maybe-good
song, but if you play them in-tune, it backfires and gives everypony and their
grandmare the mother of all headaches?" Dash groaned, her hoof raising and
connecting with her face. She slid it down the bridge of her muzzle and added,
"Remind me to not dare you to do that ever again."
"Duly noted,"Sarah conceded in a sad tone, slowly nodding her head, yet never
looking at the pegasus who dared her in the first place.
"Maybe I'll try to play a song on the harp," Twilight proposed, instantly
finding herself getting a wide-eyed glare from the hippogryph as soon as she
spoke.
"No, don't touch it!" Sarah shrieked a moment too late as a lavender aura
embraced the harxe and lifted it up. In an instant, the innate magic in the
weapon reacted and began playing the strings by itself and producing another
awful orchestra of strained, groaning notes. The song cried louder than before,
forcing the lavender unicorn to release her hold on it and let it clatter to
the floor with a final and echoing thrum of the string that had magnified
itself to near-deafening levels of volume.
Once everyone regained their ability to hear, Pinkie pointed an accusing hoof
at the two-piece weapon whilst keeping her gaze on Sarah, and she stated, "That
thing is possessed! How'd you get your claws on it?"
"Er... hand-me-down," Lyregale replied simply, frowning. "Nobody told me to
avoid playing things on that harxe; I pretty much found out the hard way not
to. Let's wait a half-hour before touching it again; it evidently does not want
anything to do with being held right now."
"I think we can all agree on that. I'm sure Harry and Angel would greatly
appreciate that," Fluttershy conceded, shooting a gaze at the animals in
question. Both nodded fervently, with Angel tugging his ears down using his
paws, a wide-eyed, agonized, and pleading look on his face that all but
screamed 'Don't do that again, please!'
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The following day, the Mythonian ponies found themselves in the company of
another airship. This one had been roughly as big as their own, yet its
insignia was drastically different from the markings on theirs. The giant
balloon portion sported a deep black hue, highlighted with silvers and greens.
The hull had crude wings on the sides, two pairs; one stylized to look like a
changeling's set, the other that of a gryphon's.
The front sported a figurehead that had three heads, the first two like a
gryphon and changeling again, but the third of a pony. Its front limbs were
mismatched; one had holes, and the other was a talon. The back legs also had a
similar appearance: a back paw, and regular hoof. The back of the ship bore
three tails; a haggard one of the changelings, a thin one ending in a fluffy
tuft, and the last flowing and thick all around like that of a pony's.
The hull itself sported predominant deep maroons, accentuated by golden
railings, orange-tinted trimmings, and a faded white that made up the docking
platform which had been closed tight.
"That's one mighty scary airship," Applejack remarked as she stared out the
window of the vibrantly-colored Mythonian airship. The other mares surrounded
her, each trying to gaze out of the window as well.
"That looks more like a war machine than it does an airship," Twilight
commented, scanning the thing and suppressing a shudder.
"I dare say, that looks quite dreadful if you ask me. It's quite fashionable,
don't get me wrong, but it's... dreary," Rarity noted, eyeing the figurehead of
the ship. "And who would put a chimera as a figurehead on an airship?"
"I blame Lance for that," Rainbow replied.
"I wonder what all's in that thing, though!" Pinkie chirped, bouncing over to
another window to see a much large, stylized almost exactly like the one closer
to the vessel she stood in, further away with its gangplank dropped. The
Valkyrie was being maneuvered into the third vessel. "Where's that other
airship taking the tank?"
"I don't know," Fluttershy murmured, shaking her head. "But the wings on the
other airship are flapping; should I go tell our pilot to take off?"
"I'll go tell him," Spike interjected, turning to another door on the right-
hand side of where the storage compartment lay. He ran to it and opened it,
finding said pilot in a room filled with maps, compasses, and a megaphone that
jutted out from the floor. The armored pony stood behind a steering wheel,
front hooves gripping the circular piece of wood at the protruding knobs,
staring intently at a wide window that revealed the outside. "Fluttershy wants
you to take off, and the other guys in the Fantasian airship are already
itching to go."
"Alright," he answered with a nod, turning to the megaphone and shouting into
it, "Let's go, boys! We haven't all day; start powering the engines with your
magic!"
"Yes sir!" a plethora of masculine voices replied as one from the other end of
the megaphone, and in an instant, the fish-fins on the Mythonain airship began
rapidly flapping in tandem with the rather lazy motions of its Fantasian
counterpart. In moments, the lavender-and-gold vehicle ascended into the air,
rising high into the sky before circling about languidly. At first, its pace
had been little more than a snail's crawl, but it soon became faster and
faster. It took off towards the sister planet, which the other airship took as
its cue to do likewise. Mimicking the first ship's motions, it too achieved a
great speed before darting away in pursuit of the first flying object.
Spike ran back to the mares and grinned. "So, how do you think the Fantasians
will react upon seeing how Equestria's run?" he asked.
The ponies exchanged glances with one another before they all turned to Spike
and shrugged in unison. "You might as well be writing a letter to Celestia
asking her how she feels about the fact that we somehow found a Fantasian
general," Twilight retorted, frowning.
"Oh, speaking of letters, when should we send one to her?"Spike sighed, his
grin fading.
"Not until this ship is in Equestria and it slows down. If we opened one of the
windows now, we'll all be vacuumed out by the intense force of wind. Or pushed
out another window, depending on which side is opened, where we'll all fall to
our deaths. Not only that, but suppose we somehow live that whilst staying in
the airship and try writing back to her. The letter itself will be lost to the
suction; it's all-around impractical," Twilight replied, her gaze falling to
the floor.
She rambled on, "It's just too risky now; the flames would extinguish before
they could send the letter because the force of wind sucks the oxygen out,
which fires of all kind need to burn with. And then we'd have to contend with
the lack of oxygen the higher we climb up the atmosphere; at best, we're still
in the troposphere. Ugh, we should've just sent Celestia the letter before
taking off!"
"It would've taken longer for the letter to reach her, though. The distance
between the two worlds isn't exactly as small as I am," Spike countered,
shaking his head.
Twilight sighed in defeat. "You're right about that, Spike. At most, the two
worlds are ten-thousand kilometers apart," she conceded. "It would've been
days, if not weeks, before she even got the blasted piece of parchment."
"Let's talk about something that'll make us smile. I can't wait to see home
again; ever since two days ago, I've been itching to go back to a place of
friendly ponies and happy foals!" Pinkie exclaimed, and at this, everyone else
turned to her.
Applejack donned a small grin. "Oh, we can see how our folks are doing. I
wonder if the Cakes and their twins are okay. Those foals are a hassle," she
chirped.
"I hope the Cutie Mark Crusaders are well. Maybe they've gotten their cutie
marks while we were gone," Fluttershy interjected, also donning a serene smile.
"Maybe Scoots learned how to fly, without my help! If she did, then it's gonna
be so awesome!" Dash cried, her muzzle breaking out in a wide and triumphant
smirk. A tear formed in one of her eyes and trailed down her cheek as she
added, "It will be the best day ever if she can soar."
"Rainbow, pardon my forwardness, but are you crying right now?" Rarity
inquired, gazing at the cyan mare with a slight frown on her face.
Dash indignantly turned to the ivory unicorn with a gawking expression. She
hastily rubbed her face with a hoof as she replied, "No, no, and no. I just had
something in my eye!"
"Then why are you rubbing the entirety of the righthoof side of your visage?"
Rarity persisted, her frown morphing into a smile.
"Because it itches!" Rainbow retorted as she ceased rubbing her face in order
to glare at Rarity. "There's nothing wrong with scratching an itch!"
"Alrighty then," Rarity stated simply, turning away from her companion and
raising a hoof to her muzzle. She giggled into the end of her limb, careful to
avoid smearing the dried red upon her lips as she did so.
***** Chapter VIII- Trotting Upon the High Road *****
The Fantasian airship followed the Mythonian one closely, and in the pilot's
steel-grey steering room which didn't have much inside, everyone had gathered.
Lance multitasked. He operated a keyboard-and-steering-wheel-screen combination
similar in build to that of the Valkyrie, simultaneously checking a corner on
the lower-left of the built-in screen and monitoring the airship's vitals.
Behind him, circling a bolted-down table while playing a game of cards, Armin
and Alexander bickered with Sarah and Fenrir about this and that. "Hrm..."
Fenrir hummed, keeping his gaze not on the cards in his hand, but on the
gryphon directly across from him.
"What's he going hard-faced over?" Sarah piped up, turning to the dark-coated
gryphon with a perplexed twinkle gleaming in her eyes.
"You're asking the wrong one," Alexander retorted, shaking his head.
"Don't look at me," Armin interjected as the hippogryph turned her attention to
him. He glanced at the cards in his right hoof and added, "Anyone have a two?"
Three consecutive 'no's answered the changeling in tandem, and he sighed before
reaching over to a deck of cards in the middle and plucking one off of the top
with his left hoof.
"Now, before I ask who has what, I must ask you something else, Lyregale," the
gryphon began in an impassive tone. The green-maned hippogryph made an
inquisitive purr as she turned to him, a brow quirked as her throat softly
rumbled. "Maria told me this morning about some kind of Godcat-awful noise that
she heard yesterday, and that it came from a harp. Since you're the only one on
this airship with such an instrument, care to tell me what the young filly had
the misfortune of listening to?"
Sarah flinched and donned a nervous grin. "Er, the rainbow-maned Mythonian—"
she started, but the gryphon cut her off with a huff.
"You mean Miss Rainbow Dash?" Alexander asked, and at this, the mare fervently
nodded. "Alright, then, please continue."
"Well, she... dared me to play a decent composition on the harp, after I
snapped one of her friends out of some kind of trance before she could do who-
knows-what with a magic surge. The harp's enchanted, and... let's just say it
didn't like my attempt at said decent composition," Sarah summarized, grimacing
at the memory.
"She attempted a harmonious piece, yet had instead attained a dissonant
serenade of sorts," Fenrir elaborated, ears folding back as if he were
preparing to undergo another phono-receptor-injuring racket. "The harp
itself... its enchantments, whatever they are, only amplified my headache
tenfold. One of the Mythonians accused the thing, instrument and weapon alike,
as having been possessed. I wouldn't doubt it if that were the case, truth be
told."
Alexander's brows shot up. "Oh goodness, that sounds worrying," he remarked.
"Just try listening to one of her compositions," Fenrir scoffed. "If the notes
are off-key and played frantically, the songs sound relatively half-decent. If
said notes were on-key and played methodically... the strings themselves
screech like they are protesting."
"That's new: a bard who cannot play a single composition to save her own life.
With that fancy weapon she has, I'd reckon she'd be better off as a knight or
something," Armin remarked, a wry smirk spreading on his fanged maw.
"Either that, or a joust master," Fenrir conceded with a nod.
"Alright, do stop poking fun at the green-maned hippogryph. Does anyone have a
jack?" Alexander spoke. A small smile spread on his beak as the other three
plucked a card from their hands and gave him a triad of jacks. "Any sevens?" he
asked, drawing a card from the deck when the others shook their heads.
"I'm hardly a bard, changeling. I can't even sing, let alone write a good
poem," Sarah scoffed, sending Armin a glare full of daggers, her voice dripping
with venom as she spoke. "Anyone have... eh, a three?" She drew a card when the
others shook their heads, and the aforementioned changeling's smirk widened.
"Watch your tongue. I could easily end you," Armin retorted, his horn starting
to flicker with emerald flames.
"And I could end you just the same," Sarah replied, one of her talons balling
up into a fist.
"Enough, both of you," Fenrir interjected with a huff. "Would anyone happen to
posses an ace?" And with that, the card game dragged on and on. It wasn't until
the deck nearly ran out of cards before anyone spoke up again.
"So, little hippogryph," Armin began, sneering.
"What now?" Sarah groaned, rolling her eyes.
Armin began smirking again, propping up a foreleg and resting his chin upon his
hole-riddled fetlock, insectoid eyes glinting with some kind of carnal joy. "If
you can't play your harxe, why don't you peddle your little tail back to the
kitchen?" he asked, snickering as the gryph stood up on her back legs, slamming
her empty claw upon the wood with a wordless snarl. She spread her wings wide,
as if about to lunge, but the sound of the general speaking up halted her
before she got the chance to make another move.
"Matt," Lance huffed from the steering wheel. "Come over here and control the
airship for a minute or two..." he trailed off, his voice laced in anger.
Instantly, the half-Clydesdale obliged and gripped the steering wheel with his
magic as the pegasus relinquished his hold on the thing. Said pegasus then
stood on his back legs and walked upright all the way to the table, towering
over Armin as the snide changeling found himself with a shadow overhead. He
turned around, only to flinch as he fell beneath a scrutinizing glare of
crimson.
And immediately after that, said changeling found himself getting a metal-
covered hoof right across the face that hit him with enough force to send his
body sprawling onto the floor sideways. "Don't you ever let me hear you make
such a horrid remark again," Lance hissed coldly.
"Y-yessir," Armin weakly groaned before spitting up some green liquid in
addition to a couple of teeth.
Lance turned to Alexander and spoke up again, still standing upright,
"Alexander, could you cap his horn for a few days?"
"I'll have to retrieve a magic inhibitor and maybe dig through the cloth boxes
to find one, but that should only take a few minutes. Consider it done." The
gryphon nodded and, after setting his cards down onto the table, got up and
walked out of the control room.
Sarah sat back down and gathered the cards on the table, while Fenrir handed
her what was left of his and Armin's respective hands. She assembled the deck
and piped up just as Lance made to turn around, "Do you always reprimand him
like this?"
Lance glanced over his shoulder and nodded. "I don't want him stepping a hoof
an inch out of line. One, your sister's one of my advisors, and any disrespect
towards her relatives is instant disrespect to her and, by extension, to me.
Two, it's imperative he keeps his magic and mouth in line, especially since
I've been made aware that we're probably going to be under whatever scrutiny
the leader of this 'Equestria' has," he answered. "I've made a bad impression
with said leader's friends; I'd rather not fuck up my chances any more than I
might already have."
Sarah quirked a brow. "Wait, you made a bad impression on the Mythonians?" she
inquired.
"More than that: they flipped when they saw my ears, accused me of torturing
the wraith we have with us, glared at Armin like they wanted his head on a
pike, and then called us barbarians after a small battalion of wraith unicorns
showed up and basically went, 'Hey, kill us, please!' Oh, and Rainbow Dash
thinks we should eat an all-green diet, something I can't do," Lance replied
with a huff and a face starting to turn verdant around the bridge of his
muzzle.
"How do you do that?" a young voice piped up, and Lance directed his gaze
downward to see Maria in front of his rear hooves. She looked at him with a
glint in her eyes, and a head tilted slightly to one side.
"I walk upright very carefully," Lance answered before walking around the filly
and reverting to all fours in one fluid motion. "It comes to me as naturally as
a swivel of my ear."
"What's a swivel?" Maria asked, garnering a chuckle from the pegasus stallion.
"It's where your ear or your leg turns," he answered, turning to her and gently
patting her head with a metal-covered hoof.
"She's going to be a handful," Fenrir muttered under his breath, looking at
Sarah and gesturing to the filly at the same time. The green-maned hippogryph
nodded in agreement, glancing at the foal with a soft, if exasperated, smile.
"Matt!" Natalie cried from the other end of the room, inadvertently causing
said stallion to flinch behind the steering wheel. "Did you give Katie shrooms,
and if so, how the fuck did you manage that? She's sitting here mumbling
something about you dying your coat bright pink and prancing on seven-colored
strips in the sky!"
Sarah clenched her claw into a fist, slammed it on the table, and threw her
head back to howl with laughter all at once. Fenrir turned to the furthest
corner, quickly spotting a cream-colored mare with narrowed eyes and a dazed
wraith muttering inaudibly to herself. He shook his head and rubbed his temples
as he sniffed the air and found a new smell intermingling with the stench of
halted necrosis.
"Matt, once this ship lands on Mythonian soil, you got some explaining to do,"
Lance stated, smirking as the half-Clydesdale groaned and slumped behind the
wheel.
"I'm gonna grab your nutsack, rip it off with my stubby horn, and then replace
your eyes with your balls!" Katie exclaimed in a warbling, dazed tone of voice
before a pale tongue lolled out of her mouth and extended until the tip reached
the floor. She went on, biting her tongue as she spoke, "Anf fen, I fill
schofth a hairbwusth uf your asf!"
"How did a wraith get high, exactly?" Lance asked, turning to Natalie with a
snicker.
Natalie threw her forelegs in the air and waved them frantically as she spoke,
"You tell me! I ain't got a fucking clue!"
Katie, whose tongue still hung out of her mouth, looked around the room for a
moment or so before she caught sight of Anna inching her way to the table. "Ey
fere, sesthy," she began, now slurring her words, "cah I polith your fluth?"
At that, Anna froze, her eyes going wide and jaw soundlessly opening. She
trembled in place, staring straight ahead at the table, her visage turning a
dark shade of azure as the wraith's words sank in. A few seconds later, sweat
dribbled down her body like liquid bullets, forming a small puddle wide enough
that it could've easily been mistaken for an excess of rainwater after a
terrible storm.
Katie lurched towards the archer with a stumbling gait, almost tripping over
her own hooves as she approached the frozen, sweat-covered mare. The stump of
her horn pointed this way and that as the head it had been attached to swayed
about, akin to a drunkard failing to pin the tail on the donkey correctly. Her
tongue retracted in her mouth, and Katie spoke clearly once more, "I wish I had
a nice ass like that... can I stick my hoof under your tail?"
Only then did the petrified mare move; she levitated herself and careened
around the table and found herself latching onto Lance. "She's scaring me," she
mumbled, leaning closer to the pegasus, which forced him to lean back a bit.
At that moment, Alexander came into the room—just in time to see the dazed
wraith slip on the puddle of sweat, spin into the air for a few seconds, and
land with her back to the floor. "Water spells are cheap," she groaned, feebly
thrashing all four of her legs in the air as she struggled to get up.
"And now she's a turtle," Natalie sighed, her hoof connecting with her face and
sliding down the bridge of her muzzle. She shook her head and turned to the
gryphon. "Katie's stoned off her gourd, and someone on this ship may have
assisted her to let her get into that state," she explained. "My money's on
Matt."
"I'm impressed the dead changeling amongst us somehow got drugged," Alexander
groaned, rolling his eyes after he turned his attention back to Katie and
noticed that she had still failed to stop her flailing upon the floor.
"She tried to do reverse-necrophilia on Anna," Lance called from the other side
of the room. "Tie the wraith up until the high spell passes; I do not want her
molesting anybody, as that would be very weird and not to mention gross."
Alexander's eyes widened. "R-reverse-necrophilia?" he asked, his voice but a
high-pitched squawk.
Lance nodded, and turned to Anna. "Can you let go of me now? I need to take the
steering wheel back from Matt, if you please," he groaned. The mare nodded and
released her hold on him, quickly using a spell to summon a towel and patting
him down with it. She did this to dry him of the sweat she inadvertently gave
unto him when she first clung to his form. He nodded once the archer finished
cleaning him and began trotting to the steering wheel, shoving Matt aside as
soon as he reached the wheel and panel.
The bulky unicorn stumbled no more than three hooves back. As soon as he
stopped himself from going backwards any further, a blue-tinted aura grabbed
him and very slowly dragged him to Natalie.
"How did you get the wraith to start tripping balls! Aren't dead mares unable
to ingest drugs, much less absorb them into probably-non-existent bloodstreams
and most-definitely decayed organs?" Natalie shrieked, horn glowing with the
same blue aura. Sweat began beading her brow as the half-Clydesdale kept trying
to firmly plant his hooves in the floor. This went in tandem with grabbing
himself using his magic and making many attempts to tug his entire body away
from her.
"It wasn't me, Natz!" Matt replied, his hooves dragging back and forth along
the floor as he struggled to keep himself from going any closer to the mare who
was magically accosting him.
Sarah and Fenrir watched the ongoing tug-of-war that went on for a few moments,
exchanging but one glance as the unicorns reached a point where, no matter how
hard one tried, the other simply could not be moved against his will. "So...
who do you think is going to give out first?" the former asked.
"The red-maned unicorn is struggling; she's glistening in sweat and her horn is
giving off sparks. I believe she'll cease soon,"Fenrir replied, shaking his
head. "I hope they do not behave this childishly when we reach Mythos."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
"What's that?" Maria cried, jumping up and down in an attempt to see what the
screen had shown. Said screen detailed a vast continent, one stretching north,
west and south, and another eastern landmass whose edge just barely became
visible as clouds swept over it. The edge of this second continent had been
separated from the edge of the first by an ocean. In the center of the huge
continent, a tall mountain jutted up, like a hoof reaching for the heavens.
"I..." Lance paused upon seeing the Mythonian airship pick up momentum,
speeding faster and faster towards the larger of the two land masses. "I don't
have the foggiest clue," he answered. A vibration shook the ship as it
continued to follow the first, and then another tremor came after that. "Guys,
you might wanna head into the lounge! We're about to reach terminal velocity!"
he barked as the ship once more rumbled.
Everyone filed out of the room in a frenzy, except for Maria, who stopped
jumping and began clinging to the pilot. As soon as Lance heard the door click
shut, another tremor forced him to land face-first in the crook of the steering
wheel, giving him a bloody nose. The gravity shifted, and he could not lift his
head as the Fantasian ship descended onto Mythos, hounding the first ship as
the foreign atmosphere of the sister planet felt as if it grew heavier and
heavier.
Another rumble reverberated throughout the ship, and he could hear the others
raising a unified fuss as the ship tilted sharply downward at a 45-degree
angle, gritting his teeth as gravity increased its pressure tenfold. Maria
clambered onto his back, digging her tiny claws into his withers, adding
another ounce of pressure that made it hellishly difficult to control the
airship.
The continent came closer, and closer, and a panicking Lance saw the Mythonian
ship swerve violently, jutting up at an angle before it straightened itself
out. His eyes began burning with a flame, and adrenaline coursed through his
veins as the ship once more tilted, the figurehead pointing straight down at
some hapless structure that had been too far away to properly identify. Maria
began screeching in his ear, giving him both a headache and another rush of
blood going through his front hooves.
Releasing his face from the wheel and letting off a cry of sheer determination,
he jerked the wheel back, causing the ship to serve with enough force to send
him all the way past the table. Maria shifted and let go, rolling away on her
side with a pained yelp. Lance staggered to his hooves, his muscles having gone
numb from the pressure he had felt earlier. Forcing himself to stumble to the
wheel, his eyes widened at what the screen had shown him.
"Oh fuck me! I am not going to crash the Scylla into the mountain!" he cried,
flinging his hooves onto the wheel and jerking it violently to the side,
scraping the wings on the right side of the ship as it veered away from the
mountain. For a few moments, the ship circled in the sky above some unknown
expanse, slowing down all the while. Once it had slowed down considerably, and
feeling in all of his muscles returned, Lance hesitantly glanced at the corner
showing the ship's vitals, which had three separate bars all glowing bright
green.
"It's gonna need refueling on the magic front, and two wings are slightly
damaged," he groaned, frowning. Lance smiled, though, before adding, "At least
Matt, Anna, and Natz don't have to power this thing 24/7. Hooray for engines
including magical reservoirs."
Maria rose onto her hooves and talons before shuffling to the pegasus. "I don't
like flying ships," she complained with a sniffle.
Lance laughed, yet the sound held very little mirth in its tone. "I understand
why you say that," he replied. "At least we won't have to do this again for a
while yet." He turned to the filly and asked, "Say, how are you holding up?"
"I hurt everywhere, and I think my wings popped," Maria replied in a weak
voice, frowning.
Lance sighed. "We'll get your wings checked once we land," he mumbled. He drove
the ship for another few moments, sitting in silence as he observed what Mythos
had to offer. Forests, dense and mighty, stood proudly to one side and spanned
across much of the continent, with a few mountain ranges here and there in the
distance. To the other side, cities grew and expanded, but there had still been
plenty more forests to dot the land with still more mountains.
And then there was the big mountain range the Fantasian ship almost crashed
into. On one side of the rock face, a grand city had been built, further
accentuated by a waterfall that seemed to go all the way down to the foot of
the towering stone behemoth. The rush of water stopped, turning into a tranquil
pool on the outskirts of a small town. In the sky, higher than the ship's
current altitude, a mass of clouds floated idly by, with several small shapes
flocking in and out of it. It oozed what looked to be like liquid rainbows that
fell from the mass in much the same way as the waterfall on the mountain.
"Hot damn," Lance stated, inhaling deeply. "This entire continent... it's a lot
better than running circles in a winter wonderland for weeks on end."
"I wanna see!" Maria chirped, once more jumping about. She caught sight of the
cloud mass with the seemingly-concentrated rainbows dripping from it, and her
eyes glittered with awe. "Pretty!"
"After seeing the colors white and grey for so long, I have to agree. The
others are missing out," Lance replied, nodding with a small smile. A thought
occurred to him, and his smile widened as he turned to the hippogryph filly.
"Hell, now that I think about it, I don't see any ectoplasms around here. You
think Sarah could stretch her wings and fly higher?"
"I dunno," Maria answered as she shrugged.
"Huh. Remind me to ask Rainbow Dash about the clouds in the sky that make
prismatic waterfalls one of these days," Lance sighed, his smile fading a bit.
"Alright Maria, hang tight. I'm gonna see if I can find a place to land this
thing at." The filly nodded and clung to his back again, and the ship ceased
its circling to lazily glide across the sky. Turning the ship towards the
mountain with the city set into its face, the pegasus spotted the Mythonian
airship not too far away, parked in the city, and caught sight of what looked
like a large boarding dock further down the mountainside.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
"So, why didn't you land where the Mythonian ship landed?" Matt asked Lance. A
few moments passed, and the latter looked around the small room he and his
subordinate stood in. It was a waiting lounge with few windows, couches bolted
down between the windows, and to one side a nearly-empty wooden crate stood
next to a staircase going down. To the other side, the gangplank had been
lowered, leading to the outside. Aside from this, there hadn't been much else
in the room.
"I circled the mountain once and looked real close. There's a city where the
Leviathan landed, packed chock full of ponies. I swear, some of them had armor
on. Something tells me we're about to enter a potential wasp’s nest, so I
figured we'd better tread carefully. It's a good thing all we brought with us,
aside from weaponry, are cloaks and masks," Lance sighed. "Speaking of, did you
put my gunblade and ammunition pouch inside of your magical cargo crate, and
are Armin and Katie sufficiently covered?"
"Yes, and yes," Matt replied, nodding. "You might wanna take off your uniform
and get a cloak too. If we're about to head into a wasp nest, then we're gonna
have to look as inconspicuous as possible. Anna has also taken a hold of
Sarah's harxe, though she had to detangle the halberd from the harp to do so.
Said something about making it easier to carry if it's in two separate pieces."
Lance nodded and removed his horseshoes before taking off his coat. As he slid
off the shirt with the vest, he sighed, "Does Maria also have a cloak on?"
"Just about everyone does, except you and I. Good thing for you, there are four
left. We can use two just to wrap your wings and keep convincing Dash and her
friends that your wings are fucked up at this time," Matt answered, nodding
again. A small smile crept on his lips as his horn glowed the moment the
pegasus had fully shaken off his clothes. The uniform and shoes vanished in a
golden light, and two brown sheet-like cloths were lifted from the open crate.
They floated to Lance, and wasted no time in wrapping around his midsection,
effectively concealing his wings and simultaneously holding them down.
A third emerged after that, wrapping loosely around Lance's neck and draping
down his back, covering everything behind his front hooves. A hood slipped over
his head, hiding his torn ears, yet keeping his visage out in the open. Matt
pried out another cloak from the crate and draped it over his frame, adjusting
it with his magic to let it rest low on his neck. His hood remained off of his
head, enabling his blond mane to drape itself loosely on his withers and past
his shoulders.
The two filed out of the airship and onto the boarding dock, where their
companions awaited them, all draped with cloaks. Armin and Katie also had extra
cloth on their legs, and white porcelain masks completely covering their faces.
The changelings' hoods concealed much of their masked visages, including the
eyes and the horns. Maria also had a cloak on, with a scarf wrapped around her
neck, the bundle tied very neatly to further hold her garment in place.
"You two finished?" Natalie asked as the two stallions rushed up to meet with
the rest of the group.
"Just about," Matt said, grinning. "What, you want to head into the maybe-it's-
a-trap-city immediately?"
"The sooner we get it over with, the better," Sarah piped up, sitting on her
rump and crossing her talons. Her wings shifted under her cloak as she added,
"Let's just hope nobody grabs our garbs just to try to assess what we are."
"Has anyone seen NoLegs? I don't think he—" Matt began, only to stop speaking
as Natalie's horn started shimmering a soft blue. In a flash of glittering
light, the legless cat had appeared, mewing as he hopped onto her back.
"—nevermind," he sighed, smiling at the cat.
"Alright, let's just follow that path there. Keep close, and stay away from the
edge of the cliff," Lance commanded, moving past the group to trot ahead of
them. "And someone hide NoLegs's armor and dagger. Last thing we need is
Mythonian ponies asking us why the hell a cat is armed."
Maria clambered onto Alexander's back. "Does the mountain have nice ponies on
it?" she asked, eyes glinting inquisitively.
Lance turned to the foal as everyone caught up to him and donned a frown.
"Maybe, but I wouldn't risk it. Don't talk to any pony or gryphon or whatever
else is in that city unless it's us, alright? We really don't want a... a bad
pony to catch us blindsided and get their grubby hooves on you," he replied.
"Okay," Maria answered and nodded. Lance shifted one of his hooves and patted
her on the head whilst walking on the other three.
Fenrir took to walking on all fours, eyeing what surrounded the mountain he
walked upon. "I wonder if there are other diamond dogs here in Mythos, like
me," he murmured to himself, ears perking at a gust of wind as it blew past. He
drew a heavy sigh, keeping silent most of the trip. The diamond dog stopped at
one point for a moment, finding a poster tacked to a small wooden pole in front
of the rock. It depicted a mare who lacked wings and a horn, with a gold-
colored mane and pale grey coat with sea-green eyes. On the parchment, the
words 'Missing: Silk Fabric, was last seen at Canterlot' were printed out in
big letters.
He stared at the poster for a minute before turning back to the path ahead and
bounding onward to catch up, slowing to a trot as he found everyone else in the
group, who started chatting amiably about what the city they were heading
towards had in store for them.
"It's huge, isn't it?" Sarah asked, a frown on her face.
"Looked it, yes. Might've even had a castle as part of the structure somewhere,
but I couldn't tell since towers were pretty much rampant throughout," Lance
replied, keeping his gaze fixed on the path ahead. "And for some reason, the
architecture was loaded with stars, suns, and moons, and it's all gold and
ivory and purple. Now that I dwell on it, since the Mythonian airship sported
the same colors, we might be approaching this continent's capital city."
"Hey, what the hell is that up there?" Natalie interjected, her inquiry causing
the group to halt. They turned to her, noticing her hoof pointing at something,
and followed said hoof to lay eyes upon the cloud mass with the liquid
rainbows. When she began squinting her eyes to get a better look, Anna noted
several things amidst the converged bits of white.
"It... looks to be a cloud city of some kind. I think I can make out houses
from here," Anna answered, a brow raising at the anomaly. "Now that I think
about it... one of Rainbow's friends mentioned something about a Cloudsdale and
pegasi," she added, eyes glinting for a second before widening. "Wait, how did
they make clouds into houses to begin with, and how in hell do they make
rainbows?"
"Don't know, don't care at the moment, let's hit the road," Lance snapped, his
tone set in anger. With that, the group went on the move again, going up and up
the winding mountain trail until they spotted the city, noticing that gates
barred their path. The gates were great golden things, standing tall and proud,
and behind it an entire array of towers jutted out, obscuring much of what lay
within the walls. The waterfall passed the gate in a small river, which a
drawbridge had been lowered over so ponies could enter and leave as they so
well pleased.
Stationed in front of the drawbridge stood a couple of armored unicorns, one
sporting coverings of iron and the other bearing gold plates on his frame. The
iron-armored one's horn briefly glowed as the group approached them in a slow
gait. Before any of the Fantasians could speak, the armored pony said, "I have
just caught telepathic wind that Princess Celestia is to be expecting a few
visitors."
The gold-plated one spoke up, his horn also glowing for a moment, "And I have a
message from Celestia's pupil to keep watch for a group that includes a pony
with torn ears, a gryphon with dark feathers, a diamond dog, and a hippogryph
mare." As soon as he finished speaking, Lance pulled back his hood, revealing
his ears to the armored duo. Sarah stepped forward and unveiled her talons to
them in a non-threatening manner, keeping the claws low out of respect.
Alexander and Fenrir stepped up as well, gazing at the guards impassively as
they stared back.
A few more armored ponies, consisting of more unicorns in addition to some
pegasi and earth ponies, trotted out from behind the city gates onto the bridge
towards them. A particular white one in purple armor lead the way, eyes as blue
as ice surveying the lot. "Are you the Fantasians my si—Twilight Sparkle has
told me about?" he asked in an impassive, commanding tone.
The group exchanged glances amongst themselves before Natalie turned back to
the purple-garbed pony and spoke up, "Yes, we are. May I ask what's with you
and the other armored ponies?" She caught a glint in the white unicorn's eyes
and she hurriedly added, "Nothing's wrong or anything, it's just that we didn't
expect this kind of welcome."
The white armored unicorn nodded. "About that, we're to provide you something
of an escort service. I heard you bunch are... dangerous when provoked, and I'd
rather you be cooperative for everypony's safety," he answered. "We're to stay
together until you meet with Princess Celestia in the flesh. The formation will
be such: with me and my fellow Royal Guards forming two lines outside, and you
filing in single file between those lines. Is that understood?"
Once more, the group exchanged another series of looks with each other. Then,
Matt stepped forward. "On one condition: we stay cloaked as we are now. Me and
my group don't want the extra attention, especially if two lines of guards
flank us on either side," he replied in a level tone.
"And why is that?" one of the armored pegasi asked from the back, his voice
barely a shout.
"I really don't want to do this, but... Katie, come here and take off your mask
for a sec," Matt ordered, turning to the wraith who trotted up to the guards.
The dead mare shook her hood off before sitting down and raising her front
hooves up, prying off the mask and letting her azure orbs glow. The guards
stared at her for a moment, some flinching and others with their eyes widening.
The purple-garbed unicorn didn't flinch in the slightest, but his eyes betrayed
a spark of some kind of emotion. "Please put that back on," he said coolly. The
wraith did as she was asked, donning the mask and then tugging up the hood, the
orbs in her black abysses ceasing to glow once her face had been shielded
again. "I understand fully your reason for the cloaks. Would anypony else in
your group have sustained such... injuries?" he asked.
"My wings are broken, and bad enough they can't be exposed to the elements
until my routine preening. We also have a hippogryph filly with us, incapable
of flight for the time being," Lance answered, his visage set with an
expressionless look.
"Understood. Guards! Flank the visitors. We must make haste!" the blue-eyed
guard shouted in the tone of a drill sergeant, and at once, the rest of the
troop formed two lines on either side of the Fantasian lot.
***** Chapter IX, Part I- A String of a Difference *****
The group filed down the streets, the guards flanking their sides every step of
the way. The purple-armored unicorn took point, with Matt following him close
behind. "Sir, is it alright if we asked you some questions?"Matt asked as the
troop rounded a corner fluently.
The lead guard tossed a glance over his shoulder. "You're already asking one,"
he quipped. "Still, I think it would be best to wait until we take you to the
Princess. I am aware a lot is probably on your mind, but I feel your inquiry is
for her ears alone."
"Well..." Matt sighed as he trailed off, letting the words of the lead guard
bumble about in his head for a bit. "That's... actually pretty sound reasoning.
Alright, I'll wait."
"Are you nice ponies?" Maria asked, eyeing the nearest pegasus guard to
Alexander's left.
The armored stallion looked at the filly who sat upon the gryphon's back and
sent her a small smile. "I assure you, little one, we're excellent ponies," he
replied before glancing back ahead.
"She's quite the curious foal. If her mouth opens, a question's guaranteed to
come out of her mouth ninety-five percent of the time," Alexander chortled,
grinning. "A mind that thirsts for knowledge is good, especially for growing
fillies. It just has to be kept in check in a relatively stable environment,
and all should go well."
"Here, here," the winged guard agreed, still grinning.
"Yeesh, this is a huge city. I'm almost tempted to ask if we're there yet,"
Natalie remarked, eying some of the buildings as she and the others passed
them, while still being mindful enough to not let the sights draw in every
ounce of her attention.
Another guard laughed. "It happens all the time, especially if ponies come in
from as far south as Appleloosa," he stated.
"From where we come from, 'Appleloosa' would sound like a silly thing to name
an area," Anna interjected, again causing the guard to laugh.
"Then again, we're not the ones who founded that place," another guard
retorted.
"Eh, true enough, I guess," Anna conceded with a shrug.
"So, what's Fantasia like?" another guard inquired, his inquiry causing Matt to
halt right in his tracks—followed by the rest of the group as they then ran
into him and each other immediately after that.
"You wouldn't want to even know what it's like over there," Matt answered in an
uncertain, although tight, voice.
"And why not?" yet another guard piped up as the troop stilled to a halt.
"Just... you don't wanna know," Matt repeated, frowning. "Don't we have
somewhere to go?"
"Guards, stop pestering the Fantasians with questions that make them
uncomfortable!" the lead guard barked in a louder tone than was necessary,
which garnered the attention of some ponies who stopped at an intersection up
ahead. He turned around and made a motion with his hoof before trotting onward,
and both guards and visitors fell in step behind him in three lines. They
stayed silent as onlookers started shooting glances from the sky, windows, and
even an alley or two.
For another half-hour of walking, there had been no further incident. A few of
the city's residents trotted by and eyed the cloaked group for a moment or so
before going about their business. Some whispered amongst themselves; whether
in awe, wonder, or worry, the Fantasians had no way of knowing. One stallion
asked the lead guard if they were prisoners, but the guards merely gave a vague
answer in unison and promptly shooed him off.
After another twenty or so minutes of trotting, Matt spoke up, his tone level,
"So, mister..."
"Captain Shining Armor," the lead guard replied. "What is it?"
Matt quirked a brow, but ventured with words anyway, "Could you tell me...
what... what this Celestia pony—at least, I'm a-assuming it's a pony—is like?"
Shining glanced over his shoulder with an unreadable look. "She's kind, gentle,
understanding, and wise. There is no need to be nervous now," he stated coolly.
"We haven't even reached the castle entrance yet; I'm impressed you've gotten
uneasy now, given that little glint in your eyes. Most ponies aren't even
stuttering until they're standing in the throne room, being asked by the
Princess about what's so important that they need to see her."
"I've only spent... three hours at most here; thus, I-I-I remain skeptical,"
Matt spluttered, his tone uneasy and warbling before the last three words left
his mouth. He stopped and flinched as he felt a thin, clothed form clamber onto
his backside with a clumsy grace. Turning his head as he resumed trotting, he
found himself face-to-face to Katie, who somehow cut in line.
"Guards at the back told me to get my tail to the front and get to you, white-
face," Katie explained in a hushed whisper. "They said I was trotting too slow,
so I had to go between everyone else's legs to get here."
Matt glanced ahead, his visage now adorned with a deep blue tint. His ears
folded back as a guard asked, "Say, why're your ears, neck and cheeks black,
but your horn, legs and muzzle white?"
"He's part Clydesdale earth pony," Natalie answered for Matt from behind. "His
dad was a purebreed."
Said half-Clydesdale shakily nodded. "Y-yeah," he added.
NoLegs, who had been riding on Natalie's back and remained silent until this
point, began mewing at one of the guards. The guard he mrrowed at, a white
pegasus with gold eyes, shot the cat a quizzical look. "Is that furball tame?"
he asked.
"I've helped raise him since he was a baby. Got him when I was about seven,"
Matt answered, his voice taking on a confident tone. NoLegs mewed again,
purring loud enough for the guards flanking Natalie to hear.
"Well, at least the cat's happy," Natalie remarked as said cat clambered up her
neck to stand atop her head and rub his head on her horn. One ear twitched when
the cat's tail brushed up against it, yet in doing so, it enabled her to catch
the sound of something going on from behind as the group rounded a corner into
another street.
"That was uncalled for!" Sarah shouted from the far back, her yell of what
sounded like alarm causing the group and the guards to immediately halt in
their tracks. Natalie craned her neck and found herself frowning, noticing that
something had gone amiss right off the bat.
The guards flanking the rear broke formation, creating a solid front row of
flesh and armor. Behind that, Fenrir and the others who kept to the rear formed
another wall, each staring ahead at the ongoing ruckus. "What's the commotion?"
a guard asked.
Natalie noticed that, amongst the second wall of ponies and such, one did not
stand with the rest. Rather, the missing member seemed to be glaring at a red-
pelted, silver-maned unicorn stallion who sneered at her before the assembled
guards, and thus contributed to the aforementioned ruckus. "I don't know what
it is I could have possibly done wrong," said silver-maned unicorn explained.
"One minute, I am minding my own business, and the next, this mare starts
shouting. I have no idea what in Celestia's name she's on about."
"You're lying!" Sarah hissed, pointing a talon at the stallion.
"Am not! And if I am, then pray tell, what could I have the sheer audacity, the
nerve, to pull off to upset a rather plain mare such as yourself?" the unicorn
retorted in a cold tone.
Natalie shook her head. She hadn't been sure about what to make of this
development, however, until the voices began rising to rather shrill levels of
volume—kickstarted by Sarah's response to the question.
"Dude, you just up and grabbed me!" Sarah shouted in an icy tone, wings visibly
rustling violently beneath her cloak. "Don't you know any better than to grab
random mares by their tails? And don't even think about uttering the 'I just
wanted to see your cutie mark' excuse!"
Matt trotted to Natalie's side as the rest of the guards quickly joined their
comrades. "Something tells me I should've brought popcorn for this," he sighed
as the unicorn stallion Sarah still glared at muttered something about the
color green.
"What is all of the commotion here?" Shining barked as he raced to meet up with
the hippogryph and the stallion who allegedly accosted her.
"He reached under my cloak with his magic and lifted my tail so every soul in
this city could see my rear end!" Sarah replied, face reddening.
"I did not!" the silver-maned pony replied, still sneering. "I don't know what
you're talking about! Why, I don't fraternize with hippogryphs at all, let
alone lift their disgusting tails. And yet, here's such a mare born of a pony
who lost his head and a mangy gryphon giving unto me such baseless
accusations!"
"And he plays the racism card," Katie whispered, positioning herself on Matt's
back to stand up with a wobbling posture. "I almost wonder what the prick
thinks of wraiths, especially those like myself."
"Don't go over there and tempt him. He's probably already making Lance want to
beat his ass as is," Matt replied in an equally low tone.
"And Anna too," Natalie added, shaking her head. "At this rate, he's just
cruisin' for a bruisin'."
NoLegs stopped purring and mewed as the already-hostile conflict between the
silver-maned pony and Sarah began to escalate.
"My father, insane, and my mother, mangy?" Sarah asked, her tone almost like
that of a high-pitched squawk. Her glare hardened as she added, "Well, judging
from your behavior, your parents are pompous, arrogant, self-entitled, racist
pigs!"
The silver-maned pony flinched and took a step back, his sneer morphing into a
scowl. "And your parents are uncivilized brutes, if I were to base any
assumption I make simply by how you're acting!" he declared, raising a hoof as
if he were going to point it in her direction. When instead he gestured to
himself with that same hoof, he went on, "Why, you little peasant, you don't
know who it is you're speaking to! I am the son of Canterlot's finest
composers; the best of the best! I'll have you—"
Sarah cut him off before he could finish his little tirade, "Spare me the
horseshit already, you elitist, grey-maned snob."
"G-guh?" the silver-maned pony spluttered, setting his hoof down as he noticed
the hippogryph's cat-like pupils shrinking and becoming meager slits in irises
of evergreen.
Sarah merely huffed, "You heard me. Shall I repeat it again just so it doesn't
go in one ear and out the other a second time?"
The red-coated unicorn's visage hardened. "So be it," he snorted. "I've seen
that a harp's part of your cutie mark, and since you’re clearly too
simpleminded to listen, I hereby challenge you to a composition duel!"
Sarah quirked a brow. "Is there a catch to this? Because if there's something
very outlandish for this possible catch you may have in mind, then I'll have to
turn you down and be on my merry way," she replied.
"No, other than what happens when one outdoes the other. Since I am Chanson
Cheval, the best composer in all of Canterlot, if you lose—which I can
guarantee—you'll have to mend my hooves, mane, and tail for a day," the self-
proclaimed 'best of the best' composer answered, once more sneering.
"Anna, gimme my harp and whatever composition you have handy," Sarah stated, a
small smile cropping up on her face.
Fenrir immediately went wide-eyed, his ears falling flat against his head.
"Don't do it! I implore you! You have no idea what horrors you have unleashed
upon us all!” he cried.
"Mean horn-pony, stop! I don't wanna hear the harp screaming again!" Maria
pleaded, yet both pleas fell on deaf ears.
"Harps don't scream, you hideous whelp! A peasant child has no right to tell me
what to do, especially one who isn't even passable as a maid, and nor does a
dirty diamond dog, for that matter!" the red-coated unicorn snapped, briefly
sending the filly a cold glare. She flinched back with a silent gasp, and the
pony turned his attention back to Sarah as the diamond dog began snarling at
him.
"You're gonna be singing an entirely different tune once this little contest
comes to an end," Sarah hissed as Anna summoned the harp and a piece of
parchment. Both objects flew to her rising talons eagerly, as the red-coated
pony conjured an electric, though cordless, guitar that sported reds and
silvers in its paintjob.
"The fool has no clue what dark forces he's going to invoke," Fenrir snarled,
reaching up to cover his ears.
"It's the mean horn-pony's fault we're all gonna have hurting heads," Maria
grumbled, slipping off Alexander's back before covering her ears. The diamond
dog pulled her close, covering her ears with his paws afterwards. His face
contorted to display an agonized, scrunchy-eyed expression as Cheval fueled his
instrument with magic, plucked at his strings and procured the first series of
horrible notes that sounded more akin to metal grating on metal.
Fenrir winced as the song went on for another moment longer, gritting his teeth
as the notes devolved into something between a demon burbling and a banshee
wailing; incomprehensible, high and low-pitched simultaneously, and terrible to
listen to. As the song dragged on, the rest of the Fantasians in addition to
their Mythonian pseudo-escorts made to cover their ears. In the case of NoLegs,
the cat began incessantly hissing louder and louder, as if he were trying his
hardest to drown out the noise.
Even Sarah found herself getting a growing headache as the guitarist played on
for a few painful moments longer, blood rushing through her head and pounding
in her ears as she patiently waited for Cheval to finish his Godcat-awful
crescendo. Her wings flared from reflex as the unicorn decided to turn said
crescendo into an overture, the guitar strings screeching as his magic
continued to power the song.
Shining Armor threw up a pink-colored shield around himself, his fellow guards,
and the Fantasians who stayed behind the platoon. He relaxed as the shield
blocked the outside noise, but stiffened a moment later when cracks began
forming in the frame of the pink dome. Yellow embraced the shield, forming
another layer, and immediately after a red encased that layer. He turned around
and spotted Natalie and Matt, their horns glowing. "I take it you can't stand
it, either?" he asked in a pained voice.
"Make it stop already, I can still hear it!" Katie wailed, cloth-covered legs
wrapping around her head.
NoLegs ceased his hissyfit, moving to clamber down Natalie's neck to curl up on
her back with a series of weak, pleading mews.
Armin pointed accusingly at the silver-maned unicorn and proceeded to prattle
off, "Good gracious, the guitarist is terrible! If he's 'the son of Canterlot's
finest composers,' then how in fuck does he play so bad? Who's idea was it to
let him in a band of any sort? The bastard seems to be tone-deaf! Look, he's
not even wincing, despite the fact that his racket's still being played!"
"Chanson Cheval—the stallion with the guitar—sadly isn't tone-deaf. He's just
playing this bad on purpose," a guard sighed, shaking his head while a crack
appeared in the red layer of the shield.
"Why? Why torture everyone's eardrums like this!" Lance barked, eyes narrowing
low as he turned his attention to the silver-maned pony.
"I reckon he's doing something sneaky—by playing bad, he'll likely discourage
her from performing a good composition. He's trying to make her think it's a
waste of time just so he gets an easy win out of it, if the grin on his face is
anything to go by," the guard replied, sighing.
"Did he do this before?" Alexander asked, rubbing one of his ears.
"Several times. My armor will fly off if his opponent somehow outdoes him," the
guard answered again, faintly smiling as Cheval finally ceased playing. The
triple-layered dome dissappated, and everyone sighed collectively in relief.
"So, how was it?" Cheval asked, donning a sly smirk as Sarah sat there staring
at him with a dazed, pained look on her face.
It took several moments for Sarah to regain her ability to listen clearly, and
another few to even process the question. When she did understand what her
musical opponent had asked, she articulated a snappish response, "It's so
terrible I'm wondering who in fuck decided it was a good idea to hire you as a
composer. Either you're tone-deaf, which I wouldn't doubt in the slightest, or
you cheated."
"I'm not tone-deaf. You're just envious of my skill, you sniveling bitch!"
Cheval hissed, his smirk turning upside-down as he went on, "And besides, I
doubt that a filthy hippogryph who should be tilling the wheat fields of her
backwoods town in the most uncivilized corner of the world could outdo me in a
performance!"
Sarah's eyes narrowed, and she unraveled the parchment she held all this time
to study it for a moment or so. She proceeded to hand the paper off to a guard
before firmly grasping her harp, starting her piece off with a low, deep snarl
worthy of a lion. Cheval took a step back, eyes widening from the sound of that
growl before the first thrums of the harpstrings filled the air.
"Mayhaps you could form another barrier, please?" Fenrir asked, gently nudging
Shining with a hand right as the harp's notes began distorting into the
terrible, unearthly shrieks thanks to its innate magic. Shining nodded and made
another barrier, frowning as the harpist's song devolved into a shrill,
incomprehensible jumble of ear-splitting volumes.
"How is a harp able to do that?" Shining asked, turning to Fenrir with a hoof
pointing at the playing harpist.
"It's enchanted. The exact nature of this enchantment sadly escapes me," Fenrir
huffed, "but a unicorn laid a hex of some sort on it, as far as I can hope to
understand. Unfortunately, as of now, there is terribly little information to
work with."
The song dragged on, for far longer than Cheval's own, because after a few
moments the innate magic of the instrument reacted vehemently. It threw the
hippogryph aside, floating in the air and playing itself as though punishing
her—as well as any unfortunate passerby who had the misfortune of simply
trotting by the street the harp floated above—for playing so terribly.
The racket increased tenfold as the harp's accursed enchantments kicked into
overdrive, both increasing the volume and further descending from
incomprehensible jumble to what could best be described as a tone-deaf pony's
dream come true.
The barrier started forming cracks in its surface again as the harp went on and
on, and not even Matt and Natalie throwing up two more layers could hope to
stall the racket from reaching their ears. All three layers cracked in unison
as the harp dropped to the ground, letting off a shrill note that sounded more
like a banshee's echoing wail. Both composers lay on the ground, hooves and
claws covering their ears, faces set with tight expressions of pure agony.
For a full half-hour, the guards, Fantasians, and Cheval remained in that
street, the final note still ringing in their ears as they struggled with the
blood rushing through their heads and drowning out almost all else. Natalie,
the first to cope with the headache and damage to her phono receptors, cast a
spell, her horn glowing a soft white in color. The glow jumped from her horn,
then one pony to the next, dulling the headaches and helping the rest of the
afflicted regain their ability to hear as the mana swept over them. It then
moved from Sarah, to Alexander, and so forth, until her magic finished its
roundabout and healed the cat and wraith.
"That was so bad I think my vision went white. Oh sweet Godcat, what did I do
to deserve that auditory punishment?" Katie whined, her tone pained and
somewhat childish.
"I know the feeling all too well," Fenrir conceded, growling as he spoke.
"I don't like harps," Maria complained as she clambered onto Alexander's back,
her lips pulled into a tight frown and ears flattened on her head.
"Guards, secure the harp. It's too dangerous to wield," Shining commanded,
though his tone was low and soft. The nearest armored pegasi nodded and
carefully made to scoop it up, with one tucking it beneath his left wing.
"What're you gonna do with the harp though?" Lance asked, frowning as the
captain craned his neck to look at him from over his shoulder.
"Find some way to get rid of the enchantment, or make it less dangerous. Given
what it just did, I don't know if the high mages of Canterlot will be able to
succeed," Shining answered, turning his attention back to the composers as they
both started to haul themselves from the pavement.
Cheval shot a glare at Sarah, his posture wobbly and his breathing ragged. "So
that's what it is," he started, his tone dark, "you came from the sister
planet's population of loons, didn't you?"
"Me and my, for a lack of better words, companions as nothing more than members
of a group of loons? We're not crazy in the slightest. We're foreigners; you're
definitely right about that. What's it to you, you ketchup-colored, boastful,
talentless hack?" Sarah snarled back, equally as snappish, her tone just as
ominous as that of her opponent's. Her wings flared wide, dragging the cloak up
from her body, talons spreading apart on the walkway as though she were
preparing to pounce.
She went on, eyes narrowing to slits, "You told me you were born of the finest
composers around here, and then what do you do? You go and give everyone
headaches with a composition worse than mine, and I used an enchanted harp that
does not like my attempts to play. Care to explain yourself, or are you gonna
shimmy away and try to make me out to be a sore loser?" She then hissed at him
like a cat, rising to stand on her back legs, talons balling into fists as she
finished producing the hiss.
Cheval let out a wordless howl and surged towards his adversary, a hoof
shooting up and smacking her straight in the chin, causing her eyes to screw
tightly shut. She stumbled back, trying to maintain a steady balance on two
legs, only to yelp as two more punches connected with her chest and stomach in
quick succession. The mare reverted to all fours, and found herself sprawling
on the ground as a hoof connected with her cheek in a solid right hook. She
cracked an eye open upon landing as the stallion reared up onto his back legs,
front hooves poised to arc in a sharp downward strike.
Before the hit could land, though, a pink magical aura gripped the silver-maned
unicorn's form and hoisted him into the air, a pair of shackles appearing from
a ball of light and clasping around his front hooves. "Chanson Cheval, you are
under arrest for aggravated assault on one member of Princess Celestia's
expected audience, and involuntary using music-based magic to assault both
Royal Guards and foreign delegates alike. You will be held with no chance of
bail," Shining bellowed, noticing the stallion's horn glowing.
An orange aura encased Sarah's tail and hoisted it up, but the captain's horn
glowed brighter in response. A circular-shaped magic inhibitor appeared from
another ball of light and clasped around the base of the the red-coated pony's
shimmering horn, causing the glow around the hippogryph's tail to dissipate and
the green mass of hair to drop.
"You mean to tell me this bitch is a foreign diplomat!" Cheval barked, gaze
affixed on the captain while his chained hooves began rattling as soon as he
pointed them accusingly at the mare he assaulted.
Shining nodded. "I'm also adding attempted sexual battery by use of magic to
that list of charges. You were stupid enough to lift her tail in front of me of
all possible ponies, and in broad daylight while you're already under arrest to
boot," he stated coldly.
"Why do you think he's trotting with me and the other cloaked ponies in the
first place?" Sarah groaned as she started to stand up once more. Blood
trickled from the corner of her mouth, a bruise forming from where the hoof
connected with her cheek. She rose a talon to rub the wound and added, "I
wouldn't call myself a foreign diplomat; I'm just tagging along with my sister
and her companions."
"Guards, half of you will escort Cheval to the dungeons! The other half will
stick with the Fantasians and continue to escort them! You two, with the harp,
take it to the high mages, at once!" Shining Armor shouted in a raised voice,
and at once the guards took up three formations. Four unicorns and two pegasi
circled Cheval and magically restrained him, toting him away from the scene and
ignoring a long string of curses he sent Sarah's way. The two who scooped up
the harp likewise left, flying on ahead and keeping the instrument held in a
pair of front hooves as they vanished from sight.
"Do you need a helping hoof? You appear to be pretty badly battered," one of
the remaining guards stated, looking at Sarah with concern flickering in his
eyes.
Sarah looked at him and sent him a weak smile. "I've... I've handled worse.
I'll live, but I'll let you know if the pain becomes too much," she answered,
wincing as her claw moved to feel her chest and stomach. "Damn, I think he
cracked a rib."
"The sun's setting," Matt noted, muzzle pointing towards the red-and-orange sky
that had begun turning a shade of violet on one bare edge of the vast expanse.
"I wish I could stay and watch the last rays of daylight paint this city's
golds and purples, but we've already wasted enough time as it stands. Shining
Armor, can we please get a move on?"
"Let's," Shining started, only to pause and turn his attention back to Sarah.
"Is it alright if I flew the rest of the way? My claws still hurt from playing
that harp," Sarah asked, still sporting a weak smile on her face.
"But you've been assaulted!" a guard pointed out, eyes widening as he turned to
the mare.
"Grey-mane didn't damage my wings in the slightest. He went for my face and
stomach, which aren't even remotely close to my wing joints. 's fine," Sarah
retorted, wings flaring wide again.
"You can rest on my back," Fenrir offered with a toothy grin, standing on all
fours. "If your claws are aching already, it won't be long before your wings
decide to take a similar route. Besides, for a hippogryph, your wing muscles
look rather weak. For how long are you able to sustain your weight in the sky,
hrrmm?"
Sarah flinched, ears folding back against her head as her grin morphed into a
nervous smile. She let off a hitched, uneven laugh as she blurted out, "O-only
a f-few minutes."
"Then I strongly suggest you hop on. Otherwise, you'll wear yourself down
faster than our hornless changeling can possibly hope to trot," Fenrir snorted,
his stature unmoving until the hippogryph begrudgingly complied with his demand
a few moments later.
"Hornless changeling?" Shining parroted, turning to the diamond dog with a brow
raised.
"On my back. She's the almost-foal-sized one with the facial injury covered by
the mask," Matt piped up, garnering the attention of the purple-clad unicorn.
"Huh. I guess I didn't notice the hornless part. Then again, a scar that wide
on the muzzle tends to draw more attention," Shining murmured under his breath
as the remaining guards took up a two-line formation, with the Fantasians once
more jostling to form a third line between the two rows of armored ponies. As
soon as the group finished its arrangement, he trotted around to take point
once more.
"Onward, and let us try not to attract any more attention to ourselves while
we're at it!" he barked, and with that, the bunch as a whole trotted in step
behind him as he led them towards another street that ended in a golden gate
adorned with a sun and crescent moon.
***** Chapter IX, Part II- Isolated Jabbering *****
"I think I recognize those ponies, with the exception of the really dark one
over there," Lance remarked, standing in a marbled hallway adorned with a red
carpet and a few dangling flower pots here and there. He eyed a stained glass
mural depicting six ponies firing a multi-directional beam of energy at a
seventh, larger dark blue pony with a pair of imposing wings spread wide. The
mural’s coloring featured a predominant purple, highlighted with azure. The six
firing the beam stood on a floor of a similar blue shade.
"What?" Shining Armor asked, stopping before trotting up to the mural in
question. He flashed a smile at the picture before it fell into a stoic pursing
of the lips as the cloaked pegasus turned to him.
"You know something I don't?" Lance asked, a brow raised.
"Well, given the barrier kept the worlds apart until... what, three days ago,
you could say I know a lot about Mythos that you don't. By that same token, you
know much more about Fantasia then I could ever hope to learn," Shining
retorted in a blunt tone. He watched as the pegasus's red-eyed visage flicked
between several emotions before settling on a frown.
"You do have a point," Lance conceded, turning around as the his compatriots
and the rest of the guards caught up. He held up a hoof, signaling for the rest
of the Fantasians to stop, and when they halted he directed that same hoof to
the stained glass depiction. "Any of those ponies look the least bit familiar?"
he asked.
"Hold the radio," Natalie interjected, eyeballing the mural with a narrow-eyed
gaze of suspicion and a brow shooting up. "I think I'd recognize that poofy
mane of bright pink anywhere."
"And that curly one of violet," Anna added.
"Wait up, how are the non-unicorns firing lasers from their heads, exactly?"
Katie piped up, jerking her head a bit before raising a hoof to point at the
glass artwork accusingly.
"That's a damn good question," Matt conceded, his gaze falling on the dark pony
in the mural. "And who is that one? I don't think I've seen any relics or
pictures depicting a unisus before."
"Unisus?" a guard piped up, looking at the half-Clydesdale with a set of brows
shooting up.
"A pony with the wings of a pegasus and the horn of a unicorn. What, you have a
different name for those kinds of ponies?" Sarah questioned, frowning as the
lot of guards that still accompanied her and her companions shared wide-eyed
looks.
"We call them alicorns around here," Shining answered in a voice laced with
disbelief.
"Doesn't that term refer to a unicorn's horn, though?" Alexander interjected,
his inquiry causing the guards to exchange another series of glances.
"Er, yes... but around here, it's just used to refer to what you called a, um,
‘unisus’ nowadays," Shining replied, one of his back legs fidgeting ever so
slightly.
"Erm, do you consider 'unisus' an insult? If not, then why're you fidgeting
right now?" Katie inquired, getting a look from the guards' captain.
"... Me, no. But, I'm... I'm married to an alicorn, and she might," he answered
in an uneasy tone.
"Stop right there this instant," Fenrir growled, sending Shining a wide-eyed
look. "Captain Armor, I am highly skeptical and disbelieving of your claim.
Thusly, I present unto you a simple challenge: prove that your supposed wife is
a unisus, or an alicorn, or whatever you care to call her. If you are able to
do just that, and she doesn't have a false horn or pair of wings, then I shall
perform one deed to make up for my skepticism. Do we have ourselves a deal?"
Shining's brows shot up. "One deed?" he asked.
"Anything you wish, so long as it is within reasonable boundaries," Fenrir
replied, his face setting into an expressionless look as he nodded his head. "I
am an ambassador of sorts, not a slave. Thus, I should be allowed to retain a
reasonable shred of my dignity."
Shining donned the faintest of smirks. "Fair enough. I shall find my wife right
away. Guards, escort the Fantasians to the throne room, if the Princesses are
still inside it. If not, find out where they're at and reroute the ambassadors
there," he commanded, and bounded off before any of the guards could have a
chance to object to his order.
"Oh boy," Armin groaned, taking a moment to sit on his rump and fling his front
legs into the air. "Looks like Shining's lost it."
"Let's hope he's not performing an act of cowardice on us," Lance sighed,
shaking his head.
"You, with the mask, standing next to the hippogryph," a guard began, staring
pointedly at Armin, "are you a changeling? I think I've caught a glimpse of
blue ribs."
"Yes, he's a changeling, under my command, and I'm having him wear the cloak
and mask. And no, he's not stripping those, thank you. You've already seen our
other changeling's face, and I think you don't need something else to gawk at,"
Lance snapped, stepping in front of the male changeling defensively. The guards
exchanged looks before turning to the red-eyed pegasus stallion and nodding in
understanding.
"So, er... are there any alicorns in Fantasia?" a unicorn guard asked, ears
falling flat on his head.
"There haven't been any. If anything, pegacorn ponies are bedtime stories back
home," Sarah piped up, rubbing her shoulder with a claw. "In ancient legends,
yes. In the flesh, no."
The guards broke formation and formed a tight circle amongst themselves,
forelegs latching onto withers of their fellow guardsponies and heads all bowed
low in the center. They whispered fervently, though their murmurs were so
rampant and overlapping that whatever it had been that they chatted about
eluded the otherworldly group. Not even Alexander or Fenrir could make out the
tumbling words uttered in hushed tones, because once they tried to sneak near
the guards, the whole group moved away from them as if one lifeform that
mimicked the walking mannerisms of an ocean crab.
Maria hopped from Alexander's back and approached the guards on all fours,
before rising onto her back legs to place her talons on the posterior of one of
the armored unicorns. The unicorn in question jumped and craned his neck to
look at the filly, sighing deeply as a bit of a blush came onto his face. "What
are you doing?" she asked.
"I-I-well," the guard spluttered, ears falling flat against his cranium. His
blush deepened, and his eyes nearly bugged out from their sockets as the little
hippogryph rose a talon up and grabbed him by the dock of his tail. A green
magical aura grabbed the foal and forced her to relinquish her hold, prior to
dragging her back.
"Apologies for the surprise molesting—she doesn't know any better. I'll have a
talk with her about that," Anna stated in a dark tone, her horn glowing as the
filly had stopped in front of her tan-beige hooves. She grabbed Maria and
hefted her up with her hooves, standing up and turning around whilst bringing
foal to eye level.
She donned a hard glare and she spoke in a very reprimanding tone of voice,
"Listen, can we not put our little talons on the tails and butts of random
ponies? It's bad, and if you put your claws on an equally bad pony or gryphon
or whatever, they might really hurt you."
"B-but everygryph back home did it! Th-they told me it was a game!" Maria
exclaimed, fidgeting in Anna's grasp wildly. "E-even the colts did it! But
daddy wouldn't let me play that game!"
Anna's glare melted into a wide-eyed look of horror tinged with a shade of deep
azure. She took a few moments just to regain her composure, and another few to
attempt to form a response, yet she had gone silent even as her mouth began
moving in an a vain effort to form words. For another moment or so, all she
could do was little more than splutter incoherently until Natalie trotted to
the archer and slapped her across the back of her head with a hoof.
She shook her head before sending Natalie a small grin and returning her
attention to the filly in her hooves. "You don't play that game with anypony,
anygryph, or whatever unless you find somepony or gryph that you really like,
and they really like you, and you're both sure you want to play that game. If
you want to, but the other doesn't, then it just makes you as bad as that big
bearded... meanie who put his claws on you and scratched you with them. And you
don't want to be like that meanie, right?" Anna asked.
"I-I don't w-wanna be like him," Maria whimpered, her bout of flailing ceasing
on the spot. She shivered, and her ears fell back on her head.
"Good. Now, go tell that guard that you're sorry for touching him," Anna
scolded, setting the filly down before trotting behind her and giving her an
encouraging nudge with her muzzle. The child approached the unicorn she
molested with a reluctant gait in her step, frail form shivering as she moved.
"I-I'm sorry for touching you," Maria whimpered, and the guard sent her a small
grin before ruffling her mane with his hoof.
"I forgive you, little one," he answered in a serene tone, though there seemed
to be a faint glimmer in his eyes.
Lance caught that glimmer, and he spoke up, "I take it you're offended that a
foreign child pretty much sexually assaulted you without warning?"
The guard turned to him and his grin fell as he silently nodded. "And... well,
she did say..." he trailed off.
"She was with a bunch of hippogryphs in a town surrounded by ice and snow who
taught her bad things and deliberately kept her uneducated," Alexander
interjected, shaking his head with a firm frown set into his visage. "They even
abused her and her family simply because she wanted a cutie mark."
"I wish he was making that up," Sarah added, crossing her front limbs. "And
those very same hippogryphs wanted my hide because look what I got," she
stated, rising up onto a standing stance and spreading her wings to show the
guards her cutie mark.
"Uh, wasn't there a harp somewhere in the equation?" Katie piped up, slipping
off Matt's back before trotting to the upright mare and gesturing to the cutie
mark. The rest of the Fantasians turned to the wraith and followed her clothed
hoof, and all blinked as they found that the harp part of the cutie mark had
indeed and inexplicably gone missing.
"Now it's just a halberd and what looks like a gust of wind surrounding it. A
change in one’s talent markings is something I've not heard of before, let
alone witnessed in the flesh," Fenrir said in an impassive tone.
Sarah eyed the mark for a moment and reverted to all fours, her wings snapping
shut at her sides. "I-I don't kn-know," she stuttered, her eyes widening.
"This... this ha-hasn't happened b-before."
"This is peculiar. There's nothing we can do about it now, though. Still..."
Lance trailed off, sighing heavily as he turned to the assembled guards.
"Alright, we've dilly-dallied enough. Let's meet these 'Princesses' and get it
over with."
The guard who'd been accosted by Maria nodded again. "Just stick with us; we'd
rather you didn't get lost," he replied.
"Just lead the way, and we'll follow. It's not like we have much choice
anyway," Natalie conceded, her horn glowing. She embraced Maria with her magic
and lifted the filly high into the air before gently lowering her onto her
back.
Katie clambered onto Lance's backside, wincing as she felt a feather or two
poke at the holes in her legs even through the three layers of cloth his back
and the additional one draped on her limbs. "I think I scraped a leg bone on
your wings. Apologies," she whispered.
Lance rolled his eyes and simply nodded as if in resignation. "It happens," he
whispered back.
The two groups trotted on down the halls in silence that felt like it lasted
for hours on end, though the Fantasians occasionally stopped to marvel at some
more stained glass murals. Some depicted two pegacorn ponies, usually
accompanied by both the sun and the moon, flying in circles or walking on
clouds. Some depicted the average pony, usually flying, casting a spell from a
grimoire, or tilling a field. More murals still depicted a strange chimerical
creature with the head of a goat and a body sporting limbs so mismatched it
looked more akin to something haphazardly stitched together.
This same creature, in almost every single instance it cropped up in a mural,
tormented ponies using puppet crosses, tugging at their strings to achieve a
plethora of agonized expressions from said ponies it antagonized. Another,
though, had the entire band of impromptu ambassadors gaping; this one had the
same six ponies firing off a multi-directional beam at the chimera, with half
of its colorful body turned a rocky grey in hue.
"They have petrification in their arsenal. Now I find myself not wanting to
earn their ire," Fenrir whimpered as he continued to gaze at the mural. A
shiver ran down his body at the mere thought of being turned to a slab of
stone, and by six ponies that could somehow fire a beam in unison despite only
two having unicorn horns, no less.
"What's petrification?" Maria inquired, earning a look from Anna.
Anna had begun sweating again, and although there was a smile on her muzzle, it
shook as her jaw trembled with the rest of her body. "It means you get turned
into a rock," she answered in a nervous tone. "It isn't exactly pleasant."
"So it's bad?" Maria asked.
"I've heard little of the whole petrification process, but what I know of it
is... it's terrible," Alexander sighed, raising a claw to pat the child's head.
Another few moments or so were spent trotting down the hall, and the group and
their escorts paused at a grand set of double doors that'd been flung wide
open, revealing an empty room with a throne beyond. This throne had been hewn
of gold that looked more orange in color as the last vestiges of daylight
faded. Cushions surrounded it on raised bronze ledges, and adorning the walls
were more stained glass depictions, though they only had one main color instead
of two per piece.
"It appears that the Princesses aren't in the throne chamber," a guard noted,
earning a glare from the Fantasian pegasus.
"Thank you Captain Obvious, now please show us where they are at," Lance
groaned, flinging a hoof up to wave it as though for emphasis.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
"Settle down," a feminine voice bellowed throughout a room of clamoring ponies
dressed in formal attire sitting in rows and rows of pews, some with sparkling
coats and manes and others sporting wings and armor. A white alicorn with a
mane that glittered with the colors of the waking dawn nodded and opened her
mouth to shout again from atop of her makeshift wooden perch, only for whatever
she wanted to say to die down with the chattering before it could leave her
lips. She paused with a sigh and turned to a white unicorn with a slicked-back
blond mane and a tie around his neck. "Now, Blueblood, what were you saying?"
"We should send the armies to Fantasia!" the unicorn replied in a loud voice
that echoed across the room, eyes narrowing to slits. "From Griffonstone to
Yakyakistan, and whatever forces lie to the west, we should all send them to
the sister planet and establish firm Canterlot rule! Whoever resists should be
sent to a slave camp, or burned at the stake!"
A night blue alicorn who sat next to the white one shook her head. "But
Blueblood, that is something we cannot do. We haven't enough airships, and I
fear that whatever rules the Griffonstone and Yakyakistan forces may have could
differ drastically from our own. And what good would killing and enslaving the
natives do? Why, that could just spark an interplanetary war that we may be
unprepared for."
"They may be uncivilized brutes, the entire Fantasian populace! For all we
know, they could be adept at dark, arcane magic and excel in shady,
disharmonious doings... They could be itching for our hides at any moment,
waiting to rend the flesh from our bones and bathe in our blood! Such a
travesty cannot, I repeat, cannot be allowed to happen!" Blueblood snapped,
some bits of mane curling out of place like broken guitar strings as he ranted
and raved. Murmurs from the other ponies erupted, some in agreement, and others
uttering about how outlandish the stallion made things sound.
"Auntie Luna, do you not agree with my reasoning?" Blueblood asked after the
murmurs hushed again.
Luna pursed her lips together for a moment before she answered, "While you do
raise a point, and a very valid one at that, I'm afraid we still cannot invade
Fantasia. Even if we gathered the necessary forces and accrued enough airships,
if they have dark magic as you say, then they might have a deadly edge in
battle. We might as well beat a dead horse at that point."
A pink alicorn with a tri-colored mane piped up, "But what if there's nothing
in Fantasia? The populace might've died off in the hundreds of years or so the
barrier has stood. All there'd be would be local flora and fauna; a conquest
has equal chance of yielding no fruit."
"That would be true, Cadence, if not for what Twilight had found," the white
alicorn conceded with a nod.
Cadence turned to the white mare and gaped. "Auntie Celestia, do you mean to
tell me there are live Fantasians?" she asked.
"Yes. According to a letter she sent to me upon returning to Equestria." Here,
Celestia paused as her horn glowed. A golden light flashed near her form for a
moment before gently dissipating, revealing a floating scroll in its place. She
levitated the parchment to Cadence and proceeded to continue, "She found nearly
a dozen Fantasians who were willing to come here."
Cadence took the scroll in a soft blue magic and opened it before scanning
whatever details that lay within. As she read, her face paled bit by bit,
turning near white when she reached the end. "Oh... I feel sorry for her," she
mumbled in a hushed whisper.
"I do as well, but we cannot dwell on such things," Celestia replied in an
equally hushed tone, turning to the rest of the assembled ponies as they once
more started chattering amongst themselves. "Calm down, at once," she hollered
again, sighing as the jabbering ceased. "Would anypony else, excluding
Blueblood, have any suggestions on what to do with the situation regarding the
sister world?"
"Princess, if I may," spoke another white unicorn with a blue mane, a suit, and
a monocle. When the eyes of the alicorns fell upon him, he cleared his throat
before deciding to further venture, "Would it be a good idea to attempt to form
alliances and trade agreements with the Fantasians? They might have things we
Mythonians lack, and might want to boost their economies with our own. By
trading our resources across nations, we could further enrich both of us."
"A sound idea, but the only travel to and from the sister world is by airship,"
Luna replied, shaking her head. "Unless we can construct portals between the
worlds, I don't see how that's possible."
"There are portals to Tartarus itself. Why not Fantasia?" another unicorn with
a white coat interjected, this one a mare with a pink mane.
"A fair point, but there are many things that can make such a thing impossible,
or at least difficult to even manage," Luna retorted, again shaking her head.
"Such as?" Blueblood hissed impatiently, tapping a hoof on the floor as though
he asked the earlier question.
"Like weather, geographic location of both ends of the portal, whether or not
the weather can be controlled by pegasus magic, new guard posts... there's an
awful lot to consider here. I'm sure Twilight Sparkle could make a detailed
list of every little thing even more effectively than the high mages could,"
Luna sighed, closing her eyes and raising a hoof laden with a horseshoe to run
down the bridge of her muzzle.
"And how well the populace would take the existence of such a portal, let alone
whether or not they might be willing to abuse it," Celestia added, donning a
simple frown. "Hopefully, we can find ano—"
A single guard bustled into the room, his presence immediately getting noticed
by the white alicorn as words died in her throat. "Princess Celestia, I have
urgent news!" he bellowed as all eyes fell unto him.
"What is it?" Celestia inquired, her frown fading for a moment, only to
reappear when the guard spoke again.
"Captain Shining Armor has found Fantasians who arrived by airship. He is
having Sergeant Riverwater escort them here in his place," the guard answered
as the aforementioned captain burst into the room, almost running over
Blueblood in the process.
"Speak of Sombra, and he shall appear," Luna groaned as Shining muttered an
apology to Blueblood. "Captain Armor, what's your report?"
The purple-clad unicorn tore his attention from Blueblood to the alicorn
addressing him, and assumed a hard face. "The Fantasians who arrived in
Equestria should be here shortly," Shining replied. "All of them have cloaks,
and two wear masks. I have received word from Sergeant Riverwater and from the
Fantasians themselves that said masked ones are changelings."
At that moment, clamor violently erupted again amidst the ponies, this time
with terrified whispers.
"Fantasian changelings?"
"Are we being invaded again?"
"What will we do?"
"Are the rest changelings too?"
"Cease, at once!" Luna shrieked in her loudest strata of royal voice, her
briefly-echoing tone causing the rampant mumblings to stop on the spot.
"Captain Armor, do you have anything else to report?"
"From what I could glean from the otherworlders, there are no known Fantasian
alicorns alive. I don't know the full details, but they only exist in ancient
legends and nothing more," Shining answered, his eyes averting to Cadence. "In
fact, when I mentioned that my wife is an alicorn, one of the non-ponies—a male
diamond dog, to be precise—immediately became skeptical. Their reactions may
not be... favorable."
"So, we might have to keep tabs on them. Already, I feel the pits of my stomach
churning in protest," Luna mumbled, turning to Celestia with a brow raised.
A third guard bustled into the room, and he had an assortment of cloaked ponies
and non-ponies flanking him. "Princess," he started, bringing his front
quarters down to a low bow, "I have brought the Fantasian ambassadors."
Celestia gazed at the assembled bunch with a critical eye, taking in the few
features she could make out that hadn't been obstructed by their garments. She
noted that the Fantasians stared at her, some with eyes glinting in wonder and
others going stone-faced; the two with the masks proved to be the hardest of
the bunch to read, as their entire bodies had been covered in cloth and their
faces shielded with what looked to be ceramic. She turned to the bowing guard
and nodded. "At ease, Sergeant Riverwater," she stated, and the guard rose into
a standing position to nod back.
Her attention immediately went to Blueblood as he huffed his chest and marched
to the Fantasians. "You brought a bunch of peasants? That mane is horrendous!
Hack off the braids and clean it up. It is much too long for you!" he hissed,
flinching as Matt glared at him.
"You have no say over how I treat my mane. Lay off," Matt hissed in a cold
tone, shaking his head and easing on the glare as Blueblood stomped a hoof
while spluttering incoherently for a moment.
"Which one of you is this 'Princess Celestia' I've been hearing about?" Lance
asked, stepping forward with his gaze affixed onto the alicorns.
"You dare speak of my beloved Auntie like that, you red-eyed lowlife?"
Blueblood snapped, turning to Lance as he spoke.
The pegasus chuckled and directed his attention to the Mythonian stallion with
a wicked smirk plastering his muzzle. "You're asking me to kick you off this
mountain, right?" he retorted.
Katie leaned a bit to one side, orbs alight despite the hood on her head nearly
shadowing them. Blueblood shivered as he spotted the twin glowing dots of
azure, and his mane stood on end as the masked mare on the pegasus's back spoke
in a dead, echoing voice, "You're about to sign your very own death
certificate. Are you proud of yourself?"
"Cease the hostilities. Blueblood, step as far away from the Fantasians as you
are able. You three, with the mask and the red and blond manes, we reserve the
right to deport you. I'd much prefer it if we kept things to a diplomatic
level," said Celestia, holding one leg over the shoulder of a far more
aggressive-seeming Luna.
"We'd rather be diplomatic too," Natalie replied before gesturing to the
retreating Blueblood with a hoof. "It seems that some ponies don't want to
remain that way."
Luna looked over at Celestia and the hoof on her shoulder, and then sighed.
"Pardon Blueblood. He's been this way since the barrier broke. The parliament's
been hotly debating on what to do with Fantasia."
"Might I have a suggestion for this parliament, if I am permitted to speak?"
Sarah interjected, raising a talon as she stepped forward.
"Well, what is it? We're all ears," Luna answered, eyeing the hippogryph and
tilting her head.
"It's a relatively simple one: don't send anypony to Fantasia. The goings-on in
my home planet are... less than satisfactory," Sarah answered in a disturbingly
calm tone, her suggestion once more the cause for another uproar amidst the
entire parliament.
The alicorns exchanged glances, and whispered amongst themselves for a moment
before another voice drew their attention. "Hey, why's that masked one's mask
holes glowing?" a brown-coated stallion asked, gesturing to the wraith.
"Please don't make her take her coverings off, please don't make her take her
coverings off..." Matt chanted to himself, ears falling flat against his skull.
“Hey!” shouted one of the ponies from the pews nearest to the group, standing
upright on his back legs as if he wanted the otherworlders to see him. “Take
off that mask!”
"No," Katie hissed, turning to the stallion and giving him no more recognition
than a simple huff from her concealed nostrils.
"If you won't remove that hideous porcelain mimicry of a pony's face,"
Blueblood declared, his horn glowing as his magic embraced the wraith and
lifted her into the air like a sack of potatoes when it took hold of the mask,
"then I shall do it for you!"
"Unhand her, at once!" Fenrir barked, making to lunge forward, only to be
stopped by dual magic auras of blue and green.
"No, Blueblood, don't take off her mask!" Shining cried, but by then it was
already too late; Blueblood's magic managed to remove the mask and threw both
that and the wraith to the floor. The action gave way to a thick, tense silence
that blanketed the room. Not even the shuffling mare's hooves could hope to
break it as she made to stand back up.
Blueblood smirked triumphantly as his magic continued to work still, undoing
the bindings on her legs. His grin fell as he eyed the wide holes in the limbs,
and further descended into a gape accompanied by widening eyes and shrunken
irises as the wraith grabbed the base of her cloak with her mouth and violently
cast it off of her withered form. Once the garment landed in a messy heap at
her side, she angled her body as if to show off her grotesque grandeur, her
split-mouthed face affixed in his direction all the while.
Blueblood stepped back, his legs shaking as he continued to stare at the thin,
pale changeling. "What part of the two-lettered word 'no' did you fail to
comprehend?" Katie snapped in a cold, ghastly tone, her burning azure orbs
dimming to meager pinpricks. Her ears shot straight up and her wings flared
wide as she shook her head and added, "You brought this upon yourself. I hope
you're happy."
Sarah waited for the parliament to erupt in clamor. When it failed to do so
after a few moments, she took the chance to speak, using a claw to gesture to
Katie as her loud voice filled the room, "Yeah, she's kinda in very bad shape.
That's just one example out of the many I could possibly give over why Fantasia
is less than satisfactory. In fact, seven Mythonians came by three days ago,
and one of them has already gone loco."
The alicorns exchanged glances as, yet again, the assembled Mythonians started
bickering en masse. One voice caught their attention, as well as that of the
assembled unicorns and ambassadors, when it echoed and hushed the ongoing
gossip. "Cease! This could be a bad case of starvation and torture going on
here; I do believe this pale changeling may just be an isolated case!" Shining
bellowed, a hoof pointing at the wraith as he spoke.
"Isolated case?" Lance interjected, visage hardening as all eyes in the room
shifted to him. "I'm afraid this is no isolated incident. This isn’t rare at
all."
"And how would you know?" Shining asked, turning to the pegasus as he too began
casting off his cloak.
***** Chapter X- A Lovely Place to Stay *****
All watched with utmost silence and held breaths as the pegasus shook off the
cloak, only to reveal two more cloth wrappings laden all around his back and
midsection. Lance fumbled for a bit, using just his mouth to loosen the fabrics
enough that he could simply shake them from his form as though they were stray
leaves that had hitched a ride upon him. Once those extra layers fell into a
heap at his side, his eyes darted across the whole parliamentary body as they
let off a unified gasp, noting that a few had flown into the air on wings from
the crowd as his own pair spread wide.
"His wings! What happened to his wings?!" one of the airborne pegasi shrieked,
his irises shrunk to pinpricks.
"Who would force a pony to have iron merged into his flesh! It must be painful
to trot in!" another exclaimed before fainting and dropping out of the air like
a fly, whereupon another swooped in and caught her before she could hit the
floor.
"It goes from the end of his withers to his croup! Is it possible to remove the
iron without killing him?" a third hollered, his legs shaking freely as he
stayed in mid-air.
Lance stomped his hoof, just prior to shaking his head. "I see you're all
fixated with what's on my back. No, this cannot be removed at this time. It's
too risky," he stated in a cold voice.
"What... happened?" Shining asked, his voice cracking as the question left his
lips.
"A very long story," Lance replied, his tone firm and his visage set into a
scowl. "But I can tell you what happened before this," he began, using a hoof
to gesture to his wings. "It's very simple: I got my cutie mark."
Shining's eyes widened. "You... what?" he inquired.
Fenrir stepped forward, flanking the pegasus. "It's something that happens...
all the time in Fantasia, sadly. Anygryph or pony with wings that aspires or
achieves their talent markings have their wings plucked, torn away from their
bodies, or in this case mangled beyond all repair should they get captured.
It's especially common for foals, and doubly so for those whose talents center
around flight. I have personally seen it happen many times, especially in the
course of one night," he said in a low, chilling tone. "The flightless
hippogryph filly we have with us... her feathers had already been forcibly
removed."
"As did I, but I managed to get away before any of my feathers were removed,"
Sarah added, stepping forward. "Another one of the many reasons we don't want
Mythonians in Fantasia—out of the seven that showed up, two were pegasi with
cutie marks. It wouldn't have mattered to the locals that they were
ambassadors. The end result would have been the same."
"Is there... a way to remedy his flightlessness?" Cadence piped up, a frown on
her face.
Natalie stepped up. "Not yet, but me and Matt and Anna—" she gestured to her
fellow unicorns with a hoof as she spoke, "—take turns working on possible
solutions."
"A mob of very angry unicorns did this to me, so I figured unicorns could
remove the blasted metal bits," Lance sighed, shaking his head. "But, after
this damn thing gets removed—if that happens at all sometime this century—I may
still remain flightless. I'm in a lose-lose situation here, and I wouldn't wish
this upon anypony or gryph period."
He flexed his steel wings and flapped them for a moment or so before adding,
"My joints and muscles are still whole, just covered and unable to grow
feathers. For all I know, the metal could've been hexed ten ways to Sunday, and
the three unicorns I have with me wouldn't know until they tried one of their
many possible 'solutions' to my predicament."
"What's worse is that, if we make one wrong move, we could tear out his entire
spinal column. We haven't tried many 'solutions,' and what little we could
manage failed thus far. It's very tricky to deal with," Anna stated, trotting
up and flanking the pegasus on his other side, using a hoof to gesture to his
back. The parliament kept their gaze glued to Lance, though, and she sighed. "I
get the feeling some of you want to toss him in a circus of freaks."
"A circus of freaks?" Blueblood scoffed, all eyes falling unto him as he spoke.
"Oh, no no no. The rest of you, mayhaps you'd be fit for such a thing. But that
pegasus and the very ugly changeling deserve one thing and one thing alone: to
be put out of their misery!"
"Blueblood, cease! We will not kill the ambassadors, let alone relegate them to
a miserable life just because they are standing in the same room as we are!"
Luna bellowed, rising onto her legs and slamming her front hooves again.
"Can I ask for him to leave? Otherwise, he's going to continue to cause
problems and be a pain in the cutie marks for us all," Matt groaned, gesturing
to Blueblood with a hoof.
"If anything, it's you who should leave," Blueblood retorted, a wicked smirk
curling on his face. He gestured to the ceiling with a hoof. "Look up there, at
the ceiling," he stated. Matt hesitated for a moment and followed the hoof,
finding the ceiling adorned with more stained glass murals. One sported the
black pony from before, another had the chimera, a third featured a dark grey
unicorn with an unusually red horn, and a fourth depicted a changeling mare
with a black coat and dark blueish-green mane.
"What do you notice about those murals? Go on, guess," the blond-maned
Mythonian stallion stated with an indignant huff. "The one with mismatched
limbs first."
"The chimera is bright; it looks like it should be a walking rainbow with all
of those colors," Matt replied, returning his gaze to Blueblood. He shook off
his cloak and sat on his haunches.
"Very good. Now, tell me: what color are the other three creatures in the rest
of the murals?" Blueblood inquired, still sneering.
"Black, or very close to it. Accompanied by reds, blues, and greens, also
dark," Matt replied, frowning.
"Excellent. And what color are you?" Blueblood continued, his smirk widening.
"Mostly black, with white legs, a white horn, and white muzzle. What are you
trying to get at?" Matt snarled, his face setting in a scowl as Blueblood sat
on his rear and clapped his front hooves in a mocking applause.
Blueblood rose onto his legs and pointed a hoof at each and every Fantasian,
and he answered, "All of you sport dark and faded colors! The only two
exceptions I can see are the cream-colored mare and the pale changeling amongst
you. Thus, you've all come here to seduce us and destroy Equestria—nay,
Mythos—with whatever devilry you possess!" he shouted in an accusatory tone,
still grinning even as Natalie and Katie shifted into pouncing stances.
"Enough!" Luna bellowed, jumping down from the perch and landing in front of
Blueblood with a powerful leap, turning to him and spreading a pair of wings
that stretched wide. She leaned in close to the stallion with an icy glare,
casting her shadow over him, and she intoned in a low voice, "Leave us, at
once. You are nothing but trouble, for you talk ill of our guests when they
have done nothing more than attempt to speak."
The Fantasians flinched, watching Luna as she turned to face them, barely
noticing Blueblood as he skedaddled out of the room. The alicorn closed her
wings, and sighed. "Sincerest apologies... why are you all gaping?" she asked.
"Y-y-you have w-w-wings," Anna stuttered, her form trembling, "a-a-and a m-moon
cutie mark like a pony o-on the murals."
Luna looked up at the murals on the ceiling and sighed before turning her
attention back to the Fantasians. "Well, yes I do..." she trailed off when
Shining looked at her with a frown, before his words bounced about in her
skull.
"There are no known Fantasian alicorns. Their reactions might not be...
favorable."
Anna hesitantly trotted up to Luna, stiffening when she stood in front of her.
"May... may I touch y-your wings?" she asked.
"W-why do you ask?" Luna inquired, eyelids slanting in worry as the Fantasian
unicorn before her twiddled with her front hooves for a moment.
"To... assess if they're the real deal. No offense," Anna answered, still
fidgeting.
Luna thought this over for a moment, briefly turning to Celestia and Cadence.
The other two nodded to her before she turned back to the green-maned unicorn.
"Only a little. Pluck a feather if you wish, but no more than that," Luna
answered. She spread a wing and flinched when a tan-beige hoof rose up to
fondle the appendage, stroking the feathers in a seemingly random fashion.
"By Gotcat's claws..." Anna murmured, eyes widening as she continued to play
with the feathers.
"Stop," Luna stated as the hoof strayed a little too close to the junction
where wing and back met. She hissed when Anna failed to comply and repeated in
a much more stern, demanding tone, "Stop."
Anna flinched and backed off, cringing as she set her hoof down. "Sorry... it's
just... they were so soft," she mumbled. A gold aura embraced her and dragged
her back to her compatriots.
"Excuse her. She's... entranced by feathers," Alexander sighed, using a claw to
gesture to Anna. "I'm impressed she hasn't laid a hoof on her sister's wings
yet. It's like the things put a hypnotic spell on her or something of the
sort."
"Feather-fondler," Sarah muttered under her breath with a roll of her eyes.
Maria hopped off Alexander's back and ran to Luna, only to stumble on her own
claws and trip halfway through. She flipped and landed on her back, wincing for
a bit before standing up on wobbly rear legs. The filly stumbled again upon
taking three steps on said back legs alone, this time landing on her face.
Lance trotted up to her and scooped her up with a front leg, carefully placing
her between his wings and sighing after.
"Walking on hooves is hard," Maria complained, eyes screwed tightly shut.
"I know it is. Why'd you try trotting to the alicorn, though?" Lance
questioned, turning to the foal with a brow raised.
"Because she's pretty," Maria answered.
"Uhuh. Is that the only reason?" Lance continued, sending the filly a small
grin.
"Yeah," Maria responded with a nod.
"I would love to continue with the pleasantries, but due to a vast number of
complications, I am afraid I'll have to adjourn this parliamentary meeting for
tonight," Celestia intoned, garnering everyone's attention as she spoke.
"Captain Armor, could you escort the Fantasians until they find a place to
rest?"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The group moved through various streets in silence, with Shining Armor leading
the way. Some guards here and there nodded to them, and even pointed hooves and
wings down particular roads the Fantasians simply didn't care to memorize.
After the moon rose high and they found themselves in a westmost side of the
city with few citizens but heavy guard patrol, they found a decently-built
hotel sporting various sun and moon motifs, with a gem-encrusted golden door
framed by a green parameter that seemed to sparkle like emeralds. Above the
door, lights that shined in all sorts of colors flashed overhead, highlighting
a structure below. It was a sign with the words sloppily smudged off like a
nasty ink blot.
"They redecorating?" Sarah asked, lifting a claw to point to the sign.
"I haven't the foggiest," Shining replied with a shrug as he made to open the
doors and trot inside, with the guests following suit. He zeroed in and trotted
ahead, speaking loud and clearly, "I have escorted some guests to this abode."
"Guests?" a mare's voice queried as the Fantasians filed in and found
themselves within an ornately-decorated waiting room, adorned with oil-based
paintings of unicorns and pegasi with a few earth ponies here and there that
were framed with gold. A carpet expanded along the floor, an intricate pattern
of stars, suns, and moons glistening under the light of hanging crystal
chandeliers. The lot paid no heed whatsoever to this, though; rather, their
unified gaze turned to and then fixed itself on a pink-coated unicorn with a
white mane sitting behind a desk as the sounds of paper being trifled with
filled the room.
"Hrm... ten... guests, and their cat... only three of which are unicorns..."
the unicorn mare behind the desk mumbled to herself as she flipped through a
book on said desk. She turned to the assembled bunch, namely looking at
Shining, and stated, "And you have brought them here... why?"
"On the direct orders of Princess Celestia herself—they're our Fantasian
guests," Shining replied simply.
"Fantasian guests?" the mare repeated, her eyes widening.
Shining nodded and then turned to Matt before he added, "Near here is a guard
post. The guards stationed there will know if you guys cause trouble. Or the
others that are roaming the streets tonight."
Matt nodded in understanding. "Alright. I assume I'll be the one paying, then?"
he asked.
"I was only to escort you, and nothing more," Shining confirmed, and he started
to trot around the group. "I have to return to my post." With that, he bustled
out of the room. The half-Clydesdale sighed and shook his head, his horn softly
glowing.
"How big are the rooms?" Natalie asked, trotting to the pink unicorn with a
brow raised.
"Enough to have large beds. A room could hold six at most," the pink mare
answered, closing the book and folding her front hooves over the desk. "The
price is fifty bits per room, please." Matt summoned a small leather bag with a
flash of magic and, after counting the amount of money needed for two rooms,
plopped that bag on the desk. The pink unicorn nodded and hollered for a bit,
until two unicorn stallions dressed in suits that covered everything past their
necks appeared.
"Guests? At this hour?" one of the stallions asked as soon as he arrived, this
one with a green mane and orange coat.
"Ten Fantasians, and their pet cat," the mare answered, gesturing to the bunch
with a hoof. "Show them to their rooms."
"Right away," the other stallion, one who sported a brown coat and almost black
mane, replied with a nod. He used a hoof to gesture to the bunch. He groaned
when NoLegs mewed, but said nothing more as he trotted away with his fellow
Mythonian. The Fantasians followed behind, and the suited ponies continued
leading the group down a long hall lined with oak doors for a half-hour.
The orange stallion leaned close to the brown one and whispered in his ear,
"They have an emaciated, hornless changeling with them. I think it's staring at
me."
"Look on the bright side, Napkin," the brown one replied in an equally low
tone, "they have two unicorn mares with them. Maybe we could try to score with
one of them."
Napkin grinned and nodded. "I call dibs on the one with the shooting star cutie
mark," he replied. He stopped and turned around, gesturing to a pair of rooms
on one side. "Alright, we'll require your names to book you for the night," he
said, his horn glowing. In a flash of light, a small notepad and a pencil
floated before him. "Full names are preferable, or just the surnames if you're
uncomfortable giving the full ones."
"Bladerune," Matt stated, watching as Napkin jotted something down on the
notepad.
"Next," Napkin sighed with a nod as soon as he finished writing.
"Mine's a bit of a mouthful. Starcovert," Natalie responded.
"Alrighty, that's two names," Napkin chirped, beaming when Anna spoke next.
"Windwood."
"Lyregale," Sarah answered after the archer had spoken.
"Icedraft," Maria chirped.
"Boltwing," Lance stated, frowning as Napkin continued to jot down stuff on the
notepad without even the slightest bit of a harried look on his face.
"Rubywing," Katie sighed, tilting her head as the suited unicorn gave a brief
cringe.
"Armin. I have no surname," the living changeling spoke.
"Fenrir," the diamond dog snorted.
"Blitzplume," Alexander finished.
Napkin finished writing and turned his attention back to the group. "Excellent.
Now, nonponies in one room, and ponies in the other..." he trailed off upon
seeing Maria flinch, and he added, "and the hippogryphs with the ponies."
The group exchanged glances amongst themselves, though they didn't say
anything. They filed through the doors of their assigned rooms, shutting the
doors with muted grumbles as soon as all were within.
"For such an intricate exterior, waiting room, and a fairly lengthy hallway,
this room... could use a little work," Sarah remarked, scanning the room. It
had three beds, a carpet that had small holes riddling its frame, a worn table
with two chairs, and one pillow whose stuffing spilled out of another gaping
hole.
"Well, it could be worse," Lance retorted, shaking his head. "The stallions in
suits kept giving Anna and Natz looks. I really hope they don't try anything. I
don't want to explain how the ponies servicing us for the night wound up with
arrows and scorched manes to the guards tomorrow if it comes to that. As it
stands, I'm getting a bad feeling just standing here."
Natalie trotted to one of the beds and sat on it, bouncing her body on the
mattress a bit before turning to the others with a frown framed in a blush. "I
think a spring just popped out and poked me in the dock," she groaned.
"Joy, defective mattresses. What next?" Anna mumbled, turning to Lance. "So...
who gets what bed?" she asked.
"Stallions in one bed, mares in another, and Maria sleeps with the odd pony
out," Lance replied, trotting to another bed and flopping on it.
Matt trotted to the third bed and clambered on, quickly finding that the sides
of the bed were cramped and the mattress folded a bit when he put his full
weight on it. "Well, there's a problem with that," he hissed, turning to the
pegasus. "The bed is so small it's trying to eat me right now."
"Great, they can't even be bothered to get bigger beds to accommodate the half-
Clydesdale," Lance grumbled, stuffing his face in a pillow as he felt two more
forms clamber into the bed he had claimed. He lifted his head and glanced
around, seeing that Anna and Sarah had laid down next to him on either side,
scooching so close to him he might as well been sandwiched between them.
"Anna, you're not touching my wings," Sarah growled, eyes widening as Anna's
horn started glowing. Her left wing found itself embraced in a magical aura,
and forcibly spread wide, draped over Lance with the tips of the feathers
tickling the archer's exposed side.
"Stop with the shenanigans at once, or I'll kick you both out of the bed,"
Lance snapped in a cold tone, sending both mares a glare before resting his
head on the pillow when the hippogryph's wing folded back at her side.
Maria clambered in the bed last bed, next to Natalie. "What are you doing?" she
asked as the cream-colored unicorn hopped out of the bed, lifting her tail and
prying off a spring that had gotten wedged on her dock.
"I'm going to complain to the staff about the mattress. Stay put," Natalie
replied, quickly trotting out of the room with the offending spring secured in
a magical grasp. She found Napkin loitering in the hall outside and marched
right up to him. "Sir, I sat on the mattress of a bed I claimed, and this got
wedged on my dock," she stated firmly, presenting him the spring.
"Oh?" Napkin murmured upon having his attention grabbed by the spring. He
marveled at the object for a moment before speaking, "Well... Miss..."
"Starcovert," Natalie sighed, raising a hoof and letting it connect with her
face.
"Well, Miss Starcovert, business has been bad for this particular district
lately," Napkin sighed, shaking his head sadly. "We haven't been able to... er,
exactly afford new mattresses, though there are spares that can be swapped out.
Would you like the mattress the spring came from switched with one that's been
used less?"
"If it means I don't get poked in the back, I can agree to that. Would that
cost any extra bits?" Natalie asked, lowering her hoof down.
Napkin shifted a bit and donned a simple smile. "Not really," he replied, a
gleam in his eyes. "At least, if you and I retreated elsewhere for... say, a
few hours."
"E-elsewhere?" Natalie parroted, a cold chill running down her spine. She rose
a hoof up in a flinch, ears falling back against her skull. She shook her head
to steel herself before clearing her throat and stating in a slight sarcastic
tone, "Really. What might you want to do in this 'elsewhere?'"
"Just hang around and chat," Napkin replied, his smirk widening. He rose a hoof
up and used it to stroke the mare's chin, causing her to take a step back.
"Hrm, what seems to be the matter?"
"I'm... afraid I'll have to pay you the extra bits. How much?" Natalie replied,
one of her back legs twitching as she spoke.
Napkin sighed, his smile fading as he lowered his hoof. "Twenty will do," he
stated. Natalie procured a small bag with a flash of magic, counted the coins
within, and handed it to him. He took the bag and trotted off down the hall,
and the Fantasian mare returned to the room to find that everyone had fallen
asleep in spite of the less-than-appealing conditions. She sighed in
resignation and trotted to the bed that Maria rested upon and clambered in it,
but not before checking for any more possibly stray springs with potential to
stab her in her sleep. Satisfied that the curled bits of metal had little
chance of accosting her, she flopped over and closed her eyes.
Yet, sleep didn't come. Her ears twitched and caught noises, swiveling when the
others mumbled in their sleep. Her brow furrowed when the filly next to her
began squirming and happily mumbling something about dicks and other such
things she didn't want to know about.
"Maria's having a wet dream. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, given she's
giggling in her sleep," Natalie mentally groaned, ears folding back against her
head. She grabbed a pillow with her magic and scrunched it in a tight heap
around her cranium, greatly muffling the little moans and giggles that came
from Marial.
But the sounds immediately became frantic whimpers and agonized pleas. She
threw the pillow off when she felt the child jolt upright with a choked scream
moments later, and wrapped a front leg around her form. "Nightmare, I take it?"
Natalie asked in a quiet, soothing tone.
"Bad... hippogryphs," Maria mumbled, nodding fervently.
"It's alright. They can't get you anymore," Natalie replied, using her other
hoof to gently run through the foal's mane. She opened her mouth to say
something else, but stiffened when the door opened slowly. She stood up,
holding Marial in her leg as she got out of the bed. She made to speak again,
but a dark blue magical glow that was different from her own, grabbed her by
the muzzle and held it like a vise, keeping her lips sealed.
A similar glow hefted Maria out of her grasp with ease, and she started to
wildly flail about, doing her best to scream even as the glow likewise took
hold of her muzzle. An unfamiliar voice spoke up in a whisper as three dark
forms strode into the room on cautious hooves, one of a gruff masculine nature,
"That one's Starcovert?"
"Yes, but I know not her first name, if she has one," another replied in an
equally hushed tone. "Bring the filly too."
Natalie's horn began glowing, but something slipped onto its frame and sent a
jolt rocking violently throughout her body, effectively canceling out whatever
spell she made to channel. Her muscles ached, and she tried to scream as a damp
cloth rag with a strange smell wrapped around her mouth. She started flailing
her legs everywhere, but the glow seized her entire body and rendered that
effort useless. Still she fought on, but precious minutes passed—minutes she
couldn't spare as consciousness fled her with haste. The world went black, but
not before she heard one of the owners of the voices utter, "Get the green-
maned unicorn, and don't wake the others."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Natalie awoke with a groan, lifting her head and opening her eyes to find that
deepest black greeted her vision. For a moment, her head bobbed about as she
glanced this way and that, only to stiffen and shut her eyes when an overhead
light turned on. She made to move her legs.
None of them budged an inch. Her eyes snapped right back open, and she jumped
to find herself tipping backwards for a few seconds, feeling her weight aid
something as it leaned against the floor to bound back with a gentle creak and
rock her body forward.
She glanced forward and paled, craning her neck to get a view of her rear and
immediately found a saddle laden on her back and much of her tail bunched
together, tied very uncomfortably and tightly with a what looked like a gauze.
She shuddered before turning her attention to the floor to assess just what in
hell was going on, though she instantly came to the realization that she wished
she hadn't done so.
Her legs had been bound tightly in black leather, all four pieces joining with
a fifth that wrapped around curved pieces of wood that supported her from under
her hooves. There was a gap between the wood pieces, but they stayed at a fixed
distance thanks to more wood that had been attached to them along the middle.
Thick straps secured the leather tightly around her limbs, rendering them numb
and very cumbersome to move.
Natalie turned to the side, eyes widening as she found Anna next to her in much
the same position, though her head had hung low and a soft snore came from the
green-maned unicorn. Through the locks of emerald, the now-alert mare could
make out some kind of thick metal band inscribed with what looked to be runes
at the base of her horn, in addition to a ball gag lodged in her mouth.
Her ears perked when another gentle creak hit her ears, and she whipped her
head around in the other direction, yet in doing so her face drained of its
color. Maria lay next to Natalie, tied upon the back of another pony, though
this one had its pelt entirely carved off. This lack of coat exposed reddest
muscles that took on a tinge of grey, in addition to the mane and tail having
been plucked out, which left nothing regarding its original identity. The bald
corpse strongly reeked of decay, further filling the air around itself as it
gently creaked back and forth.
What was left of the face warped so horribly at some point it looked about
ready to slide off the skull at any given moment. Dark red blood dripped at
random intervals from the third pony as the filly stirred, inadvertently
causing the corpse to rock back and forth like a pendulum as a result. Her gaze
trailed lower, towards the pony's side, only to find a large and gnarly gash
that stretched from the front leg to the area where a cutie mark had once been,
dipping low midway into the stomach.
The intestines of the deceased hung loosely from the torn belly, and Natalie
felt her stomach clenching as she spotted maggots writhing around the exposed
entrails, feasting on the innards without a care. Bile rose in her throat,
burning at her esophagus, yet when it forced its way to her mouth she found it
couldn't leave thanks to something obstructing the orifice between her teeth.
She ended up swallowing the acidic mixture, turning away from the corpse, her
body trembling as her irises shrunk to blue dots in the sclera and her nose
scrunched from the acrid stench that wafted from the dead pony. Her ears fell
flat against her head when the sound of hoofsteps echoed in the room, and she
spotted nothing more than a pair of orange limbs parked just outside the halo
of light where she could see them.
"I see you're awake, Miss Starcovert," spoke a familiar voice. "And it seems
you've gotten acquainted with the last mare who purchased a room. Pity that
Windwood's still asleep, but oh well."
Natalie grunted, struggling against her binds and uttering what sounded like a
muffled "Why?"
The owner of the voice stepped into the light, revealing a green mane and an
orange body that now lacked a suit. Napkin sent the hapless mare the same smirk
from before, though it came with a malicious gleam in his eyes. His horn lit
up, crackling with golden electricity, and upon seeing this Natalie ceased any
attempts at trying to break loose. The glow died down, and the stallion chirped
in a pleased tone, "I see you're acquainted with electrical magic. I'd rather
not have to shock you; it's bad for... business, shall we say."
He briskly trotted to his trapped quarry and leaned in close, staring into her
widened eyes. "Huh, I don't think I've seen that deep shade of blue before...
it almost looks like a dark grey," he remarked, raising a hoof to stroke her
chin as the bound pony began to fidget again. He found that Natalie's chest
started heaving violently, and stepped back while removing the object in her
mouth with a bit of magic. His smile faded when she almost immediately threw up
the contents of her stomach onto the floor in front of her, coughing and
wheezing when she finished seconds later.
"Gotcat-dammit," Natalie cursed in a weak, hoarse voice. "If you're gonna gag
me again, at least leave a hole for me to puke through!"
"Normally, I don't appreciate vulgar language or a snappy tone," Napkin hissed,
summoning a towel to blot up the mess Natalie made. "But, I have to admit you
do raise a valid point. The last mare... burst after I denied her the right to
vomit. Such a mess she made," he sighed, turning his gaze onto the bald,
rotting corpse.
"She... burst?" Natalie murmured, turning to the corpse for a moment before
redirecting her attention to Napkin. "She looks more like she's been slashed
with a knife."
Napkin stormed up to Natalie and slapped her across the face with a hoof before
she could react. "You don't know what you're—" he began.
Natalie cut him off with but one little word, "Rubywing."
"What about—" Napkin began again, but paused as hr response sank into his
skull. His eyes narrowed as she turned to face him, her cheek reddening as she
nodded, a glare set into her own face. "The pale changeling... of course," he
mumbled, setting his hoof down before trotting between the bound ponies and
stopping behind the trio, enabling Natalie to catch a glimpse of his swinging
fifth leg and his cutie mark—a wadded napkin crackling with sparks—as he
waltzed past her. Another set of hoofsteps echoed, and Napkin paused before he
swiveled his head and called out, "Chocolate Soufflé, is that you?"
Another familiar stallion with a brown coat trotted past Natalie from the other
side, also lacking a suit but sporting a full erection. "Yes, it is I," he
chirped, angling himself in just the right way for him to reveal his mark to
her—strangely, it was a half-buried gemstone sporting scratch marks. He looked
towards Anna as she began to stir, letting off unintelligible mumbles as she
came to. "Oh, it seems Windwood's about to rise and shine."
It took no longer than a few minutes, but Anna soon snapped wide awake as she
absorbed her surroundings, and she immediately began struggling vehemently once
the weight of the situation set in. All she could do, though, was helplessly
rock back and forth, stopping when a magic aura grabbed her and sent lightning
shooting through her nerves. "Now, now, we will have none of that nonsense,"
Napkin chastised as Soufflé trotted up behind a momentarily-stunned Anna.
Anna let off a weak protesting groan, vision bleary as lingering pain continued
to antagonize her body. Her head drooped for a moment before jolting straight
back up as she felt a hoof connect with her posterior. She craned her neck,
emitting a muted yelp as Chocolate clambered onto her back and wrapped a leg
around the barrel of her chest. "Stay still, cutie. This won't hurt a bit,"
Soufflé murmured, leaning close to the mare's head and using his free hoof to
pat her not-quite-affectionately.
"Bad pony, get off her!" a shrill voice cried out. All four ponies jerked their
gazes to the corpse—or, rather, the filly who'd been tied to it. Maria
struggled against her binds, flapping her bare wings madly as she sent a glare
at Chocolate for all it was worth.
Soufflé and Napkin exchanged a glance, then turned back to Maria. "Why would I
pass up an opportunity to pound a firm ass like this one?" the former asked,
sending her a small grin.
"Because your cock is little and nopony or gryph likes you!" Maria shouted
angrily, eyes narrowed to slits as her front limbs began jerking wildly, her
talons balled into fists. "I'll rip your nuts off and shove them up your
butthole!"
Napkin turned to Natalie, a brow raised and a hoof lifting up to point at the
filly. "Care to tell me where the foal learned such foul language, exactly?" he
asked.
"Don't ask," Natalie replied. “Never heard her use those words before anyway. I
had nothing to do with it.” She grunted as he decided he'd wasted enough time
and put his body on hers, flinching as he conjured some magic to roughly tug at
her mane.
"Icedraft, how old are you?" Napkin asked, glaring at the filly.
Somehow, Maria maintained her defiant expression. "Old enough to rip your face
off," she hissed.
Napkin donned a wicked smirk. "I'd like to see you try, you little bald dodo,"
he retorted. He paused for a moment upon hearing a pained whimper coming from
his right, and turned to his partner-in-crime to find Anna struggling again.
Soufflé looked at Napkin with a smirk, front legs resting on the back of his
captive. "I put it through the backdoor on purpose. This one may be virgin," he
stated with a shrug, hips pressed snugly against Anna's rear. Napkin growled
and sent another electric stream coursing through Anna, eliciting muffled yelps
of agony as well as electrocuting the stallion on her back in the process.
Napkin stopped the current of volts upon realizing his error, and once Soufflé
recovered from the burst of mana, he turned to his companion, narrowed his
eyes, and snapped angrily, "Hey, at least let me pull out first, you jackass!"
***** Chapter XI- Straps and Dust *****
"For crying out loud, mare, loosen up that sphincter a little! Napkin, we
should've brought the lubricant!" Soufflé groaned, glowering at his partner-in-
crime, his hips unmoving.
"We ran out on the last mare, remember? We'll just have to do without," Napkin
snapped, glaring back. His gaze shifted to Anna, whose head had drooped again,
this time with her entire mane falling forward and overshadowing her face. "Is
Windwood even awake?" he asked.
"Might need to jolt her again," Soufflé replied, turning back to the mare he
was currently accosting. Anna jumped in place, eyes wide as her head rapidly
shook. "Whoa, calm down! Don't hit me with your ponytails!"
"Go ahead and undo her mane. That particular hairstyle's going to cause you
problems later on if not dealt with now," Napkin sighed, slumping against
Natalie for a moment—only to stiffen as she inhaled deeply, as if preparing to
shriek for all it was worth. His horn glowed, and from a flash of magic a ball
gag appeared. The accursed object wrapped around Natalie's muzzle again,
lodging the red sphere between her teeth once more before another sound could
come out. "Sincerest apologies, Starcovert, but I'd rather you didn't howl."
"Wow, her mane goes down to her front knees!" Chocolate exclaimed as he undid
the first ponytail and trussed it up a bit to make it adhere more to gravity.
He used his hooves to undo the rest of the ponytails, juggling in his magic
what had held them in place. "By Celestia's sunburnt asscheeks, she had
enchanted baubles on her!"
Napkin turned to his fellow stallion and went wide-eyed. He eyed four golden
baubles, held in the air by a dark-green aura that provided levitation. A faint
rippling of lighter green mana swept across the glimmering pearls, sparking
with some kind of power. His wide-eyed look turned into a sneer. "Set those
aside for now. Besides, you haven't worked on her ass yet," he stated.
Soufflé nodded and summoned a small pouch of leather, stuffing the baubles in
it before tying it up and setting it on the floor nearby. He leaned his head
close as Anna's started to lower again, and grabbed a thick viridian lock with
his teeth, tugging back and pulling his hips away at the same time. He roughly
thrust forward with all the strength he could muster, pulling at the lock of
hair harder, grinning as the tan-beige mare released a long and muffled shriek
of agony.
"Yeesh, why do you always have to fuck a mare so roughly? At least give her a
break or two," Napkin sighed, his hips moving slowly. "Otherwise, she'll burst
a lung trying to screech through that gag."
"Not my fault she can't take it," Soufflé retorted through the bit of mane he
still held with his mouth, sending the other stallion a wicked smirk as he
thrust again. His smirk fell as Anna jerked, throwing her head back in a
desperate attempt to clock him, only to cease when a hoof shot up to push it
back down. "Where are the others? We're gonna need more than just lightning
magic to keep Windwood still!"
Napkin sighed and shook his head as he made a thrust. "I hope they're not
dealing with the rest of the Fantasians. For all I know, they could be making
their way down here right now," he replied with a shrug. His horn glowed again,
and a flash of magic conjured a small whip with multiple tails. He handed it to
the other stallion and added, "Thwack her with that. Might as well discipline
her."
"Hold that thought for a moment," Chocolate stated, taking hold of the whip in
his magic. He sent it flying through the air, hitting Maria square on the rump
with it as she put one of her binds in her mouth. "I saw you trying to break
those leather straps with your teeth, missy! Don't make me come over there and
hit you again!"
The mares jerked their gazes to the filly, whose face had scrunched with pain.
Maria grit her teeth, claws still clenched as red marks started showing through
her coat. "I-I'm gonna t-tell on you," she whimpered, ears folding back as the
whip raked across her body once more with a sharp crack, this time hitting her
right between the wings.
Magic gripped her bonds and tightened them a little, causing her to wince. "Ah,
ah, ah, you'll do no such thing with that potty mouth of yours. Besides, our
friends have yet to show up—perhaps they could keep you occupied while we deal
with these fine unicorns," Napkin scolded, his remark sending unpleasant
shivers down the spines of the Fantasian mares.
"N-n... y-you won't m-make me a c-cocksleeve," she hissed defiantly, earning
herself another whack across the back. "Y-y-you're gonna g-get it."
"I'm tempted to stick an apple in her mouth. We've already shut these two up,"
Soufflé scoffed, a firm frown set into his face. He glowered at the foal and
let go of the bundle of hair in his mouth, still thrusting at a rough and
steady pace. He added, "If she makes me pull out now..."
"What I'm worried is the fact that she knows what a cock is," Napkin noted,
shaking his head. "If this filly manages to escape, and this is only
theoretical, then we'll be in very hot water."
"Good thing the others took her, too. Remind me to get some sewing thread and
needles—that trap needs to be shut," Soufflé agreed, his voice turning raspy
and riddled with pants. He turned his attention back to Anna, using his magic
to hover the whip in front of her muzzle tauntingly. "Y-you don't l-loosen up,
the f-filly'll get it."
Anna's irises shrank, ears folding back against her head. The whip swung in
front of her like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Left, right, left,
right. She flinched when the thrusting stopped, the pain flaring tenfold as the
stallion raping her grabbed her mane with his magic and jerked it so fast she
could've sworn she felt some strands breaking near the roots. "W-well?" Soufflé
hissed in a low voice. "W-would you rather i-it be I-Icedraft?"
She weighed the options, tears prickling her eyes and trailing down her cheeks.
She shut her eyelids tightly, tilting her head forward as much as she was able,
and started charging a spell. Several jolts ran through her own body as the
ring on her horn did its work, muscles twitching and screaming as current after
current ran through her.
"The fuck is she—" Napkin started, but stopped as Natalie did the same thing.
He pulled out and backed away, with Soufflé following suit as both mares began
rocking on their own accord. A moment after the spell-casting ceased, the two
Fantasians' heads dropped like lead weights had been tied to their muzzles,
with their manes covering their faces like cloth rags.
After taking a moment to process what had happened, the stallions trotted to
the mares, dicks throbbing painfully as they approached. Front hooves trailed
over pulse points, and Napkin shook his head. "Starcovert's unconscious," he
murmured, eyes narrowing low.
"So's Windwood. Now what?" Soufflé growled, hitting Anna's rear with the whip
over and over, as though that could wake her up.
"We punish them while they're out cold. Find the most painful thing you can
stick up their orifices, or ginger if we have some handy. That way, they sho—"
Napkin stopped mid-sentence as he heard a leather strap breaking—a soft noise,
accompanied by a gentle creak. He turned to the mares, only to find that their
rocking had ceased.
Another strap-sounding thing broke, and he trotted around the two unconscious
mares to the third dead one, finding that Maria had managed to break free of
her bonds by slicing through the leather straps somehow. The orange unicorn let
off a wordless howl and used his magic to grab her, and the loose entrails of
the corpse, shaking the innards free of maggots before using them to bind the
foal in a fleshy straightjacket.
"You were saying?" Soufflé piped up, garnering the attention of Napkin as he
bound the filly's rear legs.
"Just... find something to punish the Fantasians with. And buckets of ice
water, if there are any left," Napkin snapped as he finished binding Maria,
replacing her on the back of the corpse. He trotted to his partner-in-crime,
and both slipped out of the halo of light, the darkness looking as if it merely
absorbed them into its shadowy mist.
Maria unclenched one talon, feeling its claws poke clean holes in the entrails
like the innards were little more than paper. She looked despondently at Anna
and Natalie's out-cold forms, and started wriggling as silently as she could.
"Bad... ponies a-are g-gonna feel s-sorry," she murmured to herself as her
claws went to work.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
"No, they're not in our room, either," Armin answered, shaking his head with
his horn aglow. Lance stood with him in the hall, glowering so much his crimson
eyes seemed to burn with roiling flames.
"Maybe they're toying with magic again," Lance growled, rubbing a hoof roughly
into the carpet.
"If that's the case, I'd have picked it up," Armin replied, sighing as the glow
dissipated. "Maybe Maria wanted something and pestered them to hell and back."
A door swung open, and Matt trotted out of the room. "Lance, I found
something," he stated, turning back around and re-entering the room. The
pegasus followed him, spotting a small waste bin on the table. The unicorn
pointed at something on the floor, and the red-eyed stallion followed the hoof
to find something very unusual.
"What the..." Lance murmured, leaning in close to the anomaly. It was another
hole in the carpet, but very distinct in that it had a suspicious curve to it.
He set his hoof on it and rubbed it for a bit before gaping. "That... someone
tore into the carpet with their hoof?"
"Either one of the girls, or somepony else," Matt confirmed with a nod. "But
there's more." He trotted past the pegasus and made a beeline for the table,
picking up the small waste bin with a magical aura. Lance turned to him with a
brow raised, and went wide-eyed as the magic lifted up a white rag from the
bin. "It has a distinctly sweet smell to it."
The eyes of the pegasus narrowed, irises shrinking to little pinpricks.
"Chloroform..." he murmured. He spread his wings and stomped a hoof. "We're
going to scour this entire building up and down, and if the girls and Maria
aren't in another room or on another floor..."
Armin stepped into the room. "Want me to get the guards, sir?" he asked,
garnering the attention of the pegasus.
"Yes. Take Alexander and Katie with you. Bring Sarah and Fenrir in here before
you go," he replied in a low tone. The changeling nodded and skedaddled into
the hall, and a moment after, the hippogryph mare and the diamond dog scrambled
into the room. "Matt found evidence."
"Of...?" Fenrir trailed off, a brow raised.
Matt waved the rag before throwing it into the bin for emphasis. "At least one
of the girls got drugged and dragged away, that much we know," he replied.
Sarah's eyes widened. "Oh no..." she murmured before her face set in a scowl.
"Godcat knows what might be happening to my sister and the other two at this
moment. We can't afford to stand here quibbling."
"I got the top floor. Matt, scour this floor. Sarah, get any floors in between.
Fenrir, let us know if you smell or hear anything even slightly off," Lance
rattled off. A meow caught his attention, and he jerked his gaze to the floor
as NoLegs scooted between Sarah's claws to approach him. "And you, NoLegs, get
all of the nooks and crannies that we can't fit through." The others, cat
included, nodded, and everyone except Matt scrambled out of the room to find
any trace of Anna, Natalie, Maria, or whatever might have procured the
chloroform rag.
Matt took the bin with him, making it vanish in a flash of light. He scoured up
and down the room, even going so far as to overturn the mattresses to look for
anything else that might have been amiss. Having seen nothing out of the
ordinary, he returned the beds as they were before entering the hall, where
Fenrir waited for him.
"Anything?" Matt asked.
Fenrir shook his head. "Alas, not smell nor sound has reached my senses yet,"
he replied. "It appears our mysterious chemist has covered their tracks well."
"Not well enough, considering I found the cloth rag," Matt retorted, dashing
into the other room and essentially tearing the place apart before re-
assembling it when nothing came up. He returned to the hall in short order and
selected another room to barge through, but when he tried to open the door with
a hoof, the knob briefly glowed with runes and the contraption did not budge.
"Oh, you're just asking me to kick you down," he growled, turning around and
rearing up on his back legs.
Only to drop to all fours when a shrill cry hit his ears. It sounded young,
pained, riddled with sadness—"Maria!" he cried, jerking his head down one end
of the hall.
Fenrir also jerked his head upon hearing the shriek, face setting with a scowl.
"What has the foal gotten into now?" he snarled, bounding forward on all fours,
ears perked as he followed the scream. Matt rushed after the diamond dog,
galloping as fast as he could, rounding the corner of a T-intersection when
Fenrir veered to the left.
After a few moments of running down another hall, they stopped. A dead end
greeted them, and as they turned around, they spotted a suited earth pony
stallion with a blue mane and yellow coat exiting another room. He turned to
the dog-and-pony duo with a brow raised. "Was it me, or did I hear something?"
he asked, tilting his head.
"It wasn't you—" Matt paused mid-reply as another scream echoed into the hall,
this time much softer. "—we heard it too."
The suited stallion shrugged and trotted down the other end of the hall,
continuing to go on straight and ignoring the path the Fantasians came from.
Matt and Fenrir exchanged a glance and let the stallion trot on for a bit
before following him, making sure to keep their hooves and paws silent so as to
not attract more attention to themselves. After a few moments of nothing but
trotting, the stallion did something that should not have been possible; he
turned towards a blank wall and walked through, as if it weren't really there.
Matt hesitated for a moment before trotting to the blank wall, glancing around
to ensure that nobody else but Fenrir watched his every move. Ensured that he
was only one of two souls present, he rose a hoof and attempted to push at the
wall.
His limb traveled right through it, seeming to be nothing more than thin air.
"What is it?" Fenrir asked, walking to the phenomenon.
The unicorn's horn glowed, the aura embracing the wall—or lack thereof. The
blasted thing immediately crumbled like glass when the magic hit it,
disappearing into tiny little glimmers that faded from sight, revealing a dark
place beyond with a set of stairs going down. "Oh, hello... looks like we had
some illusion magic going on here," he mumbled, setting a hoof on the first
step and poking it left and right before stopping when he found solid wood. His
horn glowed again, but only for the barest of instants.
Another scream echoed, this time twice as loud, forcing Matt to stop his spell
and take the first few steps downward. The two went as slow as they could, as
much of the wood had aged and creaked like rusty door hinges beneath them as
they moved. After another moment or so, they came upon a dark, wet, musty room.
"After her! She's getting away!" a masculine voice cried out in a soft echo,
followed by the sound of hooves hitting on the ground.
"You just had to take the filly, didn't you?" another scolded, again followed
by hooves as they hit the floor, the second set fading into the darkness just
the same.
Matt's horn softly glowed, a tiny spark of light shining forth and casting away
a small sphere of darkness. He frowned when the first thing he saw were wooden
crates stacked atop the other in towers reaching the ceiling, some covered with
mold and mildew and others leaking some kind of dark fluid. These very stacks
made for a very narrow passage; so narrow, in fact, that Fenrir had to shift
his form so he could effectively walk sideways.
After exchanging another glance, the two went forward. After three minutes of
yet more walking, they came upon a vast room that had been darkened, save for a
hanging light that shone a wide halo above the corpse of a dead pony tied up to
look like a rotting rocking horse. Entrails were strewn about, along with dark
blood stains, and the innards looked as though someone took a knife to hack
them into ribbons.
Fenrir opened his mouth to say something, but a pained and muffled whimper cut
him off before he could utter a word. He bounded forward on swift but silent
paws, and upon entering the light and seeing up close the full scene, his eyes
widened. He gestured with a paw for the unicorn to come forward as his eyelids
slanted, and a small frown came unto his muzzle. Kneeling forward, he reached
out with his other paw, the blond-maned stallion trotting towards him as
another muffled groan echoed into the room.
Matt's heart fell as he saw Natalie and Anna, both tied up like the corpse and
beaten, but still alive. The mares had reddened faces and bloodshot eyes, ears
folded back against their heads and gags tied over their mouths. Anna seemed to
have received the harsher treatment, with red welts swelling on her rear,
stretching clean across one of her cutie marks, and her loose disheveled mane
sported tangles, knots, and some split ends. He saw Fenrir's paw grab one of
the straps of the gag in Natalie's mouth, and he swiftly and painlessly removed
it.
"They... they..." Natalie croaked as soon as she could speak again, her voice
hoarse, faltering, and riddled with hiccups. The digit of a paw rose up and
hovered over her lips, silencing her on the spot, save for her hitched and
pained breathing. With his other paw, Fenrir motioned zipping his lips—'better
to be silent,' he seemed to say.
Matt jumped forward, his horn glowing brighter, magic embracing the two mares.
He undid the straps on their legs and slid them out of their bonds, pupils
shrinking as he immediately noticed they had turned blue. Gently laying them on
the floor and spotting the accursed horn rings, he pried those and Anna's gag
away, earning a pained yelp from the archer in doing so.
"It... hurts..." Anna moaned, a fresh wave of tears trailing down her cheeks.
Fenrir reached out again and wiped a tear away, frowning when it was soon
replaced by two more. His frown deepened when she made to stand, only for her
still-blue legs to buckle and send her sprawling back into the floor just
seconds later.
The dog approached them and knelt before the two, finding the saddles on their
backs. He scooped up Anna and removed hers carefully, and turned away to scowl
when he spotted her bleeding rectum, and it leaked despite having had a
glaringly obvious wad of ginger having been rammed into it. Matt undid the one
on Natalie's back, and helped her sit up to embrace her when he found the same
thing. Both mares began crying, held in hooves and paws while garbled words
spilled from their mouths like water bursting from weak dams. Soon, though,
they fell silent, save for their strangled sobs.
Several tense minutes passed, and the two were still crying when Lance, Sarah,
and NoLegs hit the scene. The three rushed over with choked gasps and a
startled mew, wings snapping wide open as the gravity of the mess set in.
"M-Maria... they... h-hurt..." Anna mumbled as Sarah rushed to her side and set
a talon on her withers.
Sarah's irises looked to be lightly shaking in the white canvases, and her eyes
prickled with tears as she saw up close and personal just how much damage had
been done. "They hurt the foal?" she asked in a low tone, pupils dilating when
the battered unicorn fervently nodded.
"W-whipped... b-bound..." Natalie confirmed, her muzzle buried into Matt's
mane. "She... r-ran... w-we couldn't... do... a-anything to s-stop..."
Matt's horn softly glowed again for a moment or two before the aura died down.
He rose a hoof to stroke Natalie's mane, but paused when the action caused her
to stiffen a bit. NoLegs mewed and scooted up to the mare, frowning when she
failed to pet him.
Lance trotted up to Fenrir, and rose a hoof to Anna's face to wipe a tear, but
he retracted that hoof when her horn violently sparked with emerald magic.
"Hey, I'm not going to hit you or anything..." he murmured, setting the hoof
down before leaning in with his face to nuzzle her a bit.
Anna didn't say anything, but closed her eyes as the stallion rubbed one of her
cheeks with the spot between his mouth and his nostrils. She frowned for a
moment or so, but relaxed a little after the nuzzling had stopped.
"Why... didn't... you come sooner?" Natalie whimpered as her fit had started to
die down a bit.
"They had illusions set up to fool us. If one of the employees didn't turn down
the stairs where the illusion was at..." Fenrir trailed off, shaking his head
glumly.
"Illusions... so that's why..." Lance murmured, turning to Fenrir with a scowl
set firmly into his visage, eyes narrowed to crimson chips.
Sarah carefully pried Anna from Fenrir's arms, wrapping her claws and wings
around her form, sitting down on her haunches as she did so. She pressed her
closer as weakened front hooves returned the hug, gently shaking as blood
flowed through the veins. "How... are your legs holding up?" she asked softly.
"B-bad," Anna replied in a wheeze, her front limbs falling slack again.
"I believe they won't be able to trot for a few hours at most. At least, not...
steadily," Fenrir piped up, gently grabbing Anna and prying her from Sarah's
claws. The green-maned unicorn made to keen in protest, but the noise died when
she found herself resting on a backside, nestled between a pair of feathery
wings. Another sound left her mouth as he slowly undid the wrappings on her
tail, becoming a pained gasp as the mass of hair got trussed up a bit and fell
down, with much of the base coming in contact with her still-aching rump. She
yelped when he grabbed the nub of ginger and sharply tugged it out quick, only
to groan as a worse ache started settling in.
Sarah stood up, using her wings to steady her sister on her back. She turned to
Lance, a worried frown etched firmly into her face. "Should we go get the
others, or find Maria?" the mare murmured.
Lance stayed silent, gaze briefly averting to Matt as he hefted Natalie onto
his back, pried out the other nub of ginger, and undid the wrappings with magic
in one go. His ears fell back, the scowl in his visage contorting just enough
that his narrowed eyes widened a bit. After several tense seconds that felt
like hours passed, he turned to Fenrir and said, "You, go get the others. We're
staying with the girls."
"What about Maria?" Fenrir replied, lowly growling as he spoke.
"I have a feeling she didn't get very far. Face it, she can't fly, and whoever
did this might be bringing her back already," Lance retorted, shaking his head.
"Thus, if our only able unicorn stays at least, he can get her and run like
hell. If me and Sarah stay with him, we can hold off our culprits while Matt
flees with the girls."
Fenrir's expression changed, from anger, to annoyance, and finally he nodded in
understanding. "I'll return as swiftly as I am able," he stated, and with that,
he bounded out of the room.
"Matt, Sarah, NoLegs, we're going to hide nearby," Lance added, earning wide-
eyed looks from the three he addressed, in addition to a loud meow. He gestured
with a hoof to the darkness the overhead light couldn't reach. "We won't go
that far, just enough where the responsible party won't see us," he added.
The unicorn stallion and hippogryph mare exchanged a glance before they turned
back to the pegasus and nodded in unison. Lance nodded back and turned,
trotting around the corpse as silently as he could and seemingly vanishing into
the darkness. Sarah and Matt followed suit, being as cautious as they could
while still carrying living, aching cargo on their backsides. NoLegs went with,
and soon the six were out of sight.
Minutes passed, and a tense silence fell upon the room. Lance fidgeted in his
spot uncomfortably, gaze affixed where the overhead light still shined. His
ears perked and started swiveling at random intervals, hoping to catch some
kind of noise that'd mean one of two parties were returning.
Instead, he flinched as the loud crack of a whip echoed off the dark walls,
followed by a strangled scream that sounded as though it came from a young
child. Hoofbeats sounded not long after, and three stallions stepped into the
light, two of them naked with their slightly-blue dicks swinging in the open
air and the last a suited earth pony. Maria came into the light next, being
propelled into the floor by unicorn magic.
Napkin turned to the corpse and his face turned a stark shade of crimson as
soon as he noticed the absence of two mares and the things that had been tied
to them strewn about the scene. "They... they escaped..." he growled, turning
to the foal with a glower. "This is your fault, you little cunt!" he screamed,
grabbing the foal with his magic and dragging her dangerously close to his rear
legs. Before he could do anything, his eyes went wide and a pained choke left
his throat as a talon shot up and cleanly pierced the flesh of his organ before
pulling down and retracting, creating long gashes that oozed with rivers of
red.
Soufflé lunged at Maria, only to stop when she moved and clawed him in the dick
as well, doubling over with a pained howl as his member likewise began aching
in a worse pain amplified tenfold. The earth pony managed to scoop her up with
his front hooves, and quickly found himself getting small talons raked across
his face—clean across both eyes, in fact. He dropped her with a shriek, and she
ran past the corpse, chest heaving with pained pants.
The foal blundered into Lance, who grabbed her and held a hoof over her mouth
as she began struggling. "It's me," he whispered lowly, "the nice pegasus with
the hat." He sighed in relief as Maria relaxed in his grasp, watching with an
impassive expression as the three ponies who had gotten scratched writhed for a
few moments, desperately using hooves and magic in an attempt to stop the
bleeding.
Hoofbeats echoed again, and before long another pony entered the fray. Lance
blinked as he eyed the distinct purple armor and ice cold eyes of the fourth
pony, noticing a wide-eyed look that quickly morphed into a scowl. "What in
Celestia's name happened here!" Shining barked, his question catching the
attention of the bleeding trio and causing them to go wide-eyed as soon as they
noticed who strode in and glared at them.
"Let's see here... a corpse that's been gutted, three little ponies on the
floor with bloodied wounds, and two throbbing dicks. Captain Armor, I think we
may have found necrophiliacs," a raspy feminine voice answered, accompanied by
the sound of buzzing wings. Katie flew into the light, hovering inches above
the captain, eyes narrowed into a glare at the stallions on the floor.
"Not necrophiliacs, but I can capably understand how you might arrive at that
conclusion," Fenrir remarked as he stepped out of the shadows. He rose a paw
and snapped the digits after Armin and Alexander flanked him. "Captain Armor,
if you would please look in the direction that the corpse faces," he stated.
Shining quirked a brow and had done just that, just in time to see three forms
emerge from the darkness, with three more laden on their backs. He spotted
blood on Maria's talons, and the filly pointed at the wounded ponies on the
floor. "Bad ponies hurt me and nice mares with their cocks and a whip," she
hissed.
"Silence, you impudent brat!" Napkin seethed, magic sparking to life, only to
stop as a magic inhibitor slid onto his and Soufflé's horns.
"Dammit!" Soufflé yelled, turning to the earth pony. "Rusty Pan, do something!"
Rusty rose onto his hooves, face still stained in crimson. He lunged at
Shining, only to find himself pushed to the floor by a dark-coated gryphon
wearing a narrow-eyed expression. "You want to have more wounds lining your
body? I can provide just that," Alexander hissed, his talons locked around the
stallion's throat.
"Shining... this is your fucking fault..." Natalie grunted, glaring at the
white unicorn with a pained voice. "You led us here... and me and Anna... and
Maria..."
"I'm sorry, I truly am," Shining began, cutting the mare off before she could
finish. "I had no way of knowing this would happen. Your changelings told me
everything after they allegedly received a telepathic message. I set up the
guard post nearby because sketchy activity has been happening in this part of
Canterlot well before you guys arrived."
"Then why didn't you act sooner? You could have prevented this!" Lance barked,
glowering.
Shining's gaze fell onto the floor, his horn glowing and his magic lifting the
two unicorn stallions into the air. "I could have arrested an innocent pony
just as easily. Me and the other guards had nothing to work with. All we knew
was that ponies vanished after trotting in this district, and little else. As
captain of the guard, I can't afford to pin the mess on an innocent," he
replied quietly.
"And... what happens when a pony, innocent or not, is found guilty of the crime
in question?" Katie asked, descending until she hovered next to Shining, front
legs crossed and a brow quirked.
"It depends on the crime, but the worst ones... the pony either gets executed,
or banished," Shining answered, turning to the wraith with a hard frown. He
gestured to the wounded stallions and added, "I can't see them getting free. If
they're guilty of sexual assault, murder, foal abuse... at the least, they're
going to be gelded and locked up for life."
"Captain Armor, we found evidence on the top floor," another voice spoke up as
a royal pegasus guard trotted into the light, garnering the attention of the
entire group.
"Evidence of what?" Fenrir asked before Shining could open his mouth.
"Evidence that the hotel staff disposes of bodies," the guard answered. As soon
as he finished speaking, the bound corpse began rocking on its own accord, its
form writhing and its head thrashing about, eye sockets glowing with a sea
green light.
Katie flew to it, her own orbs widening to the size of saucers. The corpse let
off a hideous, unearthly shriek as its fit died down, staring deep into the
wraith's eyes when it stilled. "I'll... make them pay..." the bald pony hissed
in a low, hollow tone, a few maggots sliding out of its mouth as it spoke.
"There... is no need," Katie replied, and when the corpse made to speak again,
she pointed a hoof at Shining. The bound pony turned to the captain, holding
its gaze on him for a moment before turning back to the pale changeling. "Do
you... know what happened here?"
"Know?" the corpse scoffed before letting off a laugh that held no happiness.
"I felt everything. I heard everything. I saw everything," it answered. "I even
felt the foal as her claws slashed at my innards before she broke free. I'd
hold that against her, but then... it seems everything is under control now.
What's the point?"
Shining swallowed thickly before addressing the tied-up corpse, "Would... you
like to..."
"Testify?" the skinned pony finished for him, turning its gaze in his direction
with a huff. "What good would that do? Who'd have the heart to listen to a
skinless pony whose organs have been spilled, aside from maybe the Princesses?
No, I would like to die, thank you."
"Can you tell us your name... before we lay you to rest?" the guard asked in a
hesitant tone, spreading a wing to reveal a knife secured in a leather holster
at his side.
The bald corpse turned to him and stayed silent for a moment. "Silk Fabric," it
replied, sea green orbs dimming as the pegasus guard unsheathed the knife.
***** Chapter XII- Tabloid *****
Days melted into weeks, and on a fine afternoon Twilight sat in the middle of a
library near a table, levitating a cup of tea to her lips in a slow languid
motion. In front of her lay an open book, and she idly flipped a page with a
hoof, sipping the warm brew and letting it soothe her throat. With the small
glass emptied, she set it down on the table and started to read the book when
the door to the library burst open.
"Twilight, you gotta see this right now!" a voice cried as said door flew open,
causing the unicorn's tail to stand on end and her eyes to widen. She turned to
the door and found Spike running up to her, a rolled-up paper in his claw.
"Spike, aren't you supposed to be with Rarity?" Twilight asked, before said
purple-maned unicorn bustled into the library with a harried look on her face.
"Erm, yeah. I still am," Spike answered with a grin before it fell as he handed
Twilight the paper. "But you gotta see that; it's pretty urgent."
Twilight groaned and unrolled the paper with her magic, instantly finding
herself greeted by a news article. She couldn’t help but notice the enormous
bold letters of the headline. "'Hotel in Canterlot closed due to accusations of
sexual assault...' Wait, why would you show me this? You know I don't read this
sort of stuff, Spike," the unicorn groaned, brow furrowing.
"Just wait until you get to the drivel that explains the mess. It wasn't just
anypony who was sexually assaulted, according to that particular tabloid,"
Rarity piped up, ears folding back against her head as she spoke.
Twilight sent Rarity an unreadable look before nodding and begrudgingly reading
the blasted thing. Her eyes widened as the article presented three pictures
accompanying its words. The pictures depicted exactly three faces she hadn't
expected to see on the forefront. Her visage paled, and she turned to the
dragon and other unicorn before murmuring in a low voice, "The Fantasians are
involved in the mess?"
"Three of them as victims, and the rest as witnesses," Rarity confirmed with a
nod as the lavender mare turned back to the article. "It seems they've gotten
into Celestia's mane now, and I fear for her well-being."
"Um... Rarity, it says my brother got involved, that there was a fourth victim
in the mess, and that fourth pony became a wraith," Twilight murmured, eyeing
the newspaper with still-wide eyes.
"Another reason why Spike and I rushed here as soon as we were able. I'm
impressed the pale changeling had nothing to do with the fourth victim,
considering what she is," Rarity replied curtly, donning a frown as the other
unicorn shot her a look with eyes that betrayed a glimmer of worry.
"So, if there are wraiths... cropping up in Equestria..." Twilight trailed off,
her face hardening.
"Things will go from bad to worse, going by what little that gryphon told us,
and however much of that is true," Rarity finished for her. "Would you like me
to get the rest of the girls?"
"Please do. They'll need to know this as soon as possible, in case we need to
use the Elements of Harmony or something of that nature," Twilight replied,
nodding. With that, the ivory unicorn bustled out of the library in a gallop,
making sure to close the door behind her.
She turned to Spike when she heard a choked gasp come from the drake, sighing
as his cheeks puffed up like a balloon before he knelt to the floor and
belched. In a puff of smoke and green flame, a rolled-up piece of paper burst
out and bounced for a bit, stopping long enough to roll and reveal a red ribbon
secured with a gold pin keeping it shut. Twilight picked up the paper in her
magic and undid the ribbon, unrolling it to reveal that something had been
written on the parchment.
"What's it say, Twilight?" Spike asked with a cough, turning to Twilight with a
brow raised.
"I don't know, Spike... let's see, 'Dearest Twilight,'" she read aloud, "'it
would seem that our guests have wasted no time in getting themselves involved
with Equestrian affairs. As I am sure you are aware, they have lent a
hoof—claw, in the case of the hippogryphs, gryphon, and diamond dog they have
with them—in exposing a highly corrupt business practice, yet three of them
have gotten injured doing so.'"
The unicorn took a deep breath, absorbing the information, and after a moment
she continued to read the letter, "'In addition to this, a problem has come to
light. I had thought that during my rule of Equestria, the issue of the
wraiths—which I'll explain in a moment—ceased at some point. However, the
recent turn of events has taken my suspicion and shattered it into fragments.'"
"A wraith issue?" Spike interrupted, his brows shooting up.
"That's what the letter says. I'm just reading it," Twilight sighed, then
resumed reading. "'Ponies—and possibly changelings, taking into account the
pale one the Fantasians brought with them—are morphing, clinging onto life when
they should perish. For reasons I do not entirely understand, the Fantasian
wraith would not tell me anything about the phenomenon, which leads me to the
conclusion that she'd rather keep something hidden.'"
Spike interrupted again, with a heavy sigh. "Okay, I thought Celestia could get
anypony to say anything," he stated with a frown.
"I don't understand, either," Twilight groaned, turning to the drake with a
shrug of her shoulders. She cleared her throat and went on, "'As such, I
strongly feel that I have little choice. Due to several complications stemming
in Canterlot, I have arranged for the Fantasians to come to Ponyville by train
later this evening. Even when they join you and your friends, be on guard. The
guests have searched every shelf in the royal library for some kind of
information—what that is, I cannot say, as they refused to elaborate. Your
faithful teacher, Princess Celestia. P.S. The Fantasian mares have taken to
yelling Shining Armor's ears off during their stay every time they saw him,
which fortunately only happened thrice. It had something to do with him leading
them into a bad situation or something of the sort,'" she concluded.
The unicorn dropped the letter, turned back to the table, and slammed her face
into the wood before letting off a despondent groan.
"Great, we gotta deal with those loons again," Spike stated in a sarcastic
tone, eyelids partially drooped to frame eyes that did not gleam and arms going
slack against his sides.
The door burst open again, and Twilight turned to it to see a zebra mare with
gold accessories run inside and skid to a loud halt on her hooves. "Twilight
Sparkle, I need you to come with me! I found a mare suffering in the Everfree!"
she bellowed, eyes wide and tone riddled with alarm.
"Suffering in the Everfree Forest?" Twilight asked, standing up and approaching
the zebra with a brow raised. "What... kind of suffering are we talking about
here, Zecora?"
Zecora's eyes averted every which-way for a moment, her legs trembling as she
spotted the flicker of worry in the unicorn's irises. "The mare, she... clings
to life when she should have passed," she replied, pausing to swallow. "When I
found her, she was dead, but her state changed, fast."
Twilight's eyes widened. "Is she a... wraith?" she murmured, her tone hushed.
"Yes, a wraith, and one who has lost all four legs," Zecora stated as she
nodded. Her ears fell flat against her head and she added, "I need you to see
her, for company she begged."
The unicorn sighed and turned to Spike. "If the girls arrive while I am gone,
tell them Zecora wanted me to see something," she murmured.
Spike nodded. "Can do, Twi," he replied. With that, the zebra and unicorn went
out the door, making sure to close it behind them. They trotted a ways through
a small town, winding through streets paved in dirt roads and framed by houses
with mostly straw roofs. Some ponies nodded and waved, others came up to ask
the two what had been going on, and more still came to utter a brief but polite
'hello' and go about their routine.
After a few moments, the two diverted down a road that lead them to a thicket
of wood where the trees and undergrowth sprung up like weeds that had been
given a growth hormone, through which a small path cut across. Said path had a
small strip of sky that could be seen from above, revealing the blue sky
beyond.
This path the pony and zebra took for a few moments longer, staying on the dirt
trail with eyes peeled. Zecora veered to the right after stopping for a second,
diving into a dense thicket of trees. "This way, if I remember right, if she’s
not hidden out of sight," she beckoned. Twilight reluctantly followed, silently
praying that the zebra had been making things up.
The two found another clearing in moments, and in the center of this spot
Twilight saw a pitiful earth pony mare with naught but a head and torso, legs
torn clean from the sockets of hip and shoulder to reveal still-oozing wounds,
grunting and groaning in a hollow tone. The eyes lit up like bulbs in the
canvases of black, a very soft green in hue that starkly contrasted the natural
bright red of her coat and the darker hue of blood. A trussed up pale green
mane framed the pony's face, ending in loose and dirtied curls.
"Wh-who are you?" Twilight asked, eyes widening as she examined the laying pony
from a distance.
The pony looked at Twilight and rolled onto her side, exposing a gnarly wound
that stretched from withers to rump. "Crimson... Gala," the legless mare
groaned.
"Do you now see this mare's awful bout? Surely, of her agony you have little
doubt?" Zecora murmured, turning to Twilight with a flicker of sadness in her
eyes.
"What should we do? She's in pain, and we can't leave her laying there,"
Twilight replied, slowly nodding her head.
Zecora closed her eyes and lowered her face, her tone somber as she answered,
"I'm afraid we'll have to stain our hooves in her blood. Only severing her head
will end this legless bud. Nothing else can truly end her life, I’m afraid. Do
you happen to have some kind of sharpened blade?”
Twilight frowned. "I don't have a blade on me," she sighed. "But, how do you
know what can end a wraith and what can't?"
"I've ran into them, in my time before taking residence in the Everfree. Time
and time again they have risen, and all I could do was turn my tail and flee,"
the zebra stated, eyes opening to reveal a worried flicker in the irises. She
turned to Gala, who looked back at her intently, and added, "Twilight Sparkle,
I must ask, before we begin this dark task. Have you run into a wraith before
now, and if so, when did you end them, and how?"
"I've... met wraiths weeks ago, but I didn't kill them. A few other ponies who
were there when the wraiths came did," Twilight replied in a low tone. "Only
one of them was decapitated, and another had his mana flow cut off and it
overloaded his system. Another five got turned to ashes."
Zecora jerked her gaze back to the unicorn, pupils shrinking to tiny dots. "W-
where? When did this event transpire? Please tell me how things got so dire,"
she questioned.
"In... Fantasia," Twilight stated, shaking her head. "The populace has its own
wraith problem, and it's gotten pretty bad over there." She trotted to Gala and
knelt forward to be eye-level with the legless form on the grassy ground.
"Do... do you have anything you want before you..." she trailed off, the last
word that could complete the sentence stuck in her throat. She could not utter
it no matter how hard she willed it, and during this bout of silence the
wraith's eyes dimmed momentarily.
Gala shook her head. "Just make it... painless," she answered in a weak voice,
one so low that Twilight almost didn't hear it. The unicorn nodded and shut her
eyes, her horn glowing for a moment, only for the flow of magic to cease once a
revelation set in.
"Twilight Sparkle, is something wrong? Crimson mustn't suffer all day long!"
Zecora groaned, trotting up to the unicorn who looked at her rather
despondently.
"Well... I don't exactly know how to decapitate her without making it painless.
You didn't give me enough time to bring a sword or something of the sort..."
Twilight trailed off, before a revelation sparked in her mind and her eyes went
wide with a glimmer. "Wait, that's it!"
"What is it? Tell me now, so we can make this quick!" the zebra begged, jumping
when Twilight turned back to Gala and started charging another spell without
answering. "Perhaps we can make something out of these old and dead sticks!"
she intoned after a few branches snapped from the surrounding trees and floated
to and around Twilight, embraced in magic as they formed a very crude and dull
sword. The wooden blade started shimmering in a white light, but the glow
ceased as fast as it had come.
Twilight dropped the bundle of twigs, which scattered upon impact with the
ground, and once more looked at Zecora. "I saw a spell in Fantasia, and I just
tried to replicate it... and yet, it didn't work," she murmured. "It happened
when one of the wraiths got decapitated. The pony who did it had a sword that
gleamed with a pearly white sheen instead of normal steel."
Zecora sighed and looked at Gala. Carefully, she hefted the wraith into a crude
sitting position with her front hooves. "Then we take this suffering mare out
of this clearing to my hut. Perhaps I have something that can get her out of
this painful rut," she stated.
"I'll carry her with my magic. Otherwise she could—" Twilight paused as Zecora
lifted Gala and placed her onto her back, whereupon the wraith immediately slid
off and face-planted in the dirt. "—fall..."
"Ow..." Gala groaned into the dirt, ears flat on her head as a magic aura
embraced her and hefted her into the air.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
"Tell me more about these Fantasians you have met, if you please. If you keep
mum of them I shall not press you by any means," Zecora said, scrounging around
a small room filled with corked bottles held on shelves. A cauldron sat in the
middle, and on a pile of hay rested Gala, who opted to curl up and doze.
"Well... I really can't describe them without showing them to you, which isn't
possible at this time. Four of them are regular ponies, two are hippogryphs,
one's a legless cat, and there was a gryphon and diamond dog with them..."
Twilight trailed off, sitting next to the snoozing wraith with a hoof rubbing
nervously at the other leg.
"Speak only of the ponies, then. Once I hear enough, I shall say 'when,'"
Zecora replied, plucking a round green bottle with a hoof and trotting to the
cauldron on three legs. She set it down at the foot of the gargantuan metal
bowl before trotting back to the shelves to examine the rest of the bottles.
"One of them's... a general. He leads gryphons and changelings in Fantasia, and
has somehow gotten his hooves on war machines," Twilight began, her statement
causing Zecora to almost knock a hoofful of bottles over as she jumped from the
shelves with her front legs flailing about.
The zebra turned to the unicorn, eyes widening to the size of saucers. "A
general who leads gryphons and changelings, you say? Now I understand why you
haven't talked of them all day."
"And the funny thing? He's a currently-flightless pegasus whose wings are so
busted up that, to show me how bad they are, would cause my late great-
grandmare to shudder from what he told me," Twilight added, the remark
eliciting a set of shrunk pupils from Zecora.
"How in the name of all things pure is that possible? Surely, such a thing
would be truly illogical!" Zecora murmured in a hushed whisper, eyes glinting
with worry as the information sank in.
"I wish I knew," Twilight answered, shaking her head and waving a hoof in
defeat. "He wouldn't tell me. Then again, I only stayed two and a half days in
Fantasia; not much time to gather information."
"I see. Indeed child, I see. Is there more to share with me?" the zebra sighed,
returning to the shelves yet again.
"He has three unicorns with him, and they all tagged along. From what little
I've been told, and this is all I know, he'd acted way out of line one time.
The unicorns are with him just to make sure that doesn't happen again, whatever
it is. Something tells me he's trying to hide something big, and I find myself
rather skeptical of his words," the unicorn sighed, watching Zecora as she
scooped up a few more bottles and placed them at the foot of the cauldron.
"Oh... oh dear, this isn't good," Zecora groaned as she started going up and
down the shelves, hastily prying bottles off of them for one moment before
returning the containers back where she had found them. "I need one more
ingredient, much more than I should."
"One more?" Twilight asked, both brows rising. "What is it?"
"An item that is very hard to obtain. If I cannot retrieve it, there will be
much pain," Zecora replied, turning to Twilight with a heavy sigh. She gestured
to Gala with a hoof and continued speaking with a hint of sadness in her tone,
"I could take the scarce item from her here and now, but it would not be as
useful, and I cannot explain how."
"Huzzuwha?" Gala murmured, her body writhing as she came to. "What about how?"
"We're working on it, don't worry," Twilight replied, gently petting the
legless wraith on the head with a hoof.
"Alright," Gala sighed with a nod before curling up to nap once the hoof
stopped touching her.
"Such a conundrum, it is indeed. This, I sorely wished I had foreseen," Zecora
lamented, closing her eyes for a moment before looking at the cauldron
forlornly.
"So, what're we gonna do now? What are we going to need?" Twilight asked,
standing up and quietly trotting away from Gala.
"We must find a wraith whose body is whole, so that we may at last release this
old foal. A strand of mane would do very well this moon, but it is not easy to
find one so soon," Zecora murmured, lightly tapping a hoof on her chin. "A
complete wraith is very hard to come by. They keep getting their forms mangled,
and I know not why."
"Oh, boy... so, until we get the strand of mane from a wraith that hasn't lost
a thing, what will happen to Gala in the meantime?" Twilight mused, turning to
the snoozing wraith and sighing as a set of red ears swiveled about,
accompanied by soft murmurings.
"A very fair point, you do make. She'll stay here and rest, for everypony's
sake," Zecora replied, eyes on the sleeping wraith as she muttered something
about chocolate. "I'll hide Gala in a thick pile of hay by late afternoon. I
would rather she didn't get seen by Apple Bloom."
Twilight nodded. "I guess I'll head back to Ponyville then, but I will come
back later tonight to check on Crimson. Is that alright?" she asked.
Zecora nodded back, a hint of a smile blossoming on her face. "I would like
that very much. So would Gala, I am certain of such."
Twilight smiled and made her way out of the hut, silently closing the door
behind her to not rouse the snoozing wraith within. She trotted through the
woods, though a chill ran up her spine when she noticed a good twenty minutes
later all she could hear was the sound of twigs and grass crunching beneath her
hooves. She immediately stopped, whereupon a thick silence had enveloped the
patch of wood she stood in.
"Wraiths... in Equestria... Celestia talked about them in that letter like she
knew about them all along," Twilight murmured to herself, her voice unable to
crack the tranquility that settled. She rose a hoof to rub her chin in thought,
pausing to tap it a few times as the gears in her mind spun. When, after a few
moments she idly stood and tethered on the brink of rubbing her chin raw, she
set her hoof down and sighed before trotting on again.
She found herself on a familiar dirt trail after a while of weaving around the
trees without further incident, and charged into Ponyville in a gallop. She
raced in a frenzy, eyes staying peeled for anything that might obstruct her
way, yet nopony seemed to be out at this time.
Twilight paused again once she registered the phenomenon. She looked to the sky
and found it to be still daylight. Looking to her left, she spotted a parchment
taped to a lightpost, bound in a layer of clear plastic. She trotted to it and
inspected it. "Huh, really heavy rain with a chance for hail today... that's
why nopony's out," she murmured, then shrugged and went about her merry way.
She just barely made it to a great oak tree with a door built into the trunk
when the storm hit. At first, nothing but a small drizzle of rain hit the
window, yet after two minutes passed and she got inside the torrent came,
accompanied by tiny clear pellets that bounced around for a bit after landing
before melting in the rain. She turned to the room and eyed the assorted books
on the shelves before her gaze fell unto the table, noticing a wooden carving
of a horse's head and one lone book, splayed open and begging to be read.
Twilight strode to that lonesome book and sat on her haunches, finding where
she left off with relative ease and resumed reading. Her brow furrowed as she
flipped the page when she finished it, this time with a simple levitation
spell, and she went on to read the next. As page after page of information got
a good thorough look-over, Twilight's face contorted gradually. First, her brow
furrowed some more, then a frown spread on her muzzle.
Once she managed to get through the rest of the book, she groaned and slammed
it shut with a hoof before returning it to a barren shelf with a fling of
magic. The mare pounded her hooves on the table in frustration, only to stop
and take a few deep breaths before she could explode further. When the drumming
of the rain and hail outside intensified to the point the noise faintly echoed
throughout the library, she stood up and went to the window to investigate why.
Her pupils dilated as she spotted the accursed falling ice balls, landing with
hard thuds and somehow not shattering with impact on the ground. The things had
grown to the size of tennis balls, and she could see holes forming in the
nearest straw roof at a breakneck speed. "What in the name of Celestia... oh
no. Tonight's gonna be bad."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
As soon as the storm had settled, Twilight and her friends gathered in the
library. All were looking at Rainbow Dash with frowns on their faces.
"I'm telling you, Twilight, I didn't know the hail was going to be that huge!
Neither did the rest of the weather team!" Dash exclaimed, flying in mid-air
and waving both front hooves frantically.
Twilight groaned in exasperation. She gave Dash a level look and asked, "Do you
know of anypony who did make the hail?"
"No. All the other weather ponies told me was that the weather’s been screwy
since the barrier broke. I heard it's happened in other cities, and it got way
out of control in Canterlot," Dash replied, firmly shaking her head as she
waved her hooves again.
"Could the Fantasians have had something to do with it?" Rarity piped up,
garnering looks from the other mares as she spoke.
"As far as we know, none of those crazy ponies can control weather. We saw how
bad it was over in Fantasia. There was no way it was them," Pinkie chimed in,
then she turned to Dash. "You said the weather ponies told you it was bad since
the barrier broke, right?"
"Like two seconds ago," Rainbow huffed, nostrils briefly flaring as she crossed
her forelegs. "Not even Spitfire knows what's going down, and she's the leader
of the Wonderbolts! I think that says a lot." She turned to Rarity and, with a
glower, added, "Rares, why would you accuse the Fantasians of causing the
weather to get messed up? You might as well start running around saying Pumpkin
Cake did it."
Rarity sighed and rubbed her temples with a hoof. "I suppose you're right," she
murmured. "I have no real proof that they could have done it. Oh, Twilight, do
you still have the newspaper?"
"Yes. And a letter from Celestia," Twilight answered, procuring both parchments
with a flash of light. She handed the letter to Rarity, and the newspaper to
Applejack.
"What in tarnation are you hoofing me this for?" the orange earth pony asked, a
brow raising as the newspaper found itself resting in one of her front hooves.
She read its contents for a moment before throwing it at Rainbow Dash, who
caught it with both hooves after fumbling with it for a few moments just trying
to grab it.
The cyan pegasus read the article, and her tail stood on end. "Wait, wait, back
up!" she exclaimed, pupils shrinking to tiny dots that hovered in magenta
canvases. "I thought there were no wraiths in Equestria!" With that, she hoofed
the paper to Pinkie Pie, pupils still dilated.
"Aside from the pale Fantasian changeling, I thought so, too. Then Celestia
sent that letter," Twilight groaned, shaking her head as she spoke with a
slightly bitter tone.
"I wonder why the Princess would wait until today to send this letter. But then
again, there was a mess in Canterlot regarding a hotel, so... I'll just assume
that took up most of her time," Rarity added, handing the letter over to
Fluttershy.
Pinkie slammed her front hooves down on the table, causing a loud thud to echo
in the room and simultaneously hush the others. The rest of the mares turned to
her and shivered as her visage set in a scowl, a spark of anger alight in her
eyes. "I hope the ponies who hurt them never, ever get the chance to make
somepony else frown again," she seethed in a quiet, angry tone. "The Fantasians
may have done some bad things, but what the hotel ponies did was ten times
worse."
"Well, they probably won't get that chance again. The ponies who ran that hotel
did some very bad things, and according to that tabloid, my brother got
involved in the mess too, somehow. I wouldn't be surprised if Celestia decided
to banish them," Twilight replied, noting that her words eased the burning
flame in Pinkie's eyes. The pink mare slumped a bit, and the lavender unicorn
added, "And there's a bunch of witnesses—foreign ones, but still—against them.
The hotel staff are pretty much in boiling water."
"Um, Twilight?" Fluttershy interjected, a hoof raised well before a set of
amethyst eyes turned to her. Before the unicorn could so much as utter a word,
the yellow pegasus continued, "If the Fantasians come here, don't we have to
keep them hidden? I wouldn't want the Cutie Mark Crusaders to see them. If you
don't mind, that is."
"Flutters has a point. The wraith they have with them would give Apple Bloom
some mighty fierce nightmares, and I don't even want to think about how lil'
Maria would act around my sister," Applejack conceded, nodding when Twilight
turned to her.
"Dearest Applejack, it couldn't be that bad if the hippogryph foal got some
more interaction with other children her age," Rarity countered, sending the
orange mare an unreadable look.
"That kid knows what a cock is, and I ain't talking about the kind that wake
you up every morning," Applejack retorted, returning Rarity's gaze with a face
that had a small frown and slightly narrowed eyes. "And she told us she lost
her Ma and Pa. What would happen if my sister brought that up with the little
gryph?"
Rarity flinched and her shoulders sagged. "Nevermind," she sighed in a low
tone.
***** Chapter XIII- Ice is Nice *****
A thick silence blanketed Canterlot, broken up by intense rain as it drummed on
the roofs and balconies, accompanied by hard thuds as huge chunks of hail
battered everything below the rainclouds. The silence did not last long for a
select group within the castle walls, however.
"Big stupid ice ball hit me!" Maria screeched as she ran into an ornately-
decorated guest room where most of the other Fantasians mulled about, a talon
on her forehead and her face scrunched in pain.
Fenrir limped over to the foal on all fours with his tail tucked between his
legs and scooped her up with a front paw. "On the head, I take it?" he groaned.
The filly nodded and rubbed the spot she held, giving a small wince when the
tips of her claws brushed up against it.
"Fen, are you alright? Your back legs are sagging, and your tail's between
them. It's been like that an hour since the storm started," Natalie noted from
across the room. The diamond dog turned to her and limped over, doing his best
to not drop the foal in his grasp.
"No. Let me just say that somepony decided it was a glorious idea to use a
large accumulation of hail. The somepony compacted it to the size of my
shoulder, and then struck a low blow with the resulting chunk," Fenrir snarled,
briefly wincing as he spoke. His reply caused the rest of the males in the room
to flinch themselves, with one sets of ears folding sharply back against the
head they were attached to.
Maria, likewise, cringed in sympathy. "You got the bigger hurt," she mumbled.
"Precisely," Fenrir conceded, lifting the foal and placing her on Natalie's
back. He pet her head with his paw, making sure not to touch the hurt spot in
the process, before setting it on the floor. He limped his way to a vacant
couch and flopped on it, softly whimpering when his lower half connected with
the cushions.
"You're walking around like something tore your arm off, balled the attached
paw into a fist, and repeatedly clocked you between the legs with the damn
thing. Who in Mythos hurt you?" Alexander asked, his inquiry earning him little
more than an indignant, pained huff.
"I'll trot around and start asking the guards. Maybe they know something about
what clobbered him so bad," Katie groaned, and with that, she strode out of the
room. The door closed as she made her exit, aided by a brief golden glow of
magic.
"Let's hope she and the guards find something," Sarah groaned, holding a nail
filer in one talon and grooming the claws on the other. "If it's bad enough to
make even Fenrir whimper, Godcat knows what it could do to the rest of us."
"Oioioi..." Matt mumbled, sitting on his rump with a heavy sigh. He glanced
around the room until his eyes fell on Armin, who fiddled about with a strange,
translucent ball of green goo with his front holey hooves. "What's that?" he
asked, gesturing to the slime-like wad.
"Chitil. This substance I'm holding is used for a lot of things which I'd
rather not list. I'm bored, I'm playing with it, please ask me if you want
some," Armin replied with a sneer.
Maria hopped off of Natalie's back and rushed towards the changeling, eyeing
the ball of chitil with a curious gaze. "Can I have some, please?" she asked in
a sweet tone.
Armin blinked and looked at the child with an unreadable look. His fanged maw
twitched, though not enough in an attempt to form words. He weighed the options
whilst making sure the chitil didn't have a chance to drip onto the floor. His
translucent wings flared wide for a moment before snapping shut as the filly
gave him a pleading look.
A loud, thundering boom echoed into the room, startling the group and causing
them to glance around. Sarah made to stand on her hooves, as if that could help
her see past the walls in her attempt to figure out what had happened. She
hesitated to revert to all fours, and looked at the others to be met with
"Don't look at me"s or simple shrugs of the shoulders from the other currently-
present Fantasians.
She sat down and sighed. "When do you guys think my sister and Lance will get
back?" she asked, briefly stretching her wings as wide as they could go before
closing them again.
"I don't know," Natalie responded, waving a front hoof as though she were
holding an invisible object with it. "I hope it's soon, though."
"I hope that was only a clap of thunder. We're in a castle on a mountain, and
I'm surprised the room hasn't shaken once yet," Alexander added, scratching his
temples with a claw. As if on cue, another loud reverberation echoed outside,
and this time it packed enough force to shake the entire castle for a full
minute.
"Quit jinxing it already. We got enough problems," Armin snapped, glaring at
the gryphon with the wad of chitil perched on his head like a slimy hat.
"That wasn't me, honest," the gryphon replied defensively and in an overly
innocent tone, flailing his talons in front of his chest like that could help
him.
"Yeah, right. About as likely a story as Katie learning how to lift Fenrir with
just her wings," Matt retorted in a huff, earning a chuckle from the diamond
dog in question.
"As unlikely as that scenario happens to be, somehow I find it... adorable,"
Fenrir stated with a grin.
"What's adorable?" Maria asked, garnering laughs from the rest of the group.
"What's so funny?"
Natalie had been the first to cease laughing. "You're adorable," she answered
with a wide grin, and made to speak further when the door opened.
Two more ponies that had gotten covered in ash at some point trotted into the
room, leaving twin trails of dirty hoofprints behind them. One decided to
loudly announce his arrival, and started this by letting off a shrill whistle
that garnered the attention of the others immediately. "The high mages tried
screwing with my wings, and look what happened," Lance groaned, a firm frown
set into his soot-layered visage.
"What'd they do, throw you into a pile of dust and water?" Matt asked with a
small grin, causing Natalie and Sarah to snicker at his inquiry.
"I wish," the pegasus huffed, glowering. The pony next to him just sighed and
shook her head. "Anna tried convincing the high mages it was a bad idea. What
does one of them do? Toy with the accursed wing covers anyway."
Anna spoke after taking a moment to wipe some of the ash off of her face with a
front hoof, "There's good news and bad news regarding the damn things. Good
news, they can be removed."
"What's the bad news?" Alexander questioned, a brow shooting up. His eyes
widened as Anna grabbed one of Lance's wings in her magic and spread it as wide
as it could go, and he spotted light cyan sparks glimmering from the feathers.
Each spark formed strange characters, one on each protrusion, as if they were
but incomplete fragments of some kind of rune.
Matt's smile fell upon seeing the anomaly. "Joy, the damn things are
enchanted," he groaned in a sarcastic tone. He then inquired in a serious
voice, "Did the high mages figure out anything?"
"Nope. They're like us: stuck on square one, and caked in dust," Anna replied,
shaking her head and dislodging some more ash in the process. "They couldn't
even identify these particular runes, and to be honest, I couldn't either," she
added, releasing the wing from her magical grip.
"Is he okay?" Maria piped up, tottering over to Anna on three legs and using a
claw to gesture to Lance for emphasis.
"Sort of," Lance answered for the child, punctuating his answer with a heavy
sigh. "Just gotta clean up and not bust a lung sneezing my head off while I do
it."
Anna blinked and gave the room a good once-over. "Wait, where's Katie?" she
asked upon noticing the absence of the wraith.
"Fenrir and Maria got attacked by hail, and Katie tottered off to find out
why," Sarah answered with a shrug.
"I hope what's-his-face stayed on the other side of this castle," Armin
snorted, reaching up with a hoof to pry the chitil off of his head. "The longer
we dwell here, and the more I hear him flap his gums like an uneducated fool
who has nothing better to do, the more I find myself thinking he's going to
touch us at night."
"With the guards around? Tch, that assclown has no chance of molesting us,"
Sarah scoffed, puffing her chest for a moment before sighing deeply as Lance
and Anna started trotting around the room.
After a few moments, the latter started cursing. "Godcat-dammit, would it kill
the castle staff to have feather dusters on standby after an entire room gets
coated ceiling to floor in ash?" she seethed, scouring up and down the room
whilst propelling herself with self-levitation.
"I think those are only granted to the local maids," Natalie stated with a roll
of her eyes, shaking her head as the archer landed at Fenrir's side. "And I
don't believe a feather duster to the face is a good idea."
"Natz has a point. I don't want feathers poking me in the nose or eyes anytime
soon," Lance conceded, finding a spot to lay down on. He made to rest his head
between his front hooves when somepony else waltzed into the room, bringing
with him another winged form trapped in a giant ice cube.
Several hundred smaller chunks comprised the ice cube, distorting the
inhabitant's shape, making some parts seem larger and others smaller. The only
thing that served as an identifier of the frozen one's identity was a set of
two rapidly-spinning orbs of blue. Said orbs brightly gleamed through the
chilled crystal mass as they whirled about.
The one dragging in the icy form, a white unicorn stallion with a blue mane and
monocle, sighed deeply and gestured with a hoof to the giant chunk of ice—or,
rather, who'd gotten trapped in the frozen confines. "Do any of you know how
this wraith found herself trapped in this gargantuan clump of hail?" he asked
in a smooth voice. The stallion found himself frowning when his question went
unanswered, largely because the Fantasians simply stared at the frozen pale
changeling.
Maria bounded forward to the imprisoned mare and stood up on her back legs,
resting her claws on the thick chunk of ice that seemed to have swallowed her
whole. "What happened to nice wraith?" she asked, turning to the blue-maned
unicorn with a frown.
"I'll take that as a 'no,'" the newcomer sighed, turning to the filly. "To be
honest, I just found her in the hallway round the corner in this state."
Natalie trotted forward and gently pushed Maria aside, her horn glowing and
surrounded by soft white flames that roiled around the spire. She turned to the
stallion and began, "Mister..."
"Fancypants, milady," the stallion replied, quickly stepping aside and
garnering looks from the other Fantasians in the process.
"Alright, Mister Fancypants," Natalie started anew in a tight, uneven voice,
"you might want to shield your eyes for a few moments. I don't want to be
liable for burnt-out eyes."
Fancypants nodded and his horn glowed, and a small fragment of a glimmering
blue shield hovered in front of his face like a detached mask. That mask
expanded as white flames encased the massive block of compacted ice, while
Natalie shut her eyes tight as the color ivory obscured much of her immediate
sight. Her ears folded back as escaping steam filled the air, and hot and cold
air intermingled and took to stinging at her face at the same time.
"Natz, do you need any help with that?" Anna asked, squinting her eyes as the
fire continued to attack the ice with seemingly-minimal results.
"I dunno yet," Natalie answered as she kept up the fiery onslaught. Bit by bit,
the ice melted into water that boiled and turned into steam as the flames kept
burning, yet how much remained she couldn’t tell with certainty. It didn't help
that said fires were white. Given that she stood mere inches from the
phenomenon and had to keep her eyes shut the whole time, there really hadn't
been much room to discern the anomaly.
Which made the margin for error all that much greater. After five whole minutes
had passed of channeling the spell, Natalie slumped and stopped casting,
opening her eyes after another moment with sweat and ice water beading her
brow. The wraith remained locked in the massive hunk of ice. The prison had
shrunk considerably and still dribbled with lingering white embers, which were
doused by boiling rivers of liquid that trailed down to the floor.
She summoned up another volley of flame, this set a predominant orange in color
that lashed out at the ice. Natalie stopped when one fireball shot clean
through the melting cube to the other side where it fizzed out in the hall,
barely missing Katie's left wings in the process.
"Natz, you faltering already?" Matt asked, frowning when the mare turned to him
with an unconvincing grin.
"Not yet. Just miscalculated how stable the ice is," Natalie replied in an
exhausted, pained, and worried tone.
Lance stared at the unicorn with the wet face, and he began glowering. "Just be
more careful. Last thing we need is our wraith yelling our ears into orbit," he
said.
"Can do," Natalie answered, turning back to the frozen mare and charging up
another fire spell. However, as she continued to torch the frozen water—careful
to not let herself go overboard and accidentally singe Katie in the process—the
flames gradually started spluttering out and getting weaker. In moments, the
unicorn reached the point where her horn glowed bright red and emitted vapor
from its tip, with nothing more than the faintest of sparks every time she
attempted another spell.
To add to the icing on the proverbial cake, the wraith's cage didn't shrink
more than another inch or so, even with the fiery onslaught. "Oh, you have got
to be kidding me!" Natalie cried, eyes narrowing and brow furrowing as she
stared at the ice cage.
"Oh dear," Fancypants remarked, shaking his head at the display. He turned to
the other Fantasians and sighed, using a hoof to gesture to Natalie—mouthing,
"Stop her before she overexerts herself!" at the same time.
Natalie continued to try casting spells, yet achieved little more than fizzing,
steam continually building up and rising from her horn, and a rapidly-worsening
headache. Her legs began buckling, and her breathing turned ragged and raspy as
sweat and ice water continued to drip from her reddening face.
"Looks like you need help. Stand aside, Natz. I think I can bust her out," Anna
proclaimed, trotting forward and summoning two crystal arrows with a flash of
magic. The cream-colored mare shambled out of the way and collapsed nearby,
watching as the arrows landed head-first in the ice without the aid of a bow.
Sharp taps and cracks filled the air as the arrows repeatedly stabbed the
frozen water like miniature pickaxes, dislodging entire chunks and casting them
into the floor.
In another few moments, Katie had been freed from the chilled confine. Matt
scrambled to the gathering of mares and conjured a thick blanket to wrap around
the wraith, hefting her up and putting the changeling on Alexander's back. Her
orbs still spun and spun in the canvases of black, to the point they looked
like swirls lazily turning about in a manner similar to the gears of a clock
tower.
"Bet you twenty bits she won't feel a damn thing for an hour or so," Lance
sighed, then he turned his attention to Fancypants. "Thanks for notifying us
that she'd somehow gotten into a block of ice," he added in a sincere, if
agitated, tone of voice.
"It was nothing at all," Fancy replied with a nod and a smile. His grin fell as
his gaze fell onto Katie. "Tell me, is she going to be well?"
"She'll be fine. She's a wraith; she's probably handled much worse than just
being frozen for a few minutes," Alexander replied, carefully raising a claw to
pat the head of the wraith on his back.
"I see. Still, I can't help but worry for her. That level of emaciation is
something that can't easily be ignored," Fancy stated, sighing heavily before
smiling faintly again. "But I trust your judgment. I hope she recovers." With
that, he left the room, making sure to close the door behind himself as he
went.
"Remind me to find her a hot tub tonight. I'm impressed she hasn't caught a
cold yet," Armin remarked, trotting over to Alexander and examining the wraith.
Katie weakly groaned, jaw barely moving as she spoke, "I cah feeh awyfig."
"I will find whoever put nice wraith in ice, and their face will go bye-bye!"
Maria proclaimed with a firm frown and furrowed brow, talons balling into fists
for a moment. They unclenched as Anna trotted over and rested a hoof on the
foal's withers.
"You don't want to be an ice cube yourself, right?" the archer asked. When the
foal shook her head after turning to face her, she continued, "That’s what I
thought. It's one thing to—" Anna paused to shudder and fidget uncomfortably
before resuming, "—scratch a rapist in the dick. It's another to throw yourself
to whoever decided it was a good idea to turn Katie into a wraithsicle."
"And besides, we don't know who exactly did it," Matt added, sighing. "You
might accidentally hurt the wrong pony, and then we'd all be fucked."
"That would be assuming she manages to strike first," Fenrir interjected,
nostrils flaring for a second.
"Touché," Natalie groaned in agreement, rising to stand on unsteady hooves, her
head gently swaying and her bright-red horn starting to fade back to its
natural cream color. "I swear, that ice drained me of my mana like a..." she
paused, struggling to speak as her mind tried racking up words to finish her
remark.
"Like a hoard of aphids drinking the blood of your crops," Anna finished for
Natalie, shooting a glance at the shaky red-maned unicorn before turning back
to Maria. She ruffled the foal's mane with a hoof and smiled. "Be lucky you
don't have to deal with channeling raw magic," she stated.
"Why? Magic sounds fun and looks cool," Maria protested, looking at the archer
with a pouty frown on her face.
"You saw what happened to Natalie's horn, right?" When the foal nodded, Anna
continued, "Well, that's... a very painful thing for a unicorn to go through.
An overheating horn is bad juju."
"I cwah fhah I cah deeh wif cah," Katie mumbled, front legs moving ever so
slightly to press deeper into Alexander's feathers.
"Er... whatever it was that she just said. Yes, that," Alexander sighed, eyes
widening as his head shook.
"At least she isn't drugged out of her mind," Lance remarked, taking a chance
to shoot Matt a stony glare.
"I swear, there were no mushrooms on the Scylla," Matt stated defensively as he
met the pegasus's glare head-on with a firm frown set into his muzzle.
"What's a mushroom?" Maria piped up, turning to Anna as the green-maned unicorn
lowered her head, shaking it as a soft laughter escaped her mouth.
"Oh, boy. The kid's got her started," Armin murmured, a wide frown spreading
fast on his face, revealing every single sharp tooth in his jaws as he laughed.
This wound up creating a noise sounding something like an "eeeuh!"
"Please don't tell me this is going where I think it's going," Lance moaned,
his visage starting to turn a shade of verdant through the ash coat still on
him.
"It's... it's... oh Godcat..." Anna began, only to stop as she flopped on the
floor to immediately roll on her back and howl with laughter, her front hooves
clutching her stomach as a giggle fit shook her form.
"Here we go. This just can't get any worse, could it?" Sarah groaned while
frowning at the laughing mare, and as soon as she said that a guard burst into
the room with a harried look on his face.
"The hail has gotten out of control, and your scheduled train ride has been
delayed for another week," the guard stated.
Sarah rose a talon and let it connect with her face. "Apparently, it can get
worse," she hissed as the talon slid down the bridge of her muzzle.
"How in the name of Godcat's glorious paws is such a thing possible?" Fenrir
asked, turning to the guard with a brow raised and a hard frown set into his
jawline.
Somehow ignoring the cackling mare who still lay on the floor, the guard
sighed. "The train cars, and the station itself, suffered from..." he paused to
shake his head before continuing, "Would you like to see the damage for
yourself? Once the storm ends?"
"If time and shenanigans permit, yes we would," Lance answered before Fenrir
could speak again. The guard nodded and went out of the room, leaving the
Fantasians to their own devices and their still-giggling member.
At long last, Anna calmed down and rolled onto her stomach, panting rather
excitedly for breath. "M-Maria, you don't w-want to know what a m-mushroom
is..." she spluttered, gasping between words as she spoke.
Armin bustled over and jammed a chitil-covered hoof into Anna's mouth. "Take
some breaths through the nose, mare. That giggle fit needs to stop before it
starts up again and makes you bust a lung," he stated. The unicorn nodded and
did as she was asked, inhaling through her nostrils until the changeling
removed his hoof from her muzzle.
Immediately after that, Anna spluttered. She rose a hoof to cough and spit into
it. "Bleh! Don't coat your hooves in chitil next time! It tasted like used
rubber!" she cried, ears folding back against her head as she spoke.
"Does used rubber taste bad?" Maria piped up, flinching as Natalie shuffled to
her with a soft glare.
"You really don't want to know," the cream-colored mare answered in a low,
tight voice. "You just... don't, alright?"
"What she said," Anna added, her tone also falling quiet, although it briefly
faltered as she shuddered. The archer went on, voice dropping lower, "And don't
ask how I know what used rubber tastes like, please."
Sarah cringed, then stood up on her hind legs and walked over to Anna. "Sis,
are you..." she trailed off, eyes averting as she mentally searched for words
that could aid her.
Anna sat on her rump and trailed a hoof over one of her cutie marks, ears
flattening against her head. "Y-yeah," she replied, flinching before setting
her hoof on the floor.
Sarah nodded and reverted to all fours, placing a talon on the unicorn's
shoulder and sighing heavily. "Listen, if it takes your mind off of... that and
makes you feel better," she paused to lean in close to the archer's ear, her
voice dropping to a soft and near-silent whisper, "you can touch my feathers.
Alright?"
"It's... worth a shot," Anna answered with a nod after hesitating for a moment.
Fenrir eyed the mares, a brow raised as they excused themselves and waltzed out
of the room. "Dare I question them?" he asked, turning to the others who either
shrugged or responded with "No"s.
"Oi, Katie, anybody home yet?" Matt asked, turning his gaze to the wraith as he
spoke.
"No," the wraith answered, her form shivering under the blanket she'd been
wrapped in.
"Give her another few moments. I'm sure she'll have a bit of clarity then,"
Alexander sighed, shifting to lay down. He took to being careful not to jerk or
make any other sudden motion that had potential to cause Katie to roll off of
his back.
Katie let off a low groan, nestling her head in the feathers of the gryphon's
neck. Her ears perked and swiveled a bit before drooping back down against her
head, and the orbs stopped glowing in their black canvases as a soft snore left
her torn maw.
"Looks like she's napping," Natalie remarked, tilting her head at the display.
Alexander chortled. "I think she's gotten comfy," he stated.
"You're sleeping with the wraith tonight. No ifs, ands, or buts," Lance said
simply, earning himself some guffaws from the gryphon.
"You sound like you're expecting me to advance on her, general," he retorted
with a wry grin. "Even I wouldn't do that. She'd most likely bite."
"He has a point," Armin added, turning to the pegasus with a smirk on his
fanged maw as he flinched and brought a hoof up by reflex. His smirk widened as
Lance's face drained of its color, only further highlighted by the soot still
clinging to him.
Fenrir decided to add in his two bits with a toothy grin, "Pardon my
forwardness, but shouldn't a general keep his muzzle out of his soldiers' sex
lives?"
"I only said he was sleeping with her! I don't recall saying he could piledrive
her!" Lance exclaimed defensively, turning to Fenrir with another glower.
"Besides, would a wraith want to screw with a gryphon, or the other way around?
Face it, I barely see those two getting along under the sheets."
Fenrir met the glare with a snicker. "Sounds like somepony's envious," he
stated.
"A-am not!" Lance spluttered, ears folding back sharply against his head. "W-
where's your proof of that claim!"
"I'd wager that your spluttering and sudden change in attitude would be more
than enough for me to make my initial assumption," Fenrir chirped, his grin
widening.
***** Chapter XIV- Always Knowing, Never Known *****
Rainbow Dash flew at a low altitude through the starlit sky adorned with a thin
crescent moon, the wind whistling in her ears and through her mane as she
darted over some trees like a speeding bullet. She looked up for a split-
second, brow furrowing at some stray clouds that idly floated about, before
climbing higher to avoid a particularly tall tree. She did this with such speed
it almost looked like she jutted up at a 90-degree angle.
She continued to climb, wings flapping with such haste they looked to be little
more than blurs wavering at the sides of her body. The pegasus stopped mid-air
to perform a horizontal loop, noticing that from here, she could see all of the
Everfree Forest, and the small town directly adjacent to it.
"Hey, Dash, what're you doing out here flying this late?" a masculine voice
called out, causing the mare to dart her head about every which-way she could.
She immediately spotted another form flying towards her at a slow gait, a very
pale blue stallion that almost looked white in the light of the moon. He had a
very dark blue, windswept mane that appeared to not have been brushed through,
and emerald eyes glinting with curiosity.
"Having trouble sleeping. The weather going out of control has been bugging me
lately, and everypony in Ponyville just would not let me hear the end of it,"
Dash replied, a frown forming on her muzzle. "I should be asking you the same
thing, Soarin."
Soarin chuckled, before the sound died in his throat to be replaced with a
heavy sigh. "Yeah, I get what you mean. Spitfire told me to stay on watch for
any more unusual shifts in the weather tonight," he replied, and in a moment,
his eyes went wide and that spark of curiosity within his emerald irises
flickered tenfold. "Oh, did you see that big airship with the black balloon
that came a few weeks ago?" he asked, his question causing Rainbow to pale a
bit.
"Er... yeah, I did," the cyan mare mumbled, raising a front hoof to awkwardly
rub at the back of her head with it.
Soarin's face hardened. "You did? Could you tell me what the hay that was
about?" he questioned.
Rainbow's hoof dropped, and she sighed as if she’d been bested in combat. "It's
a Fantasian airship," she stated.
Soarin's jaw dropped open for a second before it clacked shut. He shook his
head, pupils dilating as he stared at his fellow pegasus. "You're kidding," he
murmured.
"I wish I was," Rainbow replied, nodding slowly. Something clicked in her head,
but she gave it no more recognition than a twitch of the ear. "Did you read the
newspaper today?"
"Yeah, why—" Soarin stopped mid-sentence, his eyes widening to the size of
saucers. "Wait, wait, hold up. You mean... you mean the hotel scandal article?"
"Yep," Dash answered in a flat voice. "That one."
"Oh... oh..." Soarin mumbled, his shrinking irises averting every which-way for
a moment before he calmed down with a few deep breaths. He affixed as level a
look on Dash as he could muster, though the resulting small frown on his muzzle
made the expression he aimed for seem off. "Well, I was hoping the Fantasians
got a better welcome in Equestria with open hooves, and instead three of them
got..." he paused, searching for words, "used, to put it very mildly."
"I'm with you on that one. Nopony should be raped, even if they came from a
completely different planet," Dash conceded with a nod.
Soarin nodded back, his frown turning into a grin. "Y'know, I think I can give
them the perfect gift that might at least make them feel a bit better," he
began, his grin widening.
Dash quirked a brow. "What would that be?" she asked. "Aside from maybe showing
those rapists what for," she mentally murmured. "I hope that'll teach 'em."
"A few pies, one for each Fantasian. Could you tell me how many came to
Equestria, so I don't accidentally give them a pie too many?" Soarin asked, a
tiny glint shimmering in his eyes.
The cyan mare blinked and put a hoof to her chin. Her eyes averted to the sky
as she let off a low, thoughtful "hrrrrmmmmm..." After a moment, she began
tapping at her chin, her mouth twitching to form various frowns that ranged
from barely noticeable to very pronounced. Another moment passed before she
dropped her hoof and turned back to the stallion with a mask that betrayed
little emotion. "Ten Fantasians. Eleven, counting their pet cat," she answered.
Soarin's shoulders began flinching violently, almost like they had clothespins
clenching various spots upon them. He chuckled, though the laugh was uneven and
even slightly off. "I-I see," he stuttered, trying for a grin that looked
lopsided because his lower jaw kept on shaking out of tempo with the rest of
his cranium. "M-maybe I'll get th-the kitty treats, t-too."
"Soarin, are you okay? All of a sudden, you're stuttering like somepony stuck a
vibrator up your plothole and started holding a knife to your throat. No
offense," Dash mused, a brow shooting up as Soarin's grin widened and he
frantically nodded.
"N-none taken. I-I'm fine," the stallion answered. He started taking a few deep
breaths and managed to calm his bout of quivering in a moment, somewhat. "I-
it's just that I gotta p-practice a lot tomorrow. Y-y'know, standard Wonderbolt
t-training, only much h-harder."
"How much harder than kicking and moving clouds and making giant tornadoes are
we talking here?" Dash continued, her brow still raised.
Soarin took another series of deep, calming breaths before answering, "Using
hail in the standard rainbow-making process. Something about making the sun's
rays reflect just right. And then using the hail to pretty up the performance
next week, without dropping or breaking a single chunk."
Rainbow's eyes widened. "Sounds pretty rough. Well, I'm going home. Hope you do
an awesome performance next week," she said, and with that, she darted off into
the deep dark blue of the sky, leaving a six-colored trail that gleamed with
the moon's faint light in her wake.
"Thanks," Soarin called out as Dash vanished into the night. He turned away and
flew the way he had come, eyes still glinting with that curious spark as he
ascended higher and higher, his sights set on the floating mass of rainbow-
oozing clouds in the barely-illuminated distance.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Spike sighed as he and Twilight sat in the library at the table, with only the
tabloid and Celestia's letter keeping them company. "Maybe it was Shining who
made the arrests, Twilight. The paper did say he was involved in the whole
hotel scandal."
Twilight tapped at her chin with a hoof, then rubbed her temples with it.
"Well, he is captain of the guard... alright, I can get behind that reasoning.
Still doesn't really explain why he had his ears yelled off three times,
according to the letter," she murmured.
"Well, we'll have to ask the Fantasians when they show up. Shining's still
gonna be on guard duty anyway," Spike suggested, shrugging his shoulders.
"Makes sense," Twilight conceded with a nod. She stood up abruptly and shot a
quick glance around the library. She jumped to the nearest shelf and started
grasping books in her magic, seemingly at random. "No... no... not that one,"
she murmured to herself as she browsed the shelves, sometimes levitating
herself to scan the ones that otherwise remained out of her reach.
"Twilight? What are you looking for?" Spike asked, a brow shooting up as
Twilight continued to scour through the rows of leatherbound paper.
The unicorn did not heed the drake's inquiry, instead flying to another high
shelf to raffle through its contents. In fact, she paid little attention to
anything that wasn't a shelf of books. After a few moments had passed wherein
she did nothing but pull stacks of books off of shelves to scan them before
putting them back, she found a particular shelf that sat in a wide frame all to
itself. This one had been laden with a horseshoe-like indent on the back, and
it rested on the side of a flight of stairs going up.
"Huh?" she mused, raising a hoof to touch the indent. It slid deeper into the
wood with a loud click, and the wood containing it split into two halves from
the top of the frame which held it. The wood framing the indent slid to the
side, releasing not one sound as it shifted, and revealed a cylindrical
structure going down into the earth. This structure did not have any sort of
light source; Twilight peered down and found what looked like an empty abyss
marked by great gnarly tree roots.
Spike ran up to Twilight and went wide-eyed at what she had found. "Another
hidden compartment?" he asked, turning to the unicorn with a perplexed frown on
his face.
"Seems like," Twilight replied, turning to meet the drake's gaze. "Stay here.
I'll take a look at what's down there."
"But you could hurt yourself!" Spike pointed out, his frown deepening before
receding as a lavender hoof patted his head.
"I know how to levitate myself, Spike. I'll be fine," the unicorn replied, her
horn glowing with magic that embraced her entire form and emitted a brilliant
amethyst light from its tip. With that, she bounded down the chute head-first,
going slowly to avoid reaching speeds at which she couldn't shove the blasted
roots aside.
It took a few moments to reach a point where the unicorn didn't need to worry
about shoving aside tree roots, but by the time she passed the last twisting
wooden tendril, she groaned as she looked up and then back down. There didn't
seem to be an end to the damned tunnel, given that her light did not reveal a
floor of any kind whatsoever. She kept going down for another two minutes, only
to land on her face upon what felt like a mixture between gravel and sand.
Twilight rose onto her hooves after taking a few more seconds to recover from
the impact, shaking her head free of the grit as she stood up. She trotted
forward, finding herself on a winding slope that went down for a bit. "Who made
this thing go underground?" she mused aloud, just as she came to a small
rectangular room.
This place housed little more than a tiny aged wood bookshelf no taller than
she was, and an equally small collection of books adorning its shelves. Next to
that stood a small nightstand and chair, caked in dirt, moss and grime and
riddled with splinters. Twilight approached the bookshelf, carefully picking up
the bunch of books and sighing as some of them crumbled as soon as they were
lifted from their resting places. The books that hadn't crumbled floated around
her and past her eyes, stopping as she looked at their titles to scrutinize
them for a bit.
"'Olde Folk Tales...'" Twilight murmured to herself, as if another soul had
been present with her. She sighed and set that book back on the shelf before
regarding the next one that came to her face. "'Songs of Hearth's Warming...'"
That went on the shelf to join its bookmate. "'Arcane Magicks of the
Everfree...'" That, too, returned to its place with magical aid. "'Bizarro
Enchantments for the Everyday Lyrist...'"
The unicorn paused, tilting her head for a moment as she studied this book's
title. "I'll take you upstairs," she mumbled, making the book vanish in a flash
of magic before moving onto the next book, one with a terribly worn leather
finish. "'Before the Barrier... written by Starswirl—'" Twilight stopped
herself, eyes widening to the size of dinner plates as she looked at the book's
supposed author. She set it on the nightstand and hastily looked at the other
books' titles before setting those back on the shelf and making the whole thing
vanish in a violet light.
She turned her attention to the lone book on the aged nightstand and trotted to
it, using magic to open the cover and start scanning the pages. The first
sentence in, she found, had been written in what looked like a diary-type
format, complete with dates and times that were so smudged she had to do a
double-take to assess what they were. Then there came the details after that;
at first, it was some kind of drivel about preparations made to utilize
something.
Something—Twilight couldn't tell what, because a thick layer of ink that looked
fresher than what was in the paper thoroughly blotted most of that page
out—that seemed to include the world Fantasia in one of the few clean spots.
"Who would ever scribble all over this book? Why? This is a priceless artifact,
for pony's sake!" she sighed when she reached another large blot of ink just a
page later. The unicorn continued to read, brow furrowing as she found more
smudges and massive black blots before stopping at a rather particular page.
"Hrm... 'I sit in this dismal place, contemplating; writing out what I have
learnt thus far in the strangest cavern Fantasia has offered to me yet.
Traversing this forsaken network of caves in my company is Clover, who
currently lays to sleep away the dreary night; ‘tis like a mare of noble birth
might do to one’s sire in the days of darkness.'" Twilight's brow shot up as
she stopped reading to contemplate this for a moment. She continued reading,
finding a bit of banter about these caverns that the papers detailed before the
mare came upon a loose piece of parchment between the worn, warped pages.
She pried it out effortlessly with but a jerk of her head and a flick of magic,
holding the parchment to one side as she resumed where she left off when more
dastardly smudges and ink blots impeded her progress. Using her magic to flip
through the rest of the pages in a way it looked like a breeze wafted through
them from the side, she found that the rest had been obscured by ink. Either
that, or in the case of many more pages, had its words smeared so terribly it
was almost as if somepony took an eraser to the damned tome and went to town
with it.
Amidst the literary destruction, however, stood out two sentences near the end
of the book, as clear and concise as a slap to the face from a levitating
brick. "'As the stars gleam in the night sky like the moon, so too shall the
forests whisper in the winds and bring about the hope in Fantasia... I must
needs figure out if this muttering of Fantasian natives could betoken to an
event of a kind that eludes me; and with a feeble hope I pray that I understand
its musings before my faltering life comes to an end.'"
This discovery prompted a few questions out of the unicorn, ones that echoed in
the room and went unanswered as she stood alone in this tiny dismal space. "Who
would desecrate this memoir, especially if it's by Starswirl the Bearded? And
who would hide it under the library?" she groaned, stomping a hoof as her face
set in a scowl. She made the book vanish in another brief flare of light before
turning her attention to the lone parchment she had yet to study.
"Let's see what you have to offer," Twilight murmured as the paper came up to
her face much like the books had earlier. She found a few sentences on the
paper, detailing things like 'focus mana into your horn' and 'make sure the
caster has sufficient mana'—standard stuff. "I learned these things before I
got my cutie mark. This is foal's play for me," she chuckled to herself.
That's when she stumbled upon a series of strange runes, framed between two
circles and the silhouette of a dagger in the center of the second circle. The
unicorn studied the runes, brow furrowing. "These runes... that's funny. I
can't read them. Note to self: study whatever language these runes are written
in as soon as possible," she thought as her mind continued to process what had
been written on the paper.
She turned to the nightstand and chair. "No use salvaging those pieces of
furniture," she groaned to herself before making the parchment vanish in a
flash of light. She took a deep breath and channeled mana into her horn,
turning the glow already radiating from the tip from a light purple to almost
white in a second. Then, materializing in the air before her, the runes on the
parchment came to life, foreign symbols spinning with the circles as if they
were part of a turning gear.
Once the runes ceased spinning a moment later, a blade as long as her body shot
out from the innermost circle, one formed of a brilliant white light compacted
into corporeal form. It sped towards the chair and stand tip-first, slicing
through them with ease before cementing itself to the junction of blade and
hilt in the dirt wall. Twilight gaped as her eyes adjusted to the change of
light, pupils dilating as she spotted odd protrusions that came from the hilt
that looked a little bit like pairs of wings.
In fact, the overall shape of the blade looked strange. Twilight pried it out
of the wall with her magic to study the weapon more closely, and after taking
in the contours and the slender hilt, it hit her. "This is almost like... no,
exactly in the shape of..." she trailed off, mouth quivering as the gravity of
the situation set in on her.
The unicorn made the sword of light vanish and quickly turned around, galloping
to the chute as her mind began racing with wild thoughts that jumbled together
so fast it was almost like setting hoof in Fantasia all over again. Upon
reaching the chute, she grasped herself in her magic and shot upwards like a
rocket, slowing down when she reached the gnarled roots to tenderly shove them
aside as she climbed higher.
Twilight reached the main floor of the library, sighing as her hooves landed on
the wood floor and the door to the once-hidden compartment closed. She glanced
around to find Spike idling about near the table. The drake spotted her, and
began running up to greet her with a glimmer of some kind of emotion in his
eyes. "Find anything?" he asked.
Twilight answered by summoning the pile of books and their shelf, letting the
aged bits of wood and parchment and leather stand at her side. "A hefty bit,"
she replied. "Spike, could you take these books and store them in the bedroom,
please? I'm off to see Zecora again."
The drake nodded. "Sure thing. After I'm done with the books, though, I'll
probably hit the hay," he chirped with a small grin. His smile broadened as the
unicorn rose a hoof to pat him on the head.
"Oh, and be careful with these books. They're old and haven't been cared for
properly," Twilight added, waiting until Spike gave her a nod of understanding
before she rushed to the front door, threw it wide open with her front hooves,
and galloped off into the night. She bounded onwards, softly smiling to herself
as she noted the lack of ponies out and about at this hour.
She kept going, hooves propelling her body as fast as they were able, and
before long a dark and dismal forest came into view, complete with the trodden
dirt road that cleanly divided it in two. Above it, brewing violently, a
forming gathering of thunderclouds swirled about, shooting off bolts of
lightning that never once touched the trees. Twilight steeled herself and went
onwards, keeping to the path for a few moments before diverting, flinching as
lightning flashed overhead and created an extensive shadow in front of her in
its wake.
The mare sighed and still kept on going, her horn glowing with a dull amethyst
light. With the light came a dull throb, pounding away in her cranium like she
had been repeatedly hit on the head with a plastic cup. In seconds, the glow
fizzled out and ceased to exist, once more darkening her immediate
surroundings. Twilight rolled her eyes to nobody in particular and grumbled to
herself, "Stupid me, I should've stayed home and let my mana recuperate. Oh
well, there's no way I can get there now."
The unicorn turned around and sighed for the upteenth time. "I'll head over to
Zecora's tomorrow," she mumbled in resignation as she trotted onto the path and
began making her way back to the library. She did not hear the sound of leaves
rustling, nor did she see that a pair of glimmering eyes hiding behind the
bushes watched her as she vanished into the distance.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Fluttershy sat on a bed in a dark room with a fireplace and a chest resting at
the foot of the bed. She watched as Angel slept in a nearby bed of his own,
chattering with a face set in a scowl. The bunny shifted about in his sleep,
the dim lighting doing its best to hide some kind of cloth that rested on his
head. The yellow pegasus sighed to herself, voice barely audible, "I hope you
get better, Angel Bunny. That ball of hail could've hurt you really bad, but
I'm glad it didn't."
The bunny chattered, still snoozing, and Fluttershy smiled at his form before
she turned to the other side of the room, spotting two windows very faintly
reflecting the starlight in the night sky.
She blinked upon seeing a rainbow streak appearing in the expanse outside,
seemingly dividing it in two and glimmering with liquid silver for the barest
of instants before it faded like a firefly's tail light. Silently, the lone
pegasus crept out of bed and shuffled to the window, carefully dragging her
hooves in a way that made very little noise. Slowly, oh so slowly, she reared
on her back legs and pushed the panes of glass apart once within reach,
flinching when they groaned a little in response. As soon as the new opening
had been widened enough, Fluttershy flared her wings and flapped madly.
She darted out of the window, pausing to turn around and close it again before
directing her attention to the sky. The pegasus spotted another prismatic
trail, heading towards a lone cloud structure in the night that lazily floated
near the town. A breeze wafted by, briefly catching her mane and tail and
lifting them in a manner not unlike that of hair being brushed. Fluttershy
angled herself and started ascending up, wings slowing to languidly flapping at
the bare minimum as her feathers caught the tail of the fleeting gale.
Riding the wind enabled her to cross the distance from the place she left
moments ago to the cloud structure all on its lonesome. Fluttershy rapidly
flapped her wings when the makeshift porch came into view, stopping herself
before she could crash through the front door or nearest wall. For a second or
two, she glanced up and spotted rivers of liquidated color pour from the sides
of the building and a tri-colored bolt of lightning hanging above her before
turning to the door and raising a front hoof to knock on it.
Another moment passed, and she knocked again when nopony answered. "Coming!" a
voice called from within, followed by the sound of hooves hitting the soft
clouds with dull thuds. The door opened, and standing inside the doorframe was
Rainbow Dash. "Hey, Shy. You need something?" she asked.
"Um, I saw you flying above the Everfree from my cottage," Fluttershy replied,
a small frown on her face. Her head tilted slightly as she asked, "Is something
wrong?"
"I couldn't sleep, so I flew about for a bit to wear myself out. Then I bumped
into Soarin, and he started asking me..." Rainbow's voice fell as she trailed
off, leaning in to Fluttershy's face before she finished, "about the Fantasians
that came back here with us."
Fluttershy's eyes widened. "Oh, dear, that's worrying. Did you tell him
anything?"
"No, only that there were ten of them—eleven, if you went and included their
cat," Dash replied, sighing heavily. "Soarin wanted to give them pies as make-
up gifts for the fact that they weren't... warmly welcomed. And cat treats."
"But Rainbow, three of them got raped," Fluttershy murmured, pupils shrinking
as she spoke. "I really don't think pies would make them feel better about the
mess they've landed in."
"Try telling that to Soarin," Dash retorted with a huff. "I wouldn't be
surprised if Celestia basically let the victims strangle the rapists with their
front hooves... and set of claws. We both saw what happened to those dozen or
so wraiths that started calling two of them 'toys.'"
"That's true, but maybe Celestia'll compromise with them, and they did help
heal the little filly. Unless things get really bad in Canterlot, I don't think
they'll try something," Fluttershy murmured with a nod. She donned a small
smile as she further ventured, "Did Soarin do anything else?"
"No, but he did tell me that he was only flying late because he was practicing
for the Wonderbolts performance next week," Dash answered, shrugging her
shoulders. Her ears twitched as a roll of thunder echoed in the air around
herself and her fellow pegasus, and she started flapping her wings. "I don't
think it's supposed to storm tonight," she mumbled as her wings lifted her off
of the cloud floor.
Fluttershy spread her wings and began flapping likewise. "Maybe the weather's
still acting strange. Would you like me to help you clear any stray
thunderclouds?" she asked.
Dash ceased flying and landed on the cloud floor, staring at Fluttershy with
widening eyes. "Wait, wait, whoa whoa whoa," she mumbled at a rapid-fire pace
as her pupils started dilating. "You, help me with the freaky weather?" When
the yellow pegasus nodded, Dash started gaping. "Um, you've seen what it did
earlier today, right? To the roofs in Ponyville?"
"I've seen the damage, but that doesn't mean I can't help," Fluttershy replied
curtly, eyes narrowing slightly and face hardening. "I want to help you clear
any stray clouds so that something like the storm earlier today doesn't happen
again. Some of my animal friends got really badly hurt, and maybe some of the
other ponies in Ponyville got hurt too."
Rainbow relented with a slight flinch. "Well, when you put it like that..." she
paused, wings twitching momentarily. "Alright, I'll let you help. Just be
careful, okay?"
Fluttershy's visage relaxed, and she donned a small smile again. "That's what
friends are for, right?" she asked, earning a chuckle from Rainbow.
"Oh yeah, that's what friends are for!" Dash cheered, a smile spreading on her
face as she rose a hoof and set it on Fluttershy's shoulder.
***** Chapter XV- Malicious Turbulence *****
Rarity sat in a room looking out of a window, paying little heed to the nearby
shelves full of rolled-up colored fabrics, pony-shaped mannequins, and the
sewing table and machine. She watched the dim sky, ear twitching when a soft
mew hit her ears. The unicorn glanced at her hooves and noticed a fluffy white
cat with a bow on its head and an opal-studded collar around its neck sitting
in front of her, its legs so small they gave the appearances of stubs.
"Opal, dear, are you worried about me?" Rarity whispered, sighing when the cat
looked at her quizzically before letting off another mew. The cat stood up and
waddled around the mare, pausing to crouch for a moment, eying the sewing table
intently. Opal jumped up in a fluid motion, landing on the table with yet
another mew.
The unicorn followed the critter with her gaze, turning her head as the ball of
fluff curled up next to the sewing machine, looking back at her expectantly.
"Opal, just what is so imperative that I pay some attention to it?" Rarity
questioned, a brow quirking up as the cat uncurled, stood up again and jumped
from the table to the top of one of the fabric shelves and tapped at a part of
the wall with its paw impatiently.
Rarity sighed and stood up, trotting over to the cat. Her horn lit up a soft
blue, bathing the room in a small amount of light that revealed a sketch held
up to the wall by a picture frame. "Opal, it's very late. Why would I stress
myself out trying to make a dress at this hour?" she asked. When the cat failed
to mew back, she groaned and trotted to a heart-decorated door that had closed
her off from the rest of the outside.
She opened the door and left the room with her horn still glowing, quickly
finding herself in a vast space adorned with many dark pink curtains that
almost looked purple in the sable. To one side, three mirrors surrounded a
stand to her immediate left, and beyond that stood a clothing rack with several
different dresses hanging on coat hangers. Near the mirrors, a double-handled
door that had been split down a horizontal middle stood, faintly glimmering
with reflected starlight.
The unicorn trotted around these things, briefly pausing to turn to an object
completely concealed by curtains towering to the ceiling that stood in the
middle of this room. She sighed and continued on her way, passing the mirrors
and curtains and dresses before rounding a bend and noticing a flight of
stairs. Rarity made her way up these steps, silent but swift as she moved,
reaching a second floor with a small hall that had only three doorways.
Rarity moved to one of the doors and opened it, finding an ornately-decorated
room with a bed that had curtains hanging above it thanks to an overhead frame.
She trotted to it and flopped on the sheets, not bothering to cover up as she
closed her eyes and lay there for a few moments.
Silence held the room as the unicorn did not move her limbs, softly breathing
in and out, her thoughts wandering and wavering from one thing to the next in
the span of seconds. The mare's ivory ears twitched and swiveled every so
often, catching faint noises and the occasional loud mrrow from Opal that
echoed into the area from outside.
Rarity's mind whirred and whirred, spurring and churning with so many ideas
that, when she finally realized this was happening, she jumped out of the bed
and snapped her eyes wide open after a solid half-hour of doing nothing else
but lay still. The unicorn stomped her hoof onto the floor in agitation, eyes
narrowing as a frown spread on her face. "Oh, phooey," she mumbled, trotting
out of the room and rushing down the stairs to find herself back in the place
with the plethora of curtains.
She passed by the dangling cloth fabrics briskly, and before long she was back
in the room with the mannequins, rolled-up fabrics, and sewing machine. Opal
still sat in front of the rough sketch, looking at the pony expectantly as
another mrrow left her little mouth. "Alright, Opalescence, you have won the
battle this time," she sighed, her frown thinning into a slender line as the
cat grinned and started purring from across the room. "But you will get no
treats tomorrow, unless you stop Sweetie Belle from destroying the Boutique,"
she added, donning a neutral look as Opal ceased purring on the spot.
Her magic grasped the sketch and lifted it from the wall with ease, bringing it
to her face and enabling her to examine its contents. The sketch in question
depicted a nondescript pony with a partially-colored dress whose few highlights
were predominately black and silver in hue. Twin drills jutted out from the
back of the head, tied up with dark maroon ribbons that held up a mass of
uncolored mane in a ponytail. Slung around the neck and fashioned with a gold
chain sat an iron cross, barely discernable as it had been held up at an angle
while the nondescript pony who wore it stood with one side facing out.
"Hrm... why in..." Rarity stopped herself before her eyes went wide. "Oh, yes,
the dress is missing something, aside from a few more colors!" she exclaimed,
trotting over to one of the mannequins briskly and opening a door that stood
just behind it, revealing another assortment of dresses that had collected a
layer of dust and were bunched together in a tiny room. The unicorn swiftly
removed the contents of the tiny room with a simple spell and turned on a light
that hung overhead at the same time, further highlighting the dresses she'd
just dragged into the space she stood in.
Among these dresses, a black one draped over a mannequin stood out, though it
was little more than a back piece and overflowing trim that dangled past the
back legs like a sort of filthy cape. Shoving the rest of the garments back
where they had come from and putting this one before the sewing machine, Rarity
took a moment to examine her handiwork with a small grin. "Oh, yes, once I
finish you, you will be fabulous," she murmured to herself before her grin
faded into a frown. "Oh, who am I gonna get to wear you once you're completed?"
she asked, as though her unfinished dress could speak back to her.
A smile spread on her lips, and a rather coy one at that. "Yes... on her,
you'll be simply divine."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Applejack stood in front of a red barn overlooking a patch of land, staring
vacantly at a nearby orchard that spanned at least a dozen hillsides, each with
trees laden to the brim with succulent red and green apples that gleamed in the
moonlight and waited to be picked. Near one end of the vast orchard stood
several smaller red buildings in addition to a gate that stood a ways away from
a currently-quiet hen house. Opposite of all of this, there were several tilled
fields laden with corn, carrots, grapes—you name it, this one spot was laden
with fruits and vegetables galore.
She sighed to herself as the wind began blowing, catching her mane and tail to
caress them, making it appear as if they had begun dancing beneath the thin
veils of illuminating silver light. The orange earth pony looked at the sky,
blinking when she saw a rainbow streak appear in the extensive, glittering
gloom for a few seconds before it faded. The mare flinched as the sound of
hooves hitting hay, then dirt reached her ears, and she turned to find a
muscular stallion with a red coat and an orange mane staring at her with large
green eyes as he came out of the barn.
Applejack relaxed, and turned her attention back to the starry sky. "'Ello, Big
Mac," she stated in a tired voice. "What'cha doing out here?"
"Sis, I should be asking you the same thing," Big Mac responded curtly,
trotting up to Applejack's side. He turned to her, noting she did not glance at
him a second time, and made to speak when she failed to do so, "Are you okay?"
Applejack shook her head. "Cider season's almost here. It's practically next
week," she groaned, ears flattening against her head.
Big Mac raised a brow. "Why're you fretting over cider season? There ain't much
to worry about," he stated.
The orange mare turned to him, pupils briefly shrinking. "Have you heard about
the fiasco in Canterlot?" she asked.
"Yeah, but what's that got to do with cider season?" Big Mac retorted, his face
hardening just a smidgen as the question left his mouth.
"Celestia's sending the Fantasians here, to Ponyville, and..." Applejack
trailed off, her legs starting to shake. Her rear legs buckled as if a crate
had been thrust upon her backside, and she shifted them to sit down.
"Celestia's sending them? Are you pulling my tail?" Big Mac questioned, the
brow that had shot up rising even higher now.
"Yes, they're coming, and no, I ain't pulling your tail!" Applejack replied,
her voice rising an octave higher as she waved a front hoof towards nothing in
particular. Her face set in a scowl as she went on, "The Fantasians are coming
to Ponyville, and I might have to help keep their tails in line! And that means
I probably won't be able to help with cider season this year!"
Big Mac blinked, his brow lowering as a heavy sigh left his muzzle. "Tell me,"
he began in a low tone, maintaining eye contact with Applejack the entire time
he spoke, "are the Fantasians really that big a deal?"
"Yes," Applejack groaned, setting her hoof down again. "One of them... one of
them's a changeling, and she's really badly messed up. I know I shouldn't judge
her none, but she's..."
"How badly messed up are we talking?" the stallion asked, his brow shooting up
yet again. "That changeling gal didn't seem all that bad, just from being a
changeling and all."
"You have no idea," Applejack retorted, eyes narrowing.
"Then again, I'm only going by what that newspaper this morning said," Big Mac
shot back in a flat tone, punctuating his response with a snort. "Just how bad
off is she?"
"She's... a wraith, Big Mac. A bucking wraith. You ain't seen how bad she's got
it," Applejack sighed, turning away once more. "She's about filly-sized, thin
as a twig with her face torn in two, and almost no horn on her head at all.
Last I seen of her, she only had about four teeth left."
Big Mac's eyes went wide. "A wraith... with no teeth? Not any bigger than Apple
Bloom? A-and her horn's missing?" he asked. "That... the article didn't say
anything about that! All it said was that there were two changelings in
Canterlot!"
"That's about right," the mare replied, drawing a heavy sigh as she slowly
nodded. "But I'm gonna guess Apple Bloom's probably bigger than she is, because
like I said, Big Mac: thin as a twig. I'm surprised the other Fantasians who
were with that wraith didn't just... put her out of her misery. And I don't
know why the article didn't say that. I guess the changeling wanted to stay
away from the press, and I don't blame her one lil' bit if she did."
Big Mac's eyes widened still, until they were the size of saucers. His face
immediately set with a slant-eyed expression that betrayed a spark in his
irises. He lowered his head, eyelids closing shut as he muttered, "Celestia
bless her soul." He rose a leg and wrapped it around Applejack, pulling her
into a hug. "Why don't we talk about it tomorrow? Maybe we'll have to re-
schedule cider season, if it comes to it."
Applejack donned a soft smile, and returned the hug. "Thanks, Big Mac. I
just... it's so much to think about, and—"
A new voice, one elderly and feminine, cut Applejack off before she could
finish. "How about we get some of our other Apple kinfolk here while you help
keep them pesky Fantasians in check?" Applejack and Big Mac broke out of their
hug with a jump, turning to the barn in unison to find an elderly green-coated
mare with thin legs was trotting out to them. This mare had a grey mane held up
in a loose bun at the back of her head, some strands falling down to frame
golden orange eyes that twinkled with some kind of emotion.
"Wait... you mean get somepony else to watch over cider season in my place?"
Applejack asked, eyeing the crone with a frown framing her face. "Granny Smith,
that..."
Granny cut her off again, donning a smirk of her own as she spoke, "Is a good
idea?" Her grin only widened, golden eyes twinkling as she proceeded to quip,
"Applejack, dear, don't be so hard on yourself. Hay, maybe you could get them
Fantasians to try some cider—of course, they'd need to work for it like
everypony else on this here farm does."
Applejack's frown flipped once again, only to revert back to what it was a
moment later. She rose a hoof to her temples and started rubbing them. The
orange mare let off a low hum, pursing her lips together as she contemplated
this for a moment. "I... I guess it couldn't hurt much to try," she stated
begrudgingly. "But... I can't see the bunch of Fantasians I ran into helping
out with cider season much, if at all."
Granny Smith quirked a brow. "And why's that?" she asked.
"One's a general, five more serve him, another's a cat, one's a filly, and the
last two... oh shoot, none of them looked the least bit—"
"Then consult the flippin' general," Granny Smith replied, once more pre-
empting Applejack before she could finish. "This farm and the orchard we live
off of, take a good long look at it now! Me and the rest of the Apple clan had
to consult Celestia in the good ol' days before we could build it all from
scratch. And if Celestia granted us this fine piece of land, then I reckon the
general will lend a few of his troops to cider season."
Applejack ceased rubbing her temples, though she winced upon setting her hoof
down yet again. The mare let off a few more thoughtful hums, lips pursing
tightly as she turned over the option Granny had presented—the possible
solution to her predicament of sorts. But, there had also been the relatively
small hoofful of the troops she'd seen in the flesh, a good three of them
having one reason or another to deny the orange mare and her kin their aid.
That wasn't exactly counting the general himself, either, nor the demeanors of
the entire bunch as a whole.
She continued to consider the option carefully, humming all the while to help
keep herself focused, ever-mindful of the chance that Lance could turn down
granting aid for cider season. After all, he currently and very likely still
had bigger fish to fry, and that might have the chance to remain the case, no
matter where he set his hooves. Eventually, after nodding to herself, she
opened her mouth to speak. However, she ended up closing her jaws as a bestial
howl rang out and echoed through the night, followed by another howl, and
another.
The howling kept growing, as if accruing more unseen members to join in on the
chorus. This went on until it reached the point to where it sounded as though
several hundred beasts had come together to cry out to the crescent moon in
disorganised unison. The song continued for some time, drowning out almost all
else as it echoed repeatedly for minutes that felt like hours on end.
Granny Smith swiveled her ears the entire time the howls continued to ring out
in a massive throng, until the very last one died down and echoed through the
winds. "We might need s'more help this cider season," she mumbled. She leveled
a look at Applejack before turning to glance at Big Mac. "Both of you need
plenty of rest tonight. I have a feeling we're gonna need all the helping
hooves we can get."
Big Mac and Applejack exchanged glances, then turned back to Granny Smith.
"Will we have to re-schedule cider season, though?" the orange mare asked, eyes
flickering in worry.
Granny Smith laughed. "Well, I was wanting to make a special kind of cider this
season," she replied, a small smile framing her face once more. "Unless... you
don't want the special cider?"
Applejack's eyes widened. "Actually..." she paused to calm herself down before
donning a smile of her own. "Yer on."
"Now that's what I like to hear from my grandfoal," Granny chirped, her smile
widening. She turned to Big Mac, her grin still growing.
"Eeyup," the red-coated stallion replied, now smiling himself.
Granny Smith nodded. "Now, get those young tails of yours to bed. Y'all need
your rest so bad I'm starting to wonder if you two can even see straight now,"
she ordered, watching as Big Mac and Applejack shifted a bit before trotting
briskly past her. The elderly mare turned to the sky and sighed to herself.
"Applejack, dear, y'all said one of them Fantasians was a wraith?" she asked
without turning around, causing the orange mare to freeze just as she set the
first front hoof on the hay lining the floor of the barn.
"Yeah... both a wraith and a changeling. Why?" the blond-maned mare asked in an
uneasy tone, turning to the crone with a frown on her face.
Granny turned to meet the younger mare's gaze. "I think that a wraith can lend
a hoof too. When cider season rolls around, see if you can get the general to
fork that changeling over for a day or two," she replied. "Or... can this
wraith even help?"
"She can fly, and trot, but... that's about it, Granny. This wraith-
changeling's so thin I doubt she could help at all," Applejack answered,
turning away to sigh to herself.
"Maybe she could still help somehow," Granny replied with a huff. "Like looking
at the apples and telling the good un's from the bad un's."
Applejack turned over Granny's words in her head, lips pursing in a tight but
thin line as she pondered the possibility. "I'll give that a shot, but we'll
have to figure out if she picks the apples she finds are good," the orange mare
stated as she resumed trotting into the building.
"We'll figure something out," Granny called out as Applejack reached the end of
the barn and pushed a door open, trotting into a small room beyond without
closing it behind her.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Pinkie Pie stood in a small room with a chest, a dresser, a window, and a crib.
She peered over the edge of the crib, smiling as a cream-colored pegasus colt
with a brown mane and another unicorn filly with a yellowish body and orange
mane slept soundly. The pink mare leaned in, pressing soft kisses to the foals'
foreheads and pulling back to watch them squirm a bit as they slumbered.
"G'night Pumpkin and Pound Cake," she whispered, backing away from the crib
silently before turning around and walking out of the room.
Closing the door after taking a glance at the foals to confirm they were still
sleeping, she sighed softly as a hallway with but two doors greeted her.
Looking around, her eyes fell on two sets of stairs that divided the hall in
half, with one going up and the other going down. She trotted over to the
flight leading up and found a small green alligator looking up at her with big
purple eyes, tilting its head as if that alone conveyed what was on its mind.
Pinkie beamed and scooped up the little reptile with a front leg. "You were
waiting for me, Gummy?" she asked, grinning. Gummy stuck out a slender forked
tongue, just prior to opening his maw and clamping down on Pinkie's front leg
with it. The mare giggled and shifted to sit on her haunches, stroking the
little gator with her other hoof.
Which promptly got clamped on by the maw. Pinkie angled her hoof just right to
peek between the jaws, giggling as she saw a distinct lack of teeth in the
croc's muzzle. "That tickles," she cooed, even as the toothless gator continued
to try to chew like it's life depended on it. The mare stood on her back legs
and crept up the stairs, going as silently as she could and struggling to hold
back a few giggles as Gummy continued to gnaw on her to no avail.
She found a small room, with a chest, some floating balloons, a bed, and a
window next to said bed that lead to the outside. The mare set Gummy on the bed
and, after prying her hoof out of his mouth, she looked around and spotted the
almost-invisible strings that had been tied around the balloons. She lowered
into a pouncing position before bounding up, using her mouth to grab a bundle
of the strings prior to making a landing whose thud was muffled as her hooves
connected with the sheets on the mattress.
The little crocodile bit down on the tip of Pinkie's tail as she landed,
earning a giggle that came through clenched teeth. The mare stood on her back
legs again, taking the bundle of strings out of her mouth with a front hoof
before pulling the balloons to eye level, whereupon her eyes narrowed as she
scrutinized each and every colorful air-filled bit of latex. She noticed two
deflating balloons that were on their last vestiges of borrowed air right off
the bat, and carefully separated them from the rest of the bundle with a pluck
of her free hoof.
She let the deflating balloons go, and they weakly wobbled up to the air and
hugged the ceiling when they couldn't go any higher. Pinkie didn't notice that;
rather, she took to examining the rest of the bunch for any flaws, down to the
tiniest possible hole she could see in the bleak room almost as if she had been
a general glaring coldly at each of his troops.
The mare giggled as, for a moment, Lance came to the forefront of her mind. "I
wonder if he does smile like he enjoys himself without that boring bout of
anger going on," she mused aloud, before resuming her scrutinizing of the
balloons and smiling when she found no further flaws in the rest of the bunch
she held.
She hopped off the bed and landed on two legs, still clutching the bundle of
inflated latex like a kid at a carnival. Gummy held onto her tail with his
jaws, opting to crawl up it a quarter of the way after she jumped a second
time.
Pinkie strode up to the chest in an upright stance and used her free hoof to
open it, revealing a mass of deflated but fresh balloons and a plethora of
string, haphazardly thrown in and tangled around itself at some point. Amidst
all of this, laying on its side and barely noticeable since the rest of the
chest's contents were heaped onto it, a large metal cylinder with a bright red
valve lay on its side.
Her grin widened as she plucked a few more balloons out, setting them and the
tangled bundle of string aside before lifting out the object obscured by
splotches of rainbow vulcanized rubber. Lifting it onto one end so it could
stand, she spotted a pressure gauge and an almost pencil-thin mouth nestled
very close to the valve. The mare tied the bundle of balloons she still held
around her waist, and once this was done, she set to grab the tangle of threads
with both front hooves and started tugging the mass apart bit by bit.
Plucking out long-enough strands proved to be an easy task. They slipped out of
their confines like inanimate snakes, whereupon Pinkie set them next to the
balloons she pulled out of the chest earlier. This took a few moments, largely
because after the strings were untangled, Pinkie continued by way of aligning
the balloons so they were put lip-first on the mouth of the cylindrical object
and filled with gas.
Gummy climbed higher, bypassing the strings of the balloons the mare tied
around her own waist. After firmly clutching her withers with its claws, the
gator proceeded to bite on the end of the mane and began tugging just as she
finished filling up another balloon and tying it with a string. Pinkie giggled
and secured the fresh balloons she filled around her waist with no more than a
meager ounce of hesitation, her laughter only growing as the combined pull
lifted her off of the floor and caused her back legs to dangle.
She opened the window with her front hooves, tenderly floating out of it almost
as if a unicorn had been using simple levitation on her. She stopped and turned
around, taking her sweet time to pry out all of the individual balloons one by
one—the amount adding up to a dozen or so—being careful to avoid popping them
on accident. As soon as the balloons were liberated, she shut the window and
used her back legs to push herself onward from the near-top of a building,
turning around yet again to marvel at the structure—which looked like a
gingerbread house with a cupcake plastered on top—from above.
Pinkie drifted, using her hooves to kick and paddle with a grace that gave the
impression of her swimming in the air, humming merrily to herself and enjoying
the lift the balloons provided her. She stopped her reverie to giggle as Gummy
shifted positions again, this time scaling to the top of her head and nestling
comfortably between her ears.
She started up once more, continuing to glide over the town, passing a clock
tower and catching sight of the library before pausing at a windmill in the
span of moments. She looked around, briefly wincing as Gummy shifted his claws
and scratched at her cranium a tad too hard, before shrugging her shoulders and
pushing onward.
The floating mare started humming a new tune, looking up at the sky and seeing
nothing but the dark expanse that gleamed with countless stellar configurations
as limitless as the bounds of a child's imagination. The crescent moon hung
lazily to one side, its soft glow reflecting off of a creek that the mare
drifted past.
It wasn't until she merrily wafted above another house that doubled as a tree
did her song take on a note of uncertainty as thunder boomed in the air around
her. The clap came packing enough strength to briefly distort the very space
surrounding her, almost like she had been directly under its source. This, and
what happened immediately after, caused a feeling of unease to spring up in her
gut.
A wind blew, soft and almost undetectable, but present nonetheless. The
fleeting zephyr pushed Pinkie onward by a few inches, propelling her towards
the Everfree Forest. She stopped kicking the air and ceased her humming,
looking at the patch of wood as roiling, ominous storm clouds shifted and
churned over its canopy. A few wicked bolts of lightning arced violently
between the two entities, at first white as the sclera of her eyes before
changing to a deep, unnatural green in hue.
Immediately after seeing the arcs of raw electricity, Pinkie's tail began
violently twitching. She glanced around, her whole body starting to vibrate
like she was a living jackhammer. "O-oh no, I... I feel a doozy coming!" she
cried, gulping loudly as she started looking around, scanning earth and sky for
anything else that even seemed remotely off. At first, she saw nothing else out
of the ordinary, but upon looking down to monitor the edge of the wood, she
spotted a writhing form not unlike that of a serpent. From what she could make
of it, it had eyes gleaming a wicked gold and bits of bark making up crude
overlapping scales, but it moved too fast for her to effectively make out any
other features it might've had.
A bestial cry rang out from the woods as the creature vanished, more akin to a
roar, and the airborne mare immediately turned around with wide eyes and began
kicking at the air with renewed vigor. "If that's the doozy, then I'm going
home!" she exclaimed, still twitching even as her legs flailed about like fish
out of water.
Being careful to not go sporadic enough to send Gummy plummeting below as she
propelled herself with all her might, she inched her way back to the
gingerbread house and eventually found herself in the room she left with
hitched breathing and ears flat on her head. She made to close the window she
first re-opened as she got in, but she did not close it fast enough to block
out another unearthly shriek that echoed in a manner that made it feel as if
the very winds carried the noise straight to her.
Slowly, and with a trembling sort of delicate consideration, she untied the
balloons around her waist one by one. Each time a balloon had been released
from her body and then her hoof, it floated to the ceiling, making the overall
pull on her body grow weaker and weaker until just one inflated bit of latex
held onto her before its knot was undone. Now standing on the floor, she took a
few deep breaths to force herself to stop shaking, collected her nerves, and
deposited Gummy on the bed prior to treading lightly out of the room and down
the stairs.
She briefly paused to glance at both ends of the hall, noting singular windows
framing either side. The curtains were drawn tightly closed, but that did
little to ease Pinkie as lengthy shadows darted past them outside, forming
hellish silhouettes that seemingly came and went with the wind. The mare
trotted down the second flight of stairs, finding herself in a relatively empty
room with a counter that had a cash register and glass display case, and
another partially-open door just feet away that creaked back and forth. Yet
another door stood well away from the cash register, one fully closed and
placed near a window that sported a criss-cross pattern.
The shadow came again, darting outside like a bullet, passing the window quick
as a whip. Pinkie stood stone-still for a moment, eyes widening as though she
gazed into the face of death itself. Then she rushed right over to the door and
tried pushing outward, placing one hoof on the top and the other on the bottom.
It did not budge. "Well, at least it's locked," she murmured, turning away from
the door and trotting to the room opposite of the stairs behind the counter.
She stopped mid-trot to shoot another glance at the accursed window.
Nothing. Nothing shot past the glass pane from outside. Pinkie resumed trotting
to the other room, finding herself in a well-kept kitchen with already-made
products stored in glass-door cabinets, a giant electric taffy machine with
three prongs, an oven, and a counter laden with some loose bowls. Unlike the
other rooms, this kitchen had no windows. The mare took a moment or so to relax
and stare at the stored sweets before trotting out of the kitchen and making
her way back upstairs into the the hallway.
That was when she heard it—echoing into the halls were two distinct sounds. One
had been a roar similar to the one she heard from the Everfree, except much
louder yet more brief. The other sent her heart racing and her body into
another shuddering frenzy, one the very bane of every pony with a caring heart
and a desire to keep others safe and sound; the wailing of two little infants
that screeched in unison. She jumped into a gallop without a second thought,
flinging a door open and finding the babies crying in their crib in addition to
a shadow with glimmering eyes outside the window, growling before vanishing out
of sight.
The mare did not care about the shadow, however. Instead, she turned on the
lights and raced to the crib, scooping up Pumpkin and Pound with her front
hooves and cradling them tightly to the barrel of her chest. "Shhh, Pinkie's
here. Pinkie will protect you," she cooed, gently rocking them back and forth
as they continued to wail.
She barely noticed the sound of hooves hitting the floor outside before two
more ponies burst into the room, one with a dull yellow coat, a curled but thin
orange mane, and green eyes. This pony, a stallion with a pronounced chin,
rushed to Pinkie and hovered over her, sighing as the babies slowed their bout
of crying. Pinkie turned to him and muttered, "Something was outside the
window, Mr. Cake. It ran off before I could look at it."
The second pony, a mare with a pale blue coat, two-toned pink mane looking like
a wad of cake frosting sitting atop her head, and cerise eyes trotted forward,
softly smiling when the babies finally stopped crying and burbled as she
approached. "Pinkie, dear, if there was something outside the window, could you
stay up the night and watch the foals?" she asked. "Me and Carrot... oh stars,
we heard an awful noise outside. It sounded like a gryphon's claws on a
chalkboard..."
"I heard it too. I'll stay up for the rest of the night, but that means I'll
probably drop tomorrow," Pinkie answered in a serious tone of voice, turning to
the foals in her forelegs and sending them a sweet smile as they giggled in
glee.
The blue-coated mare smiled, and turned to the yellow-pelted stallion. "Carrot,
maybe we should stay up a bit too. I want to make sure the twins are absolutely
okay before heading back to bed," she chirped.
Carrot donned a grin of his own and nodded in understanding. "Well, the twins
are giggling. Maybe the whatever that made the noise earlier didn't get in,
Dazzle," he replied, turning to Pinkie as she checked the foals for any sign of
injury or the like. "Anything?"
"Nope. They're alright," Pinkie answered in a chipper tone, her smile widening.
The babies fidgeted in her grasp, with the little pegasus flapping his wings
madly and the unicorn starting to channel some magic into her small,
underdeveloped horn. "Oh, it seems they want to play."
***** Chapter XVI- Chaotic Pursuit *****
The storm had passed in the late evening, some bits of its accursed hail having
left many holes in roofs in their wake, while the rest littered the streets and
alleys. As the last bits of day turned into night, ponies gathered on the
cobblestone walkways to begrudgingly sweep up the remnants of the storm that
hadn't yet melted.
This went on for a good while, though as the very late hours rolled around,
many ponies ceased cleaning the streets inexplicably. The ponies who failed to
finish sweeping the streets started shouting, and the city of Canterlot quickly
found itself with an escalation comprised of a myriad of angry voices and
hooves assaulting the paved walkways in what could best be described as a
chorus of wrath.
The orchestra started as a small thing, kickstarted by the ponies that were
already in the streets and letting their anger fuel their actions. But it grew
in intensity, and the angry ponies' numbers started growing in perfect tandem.
The symphony took to adding some new notes—notes composed of hail being
shattered and ponies shoving each other aside. It was only further escalating
as two sets of eyes watched the whole scene unfold at a relatively safe
distance.
Witnessing this gathering crowd assemble between the golden buildings and its
members fighting amongst themselves, Anna and Sarah had perched themselves on a
balcony in silence. Both were sitting on opposite ends and frowning as the
streets continued to erupt with the suddenness of an earthquake and the
intensity of a monsoon that kept on worsening.
Many ponies below raised all sorts of hell. A few took to throwing objects in
and out of windows, some more engaged in violent brawls with hooves seemingly
going in every conceivable direction one could think of, their hits landing
with varying degrees of success. For some bizarre reason that eluded the
Fantasian spectators who went unseen by the mob, even more unicorns decided to
use their magic to hurl their fellow ponies up into the air like basketballs.
Pegasi dumped buckets of hail on the unicorns, who sent into the sky a
sacrificial vase or something of the sort in kind. The pegasi further retorted
by flinging their emptied buckets into the grounded below, often blinding a
hapless pony and causing them to blunder every which-way. Some slipped on hail
clumps and skid into walls or the other fighting ponies, often knocking the
latter over as if they were bowling pins.
Still more gathered accumulated clumps of hail that the pegasi had poured on
them, and they smashed them against the heads of their neighbors like fine
china. This caused the ponies attacked by ice clumps to retaliate by throwing
objects back, only to get hit themselves immediately after they landed a hit
with their makeshift projectiles.
"I'm not sure if this is a riot, or a drunk convention gone wrong," Anna
remarked in a quiet voice. She began noticing some pegasi trying to fly out of
the streets and buildings, only to be dragged back down by a magic aura or two
grabbing them. "I don't even know why they're bashing each other."
"The weather ponies did this on purpose!" cried out one voice from the throng,
the remark causing all to halt in their tracks. The rest of the mob turned to a
haggard unicorn holding a bucket of hail in his magic. "They sent the hail our
way! Let's go up in our airships and show those pegasi what for!"
"We're going to Cloudsdale, and tearing down the weather factory!" another
exclaimed, followed by another, until the entire mob chanted this in unison.
"Riot... if it were a drunk convention gone wrong, we'd see booze bottles going
all over the place," Sarah sighed, shaking her head as the chaos below
continued to escalate. Some unicorns sought out and jumped on many a hapless
pegasus, holding them still with magic and advancing on their prone forms with
their hooves. She couldn't help but shudder as the sickening snap of bones
breaking when hooves connected with delicate wings echoed over and over again.
This, combined with the shrieks of pain that came as a direct result of the
wings being broken, only contributed to the unholy symphony that emanated from
the streets. Her gut twisted in response, and she clenched her talons into
fists in an attempt to distract herself from the horrid orchestra. She had to
force herself to keep her own wings shut against her sides, as if the mere act
of spreading them had a one-hundred percent chance of having their feathers
ripped out.
Her pupils shrank to tiny slits as feathers were yanked out from the
unfortunate pegasus ponies' wings—pegasus ponies who already had the misfortune
of getting the aforementioned wings broken. Sarah's ears quickly flattened back
against her head as the screams of pain continued to reverberate through the
air unhindered. "I'm getting the feeling they're gonna come after me next," she
murmured, a spark of fear flashing in her eyes, her body tensing up to the
point it began aching in various places.
Anna took another good look at the havoc raging below, noticing a plethora of
royal guards rushing in like a stampede of buffalo, with some of the earth pony
ones already tackling the offending unicorns to the ground. Some more guards
diverted from the others and scooped up the wounded pegasi, while still more
came to them with distinct silver armor and white saddlebags on their
backsides. The flaps of the silver-armored ponies' saddlebags were all marked
with a distinct red cross. "Huh, they seem to have medic ponies for this sort
of thing," she noted.
"Maybe this isn't the first time de-feathering's happened around these parts,
then," Sarah sighed. She started relaxing a bit as the silver-armored ponies
went to bandaging and tending to hurt wings. The medic ponies did not appear to
worry about the unicorns who threw things every which-way, largely because a
tight circle of golden-armored ponies protected them with fairly sizeable
shields from many attacks.
Some of the enraged unicorns looked entirely hellbent on getting to the pegasi,
though. They lashed out with their back legs, they tossed things ranging from
small objects like vases to larger, entire table sets. They spit in the guards'
faces, and some even catapulted themselves onto the shields with self-
levitation, hoping their front hooves could dent the shields. Then the mob took
to swearing up and down and sideways when said shields failed to get even a
scratch.
They shouted slurs and threats, called the pegasi they wished harm upon things
like 'incompetent nincompoops' and 'dumb dodos who should not rule the skies,'
among various other things. All in all, they had become the pinnacle of unhappy
campers, though it failed to occur to them that the innocent pegasi they had
harmed might have had nothing to do with the transgression they had allegedly
committed. The aforementioned pegasi—including those who had escaped being
plucked—began shouting back, declaring their innocence.
"The weather went out of our control! It was like it got hijacked or
something!" cried a wounded stallion as another angry unicorn threw herself
onto the shield protecting him.
"The hail hit some of the weather team and put them in the Cloudsdale
Infirmary! We couldn't have prevented it!" another exclaimed as she deftly
dodged some flying pieces of furniture. This one found refuge on a flat rooftop
with raised decorative walls on three sides, but this didn't stop the unicorns
who kept barking up the tree by throwing more furniture up and over in an
attempt to score a hit from below.
"It was your fault, you filthy frumptious freaks! The entirety of the pegasus
race bears the weight of this out-of-control weather on their feathery
backsides!" a masculine voice cried out, causing Sarah to jump and blink for a
moment before turning her attention away from the medic ponies and the wounded
to a sight that made her pupils dilate to vertical slits.
One particular pony that sported a cloak went so far as to attack a pegasus
mother and her foal with a red object that moved too fast to be discerned
properly. The mother and foal both screamed, even when some guards ran to them
and jumped to their defense. The duo only calmed down when their protectors
shoved the offender back with blasts of concentrated magic.
"You dare defend these wretched imbeciles? Have you gone mad?" the cloaked pony
shouted at the guards, who responded by firing more wicked projectiles of raw
magic his way.
Anna and Sarah tailed this pony's movements with their eyes. Both sets of brows
furrowed when the entity began jumping from one pegasus to the next, only to be
parried and shooed away by guards aplenty while he shouted insults as numerous
as the magic blasts aimed at him. The latter's eyes narrowed when the cloaked
pony's garb momentarily wavered as a guard delivered a kick that found its
mark. The kick gave way to the pony very briefly betraying a flash of maroon
that came from beneath the cloth as he turned and fled to find a new target.
A mew hit their ears, and the hippogryph and unicorn duo turned around to find
an armored NoLegs approaching them from an open spot that lead into the castle.
The cat had his little blade strapped around him and secured in its sheath,
happily purring as he jumped up to the mares and rubbed his head on their back
hooves. Anna smiled at the cat and made to pet him with a front hoof, only to
sigh as the critter jumped up and landed on her back with another meow.
"How's he able to jump? Doesn't the armor weigh him down?" Sarah asked,
gesturing to the feline with a talon. She blinked when the cat responded by
waving his tail, seeing some kind of aura glimmering around its tip like a
prehensile unicorn's horn. "He can do magic?"
"Dunno, really. But I wouldn't be surprised if he did self-levitation on a
daily basis," Anna murmured with a shrug, turning back to peer over the balcony
in another attempt to survey the still-ongoing madness that seemed to have no
end in sight. The cat jumped up and perched on her head, his purring grinding
to an abrupt halt when he saw what it was that had been going on in the
streets.
"You sound like you've seen him do it before," Sarah noted, eyeing the cat for
a moment longer before directing her attention to the anarchy. She scanned
every street with a wary gaze, but found that the cloaked pony had slipped out
of sight in the brief period she turned away. In addition to this, the guards
had effectively gotten every single pegasus pony out of the brawl and were
rounding up the rioters with shields and swords. The silver-plated ponies, in
the meantime, took to corralling the wounded towards the palace. "Damn, these
guys are effective."
"At least they were able to get to the pegasi in time..." Anna sadly muttered
under her breath, turning away from the balcony and to the open spot. "But we
couldn't save that stallion in Frostbite..."
"Don't beat yourself up over it," Sarah chastised as she whirled around to see
that her sister's back was facing her. When Anna shot a glance over her
shoulder, Sarah sighed softly and stood on her back legs before walking up to
her sister and resting a claw on her withers. "We can't help everygryph or pony
we come across. But we can still help those we reach in time."
"Well..." Anna trailed off, taking a moment to consider Sarah's remark. It was
a moment she didn't have to spare—one that Sarah took with her subsequent
utterance.
"You know you can still help Lance. It's why you became one of his advisors,
isn't it?" Sarah mused with a snort, garnering another look from her sister. A
moment passed and silence took hold between the two, and it went without so
much as an inkling of a response from Anna. Sarah took this as her cue to
continue, "It's also why you didn't... end Katie, right? You had the chance to
slay her, but you didn't take it. Why?"
Still no answer came from Anna. Only when Sarah relented and retracted her claw
did the pony with an armored cat on her head speak up, "It's... something just
tells me it wouldn't be right to kill Katie."
"Go on..." Sarah implored, ears twitching slightly. NoLegs turned to her and
mewed, starting to purr again when Anna did as was asked of her.
"It'd be like killing Maria," Anna answered in a low, hesitant tone. "That
wraith... look at it logically, Sarah, she can't defend herself. Maybe fly
away, but her wings are nothing more than tatters at this point. I'm amazed she
can even fly at all. Hell, when me and Matt and Natz found her, she was seconds
from becoming bear chow."
"So, that explains the bearskin I found when I was helping clean out the tank?"
Sarah asked, a brow shooting up.
"Yeah. We... kinda ate the bear," Anna answered with a nod, angling her head to
gaze at the sky. She went on, unaware that her sibling donned an amused smile,
"Seventeen hungry mouths in a tank parked in a wintery wonderland... oh, Lance
was grouchy before we found that bear."
"Speaking of Lance, why're you helping him?" Sarah went on, her grin widening.
Anna opened her mouth to speak, but closed it prior to jerking her head back to
the streets below as a scream that sounded like it came from multiple ponies
rang out. "Oh, what is going on down there now?" she groaned as her gaze went
everywhere, scanning even the smallest details of the aftermath in a bid to
figure out where the accursed sound had come from.
"It probably came from a pegasus whose wings have been touched the wrong way,"
Sarah murmured. "Now, why're you helping Lance?" she repeated, her grin fading
as Anna simply opted to ignore her. NoLegs mewed and shook his head, waving his
tail for a moment before curling it around his limbless hips. A vein appeared
on her slightly-twitching forehead, and she snarled out, "Sis, whatever is
going on below isn't important!"
"Then what's that?" Anna replied, using a hoof to gesture to a particular spot
in the streets below. Sarah followed her hoof, finding a gathering of ponies
marching from a bizarre, two-story violet building that sported twin towers
erecting up from both ends of the roof. Said gathering of ponies were listening
to some kind of drivel from a cloaked triad, one of which betrayed a flash of
maroon as they continued onward.
The group led by the unusual trio continued to shriek in unison, and as Anna's
ears swiveled about to catch their ruckus, their cries became crystal clear.
"The Fantasians screwed with the weather! We must have them hanged! Prince
Blueblood was right!" the marching crowd bellowed over and over as if it were a
chant, their call for death sending icy water shooting through Anna's veins.
"'Not important' my ass," Anna scoffed, ears flattening against her head. She
whirled around to meet Sarah's gaze, face hardening within seconds. "There's
another group down there, and apparently, we made it onto their shitlist. Let's
find the others, and haul out of here."
"Want me to fly?" Sarah asked, spreading her wings wide. Anna nodded, her horn
glowing for a moment. In a flash of light, her flute appeared. "I could get to
the others and warn them faster if I flexed my wings."
"Might as well call forth some wind. It couldn't hurt to be extra-speedy," Anna
chirped, putting the instrument to her mouth. She took a second to grin, but
the expression fell and her magic briefly faltered as a vase flew over the
balcony and shattered against the back of her head. She dropped the flute, but
lunged and caught it between her teeth before it had the chance to finish its
descent.
And then another vase arced over the balcony, breaking into a thousand
fragments upon her back, and narrowly missing NoLegs while sending his
makeshift mount sprawling to the floor. This ended up forcing her to drop her
flute once more, where it rolled helplessly for a few inches before stopping
its tumble abruptly. The cat started hissing furiously, tail waving and
emitting a pale blue glow from the tip like no tomorrow.
Sarah's eyes went wide, and she shut her wings before another object—this time,
it was a chair—had the opportunity to snag her left one. The wooden piece of
furniture broke into several smaller fragments, and her ears flattened against
her head as the crowd's cry of "We must have them hanged!" grew loud enough to
echo into the skies.
"They're in the castle! They might have incapacitated everypony else inside!"
cried one of the gathered unicorns as the hippogryph dared to peek over the
balcony. Another next to him reared up on his back legs, grasping in his magic
an entire dish cabinet.
Sarah gulped, then made to scoop up her sibling and nestle her between her
wings. Anna groaned, but made no attempt to move. NoLegs swished his tail and
lifted the fallen flute up in a faint magical aura, mewing before grabbing
Anna's mane with his mouth.
Sarah rose onto her back legs, holding Anna's rear hooves with her talons as
she ran into the castle upright. Her heart started racing as glass and wood
crashed loudly behind her heels. She skid into a hall and almost tripped over
her hooves, but caught herself with a few hasty flaps of her wings.
The mobile foundation of the impromptu totem pole awkwardly stumbled down the
hall in a constantly shifting gait, speed fluctuating as she struggled to avoid
blundering into walls or bumping into the occasional dangling flower pot. Her
wings never fully spread wide, with the exception of flapping madly whenever
she miscalculated her velocity and came close to having her muzzle meet with
the red carpet. This went on for a good twenty minutes or so before she had to
stop in an otherwise-empty corner and gently lower her sibling to the floor
before collapsing herself.
Sarah's breath came in sharp, wheezing exhales that barely left her throat,
chest tightening and wings and claws rippling with electrical sensations as
they started going numb. Her ears, though, remained upright and constantly
swiveled, only to catch nothing but her own rasping breaths and the echoes of
the chaos outside. She barely noticed NoLegs as he let go of Anna's mane,
jumped down, and moved to her until he stuck his tongue out to lick the corner
of her mouth.
"You... still have her flute, right?" Sarah asked, slowly turning to the cat.
NoLegs waved the flute in a magic aura, his glowing tail facilitating the
movements. He let off a mew that gave way to soft purring. She gave the feline
a weak smile, which broadened ever so slightly as her breathing slowly returned
to normal exhales that still had a raspy undertone.
"Sarah, did a train come by to hit you, and then backed up to be sure?" a
hollow voice asked, andSarah blinked before glancing around. Her gaze fell on a
pale form with a crimson mane that just cantered round the bend and tilted her
head quizzically.
"If that happened, I'd be in bloody chunks right now," Sarah replied. She took
to shifting her forelimbs and wings, grunting as the feeling of a dull,
tingling, current-like sensation faded away. With her limbs recovering from the
sensation and numbness, she made to stand, though on all fours.
"And... why are there chunks of pretty shiny things in her mane?" Katie asked,
raising a hoof to gesture to Anna. Sarah turned to her sibling who then gave an
indignant grunt, shifting a bit and allowing light to reflect off of tiny glass
chunks that stubbornly clung to the viridian strands.
"The mob outside managed to throw a vase high enough to bypass the balcony, and
it clocked her on the head," Sarah replied, sighing as Anna gave a groan of
confirmation that accompanied a sluggish nod of her head.
"Two vases," Anna corrected with another grunt. "One hit me on the back."
"Wait, wait, there's a mob?" Katie asked, orbs widening. The two mares and the
cat nodded slowly, and the wraith's orbs flickered for a moment. She whirled
around to look in the hall behind her, tensing when she found it absolutely
barren of life.
Katie quickly turned around again and then looked up, past Sarah and Anna and
NoLegs, only to gape. In the hall she stared at, a bunch of new arrivals were
led by a cloaked trio, and they had taken to juggling a wide array of objects
in their magical grasp.
"Girls, get up, because we have to hit the fucking road!" she exclaimed, her
remark spurring Anna into action. She got up, horn glowing as her magic grasped
the other three and the flute while her legs kicked into gear and pushed her
back down the first hall. Her magic held firm, ensuring that the makeshift
cargo remained behind her and kept up, all the while the mob began shouting all
over again.
Anna scrambled down the hall, heart climbing up her throat and feeling as if it
drummed out its frantic song so hard her jaws trembled. She rounded a bend,
almost sending the cat flying into a marble pillar in the process, but the
archer briefly paused to stop his careening and placed him on her back. When
the cat grabbed a lock of her mane with his tail, the mare bounded forth again,
this time with Sarah and Katie jostling to grab her tail to no avail.
This gave the mob a scant few seconds that they did not waste catching up to
the fleeting group. Their shouts morphed, one by one, into screams of pure
anger that echoed down the halls. Sarah glanced over her shoulder, noticing
tiny, ball-like sparks erupting from the pursuing unicorns' horns that deftly
moved to their throats in tandem with their gallops. These balls then began to
fade into nothingness, just as the screams amplified in volume tenfold.
The sudden spike in screeching intensity forced Anna's ears to the back of her
head, the concentration spent on maintaining the flow of mana wavering for the
shadow of an instant. Her magic let go of the gryph and wraith, but both flared
their wings and started flapping madly as soon as the green glow disintegrated
around them.
The now-airborne dup were spurred on by the shouting of the mob in an attempt
to keep up with Anna as she turned a sharp left. They too darted to the left,
silently cursing as they looked over their shoulders and found that the mob
still gained some ground, inches behind their wavering tails. The two rose
their claws and hooves to cover their ears as the mob's unified outcry rose
once more, this time to head-splitting levels that further amplified their
pain. As a result, their wings slowed their flapping, although only by a meager
margin.
This only served to fuel the mob's own efforts, and the lot of angry unicorns
started pumping as much energy into their gallops as they were able. The group
of shouting ponies turned another corner, near-flawlessly keeping pace with the
otherworlders who were still scrambling to stay as far away as they possibly
could.
"Maybe we should pelt the fliers with more vases!" yelled one stallion. "I bet
that damned skinny bitch won't fight once glass breaks on her spine!"
"Save your ammunition!" bellowed the leading cloaked pony, the voice distinctly
masculine in tone. Sarah glanced over her shoulder as he turned to the one
unicorn who wanted to chuck more vases and betraying a flash of maroon and
silver in the process. Her eyes went wide as he spoke further, "We'll wear them
down yet, the whole mangy lot! Spare the hippogryph; I have a score to settle
with her!"
"That voice... wasn't he... no, don't focus on that right now, Sarah. Save your
feathers and live to fly another day," a voice in Sarah's head chastised, one
not her own that had an echo to it. She blinked and turned to Anna, who glanced
back with a horn that had started glowing, only for its magic to dim and
flicker out as soon as she set her eyes on the pointed appendage.
Anna turned her attention back ahead and rounded another bend, and Sarah nodded
before following her lead. Katie struggled to keep pace, and outstretched a
hoof to tap at Sarah's cutie mark frantically. She turned to her pale
companion, noticing narrowed eyes and wings that buzzed less and less with each
passing second.
Katie flailed her forelegs in an attempt to make various signs, whereupon she
mouthed, "I'm about to drop." Her orbs flickered erratically, like dimming
light bulbs about to shut off, and she began plummeting to the ground as her
wings began beating weakly. Sarah weaved under the wraith and felt her land
between her wings, using her mouth to grab a lock of mane and hang on for all
it was worth. Sweat formed on Sarah's brow as she went into overdrive, flapping
so much her wings started aching in protest.
The action caused the mob to once more double their efforts into their unified
gallop. This, combined with their shouting, which fluctuated in volume once
again, immediately gave way to a sort of disorientation. Their shouts started
hurting the ears of their own makeshift battalion, as much as it antagonized
the still-fleeing Fantasians who managed to outrun them as they swerved into
another hall—and one that was particularly long at that. This hall ended with
an ornately-decorated set of double doors marked by a great sun, which split
perfectly down a vertical middle.
Unicorns began stumbling into one another, and any objects they held in their
magic was instantly released as their holders lost concentration—either
dropping them onto the ground, or, in some cases, causing the damned things to
start landing on the heads of their fellow mobsters. As the objects fell and
smashed upon more heads, they and their former holders thereby contributed to
more unicorns bumbling into one another and losing concentration.
To put the situation at this point into a nutshell, the mob lost much of its
traction and impromptu weapons. This left the three cloaked ponies to scoff at
the unicorns they lead, turn their attention to their quarry, and immediately
ditch their followers to continue pursuing the Fantasians. Said Fantasians had
gotten a bit of distance away from the trio, but Sarah noticed the door at the
end of the hall and closed her wings against her sides before they could seize
up from the pain.
She landed gracefully onto the carpeted floor and shifted into a mad gallop,
feeling Katie rise up and drop down between her wings like a loosely-secured
saddlebag. But Sarah then stopped as Anna's run skid to a halt at the end of
the hall. Anna stopped just inches from the sun-decorated door and turned
around, her face reddened and her chest heaving with heavy, pained breaths.
Upon seeing that almost all members of the mob had effectively—and
unwittingly—disabled themselves, she summoned her bow with a flash of magic,
face setting in a hard glare that was directed to the cloaked triad.
"What... do you want?" Anna seethed in a hoarse voice, noticing that the
cloaked ponies slowed to a sluggish walk. They too breathed heavily, but kept
their semi-concealed muzzles high.
One cloaked pony answered by pausing in their advance before raising a
hoof—distinctly maroon in color—to their head and using it to shake off the
hood. A familiar unicorn stallion stood with the other two, but his silver mane
was unkempt and stringy, some visible tangles dangling past the cheeks like he
hadn't gone through it with a brush in weeks. "It isn't you. It's the
hippogryph, the one who had the nerve to land me in the wretched dungeons a few
weeks ago," he hissed.
"Anna, halberd," Sarah murmured, glaring at the now-uncloaked unicorn. "Godcat-
dammit, Chanson, you just had to stir shit up, didn't you?"
"Moi, cause havoc in Canterlot?" Chanson asked, raising a hoof and putting it
to his chest before shaking his head. "No, no, and no. That's your doing, and
yours alone. I'm merely doing my people a favor." The hoof rose and parted some
thick locks of mane that clung around his horn, revealing at its base a rune-
inscribed ring fashioned of silver.
"You assaulted her. I saw it with my own two eyes, ketchup colt!" Katie
shrieked, the strands of mane she held with her maw falling out through the
gaps of her split grin as she spoke.
"And so did Captain Armor," Anna added, levitating her bow in front of her
horizontally. "And while we're on the subject, how'd you get out of the
dungeons he threw you in?" she asked, shooting Chanson another hard look.
The still-cloaked ponies rose hooves to shake off their hoods, revealing two
more unicorns whose horns glowed. Dual auras grasped the ring around Chanson's
horn, one teal and the other brown that crushed and ripped apart the metal,
casting it aside once it became a mangled heap of scrap. Anna stared at the two
ponies, noticing that one of the now-unveiled ponies was another stallion with
a greyed mane and dulling coat of red. If not for his beard and wrinkles along
his eyes, he'd have been a perfectly good mirror-image of Chanson himself.
The other, a mare with a white coat and oily black mane, began hissing in an
irate tone, "Our dear Chanson assaulted nopony. Me and his father here have
simply paid for his bail when the riot started."
"Bail? You're telling me you shelled out enough coins for that sorry prick?"
Sarah asked, a brow raising as she stood up on her back legs. A flash of green
magic shined and vanished next to her in the span of seconds, and a halberd was
thrust into her claws immediately after. She gripped the shaft of the weapon
eagerly, barely noticing the wraith as she slid off her back and landed on the
floor behind her rear hooves.
The stallion with wrinkles around his eyes growled, his horn still glowing. "We
earned that money. I dare say, the riot's timing was excellent. And Chanson
told us of everything you did, you mongrel—Fantasians don't belong in Mythos.
My family and our gathering will drive you foul lot out," he snarled.
"On what grounds?" Anna retorted coldly, her breathing starting to steady. "You
and that mob chased us and managed to pelt me with two vases. We haven't
retaliated in any way, unless running to save our tails count as such."
NoLegs gave a mew before jumping up and positioning himself behind Anna's horn.
He leveled a glare at the triad as they conjured three instruments with their
magic. The instruments comprised of a red-and-silver cordless guitar, a brass
tuba, and a black-and-white accordion with polka dots. He hissed at the three
unicorns, positioning the flute to his mouth like he knew how to play it.
"Spare yourself, NoLegs. Let me and Sarah handle this," Anna remarked,
magically plucking the flute from the cat's grasp before holding it to her own
lips. Her eyes briefly averted as Katie cantered up to her on exceedingly shaky
legs, stopping to steady herself as her wings buzzed softly and helped her
balance once or twice.
"Do you have my horseshoes? If so, can I have those back, please?" Katie asked,
her voice strangled and much more raspy than it usually was. "I want to
puncture holes in that bearded stallion's... thingamajig." NoLegs mewed at the
wraith and jumped down to stand in front of her pale hooves, still turned to
the trio that cornered him and his companions in front of a door. He used his
tail to draw forth his blade, ears flattening against his armored head as he
let off a warning hiss.
***** End of Arc I: Chapter XVII- Syncopated Pandemonium *****
NoLegs hissed at the trio again, then turned his attention to Katie. His tail
swished, glowing with magic. Katie rose a hoof to shield her eyes as an azure
flash of light sparkled brilliantly in front of her, and upon lowering it found
four clawed horseshoes floating in the air. "You had them this whole time?" she
asked the cat, turning to glance at him as one shoe took to securing itself to
her raised appendage. Then, she was lifted into the air by the cat's magic,
whereupon the rest of the shoes slipped onto her bare hooves with ease.
As soon as the last shoe had been fitted onto her frame, the hallway's
temperature instantly dropped by several degrees. Everyone else shivered, and
Chanson and his fellow instrumentalists drew the flaps of their cloaks tighter
around their bodies. The shoes shimmered with a pale blue wave of mana,
matching the wraith's eyes in color, and soon after a thin layer of frost
formed upon the metal and legs that wore them.
Anna glanced at Katie, eyes glinting in askance. Katie mutely nodded. "They're
enchanted," she mouthed before turning to Chanson and his colleagues. Her ears
stood upright, and she shifted to all fours as the cat's magic gently lowered
her to the carpeted floor. Sarah shot a glance at the now-armed changeling and
merely shrugged before turning to the cloak-wearing unicorns.
"Your move," Sarah stated simply, holding her halberd vertically before her and
shifting her rear legs a bit. Her wings flared wide, eyes narrowing to tiny
jade slits as Chanson stepped forward with another shiver.
Chanson eyed NoLegs with a suspicious gaze, then turned to Katie and quickly
looked her up and down with a scowl of disgust. His eyes soon fell on Sarah,
and a snide grin spread on his muzzle. "I will break your wings and—"
"Stop talking and do it already, you pompous fucktwit!" Sarah cut him off, a
firm frown setting into her face. Chanson's grin faded, and he immediately
surged forward, swinging his guitar like a crude mace. It connected with the
halberd's shaft, bouncing off and creating sparks before floating higher and
swinging down. Sarah blocked it again, this time with the axe-blade of her
weapon. Chanson made another mighty swing, only for the spear-piece of his
enemy's weapon to pierce its bridge, severing the guitar's strings like a knife
going through wet noodles.
He withdrew his weapon and jumped back, face paling as he turned to survey the
damage done. His visage hardened, and he surged towards Sarah with his
somewhat-broken guitar flying behind him. "Do you have any idea how many bits
this cost me?!" he bellowed, horn shining with a vibrant light.
"Nope, and I don't care. You're trying—" Sarah paused to deflect the weapon
again, almost knocking it out of Chanson's magical grasp. "—to hit me with it.
It's your fault that—" sShe paused again to swat the guitar away a fifth time,
"—you're coming at me with it when I have a fucking halberd at my disposal."
"She's right," Anna chirped, summoning an arrow and nocking it into the
drawstring as the black-maned mare—the one with the accordion decorated in
polka dots—advanced towards her. The wielder of the squeezebox started flexing
her instrument, using magic to push on the keys frantically, producing a piece
with fast-paced notes that sounded more like it came from a grand organ having
a seizure.
Anna paused, as she was entranced not only by the tune, but even more so by how
fast the black-maned mare's magic played the instrument. She eyed the keys,
watching as each one was pressed with others in rapidly-shifting bunches. "I
see you like my performance of one of Vinhorndi's compositions," the white-
coated mare remarked.
"Vinhorndi?" Anna parroted, eyes widening as the mare came even closer. She
tried to turn to her adversary, yet found herself fixated on her accordion as
it continued to play. The squeezebox-player still advanced, until she was mere
inches from her bow-clutching opponent. The black-maned mare surged forward in
a single bound, closing the distance and raising her accordion to deliver a
very early strike.
Katie made her move the instant the accordion ascended, stumbling forward in a
frenzied but awkward gallop. Propelling her run with her wings, she
outstretched a clawed hoof and raked the right foreleg of the white-pelted
unicorn. She screamed and backed away, the leg now bleeding from deep gashes
for the span of a moment. The wounds took to closing off with a layer of frost
that was thicker than that on the shoe that had wounded her.
The mare who now had frost clotting her fresh set of scratchmarks turned to
Katie and retracted her accordion. "Oh, you sneaky little blight," she hissed.
"Not my fault you weren't paying attention," Katie retorted, her tone turning
ominously cold and angry. Her orbs glinted and her eyes narrowed as she rose a
hoof to point it accusingly at her opponent. She jerked her head as the sounds
of a pony galloping on carpet came from behind, and she immediately noticed
Chanson as he decided to distance himself from Sarah and attack her instead.
Katie lashed out with a back leg, wings supporting her weight as she aimed high
up and managed to awkwardly slash him in the barrel of his chest.
Chanson, likewise, backed away as he found himself with a fresh bit of ice
coating a patch of fur and a newly-opened-and-closed wound. He glanced at the
anomaly for a moment, then decided to try his chances with attacking Katie once
more. She spun around to face him and reared up on her back legs, flailing her
front claws for all it was worth. Chanson, however, sent his guitar crashing
into her like a wrecking ball, striking her in the stomach and sending her
sprawling to the floor with no effort on his behalf.
He advanced towards his now-prone and foal-sized adversary again as she lay,
stunned and recovering from the impact of his attack—only to then stop and
scream as something painfully wedged itself into one of his back legs. He
turned around, finding that a hissing NoLegs had embedded his blade into his
flesh, drawing blood and tugging the weapon down towards the hoof, lengthening
the affliction into a sizeable gash. He rose the limb, wincing before trying to
shake the feline off, yet no matter how much he moved his leg like a pendulum
the cat did not let go of his weapon—or his leg, for that matter.
NoLegs began mewing frantically, driving his blade even deeper into Chanson's
rear leg, tail glimmering with a faint red aura that also embraced his
opponent's head for a few seconds. "Prissy little pansy. You can't even shake
off lil' old me," a voice hissed in his head. Chanson's eyes went red, and he
howled as he began prancing up and down in place, bucking his back legs in an
attempt to get the blasted cat off of him. This time, NoLegs relented, pulling
out his sword before landing on the floor with another hiss as the injured
stallion whirled around to look at him.
Chanson limped to the cat, but could not move any more than three paces before
an arrow found itself thwacking into his shoulder. He screamed again, turning
to Anna as she readied her flute. He made to move, only to find himself unable
to as electrical sensations shot through his body again and again, coupled with
a blindingly bright yellow overtaking his vision. These sensations assaulted
his nerves, quickly forcing him into the floor in a kneeling position.
Sarah scrambled to Katie and helped her up onto her hooves, turning to the
black-maned mare as she began playing up her accordion with renewed vigor. "You
hurt my son, you unrepentant barbarians!" she cried, her face turning an
unhealthy shade of red. "My song will be the last thing you and your beastly
cat will hear!"
Anna responded by summoning another arrow, nocking it, and pulling the
drawstring taut before firing. The projectile whistled sharply through the air,
thudding itself between a cluster of the accordion's keys and rendering at
least one of them useless. The squeezebox-holder gaped at the sight of the
crystal arrow lodged in her instrument, and she pried it out with a simple bit
of magic.
Almost immediately after, the arrow glowed and all of its crystals turned into
an icy blue color. A flash of similarly-colored magic exploded in front of the
instrument. Three more arrows appeared from that blast of magic and landed on
some more keys, damaging some and causing frost to spread on the ones that had
escaped unscathed, locking them in place.
This was followed by the sound of a flute being played, and the accordionist
tossed her instrument aside as if it had no more sentimental value than a trash
can. She turned to Anna, who already started up her piece, the flute faintly
shimmering with a green ripple of mana that then turned bright red. Fire
exploded around the archer, forming a ring that hovered above the carpet and at
her hooves, yet failed to scorch anything.
At first, this fire was red, but then turned a brilliant golden orange as it
rapidly expanded, embracing her in a tightly-wound sphere that rippled with
emerald sparks. When it faded, Anna leveled a glare at the accordionist with
green eyes that turned vibrant red. She lunged forward with a cry, summoning
three more crystal arrows whose gems turned scarlet in color and loading them
into the drawstring of her bow all at once.
The accordionist deftly sidestepped the oncoming triad of arrows, briefly
smirking as they landed in a marble column behind her. The grin fell as heat
rose from behind her, and became a frown as she felt flames lick at her back
hooves. She turned around, eyes widening as jagged red crystals grew out of the
arrows at an alarming rate, pulsating with mana for one moment and dissipating
into fire that exploded in a wave-like formation the next. She ran from the
crystals and the flames, only to find herself butting straight into Anna.
Anna stumbled back from her adversary, readying another arrow for a sure shot
when Chanson forced himself to stand and slammed his guitar into her back with
his magic. This caused the archer to stop aiming and lurch a bit, her rear legs
buckling for a moment as she steadied herself. The guitar slammed into her
again, this time breaking into two different pieces at the neck and sending her
to the floor.
"Celestia-damned archers," Chanson hissed between clenched teeth, shooting a
glare at Anna as she made to stand up again in a hunched posture. "Mother,
father, she's just going to—gah!" His remark morphed into a pained cry as Katie
rushed towards him, flew up with a rapid beating of her wings and perched on
his back before sinking her front claws into his withers and sending ice water
shooting through his veins.
"Celestia-damned changelings!" the black-maned mare shrieked, jumping over Anna
and surging towards Chanson with her horn glowing. Katie flapped her wings
madly and slid her claws out of his back before catapulting herself off with
another mad flapping, landing in front of Anna and extending a clawed hoof.
Anna bumped the armored and frosty hoof with one of her own, before turning to
the mother and son. The mare-and-stallion duo found themselves darting away
from a halberd as its blade swung into the carpet from behind them. The impact
gave way to a fierce blast of wind that radiated from the weapon as it pulsed
with mana, forcing the two unicorns further back before fading.
Sarah lifted her weapon with ease, wings still spread wide as she waved it
menacingly in front of Chanson and his mother. "You two wanna try something
else that's stupid? Be my guest; just don't come crying if you lose a limb
later," she warned, and both of them took three steps back with smirks growing
on their faces. "What the fuck are you two grinning about?" she asked, scowling
when the two Mythonian unicorns failed to answer her.
The bearded stallion, who had sat on the sidelines watching the battle unfold
and come to a halt, took a deep and silent breath. He put his mouth on the
mouthpiece of his tuba and started playing, magic rippling off of the brass in
various spots. Some of the instrument's buttons pressed down, while others went
up, though as he played not a sound was made. He played unnoticed as Chanson
and his mother lunged at Sarah again, forcing her to wave her halberd in an
arcing sweep to keep them back.
The two unicorns summoned another accordion and guitar with their magic, but
decided to switch things up a bit: the accordionist went and started using her
weapon like a club as Chanson began playing his strings.
The guitar produced a wicked thrum in its owner's magic before descending into
a solo, one that sent out waves of pure mana sweeping over the hall-turned-
battlefield. These waves of mana congealed around the wounds the two had
suffered, bathing them in a soft white light before closing them and removing
the accumulated frost that stubbornly lingered.
Anna scowled, putting her flute to her lips in order to play. However, that was
when she caught a low sound, barely noticeable even as Cheval's solo ended. Her
head began hurting, amplified by a draining feeling that came from her horn.
She grabbed her flute with her mouth and rose a wobbly hoof to grab her bow,
snatching it out of the air and toppling forward onto the floor again.
NoLegs lunged up in the air, sword pointing down and ready to strike at the
accordionist. Mid-leap, he too heard the low sound, and for a moment he stopped
himself with magic to glance around in an attempt to find the source. Then his
magic fizzed out, accompanied by a draining feeling in his tail, whereupon he
fell to the floor. The blade slipped out of his grasp and bounced off his armor
harmlessly, sliding away on the carpet out of his reach. The cat hissed in
frustration as Chanson used a hoof to kick him towards the fallen archer a
weakened Anna, driving him further from his blade.
This left Sarah and Katie as the only two otherwordly combatants, and both
exchanged glances with one another. Sarah readied her halberd again, but she
immediately found it a difficult task to deflect the squeezebox that started
pelting her on two accounts. First and foremost, it was smaller than the
guitar, and second, it did not expand its bellows—allowing it to keep its
compact shape and bypass her rather tragically flimsy defenses with ease.
Chanson used his guitar to bash Katie on the chin from below, sending her
flying up to the ceiling, and further upped the ante by hitting her back up
into the air whenever she descended down. She tried flying away, but his magic
grasped her wings and kept them firmly at her sides, thereby keeping her locked
in a twisted game of paddle ball. When he got bored with her a minute later, he
sent her careening into a marble pillar with another solid hit from his weapon,
watching with a twisted grin as she landed face-first on the column and dropped
to the floor almost perfectly still.
Now that Katieh had seemingly been incapacitated, he turned his attention to
Sarah and the accordionist. "Mother," he said, his gaze falling on the black-
maned mare while his remark caused the two mares to stop and look at him. "The
mongrel's mine. Mine alone."
"But she hurt you!" the black-maned mare exclaimed.
"No, that was the cat, the archer, and the changeling. Those three have already
been taken care of. Let moi address the gryph," he replied with a wicked smirk.
His mother smiled at him and backed off, and he rushed in to fill her place
eagerly. He caught Sarah off-guard by reaching over her angled halberd with a
hoof and clocking her in the nose, causing her to stagger back awkwardly.
Chanson followed this up with a jab to the stomach using his guitar, his
twisted grin broadening as she kneeled with one claw letting go of the shaft
and flying to rest on her gut.
He tsked her three times, shaking his head before turning around and kicking
her in the face with his back legs while she'd been left vulnerable. He whirled
around again, just before she landed flat on her back, watching her halberd fly
out of her grasp as her wings spread wide on the carpet and fresh blood began
trickling down the side of her muzzle. He trotted over to her until he stood
with his body looming over her, positioning his front hooves on her wings and
pressing on the two humerus bones.
Sarah rose her claws up in an attempt to strike him, but his magic grasped them
and forced them to the floor above her head. Sarhe let off a weak yelp as she
felt her left wing bone starting to crack, but stifled the noise before it
could become something more as Chanson pushed down on it with all his might.
The bone snapped in two, but by no means was the deranged and haggard unicorn
finished just yet. He rose the hoof that broke the bone and set about trailing
up the wing with it, breaking more bones and eliciting more groans of protest
from his hapless victim.
When he did this, though, she stopped making noise and leveled a glare at him.
Chanson grabbed some feathers in his hoof and pulled them out, garnering a
wince and gritting of teeth from Sarah. He pulled out more feathers, yet did
not get anything more than a pained, indignant grunt. His eyes fell on her
halberd, and he picked it up with his magic to study it for a moment. "Now,
what did you say about… what was it, lost limbs?" he asked, turning to Sarah
and meeting her glare with his smirk still in place. "After all, you said
yourself—'do it already.' The broken wing's nothing more than the fault of your
rapid-fire foul mouth."
"That may be true," Sarah began, clenching her teeth for a second before
speaking further, "but that doesn't make what you're doing any less wrong."
"And what if I broke more of your bones as just retribution for having moi
jailed?" Chanson asked, an amused glint flickering in his eyes.
Sarah responded by raising her back legs up and jabbing him right in the gonads
with her rear hooves. Chanson screamed like a filly and jumped away, hunched
over with a front hoof—the same one that had removed some feathers—darting to
his junk. "Oh, you little bitch," he hissed as she rolled over onto her good
wing and made to stand. She winced as she got on all fours and angled her body,
her broken wing now hanging uselessly at her side.
Impressively, Sarah still glared at Chanson, fresh blood still trickling from
her nose and her form swaying a bit. She opened her mouth to speak, but froze
as the rioters that had disabled themselves earlier got up on their hooves and
quickly backed up her adversaries, cutting off all means of escape. All
means—save for that of one of her fellow Fantasians, she quickly realized. Her
eyes averted to Katie as she staggered to her hooves and shook her head
dazedly.
Chanson, however, turned to Katie as well, and proceeded to smash his guitar
into her once more, this time striking at her hind quarters. She returned onto
the floor sprawled out again, this time letting off a weak groan. "Ah, ah, ah,
you're not going anywhere," he hissed in a pained tone. Chanson then turned
back to Sarah and asked, "Where are the rest of the foul Fantasians, hrrrm?
Have they gone home already?"
"Why don't you take your daddy's dick and shove it up your ass, Chanson
Cheval?" Sarah growled, eyes narrowing for a second. "How would you feel if I
took that horn of yours, tore it off, and shoved it up your cockhole before
breaking it?"
"Pardon moi?" Chanson snarled, dropping the halberd and taking a moment to
process the gryph's response.
"Ignore her crass remarks, my son," the bearded stallion spoke up, trotting up
to stand at Cheval's side with an unreadable look on his face. "She's just as
beastly as that changeling and the cat. Mayhaps I should shut that trap of
hers." He put his mouth to his instrument, horn glowing as he began to play for
a moment.
It was a moment he didn't have to spare, as the sound of many hooves hitting
the carpet and the mobsters shouting in protest behind him caused him to turn
around to see what the new and abrupt ruckus was about. Chanson turned around
as well, not noticing his father's sudden halt with whatever tune he had just
started striking up.
One by one, the rioters were hefted in magic and shoved aside, until a path had
been formed that cut the mob clean in two. The split between the mob, to their
resulting visages that morphed to convey nothing short of wide-eyed expressions
of pure horror, revealed one Shining Armor and a large plethora of guards as
they trotted down the path. The guards flanked the captain in two rows behind
him, leaving space for a third row of beings whose members were not royal
guards.
With the guards and Shining were the rest of the Fantasians, who shoved through
one row of armored ponies before darting ahead and galloping around them. They
stopped upon seeing Cheval and his parents, taking in the scene and finding out
just how bad in shape their companions were. "What the fuck happened here?"
Lance barked, his eyes falling on Sarah first.
"Chanson happened. He stirred shit up," Anna answered for Sarah as she made to
stand, this time on her back legs, her eyes reverting from crimson to their
regular emerald hue. Her bow rested in one hoof, and her flute was held by the
other.
"Aren't you supposed to be in the dungeons?" Shining asked, turning to Chanson
with an icy glare and a gleam in his eyes.
"There was a bail, and me and his mother paid the necessary sum of bits for our
son to be free again," the bearded stallion replied simply. He flinched as
Shining turned his glare onto him.
"There was no bail, last I checked. He'd been found guilty of his crimes and
sentenced to one life term," Shining hissed, cantering over to the stallion
with the tuba and staring into his eyes. He turned to some of the assembled
guards and barked, "Guards! Arrest Chanson and his parents immediately! It
seems we had a breach in the dungeons while we were rounding up the rioters; we
cannot let this happen again!"
"Sir, yes sir!" the guards replied in earnest as a few armored unicorns already
lunged forward and summoned manacles with their magic. Chanson and his mother
found themselves shackled, and tried summoning up retaliatory magic, only to
snarl like animals as silver bands with runes slipped on their horns and cut
off their mana flow as soon as contact was made.
The father quickly began playing his tuba again, and the guards who conjured
magic heard a low hum before their mana flow inexplicably cut off. He kept
playing, until Fenrir rushed through with Maria clutched tightly in one paw and
tackled him to the ground, shoving the other paw into the mouth of the
instrument and drastically contorting it through that act alone. "I will
tolerate no disrupting of magic against the authorities of this castle, you
cur," he snarled lowly.
"Mana disruption? Really?" Armin groaned sarcastically, cantering over to look
at the bearded pony straight in the eyes. "How much dumber can you get? Like,
where'd your brain go? Is it in a jar somewhere?" he asked, a grin forming on
his face.
"That's the lowest form of cheating, if I've ever heard of it," Alexander
added, mimicking Armin and glaring at the tuba-player coldly. "What on Mythos
drove you to do this, especially knowing that there are non-unicorns present
who can easily hold you down… like, right now?"
"Mayhaps you'll learn a valuable lesson this night. And when you do leave the
dungeons as a free stallion, I implore that you do not do something this
brazenly foolish in your remaining days," Fenrir snarled, eyes narrowing as he
pushed harder on the instrument, crushing it into a heap. The bearded stallion
went wide-eyed and frantically nodded. "Have I made myself perfectly clear?" he
asked, and the stallion whimpered with another nod before the Captain spoke up.
"Well said. Guards, take him away!" Shining barked, his voice echoing into the
hall. The guards rushed over and manually clamped the stallion in chains and
slipped unto his horn a silver ring before he had been parted from his now-
consigned-to-scrap instrument. The trio of troublemakers were dragged off by
their new manacles, and some more guards took to showing the remaining rioters
out of the hall without input from their captain.
Shining then turned to Sarah and noticed her dangling wing, as well as a few
scattered feathers that surrounded her, littering the red carpet with greens
and browns. "He did another number on you?" he asked.
"Every damn bone in my wing's busted thanks to him. He also did a number on
Katie," Sarah answered with a slow nod.
"I'm still conscious," Katie grumbled as she stood up again, this time with her
back legs sagging a bit. "Ow, my hips."
NoLegs let off a mew as Matt trotted up to him and scooped up his armored form
with a furry foreleg. The cat found himself held up to the stallion's face, and
he licked the end of his muzzle with a soft purr. "Did you kick some ass?"he
asked, chuckling as the feline mewed again.
"He kicked plenty," Anna answered, her horn starting to glow again as the
draining feeling finally faded. She grasped her bow and flute with her magic
and, with a flash of light, made them vanish before falling to all fours. She
turned to the fallen halberd and did the same with it, just as Katie waddled
her way to Shining.
Shining studied Katie's slightly stilted form and sighed when he noticed her
shoes, seeing a ripple of blue mana radiate on the weaponized garments before
their layer of frost melted off. He felt a fluctuation in the hall's
temperature, and frowned as it rose in tandem with the ice melting away. "Are
you a frost wraith?" he asked, using a hoof to gesture to the shoes.
"Frost wraith?" Lance parroted, turning to Shining before noticing whom he was
staring at and going wide-eyed.
"Only with these shoes on, I am," Katie answered, sitting on her rump and
wincing again. "That's it: Chanson's family is paying for the painkillers I
need to take."
"Eh, they won't be able to. Besides, I can fix you up in a jiffy," Natalie
interjected, tottering over with her horn glowing a soft white. She lowered her
head until the tip of her appendage pointed at the wraith, and started
channeling some mana into a spell. A white glow bathed Katie for a moment
before it faded, and the changeling stood up without a wince. "How do you
feel?" she asked.
"Like I haven't been bashed with a guitar over and over. Thanks," Katie chirped
in a pleased tone.
"No problem," Natalie replied before turning her attention to Shining. "Captain
Armor, is it alright if we left Canterlot… I dunno, sometime tonight? I have a
strong feeling that if we stay in this city any longer, the ponies here will
just find something else to blame us for."
Shining assumed a hard, though unreadable, look on his visage. He turned over
the request of his foreign guest for a bit, briefly turning to the remaining
guards who exchanged glances amongst themselves before nodding to their
captain. "Prepare the chariots, except for you," he answered, raising a hoof to
point at a unicorn medic guard amidst the bunch.
"Yes sir," the guards replied, and they bounded off—except for the medic guard
Shining pointed at.
"What do I do, sir?" the last guard asked with a slight frown on his face.
"What else? Tend to the wounded hippogryph," Shining answered, noticing that
this guard hesitated for a moment, fidgeting in place without otherwise moving.
"Now," he emphasized, and the guard nodded before rushing over to Sarah and
opening his saddlebag with some magic.
He held the broken wing up with simple levitation, earning a gasp from Sarah.
"Please don't prod too much. It hurts like a motherfucker," she groaned, and
the medic replied with a mute nod as he pulled out a roll of gauze from his
saddlebag.
"Do the medics know basic healing magic?" Natalie asked, turning to Shining
with an incredulous brow raised.
"Yes, but that one's a trainee," Shining replied, gesturing to the sole medic
guard for emphasis. "He has to—"
Natalie cut Shining off with a groan, a hoof rising up and connecting with her
face. "I'll go help him on the spell front, then," she sighed, setting her hoof
down before trotting over just as the guard bent the broken wing in the wrong
way by accident. This wound up making Sarah shriek in pain, the noise nothing
short of an ear-splitting keen. Her horn began glowing again, and her magic
grasped the wing and gently stretched it as wide as it could go.
A white glow bathed the injured wing, and as the mana weaved around it and set
to work, Sarah relaxed little by little. She started purring as the medic
wrapped her wing in the gauze, wincing as the cloth bunched up some of her
feathers and made others stick out of place. The glow receded, and more
bandages were wrapped around both the limb and the midsection to which it was
attached before the wing had been closed.
Sarah shuddered as the medic summoned what looked like an oversized cast laden
with straps via his magic and affixed it to her wing and midsection, being
mindful of how damaged it was. He also tenderly ensured that the cast had no
chance of sliding out of place and enabling the wing to dangle again,
tightening the straps as he saw fit. Once satisfied, he nodded and rose a hoof
to pat his patient on the withers.
"How do you feel?" Natalie asked, concern flickering in her eyes.
"I still feel like my wing got crushed by an airship's engine, but some of the
pain's gone away," Sarah replied before she returned to softly purring.
"Don't move that wing for a few weeks, unless you need to preen it and change
the wrappings," the medic warned, cantering to Shining only after his most
recent patient nodded in understanding. "The wounded has been tended to, sir."
"Excellent," Shining replied with a nod and a small, satisfied grin emerging on
his face. "Now, could you go find Sergeant Riverwater and have him report to me
immediately?"
"Yes, sir," the medic replied before he gallopped away. Shining watched him
scramble down the hall until he vanished around a corner, then turned to Lance
and addressed him, "Would you rather use your airship, Fantasian general?"
"No. I'd rather trot through all of Equestria's other towns discreetly, and
incognito," Lance replied with a huff. "I don't want to find myself the target
of another Godcat-damned mob, and if I find myself in that situation again,
then I'd want to get out while minimizing damage to all parties involved. If we
took my airship, that would be the opposite of discreetly, and not to mention
mana-consuming."
"'Mana-consuming?' Care to elaborate?" Shining asked, a brow rising.
"Me, Natalie, and Anna power that damn thing with our own horns. Every single
time the airship is used, we sacrifice a lot of mana just so the engine runs,"
Matt answered, turning to the Captain with NoLegs still in his foreleg. "Put it
like this: we're reduced to basic summoning spells and levitation at most after
charging the engine."
"And the whole insanity that's happened this night drained a lot of our energy.
I mean both physically, and magically," Natalie added, garnering a look from
Anna.
"Wait, you guys had to fight off droves of grouchy unicorns too?" Anna
incredulously asked, a puzzled frown on her face.
"Yes, it was very hectic. They kept throwing furniture—I sincerely wished
they'd just stuck with rotten tomatoes," Alexander groaned, a frown on his
beak.
"They tried pelting me with forks and spoons, but they didn't succeed because I
just brushed them off," Armin added, the grin on his fanged maw taking on a sly
cast.
"By the dozen," Matt replied, turning to the green-maned unicorn with a sigh.
He turned to Fenrir as he waltzed over on two legs, holding a snoozing Maria in
one of his front paws. "Is she okay?" he asked, setting the cat down and
gesturing to the filly.
"Yes, she has gone through tonight's dilemma unscathed, and is slumbering
quietly," Fenrir answered with a curt nod. "Though, something troubles me."
"And that is…?" Anna implored, looking at Fenrir with her frown becoming more
pronounced.
"Just who in Canterlot, exactly, decided to pin the blame on the supposedly-
bizarre weather on us?" Fenrir replied, eyes narrowing slightly as he spoke.
***** Start of Arc II: Chapter XVIII- Early Morning Quibble *****
Morning came, and its light shined through a wide window framed with parted
yellow curtains onto a wooden bedroom. Bookshelves were carved into the walls,
a set of stairs led from a bedroom into a sort of side-room where a table sat
near another flight going down. A few vases stood here and there with plants
sprouting from them, and there were some crescent moon and sun insignia dotting
parts of the ceiling. Some more parts of the walls weren't made of shelves, but
instead had wooden doors and drawers fitted onto them to serve as storage
compartments currently not in use.
In the bed next to the window lay one Twilight Sparkle, her form entirely still
despite the light shining right in her face, save for her breathing. She had a
complacent look on her visage that didn't waver, even as someone rushed up the
flight of stairs straight to her while raising a ruckus.
"Twilight, Twilight, wake up! It's urgent!" Spike shouted over and over again,
though the unicorn he was addressing didn't stir once in her bed. A star-
decorated quilt covered her frame, and she dozed even as the drake moved to
stand beside the bed hollering. He paused and took a deep breath before he
began shouting with all his might once more, and still the lavender mare failed
to move.
He slumped for a moment and narrowed his eyes, mumbling to himself through
teeth he started grinding, "Drastic times call for drastic measures." He
grabbed the quilt and tugged it off, casting it aside where it folded into a
heap on the floor behind him. When that failed to rouse her, he clambered onto
the bed, careful to avoid stepping on Twilight's body, and began to jump on the
mattress fervently. After hurriedly trampolining about a few times, he paused
to catch his breath.
Twilight still didn't wake up, instead muttering something he couldn't make
out. He tried jumping again, but was thrown off as the unicorn shifted and
kicked him off the bed. Spike took a second or two to recover as he found
himself with his back to the floor, sitting up as he hissed in exasperation,
"Okay, Twilight, you asked for it now."
He stood up, dusted himself off and ran down the two flights of stairs, and for
a while the sound of things shuffling from below resonated into the room. It
eventually ceased, shifting into a lull of quiet before Spike came running back
moments later with a megaphone in his claw.
"Twilight, wake up!" he shouted into the contraption, his voice amplifying
tenfold in volume. He began smirking when the unicorn finally got out of bed
with a harried jump, flailing her legs willy-nilly and emitting a startled
yelp. She stayed in that position for a moment, before gravity kicked in and
sent her falling to the floor face-first, halting her erratic movements
altogether.
"Spike," Twilight grumbled in a tired, indignant voice as she made to stand up.
"What's all the fuss over?"
"Come to the front door, like right now!" Spike answered, dashing down the
stairs before Twilight had the chance to ask him any more questions. She
wearily grumbled to herself, squinting her eyes as they adjusted to the light
before trotting down the stairs. Her mane hung in clumps and clung to her neck,
but she forwent grabbing a hairbrush for the moment—after all, Spike had wanted
her to see something. She surmised that, whatever it was, it had to have urgent
enough to warrant usage of the blasted megaphone.
Making a mental note-to-self to talk to the drake about the megaphone at a
later time, she sauntered down the stairs, past the table, then down another
flight to find herself at the living quarters with the horse head carving. A
knock sounded from the front door, persisting for a moment before Spike rushed
over to open it and tell whoever it was that Twilight was coming. Twilight
cantered over, hastening her pace when she finished the flight and peeked out
of the door, an angry glare set firmly into her face.
What she saw beyond that door melted her glare into a state of wide-eyed shock
in the span of seconds. Beyond the door stood Princess Celestia, and an
assortment of guards which included Shining Armor, and a bunch of cloaked
beings accompanying them. Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but had that
chance taken from her as a small cloth-wearing form rushed over and tackled her
in the chest, knocking her back a few paces and wrapping their front legs
around her neck. She felt multiple poking sensations along her maneline, but
that had been the least of her worries.
"Purple horn-pony!" the being exclaimed in a cheery, all-too-familiar young
voice. The befuddled mare looked down to see the form's hood falling off and
revealing a pale pink-grey coat, brown irises and a messy violet mane all
framing a grinning face.
Twilight gaped. "Oh, um… hello," she managed. Turning to Celestia, her knees
wobbled as she gave a weak, "I guess you can all come in…" Celestia nodded and
turned to the guards and cloaked beings behind her to nod to them, and most of
them strode inside. The few who didn't were guards that Shining barked at for a
moment or so before catching up with the lot in his full set of armor.
Shining closed the door with a gentle kick of a back hoof and stood next to it,
now silent as a statue. A faint series of flaps echoed into the room, growing
quieter and quieter until the entire place had fallen under a tense tranquility
that soon broke.
Maria slid off of Twilight and grinned at the dumbstruck mare for a moment
before she noticed the carving and ran to it. "What's this?" she asked, pawing
the wooden statue with her claws for emphasis.
"A carving, little one," Celestia answered in a sweet tone with an amused grin
cropping up on her face. She turned to Twilight, whereupon the smile
immediately fell. "Quite a lot has happened last night," she stated flatly, all
traces of her previous amusement gone like a brief gale of wind.
"A… lot? Care to elaborate?" Twilight asked, her tone low. The instant she saw
a flicker in Celestia's magenta eyes and Shining stepping forward to flank the
Princess, she found herself feeling that, whatever it was, it likely did not
bode well.
"A riot—one where the unicorns directed their ire to the pegasi at first,
breaking wings and de-feathering whoever they could catch. But then a prison
breach happened sometime during the confusion, and the prisoner and his
partners-in-crime directed the rioters' anger to our guests," Shining answered
in a grim tone, shaking his head.
He made to speak again, but got no further than opening his mouth again as
NoLegs appeared on his head in a flash of magic with a mew. He looked at the
feline cross-eyed for a moment before shrugging his shoulders and continued as
he began purring, "And said guests had to… defend themselves. To varying
degrees of success."
Twilight flinched, immediately envisioning several unpleasant scenarios in
which the Fantasians could have killed some ponies, or vice-versa. Shining saw
a spark of worry flicker in her eyes, and he said in a soft tone, "No, nopony
was killed. There have been many injuries and broken wings, but things honestly
could have been much worse."
Twilight relaxed a bit as NoLegs jumped from Shining's head to land in front of
her hooves. He mewed and rubbed his head on her forelegs before another small
cloaked form with a mask stepped up. A pair of orbs lit up in the eye-holes of
the mask before the form spoke in a hollow voice, "So… what now? What do we
do?"
"Well, you guys are all inside, so… remove the cloaks and stay awhile, I
guess," Twilight answered hesitantly. The group obliged, and a bunch of
familiar faces had been unveiled as they shook off their garments—with the
exception of Lance, who had his uniform on beneath his cloak for some reason.
Twilight sighed when Maria jumped onto her back, and addressed said foal
without even looking at her, "Yes? Do you need something?"
"Why's your mane like a bunny's tail?" Maria innocently asked, using a talon to
grab a tangled lock and tug at it.
Twilight winced, her horn glowing as a lavender aura embraced the foal. Maria
found herself lifted up, then gently lowered to the floor. "I didn't have time
to brush it," she sighed, turning to Maria for a brief moment before directing
her attention to the rest of the Fantasians. Almost immediately, she now saw
that everyone had gotten bruises that showed through their fur, with varying
sizes, colors ranging from red to deep purple, and placements. Anna and Sarah
looked as though they'd taken quite the thrashing, sporting the most bruises
out of the lot that Twilight could see—and a wing cast in the case of the
latter.
"Um… why do you have black eyes?"Twilight hesitantly asked, looking pointedly
at Sarah.
"I took a pair of back hooves to the face. I'm amazed my skull didn't fracture
upon impact," Sarah scoffed, raising one of her talons to rub her temples with
it.
"Last night was nothing short of the purest madness I have witnessed in my
days. At the very least, I am grateful the royal guards were able to stop the
riot before it could descend further out of their control," Fenrir growled,
shifting to sit on all fours. "Though, the damage done was nothing compared to
what I witnessed back home."
"What do you mean?" Twilight asked in an uneasy tone, a brow raising up.
Fenrir rose a paw and gestured to Maria with it, a firm frown set into his
face. "From where does our little one hail?" he retorted. Twilight stiffened,
shivers running down her spine. She nodded, forgoing speaking words, as if
uttering even one syllable had potential to conjure images of atrocities she'd
rather not remember.
Shining Armor decided to interject, "Twilight… Celestia's entrusted me with
watching the Fantasians."
"Yes, I have," Celestia confirmed before Twilight even opened her mouth.
"Something is amiss; that much I know. I believe our foreign guests might help
us figure out just what that is, with their… talents and diversity." She turned
to Lance and stared into his eyes for a moment before continuing, "However, I
request that you abide by our laws while you are in Equestria. Do as you will,
but do so while maintaining some modicum of respect for the rules in place
here. Am I understood?"
"Yes. You are understood," Lance replied tersely, breaking eye contact to glare
at his advisors, troops, and the odd Fantasians out. They too answered Celestia
with simple "Yes"s and nods of confirmation. NoLegs mewed, nodding when the
Princess turned to him expectantly. Maria followed suit, grinning as Celestia's
intense gaze briefly fell on her.
Celestia shifted her wings a bit at the foreigners' response and turned to
Twilight and Shining Armor. "You two, notify me if they do anything…
questionable," she stated. When the siblings in question nodded, she softly
smiled at them and made her way out of the library, pausing as the guests moved
to either side of the door to let her out before opening said door and striding
out with a spring in her regal step.
She gave Twilight and Shining one last glance from over her shoulder, fully
exiting the library and gently closing the door behind her and leaving the two
factions to their own devices. Again, a faint flapping sound echoed shortly
after her departure, leaving another silence in its wake.
Twilight turned to look at Maria again, and noticed a soft, fresh down of dusty
brown feathers growing in erratic patches on her bald spots. Some more feathers
grew along the margin where her front limbs joined with her talons, making her
look just a little more like a hippogryph. "Have you been doing well? I see
you're starting to grow feathers again," she mused with a faint smirk on her
face.
"Well?" Lance scoffed, garnering Twilight's immediate attention. He had a smirk
on his face too, with the addition of a glint in his eyes. "Hell, she's been
doing excellent. We've been feeding her right, and enough to put a little extra
weight on her bones—but we also had her do some exercise to keep from getting
excess. At this rate, she might start flying soon enough."
"And I might get my cutie mark," Maria eagerly chirped, rising to stand on her
back legs. She rose a claw and tapped at Twilight's cutie mark with it. "What's
this mean?"
"Oh, you mean my starburst cutie mark?" Twilight mused, turning to her mark and
sighing. "Well… my talent's magic, to put it simply."
"Can I do magic?" Maria asked hopefully, a glimmer in her eyes. It fell when
Lance spoke up.
"You can't channel raw magic like a unicorn could, but you have a natural magic
regardless," Lance said simply.
NoLegs mewed again, jumping up into the air and hovering in front of Twilight.
He purred when she turned to him and shrieked in surprise, eyes widening as she
registered the sight of the seemingly-floating feline. Twilight glanced at
Shining and the assembled Fantasians, as well as Armin before she noticed that
no horns had been glowing. She turned to the feline and asked in mild surprise
and exasperation, "Alright, cat, how are you able to do that?"
"Look at his tail," Alexander instructed. Twilight did as she was told, eyes
squinting as she watched the furry limb swish back and forth eagerly.
"All I see is a tail," Twilight groaned. She heard Matt chuckle as the cat
found himself bathed in a brief golden glow, and her irises shrunk immediately
after that—a pale blue glow surrounded the cat, coming up from the tip of his
tail. "Wait, he can do magic? But… but…" she stammered as the cat mewed again,
purring almost like he was taunting her. Another golden glow surrounded the
cat, and the pale blue glow already around him seemingly vanished with the
second aura, though he still floated regardless.
"To be honest," Matt began with an amused smile on his face, garnering
Twilight's attention again, "none of us know how he's able to do that either.
But hey, at least it makes getting around easier for him, especially since…
y'know, he lacks legs."
NoLegs mewed in agreement, levitating closer to the dumbstruck Twilight before
licking her on the nose. She merely sighed in resignation and hesitantly rose a
hoof to pet the cat on the head. She pulled her hoof back when the tell-tale
sound of books being tampered with reached her ears, and she glanced around for
a moment to find Natalie browsing through a shelf. Clearing her throat and
stopping her seemingly-eager-to-read guest right in her tracks with the noise,
she stated in a flat tone, "If it has to do with the barrier that broke, I
already scoured up and down all of my shelves and found next to nothing."
Natalie whirled around and looked at Twilight with a brow raised. "What did you
find, then?" she asked.
"A ruined book," Twilight answered, turning to Spike and nodding in his
direction. Spike nodded back and scrambled past her and the others and up the
stairs.
"What good's a ruined book?" Lance scoffed, giving Twilight a hard, almost sour
look. "And how beat up is the damned thing anyway?"
"Eh, you'd have to see it to believe it… it's in pretty bad shape," Twilight
replied in an uneasy tone, a wavering smile spreading on her muzzle. She rose a
hoof and started rubbing awkwardly at the back of her head when all her
response garnered was a narrowed pair of crimson eyes. She heard something open
and slam faintly, followed by soft thuds that came from above. She turned to
the stairs to find that Spike was already coming back on swift little heels.
"In case you're wondering, it's so beat up Twilight barely found diddly," Spike
answered as he came down the stairs, an old and worn book in his claws.
"But," Twilight started, summoning a scroll in a flash of magic. "I found this
inside that book, and I believe one of you knows the inscriptions on this
parchment." She waved it for emphasis, and charged up some more mana into her
horn. Glowing white runes appeared above her head, spinning for a moment before
conjuring up a blade of pure light that shot up and embedded its tip firmly
into the ceiling.
The Fantasians looked at the anomaly, and they all gaped. None of them, not
even NoLegs, could come close to the wide-eyed, shrunk-irised, ears-against-
the-head, slack-jawed expression that was plastered onto Matt's face. "H-how…
w-where…" he stammered, the dark parts of his face draining of their color,
leaving only an aghast white. He turned to Twilight, eyes glinting in askance.
"It… looks almost like…" he trailed off, partly from shock and partly because
she started speaking again, cutting him off in the process.
"I found it in an old shelf that's underground. I don't know how long it's been
there," Twilight answered, handing the floating scroll to the still-stunned
Matt. He studied the runes on the page, a shudder running through his spine as
he absorbed the scrawlings. "Can you show me your sword again? I want to be
sure I have the right pony here."
Matt let his horn glow and begrudgingly summoned Heaven's Gate. Twilight used
some more mana to pry the blade of light out of her ceiling, and took the
silver-and-gold sword to hold the two side-by-side. She looked closely at the
weapons, and found them to be near-identical in every way as far as overall
shape was concerned. She made the light-blade vanish, and returned Heaven's
Gate to its owner, who likewise made it disappear.
"Do you know that spell?" Twilight ventured, noting Matt's ongoing silence. He
mutely responded by conjuring mana of his own, summoning the same runes and
sending another white blade into the ceiling exactly where Twilight had first
landed hers. She turned up and stared at the blade before it dissipated. "I'll…
take that as a yes."
"What does that book you supposedly found the scroll in contain?" Anna asked
with a straight face, eyes glinting with a spark of emotion—of what emotion
exactly, Twilight was not sure.
"Well… from what I could glean, it's a diary of a stallion who went to
Fantasia… before Celestia and Luna began ruling Equestria," Twilight replied, a
chill running down her spine as her guests exchanged glances and brief
mutterings. Matt still remained quiet, as if his brain had shut down and left
the building. "I have another question to ask you all," she piped up, and
instantly the murmurings ceased. All sets of eyes belonging to the
otherworlders turned to her, watching her as if expecting to have a sword of
concentrated light pointed on them.
"Do any of you know this… uh, phrase or sorts…?" Here, Twilight paused to clear
her throat and steel herself before she uttered, "''As the stars gleam in the
night sky like the moon, so too shall the forests whisper in the winds and
bring about the hope in Fantasia?'"
Immediately, and to her instant wide-eyed surprise, the response she got was a
series of choked gasps, flared changelings' wings, a yelp from Fenrir, and a
mew from NoLegs. Sarah stepped forward hesitantly, pupils nothing but tiny
vertical slits adrift in twin lakes of green. Once in front of Twilight, her
ears fell back. "I've… heard about it from dad. He told me and Anna that… long
ago, a pony named Starswirl came to Fantasia somehow…" she murmured in a quiet
voice.
"Starswirl?!" Shining cried in a high-pitched squawk that suggested he'd just
caught on, rearing onto his back legs as if somepony had managed to suckerpunch
him in the chin. He reverted to all fours, going as wide-eyed at the
otherworlders when Sarah slowly nodded once.
"I thought it was just some old foal's tale, but… but dad also told me the
Starswirl pony crafted a spell that summoned a blade of light. Now that I've
seen you and Matt cast something that fits the bill, I'm… just…" Sarah uneasily
trailed off, turning her head left and right to gaze between Matt and Twilight
fervently.
Matt's visage contorted as he sat on his haunches, his jaws closing and his
irises enlarged, though his ears were still back on his head and his features
looked pale. He fixed Twilight with a vexed look before deciding to speak for
the first time in moments, "Do you… have anything else written by this… this
Starswirl pony?"
"Yeah, but last time I checked, they had nothing to do with the barrier between
the worlds. The damaged book and the scroll were the closest things I could
find, and—" Twilight inexplicably paused, her eyes widening as she turned to
Sarah. "Wait, did you say that Starswirl crafted the spell I cast earlier?"
Sarah slowly nodded again, fidgeting in place. Her right wing flapped for a
moment, as if by instinct. "I'm only going by what I was told when I was a
filly, though. I don't know if it's true or not, but… what I saw was
impressive, to say the least," she replied, her voice as shaky as her body.
"Well, at least we have something to go on," Lance interjected coolly, also
shifting to sit on his haunches. He turned to Spike and asked, "Can you hoof
over that book for a second, please?" Spike immediately waltzed over, and
handed him the book as soon as he was within arm's reach. Lance studied its
title for a moment before turning his attention back to Twilight. "Do you think
there are any other copies of this book out there?"
Twilight shook her head. "It's not likely; it's very old, and damaged. I'm
under the impression that, whoever defaced it, they didn't want whatever
Starswirl found to be commonplace knowledge," she answered glumly.
Lance blinked and rose a hoof, tenderly opening the book's cover. He started
scanning the pages, and quickly came upon the 'defacing' that Twilight spoke
of. He dejectedly turned a few more pages, only to groan and close the book as
carefully as he opened it. "Well, this is a problem. For all we know, the book
could've been wrecked to hell and back just weeks after being published," he
sighed bitterly, eyes narrowing at the blasted thing as if it insulted his
mother.
"But then, how'd it get here to begin with?" Anna asked, waving a hoof around
the room for emphasis. "This looks like a place for new books, or recent
translations of old books—not the kind of area to find that beat-up stack of
papers in," she added, her hoof turning on the book Spike held as she spoke.
Twilight wrinkled her nose a bit, only for said wrinkles to smooth out as she
put a hoof to her chin and gave Anna's remark some thought. She set her hoof
down and trotted around the room before levitating herself, scanning each and
every shelf she could. To her chagrin, Anna tragically had a point—every book
on the shelves she could see had been fairly recent, with the oldest book a
whopping twenty years in age. The book Spike held, on the other hoof, was far
older, if its weathered condition had been anything to go by.
Which brought her to echo said guest's earlier question as she descended to the
floor, "You're right: how did that book get here?"
"Don't look at me. I just live here," Spike replied, shrugging his shoulders as
Twilight's gaze fell upon him for a second.
"I don't know about you guys, but this is pretty suspicious if you asked for my
input," Shining interjected, turning to Twilight as she turned to him. He broke
eye contact and shifted his gaze to Lance. "Do you know anything about what
Twilight said earlier? About the stars gleaming and the wind whispering or
somesuch?"
"I heard that as an old foal's tale, but honestly, I don't remember exactly how
it went," Lance answered, eyelids slanting for a moment. He sighed deeply and
added, "In fact, I forgot all about it until today. I guess being in my current
position just… detracted most, if not all of, my attention."
"I can understand that entirely," Shining murmured, nodding to the general
before turning back to his sister. At Twilight's nod, he once again shifted to
glance at the otherworldly tourists. "Anypony know, or remember anything else
you might've heard about Starswirl?"
The group exchanged glances, and with the exception of Sarah, Lance, and Anna,
the others shook their heads. NoLegs mewed, and when Shiningn turned to him, he
instantly saw that the feline had frowned. Then he turned to Katie, who waved
her front hooves and reared onto her back legs simultaneously, jaw soundlessly
moving up and down and tongue flopping about in a manner that suggested she
spoke in muted gibberish.
Upon looking at Armin, he saw another frown, albeit one marked with pointed and
jutting fangs. "I know zilch," Armin said flatly, turning to look at Katie as
she still flailed about, and lit up his horn with a bright green magic aura
that grasped her to keep her still. "Would you stop that? You look like a damn
fool doing that!"
"She's in a closed space with the rest of us. She can act as foolish as she
wants. Besides, we took her horseshoes away last night, Armin—she can't do much
without them," Natalie chided, shooting him a cold glare that made him
relinquish his magical grip on Katie, who immediately returned to flailing her
front legs every which-way while balancing on her back ones, her mouth and
tongue moving at rapid-fire rates.
Shining exchanged another glance with Twilight. He pointed a hoof at Katie and
asked, "Erm, is she alright?"
"I don't know, but it looks like she's trying to tell us something…" Twilight
murmured, shooting Katie a concerned look. "Um, did you lose your ability to
speak or something?"
"No. Sometimes I just… spasm like that," Katie replied in an uneasy tone,
whereupon she sat on her haunches and brought her front legs up to her chest.
Her wings buzzed, and she stayed in that position for a moment or so before her
hooves returned to the floor, looking at the wood surface while allowing her
mane to fall over half of her face. The translucent red wings slammed shut
against her thin sides, and her orbs dimmed.
Shining eyed Katie rather suspiciously for a moment, entirely befuddled at her
behavioral flip-flop. He shrugged in resignation and turned to Fenrir. "I know
not a thing regarding the stars gleaming, nor of our wraith's temporary attempt
at proper sign language. For my ignorance, I sincerely apologize," Fenrir
stated flatly, a frown forming on his face as he set about crossing his front
limbs.
"Sign language?" Shining asked, a brow quirking up.
"It is what it seemed to be, yes," Fenrir answered, nodding slowly. "As I see
it, how could it be anything but, at the very least regarding terms of
appearance?"
Twilight turned to Maria, groaning as she found that the filly in question had
decided to clamber on top of the horse head carving. Maria sat snugly between
the ears, cocking her head to one side as Twilight stared at her. "Um, did your
daddy tell you anything about stars and winds and such?" she asked in
desperation, wincing when the query caused her small guest to frown.
"No, he didn't. Hardly anygryph saw the sky back home," Maria answered sadly.
"And when they did, the big bearded meanie said it was a bad thing to see the
big round white thing in the sky."
Twilight sighed, her head lowering as the noise she made devolved into a bit of
a whine. She stopped abruptly as a mew reached her ears, and she rose her head
a little to find that NoLegs stood in front of her, looking back with a soft
purr. Immediately, and inexplicably, she then beamed at the cat. "Maybe my
friend Fluttershy could talk to you and tells us what you know," she thought, a
grin spreading on her face.
Twilight turned to the other Fantasians, who at this point looked at her with
varying emotions marring their features. Some brows were quirked, a few mouths
were slightly agape, a pair of orbs brightened, and another mew hit her ears.
"Guys, could you stay put for a few? I think I might have found the solution to
our problem; it's just that I need to get somepony first so we can crack it,"
she stated. Without warning, she ran to the door, flung it open, and galloped
out in a hurry with a cloud of dust flying behind her.
The door freely swung about for a moment before Shining trotted to it and
closed it with some magic. "Anypony else have a bad feeling all of a sudden?"
he asked, turning to the assembled Fantasians who merely looked at him and
shrugged with befuddled looks on their faces.
***** Chapter XIX- Guests of the Round Table *****
Twilight scrambled down worn dirt paths, dust whirling behind her for a moment
before settling as she rounded a bend. She hastily darted past houses, grateful
that nary a soul had set hoof into the streets at the onset of today's dawn. A
sense of hope and euphoria filled her, and she showed it through high-pitched
whinnies, fast-moving hooves, and a smile on her face that came with a gleam in
her amethyst eyes.
She rounded a bend that veered left and kept going, adrenalin coursing through
her veins as she blazed down another street. Turning sharply to the left again
after a good five miles or so on hoof, her smile grew as a windmill came into
view. She spotted a nearby wooden bridge and pranced up to it, listening to the
sharp taps she produced just trotting to the other side, and crossed another
bridge seemingly lined with moss that arced over a small creek.
Past that, she spotted another tree-house-type construct, though it was
considerably shorter yet thicker than the library. It had a plethora of
windows, however, and two doors fitted onto the same frame that made it look
like one split horizontally in half. Bird houses and nests littered the scene,
dangling from trees and kept tidy in hollowed out holes in the trunks. Some
ground burrows were here and there, though thankfully out of the way of the
dirt path leading up to the house.
Twilight paused, partly to catch her breath and partly to admire the bird
houses as the sun's early light basked them in its glow. Some blue jays and
cardinals jumped out, chirping and experimentally flapping their wings for a
moment before taking to the skies and spreading their songs through the
expanses above. Her eyes fell to the ground, just as some rabbits began
crawling out of the burrows. Her smile fell when the rabbits frowned,
chittering fervently about something she couldn't comprehend.
Her legs burned with pain, and Twilight started trotting up to the house in
spite of her nerves telling her to stop. She forced herself to look at the door
instead of the rabbits, taking care to not stray from the dirt path and
accidentally trample on the entrances of the rabbit holes. Upon reaching the
wooden obstruction, she rose a hoof and began knocking slowly.
She stopped knocking when hooves echoed from within, and she took a step back
as both halves of the door opened. In the frame now stood Fluttershy, who had
slight bags under her blue-green eyes and a tremendously frazzled mane. She
blinked sleepily, regarding Twilight with partially-lidded eyes. "Twilight,
it's very early. Do you need something?" she asked in a soft tone that belied
her drowsiness.
"The Fantasians are here, and I heard a riot transpired in Canterlot last
night," Twilight replied, making to speak again when two things happened
simultaneously. First, Fluttershy's eyes widened, her jaw soundlessly dropping
open like somepony jammed a hoof snugly between her two rows of teeth. Her
wings spread to full mast, as if by reflex, and they shuddered for a moment
before snapping shut at her sides.
The second thing that happened was that the rabbits started shrieking in
unison, running back to their burrows and sending the airborne birds into a
frenzy overhead. The avians rushed back to their homes, chirping frantically,
as though Twilight herself had the temerity to say something so unspeakably
vile in their tongue they could not bear to listen to it any longer. This left
just the two alone, at least for the moment.
"A… riot? In Canterlot?" Fluttershy asked, pupils seemingly shaking in her
eyes.
"Yeah. It got bad enough that our… guests sustained some injuries. Could you
come over to the library…" Twilight paused, taking in Fluttershy's haggard
look, "whenever you feel ready?"
Fluttershy nodded. "Of course. Oh, poor Angel's been fretting about the little
hippogryph filly—is she hurt?" she asked.
Twilight shook her head. "No. In fact, her feathers are growing back," Twilight
replied, donning a small frown. "Why's Angel… concerned about it?"
"He told me he doesn't want what already happened to undergo a repeat,"
Fluttershy sighed, just as she felt something tugging at her mane. She looked
down and found Angel at her front hooves, a bandage on his head that left holes
for his ears to poke through and a firm scowl set in his face. He furiously
chittered a bit and crossed his forelegs, tapping a rear paw rather
impatiently.
"Um, I'll wait for you to feed your animal friends and get ready. Oh, and when
you come, could you bring Angel with you, and a fish for NoLegs?" Twilight
inquired, softly smiling when Fluttershy looked up at her and sent her another
nod.
"I would be more than grateful to give a fish to little NoLegs. But I have to
feed all of my other friends first," Fluttershy murmured in reply. She turned
around and went back inside, stretching her wings as she languidly walked to
another room within the house. Angel went with her, shooting Twilight a soft
smile before closing the door behind himself.
Twilight trotted backwards a few paces from the door and turned around to look
at the path she'd come from. She took a deep breath and exhaled, and the
moments that passed after that were spent examining the area. After a good
twenty minutes or so, Twilight began softly smiling as small blades of grass
caught some of the early dawn's rays and began appearing as though they were
glowing in the light's radiance.
Another ten or so minutes ticked by, and slowly, the birds poked their heads
from their homes before taking flight and filling the air with their songs.
Their chirps and serenades had a sort or effect on the immediate area, causing
the rabbits to come out of their burrows and chitter amongst themselves once
again.
From the nearby creek, beavers poked their heads out of the water before
hauling themselves to the banks and stretching their dripping wet forelegs.
Twilight smiled softly as amongst them, a little beaver kit stood next to the
fully-grown adult beavers, giving them a look and some slaps on the ground
courtesy of its tail. The adults with it chattered a bit before walking up to
the nearest rabbit and communicating with it.
Fluttershy opened the door, and her presence immediately caught the attention
of the animals already out and about. "Breakfast is ready," she called out, and
the birds and rabbits and beavers rushed to the door, darting past her with
smiles on their little faces. The little beaver kit tripped, and Fluttershy
hurriedly trotted to it and gently used a hoof to get it back on its feet as
soon as she was at its side. The kit shot a wide smile at her before running
into the house to join the other animals.
Twilight went to the nearest window and peeked in, smiling as the assorted
animals started eating food that had been laid out in a living room. Turning to
her friend, she decided to venture with words, "Um, where are the mice and
squirrels at?"
"Oh, them?" Fluttershy responded, turning to Twilight with a sincere smile on
her face. "Oh, they're in the kitchen. Angel's eating too; he was almost done
when I trotted out to tell the other bunnies and critters that their food was
ready." A moment passed, before her smile fell and she went wide-eyed. "Oh no,
I forgot NoLegs' treat!" With that, she rushed back into the house, and
Twilight chuckled when she returned a moment or so later with Angel perched on
her back and a basket of fish held on the handle with her teeth.
"So, you're ready now?" Twilight asked with an amused smile spreading on her
face. Fluttershy nodded and made a muffled "Mhmm" in response, her movements
slow as her head bobbed. Twilight nodded back and the two trotted over the
small bridge, though Fluttershy turned back to find Harry coming around from
behind the massive house. She lowered her head to set the basket down and
craned her neck to see him closing the door.
The bear rushed up and met with the ponies, letting off a small growl as he
picked up the basket with his claws. Angel chattered at him for a moment, and
Harry listened as the rabbit told him something. The furry giant nodded in
understanding, and they turned to the road ahead, where Twilight stopped a few
paces to wait for them. The trio rushed up to join her eagerly, and back into
Ponyville they went.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The Fantasians sat around the library's table, with Shining between Lance and
Armin and Spike sitting between Alexander and Katie. The group bickered
rampantly, some pointing at a worn book that stood open at the center of the
table, though all had hooves and claws and paws on the table.
"So, this book's meant to be elsewhere?" Matt asked, using a hoof to gesture to
the damned thing. He looked at Spike, who nodded frantically.
"At least, I think it is. I don't know where it's supposed to be, though,"
Spike replied, a frown on his face.
Lance rose his front hooves and put them together as if in prayer. He sighed,
shaking his head. "So, Twilight just… found it. In this library…" He paused,
closing his eyes and lifting a hoof to rub his temples before continuing,
"somewhere. Is this what I happen to be hearing?"
"That's about right. We don't even know who might've had the book before, apart
from the pony who wrote it," Spike answered, nodding in spite of the fact that
Lance had his eyelids shut.
"So, what're you lot so keen to know?" Shining asked, eyes darting between the
assembled Fantasians.
"Anything regarding the barrier that broke. My general heard some 'end of the
worlds' nonsense from an old, crazy geezer," Armin answered, raising a hoof up
before rubbing the back of his neck with it. He lowered his limb when Maria let
off a whimper and wrapped her claws around his ribs, and he moved his other
foreleg around to hold her with a sigh of resignation.
Shining noticed the foal's clinging to said changeling, and turned to Anna
before changing the subject a little, "So, just to be absolutely certain we're
all on the same page here, nopony remembers or knows much about Starswirl?"
Everyone, sans Spike, shook their heads.
Shining Armor sighed dejectedly. He looked around before noticing NoLegs
striding to him, and looked at the cat quizzically before he found the end of
his muzzle booped by a furry tail. The cat mewed with a purr, causing him to
raise a brow. "Do you need something?" Shining asked.
NoLegs nodded, using his tail to gesture toa white hoof that sat on the table.
Shining mentally slapped himself and rose the hoof the cat pointed at to give
him some petting. "So, tell me more about the legends I've heard about the
supposedly-non-existent Fantasian alicorns," he murmured, turning his eyes on
Sarah.
Sarah sighed, shuddering as she felt Lance's cold crimson gaze sweep over her.
Having Shining giving her more or less the same look was bad enough, and she
gulped before speaking in a nervous tone, "W-well… I kn-know this one foal's
tale I heard…" She gulped again, suppressing another shudder before continuing,
"When Fantasia and Mythos first came to be, two divine beings quibbled over the
sibling planets in their first hours of existence. One was a cat, with silky
white fur and piercing blue eyes that wished to spread feline dominance."
Shining and Lance exchanged looks before nodding in her direction. Sarah took
that as her cue to go on, "The other was a white alicorn with a flowing red
mane and eyes sparkling a greenish-blue. She was a pony who had a long tapered
horn, a regal set of wings capable of whipping up storms, and hooves that were
strong enough to rend mountains asunder. The alicorn, a mare named Faust,
wished to spread equine rule."
"An alicorn named Faust? That's funny," Katie noted, ears twitching as she
spoke.
Sarah nodded to Katie, before taking another deep breath. "So, they battled for
the worlds, for many years—until they saw that they were at an impasse. The
feline, Godcat, decided to broker a deal with Faust: the same species could
inhabit both worlds, both flora and fauna, and the fighting between them would
cease."
"Faust agreed, and together they made cat and ponykind, as well as all other
species, once they ensured the worlds were safe enough to inhabit." Sarah
paused with a shuddering breath, her head lowering and eyes closing. She rose
her talons above the table and clasped them around one another in a pleading
posture.
Her voice dropped to a somber tone as she went on, "But Godcat favored the cats
and the gryphons, who were Fantasia's apex predators, and Faust favored the
equines. Both saw that one world had a dominating species, and reacted
vehemently: Faust took away the cats' legs, and weakened the gryphons and any
hippogryphs she could find. Godcat responded by wiping out many, many alicorns
and gave some aid to her then-just-legless children and ailed gryphs. In doing
so, she left just the unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi to seek out a living
on their lonesome. Only a select few with traits of all three tribes escaped
her wrath, but even they did not leave entirely unscathed."
Shining cringed, eyes narrowing as Sarah let out a soft sigh. "The few alicorns
left… at least, on Fantasia, none ever heard from them again. Their exact fates
were buried so long ago, they may as well have been lost to the mists of time.
The earliest ponies and cats eventually had an upheaval against their gods, and
locked them away after a cataclysmic battle raged for some time. Thereafter, a
barrier between the worlds had been enforced, with none daring to even break
it. None could break it, as their descendants came to find out eons after the
initial clash. None knows who even made it or why, just the same" she
concluded.
"And yet… the barrier broke," Matt mumbled in a low voice. He too turned his
eyes on Sarah as she gave a final dejected sigh. "Does the legend mention
anything about what could've broken it?"
Sarah shook her head, keeping it low. "No," came the terse reply. She rose her
head and leveled a straight gaze at Shining before adding, "In fact, that's all
I do know—and it's the only foal's tale dad would tell me and Anna when we were
fillies… for all I know, dad might've tweaked the tale a lot, and the original
would be lost to me if such is the case."
"He probably did tweak it here and there. After all, children are young and
impressionable; you were no exception," Alexander piped up, garnering a nod
from Sarah.
"And we don't know how much your old stallion altered or left out," Armin added
with a sigh. "Hell, neither do you—I feel like we're galloping in circles
here."
"Which sucks," Sarah scoffed, nodding again.
Shining nodded back. "Every teensy bit we can get helps," he groaned. NoLegs
chimed in with a mew, purring as his hoof continued to rub him. He turned his
eyes on everyone else, making sure to give Spike but a brief glance, and again
the heads shook glumly.
"What's a predator?" Maria asked, and immediately a few of her fellow
Fantasians tensed up at the question.
Katie groaned and answered the foal in a flat tone, "A predator is somepony,
gryph, cat, or whatever that kills and eats another living being. Like, say I
could catch and eat a mouse—in that case, I'd be a predator."
"That sounds about right," Shining remarked, looking at the filly. "But not all
predators are bad—most just kill to survive."
"But, there are predators who go above and beyond to be the most sadistic,
inconsiderate, horrific barbarians that the environment has managed to
produce," Fenrir added, pausing briefly to growl at nothing in particular. He
went on after taking some breaths and collecting himself, "They seem
inconspicuous—at first. And when one's guard goes down, that's when they reveal
their truest of colors."
Sarah pried her talons apart and rose one of them. "I can vouch for that," she
agreed.
Spike mimicked her posture. "Seconded," he stated simply.
Shining turned his eye on Spike and opened his mouth, but before he could utter
so much as one syllable, the door opened and caught everyone's attention. The
gathered bunch turned and sighed as Twilight Sparkle came trotting in, with
Fluttershy, Harry, and Angel bringing up the rear. Speaking of, the bear parted
from the mares and rabbit and homed in on the table, plopping a basket of fish
next to the book.
And that was before Maria jumped from Armin's forelegs onto the table and
launched herself into the bear's chest afterwards. "Fuzzy!" she exclaimed
cheerfully, a great big smile on her face.
Fluttershy trotted to Harry as he staggered back and steadied himself,
spreading her wings and flapping before flying around his hulking form to see
what had tackled him. She grinned upon spotting Maria nestled in his massive
forelimbs, and gave a small giggle. "It seems you missed Harry," she noted. The
bear looked at his airborne companion and smiled, giving off a soft growl to
accompany his grin. Angel, who was perched on Fluttershy's back, hopped onto
the table and bounded to NoLegs, chittering something to him while using a paw
to gesture to the fish basket.
The cat nodded and pried himself away from Shining, approaching the basket with
a gleam in his eyes. When he settled next to it, he used his tail-magic to
pluck out a very fat trout. While the cat commenced with digging in, Angel
darted to Lance and shot him a glare that could've been intimidating—if not for
the difference in size between himself and the red-eyed pegasus he glowered at.
The rabbit chittered something in bunny-tongue and rose a paw, using two digits
to point between his own eyes and those of the pony he stared down. "You're
watching me?" Lance asked, looking at Angel with an amused smile spreading on
his face.
The rabbit nodded once before Fluttershy swooped in and scooped him off of the
table with a foreleg. "Apologies. He's just been grouchy and worrying about
Maria so much he thought of doing terrible, diabolical things if even one
scratch got on her haunches," Fluttershy sighed.
Lance nodded in understanding. "I can understand his worry. Though, I doubt he
can do terrible, diabolical things—his attempts would make me raise an eyebrow
at best," he replied, still grinning.
"Oh, I've heard about terrible things happening in Canterlot, and when I told
Angel about it… let's just say I had to set aside some bits to invest in a
punching bag for him later," Fluttershy murmured, her remark instantly causing
Lance's smile to drop.
"What happened last night, or weeks ago?" Lance inquired, eyes narrowing.
"Both," Fluttershy replied simply, turning to fly away. She gained a bit of
distance before landing on three legs at Twilight's side.
Twilight trotted to the table and turned to Shining. "Say, did you glean
anything?" she asked.
"A local Fantasian legend," Shining replied with a huff. "Sis, do you have
anything on an alicorn named Faust?"
"On an alicorn named Faust?" Twilight repeated, blinking as the words bounced
about in her skull. She fidgeted for a moment before her horn lit up, her magic
grabbing every single book in the crevasses at once. "This might take a while…"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Zecora crept around the foliage of the Everfree, eyes and ears open and alert.
Her hooves were in constant contact with the ground, either brushing up against
shrubs and twigs, lightly kicking aside rocks, or squelching in the damp
undergrowth. Laden on her back was a saddlebag, which shifted against her body
every time she scraped against a tree or thorn-laden bush.
She paused, her gold accessories clinking when she halted. Before her, a small
clearing stretched, letting in more sunlight than the rest of the darkened
canopy. In one ray of solar light, a patch of blossoms bloomed in a cluster.
Fluttering gently to one such flower was a lone butterfly, large enough to
cover one of her hips with its wings alone. It sported colorful scales and
tails extending from its back wings, vibrant crimson in hue that gave way to
golds and oranges which appeared to be metallic.
Zecora grinned, and quietly reached into her saddlebag with a hoof, opening the
flap before pulling out a lidded jar large enough to contain the butterfly. She
rose on her back legs, lifting her tail to make an ample counter-weight, and
silently approached the insect while unsealing the jar. Her smirk broadened
when the butterfly flittered away from the flower, only to find itself in a
prison of glass. She sealed the jar and eyed the creature, watching as it tried
to get away to no avail.
"At last I have you, my gorgeous sunset swallowtail. You shall accompany Gala
to the afterlife when she sets sail," Zecora intoned, gently placing the jar
with the swallowtail into her saddlebag and closing the flap. She turned around
and crept back into the shadows of the woods, careful to avoid stepping or
kicking things that could give her position away to potential predators.
For a few moments, she trudged through the dense woods, pausing to swat
unwanted insectoid hitchhikers with mere flicks of her tail. Zecora stayed low,
rarely straying into the light, her striped form of dark and light greys
providing a monochrome sort of camouflage. A growl from somewhere nearby halted
her right in her tracks, though, and she quickly crouched to the ground.
Twigs snapped and the sounds rang in her ears, and Zecora's heart began
climbing up her throat. She remained still, hoping to go unseen by whatever it
was that had produced the noise. Her eyes darted everywhere, though she
couldn't see much past the trees and the bushes from her current position.
Then, she caught the sight of something moving. It curled around a tree trunk
to her left, though it writhed out of sight. Another growl hit her ears, much
louder and more like a roar than anything else. The Everfree fell into a thick
silence, occasionally broken up by crickets and birds that went on making the
morning symphony.
Adrenalin pumped through her blood and the hairs on her backside stood on end
as a wet, semi-viscous liquid dribbled down onto her withers from above.
Slowly, she tilted her head and craned her neck to see what it was that
produced the odd substance. Zecora paled upon seeing a great, serpentine beast
made of wood, with thick treebark acting as scales. It had gnarled horns on its
head, a fanged maw slowly opening and oozing some kind of green fluid.
But what really snagged her attention were its eyes, glowing a sickly green and
lined with three-pronged leaves. They zeroed in on her, and the beast lowered
its frame so its reptilian-esque face hovered inches from her own. It let off a
hideous roar that sent an acrid aroma of rotting flesh into her nose, and a
spray of green fluid that went everywhere. The liquid wasted no time in coating
her mohawk so much it drooped to one side as soon as the beast finished its
cry.
Zecora scrambled to her hooves and backpedaled as the thing lunged at her,
sinking wooden daggers for teeth into the dirt. "Oh no, I enraged a snarling
timberwyrm!" she cried with alarm, turning around and jumping into a harried
gallop. "If it wants me for food—on second thought, this I do not wish to
confirm!" Her cries served to embolden the beast—as soon as it disentangled
half of its face from the dirt, it slithered after her with another wailing
roar, homing in on its galloping quarry like a missile.
Zecora fled deeper into the wood, jumping out of the immediate path of trees
and darting over bushes. The timberwyrm kept pursuing her, launching itself
into the canopy and slithering through the branches, keeping a constant vigil
on its target. It started lashing out after a moment or so of giving chase,
narrowly missing her flailing legs and sailing tail as she repeatedly ghosted
away just out of reach.
She moved deftly, lungs starting to burn as the monster lunged at her again and
again. Her run began to slow a bit, only to pick back up as she doubled her
efforts to get away, eyes peeled for something she could use to avoid becoming
the timberwyrm's breakfast. At last, after turning a sharp right and blazing
through another clearing, she found her chance: a broken tree up ahead, its
bulk resting at an angle with just enough room for her to squeeze between the
wood and the dirt.
Zecora dived and slid, going under the fallen wood husk with ease. The
timberwyrm miscalculated when it lunged, grabbing the entire tree instead of
its prey with one firm bite. The monster let out a muffled roar, hefting the
tree and wildly thrashing its head about, yet no matter how fast or erratically
it moved the tree would not dislodge from its jaws. To make things worse for
the would-be diner, a swarm of glimmering green beetles with antennae as long
as their bodies poured out of the dead tree. They climbed all over the wyrm,
quickly sinking their mandibles into its barky flesh and halting it in its
tracks entirely.
Zecora took this as her chance to get away, running for a good ten minutes
before slowing to a trot. She paused to catch her breath and rest, and checked
on the jar to ensure that and her flittering passenger were alright.
Thankfully, the glass confine and the butterfly were both unharmed, and when
she regained her breath she set out once again after putting the jar back in
her saddlebag. Thirty minutes passed when she eventually found another clearing
that boasted a tree with a door built into the bark, and she sighed in relief.
She trotted briskly to the door and opened it, using her tail to close it shut
behind her as soon as she strode inside. She scanned the room with the shelves
full of bottles and the cauldron, before her eyes fell on a pile of hay with
the legless Crimson Gala looking at her expectantly. "Did you find a butterfly
that's beautiful?" she asked.
Zecora answered in silence as she opened her saddlebag again and procured the
jar with the butterfly in it. "Yes, I have found such a butterfly. It flitted
to me, and I gently snatched it from the sky," she eagerly replied with a grin.
She opened the jar and watched as the butterfly clambered out, looking around
warily before flittering out and about the room.
Gala watched the insect, seemingly captivated by its graceful movements and
bold hues. The insect continued to flitter and float, and after a few moments
it changed course, descending down slowly to land on the end of her muzzle. She
giggled like a little filly at the sight, grinning as the butterfly didn't fly
off at her noise of joy.
Zecora's smile widened as well, and she tried her hardest to not fawn over the
sight. "It seems the swallowtail adores you. All seems well for the moment—now,
I shall work on the brew," she noted in her head, and she began to trot about.
She pulled off ingredients with her hooves, mouth, and tail, being careful to
avoid smashing their containers and setting them before the cauldron.
"It's between my ears!" Gala exclaimed, briefly catching Zecora's attention for
a moment. Indeed, the insect decided to rest between the wraith's ears, wings
folded up to reveal a dull brown underside with an equally dull body.
"Don't be too loud, for noises can cause undue tension. I ran into a timberwyrm
earlier; we really don't need the extra attention," Zecora warned. Gala slowly
nodded, her mane bobbing up and down with her and gently shaking the butterfly
on her head.
Zecora nodded back and proceeded to pull a mortar and pestle hewn of oak wood
out of a shelf, and she tottered over to the cauldron to put it with the rest
of the ingredients. She opened some of the bottles and jars, revealing dried
herbs and bits of plants that she poured out in eyeball-measured amounts,
making sure not to spill a single leaf outside of the mortar. Picking up the
small bowl in her left hoof, she grabbed the pestle with her right and started
grinding up the plants.
She paused when a low, bestial roar came from outside, but resumed turning the
plants into powder when it faded without any other noise accompanying the
racket.
***** Chapter XX- Volatile Musings *****
Gala watched as her caretaker continued grinding plants, sometimes averting her
orbs to look at the sunset swallowtail as it crawled about her body. After a
good forty or so minutes, her attention was grabbed by the sound of wood
hitting wood, and she turned to Zecora to find that she put down the mortar and
pestle. Zecora made to stand, being careful to avoid knocking the mix of herbs
and such over. She rushed past Crimson and picked up a small pouch and put it
in her saddlebag, before she turned to her and sighed.
"I need just one last thing for the brew. I'm going out to Ponyville; I should
be back soon," Zecora stated, looking at Gala with a straight face. Gala
nodded, giggling as the butterfly crawled to rest on the tip of her left ear.
With that, she watched as her caretaker trotted out of the hut, making sure to
leave the door firmly closed behind her on the way out. Zecora started trotting
through the foliage, eyes and ears once again peeled and on lookout for any
sight or sound that could've belonged to any of the Everfree's other residents.
And yet, as she sloshed through wet ground and half-soggy bushes that dried out
a bit, the only sounds she could detect were her hooves as they snapped twigs
and kicked rocks out of the way. Not even the birds or the insects sang
throughout the canopy; the forest had gone deathly silent. Her heart began
thundering in her chest, and instincts screamed at her to head back to the hut
and barricade the door.
She ignored those things, though; she had a much more important task ahead of
her. Zecora pushed onward, wading through the undergrowth for a few minutes
before finding herself on the split between the forest, complete with a worn
dirt path. She veered right, letting off a small nicker before wandering into
the nearby town. As soon as she set hoof in town, she noticed the residents
already trotting through the streets and already starting their day.
Among them, three little fillies bustled about alongside Rarity, Rainbow Dash,
and Applejack. The foals had colorful saddlebags laden on their backs, and they
trotted ahead of the mares that accompanied them. They all stopped in front of
Zecora, grinning innocently. Zecora nodded to them and looked to one of the
fillies in particular, a yellow-coated foal with vibrant gold eyes and a maroon
mane with a pink bow resting on the back of her head.
"Apple Bloom, how are you this morn?" She paused, noticing a little yellow
nugget of something in the foal's mane. "Why, is that a bit of corn?" she
asked, gesturing with a hoof at the bit of yellow. She turned to Applejack when
she spoke up.
"Naw, that's a bit of hay. Apple Bloom tripped on her way out of the barn,"
Applejack replied with a sigh. "Good thing she landed on the hay, though;
otherwise she'd have gotten a nasty scrape, I reckon."
Zecora nodded in understanding. "Shall I accompany you, then? I have a place I
must visit, again," she stated, turning to Rainbow Dash.
"Eh, sure," Rainbow Dash agreed with a nod. "After I help Applejack and Rares
drop off Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle at school, we gotta hit Twilight's
library anyway."
Zecora donned a smirk. "That's where I was going at morning's first rays; that,
I hadn't expected you to say. Very well, lead the way. We mustn't stall all
day."
One of the other fillies, a light grey unicorn with green eyes and a swirled
purple-pink mane, piped up as they started trotting again. "Sis, why're you
gonna visit Twilight?"
Rarity answered as the group turned a sharp left onto another street, "It's… a
long story."
The third filly, an orange pegasus with a magenta mane and lilac eyes, jumped
up and down a bit. "Is it another dress design? Can me, Sweetie, and Apple
Bloom help?" she asked.
Rarity shuddered, and her eyes went wide. She turned to the small pegasus and
said, "But won't you have homework to do later today, Scootaloo? Why, you
wouldn't find the time to make a dress, not when you have assignments that are
due the next day. And besides, you need to learn all sorts of other things
before you can make a dress."
"Unfortunately, she is right," Zecora chimed in, just as Scootaloo groaned in
annoyance. "You can't just make a dress overnight."
"But," Rarity began again, garnering the attention of the fillies as they
rounded another bend. "If you do well in school this week, and this goes for
all three of you, I'm willing to let you help me with some of my designs. Am I
understood?"
"You can count on me, sis," Sweetie piped up, a grin on her face.
"I wonder what kinda dress we'll make after we do good in school!" Apple Bloom
exclaimed, eyes widening and sparkling.
"Cutie Mark Crusaders Dressmakers!" Scootaloo cried, at this point beaming. The
other two fillies chimed in and all three chanted "Cutie Mark Crusaders
Dressmakers!" as a reddish-violet barn-esque building came into view, one
adorned with a bell tower atop the roof and a playground stationed nearby. They
sprung into a gallop and rushed to the barn-like construct, where a bunch of
other foals with saddlebags had already begun to congregate.
"Be good, Sweetie Belle!" Rarity called just before the foals could move into
the building. She sighed and slumped, watching as Sweetie and the others
vanished into the building, though the little unicorn filly she addressed waved
a hoof as she went inside. She sighed, prior to glancing at Zecora and
addressing her, "So, if you'll pardon my forwardness, may I ask why you are
accompanying us?"
"Twilight Sparkle promised me she'd help with something. For us both, it's…
rather unbecoming," Zecora answered, a rear leg twitching for a moment. The
group began trotting again, this time at a slower gait. "Tell me, why are you
three also seeking her out? Judging by your expressions, you seem to have some
sort of bout."
"You're right about that," Applejack groaned. When she turned to Zecora and
found that the zebra raised an eyebrow, she elaborated, "Long story short,
we're expecting the Fantasians who dropped by to show up in town today. We just
don't know when, so we wanted to ask Twi if she knew."
"You sound like you know them, dearest Applejack," Zecora noted, blinking as
her other brow rose to meet with its companion. "What are they like; do they
give any flak?"
Rainbow took in a deep breath, wings briefly flaring as she answered, "Well,
one's a general, and he kinda brought a small hoofful of his troops here, plus
a few who weren't drafted into his army."
Zecora's eyes widened. "A general, did you just say? Twilight told me a little
about him yesterday."
"Did she tell you anything else about him?" Rarity asked with a huff.
"Not much, aside from his changelings and gryphons. When she spoke of him, she
partially stiffened," Zecora sighed, shaking her head.
"Then let us fill you in on all of the missing details…" Rainbow began, closing
her wings with a near-soundless grunt punctuating her response.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Twilight groaned in exasperation, her head being the only thing sticking out of
a pile of books that embraced her form. Her mane was even more frazzled at this
rate, looking like nothing more than a clump of unkempt tangles. A book
levitated in front of her for a moment before it was flung aside, bouncing off
of a wall and plopping to the floor. The shelves in the room around her were
barren, and she began grinding her teeth as another groan climbed out of her
throat.
The table nearby had been lifted up by both Shining and Matt's magic, revealing
another staircase that wound down into another room. Spike and Alexander came
rushing up and weaved around the horse head bust, shoulders sagging and wings
flaring when they saw Twilight apparently being devoured by a mass of books.
Spike sighed and rushed up to her and scaled the mound, careful to avoid
stepping on leather-bound stacks of parchment that protruded from the pile
significantly. "Nothing in the basement had anything about Faust or Godcat," he
said.
His remark elicited nothing more than another agitated groan. Twilight ground
her teeth harder, shuddering at the sensation when Fluttershy came in from
upstairs, with NoLegs perched on her head. "I didn't find anything either—not
in the books, anyway," she sighed.
"Does NoLegs happen to know anything?" Alexander asked, turning around to make
eye contact with the yellow pegasus.
Fluttershy shook her head. "Next to nothing, or so he told me," she said. The
cat shook his head as well, frowning when Twilight groaned for the upteenth
time. The cat mewed, and Fluttershy immediately translated, "Aside from
something Sarah already told him about."
Twilight howled out, eyes narrowing as she began fidgeting and squirming in
place. For the first few seconds, the books held her to the spot, prior to
shuddering and tumbling down to the foot of the pile. Then she jumped out of
the mound, her horn glowing and her magic grasping her to hover her body a few
good inches above the pile, though she remained well beneath the ceiling.
Fire erupted around her, coalescing into a sphere before dissipating, revealing
a pony whose only feature remotely resembling Twilight's was that of her
starburst cutie mark. Her coat turned so pale an orange it looked to be white,
and her eyes went bright ruby red while her mane and tail exploded into roiling
flame on the spot. Everyone flinched back at the display, eyes widening when
the now-ablaze mare let off another shriek, this one more deafening and
unnatural.
Fortunately, the abrupt transformation didn't last no more than a second or
two. Another sphere surrounded Twilight briefly before vanishing, revealing the
same purple hues she had before, albeit now littered with scorch marks. She
landed ungracefully into the pile of books, sending a lot of them everywhere in
the process, and sighed dejectedly. "There are other libraries in Equestria… no
use to get frustrated yet," she mumbled.
"Yet," Lance emphasized for her. He watched as Shining's horn briefly stopped
glowing. He immediately cantered over and lifted Twilight out of the mess of
books with magic and levitated her to him, wrapping his forelegs around her in
a hug and letting the aura dissipate. Twilight returned the hug with another
sigh, her horn still glowing. Her magic lifted the books and haphazardly threw
them into their shelves, though they circled around the room first prior to
finding a crevasse.
As the last book slid into a shelf and flopped on its cover, a series of knocks
came into the room from the door. Spike jostled past Shining and Twilight and
opened the door, eyes widening when he saw Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and
Zecora standing just behind the obstruction. "Uh, hang on for a second, girls,"
he stated in an uneasy tone, with an equally nervous grin to accompany his
words.
The quartet of mares nodded, and Spike gently closed the door before whirling
around and rushing over to Twilight. "Rainbow, Rares, Applejack, and Zecora are
here," he groaned, causing Twilight to jump with enough force to slide out of
Shining's grasp.
Twilight turned to Matt, noticing the table was still levitating thanks to his
magic. "Um, put the table down," she murmured. Matt nodded back and gently set
the table down behind the horse head bust, neatly covering up the hole and
staircase going further down. She whirled around and trotted over to the door,
paying no heed to the Fantasians as they started mumbling about the second
batch of guests, and opened the obstruction again.
As soon as they saw her, four sets of eyes widened. "Twilight Sparkle, what
happened to you? You look like you escaped becoming stew!" Zecora exclaimed,
taking in the scorch marks littering the lavender mare's body.
"Um… kinda exploded in fire," Twilight replied with a sigh, her remark
eliciting a cringe from Applejack. "No, nothing else was burned. I'm going to
apply ointment."
"Then where's the ointment?" Applejack asked, her brows rising.
"Um, upstairs. Oh, and…" Twilight trailed off, eyes darting between the mares
assembled at her front door.
"'And' what?" Rainbow implored, eyes narrowing slightly as one brow shot higher
than the other.
"The Fantasians and my brother are here," Twilight answered simply, earning an
alarmed gasp from Rarity.
"Here? Already?" Rarity tersely asked, her voice an octave higher. She made to
speak further when Shining trotted up to stand behind Twilight.
"That would be affirmative. Celestia's entrusted me with watching them, and
making sure they don't do anything fishy," he answered in a flat tone. He
wrapped a front leg around Twilight's midsection and sighed. "You might as well
get that ointment now, sis."
Twilight nodded and disentangled herself from Shining's grip, and both turned
to trot back in the house, though he paused to beckon the next batch of guests
inside with a hoof. The quartet followed him and his half-burned sister, and
Rainbow let out a huff when she saw a bunch of pairs of eyes turn to her and
the others. "So, what happened?" she asked.
Fluttershy trotted over with a frown on her face. She opened her mouth, but a
sharp inhale of air from Zecora cut her off. "Over there, is that a wraith I
see? Right there, standing with you three?" she asked, looking pointedly at
Twilight, Shining, and Spike as they made for the stairs—with Katie not even
three feet away from the trio in question.
Katie instantly turned to Zecora, orbs going wide. Her wings flared, jaw
soundlessly opening and shuddering as Zecora's gaze fell onto her. "Yes, that's
a wraith—a Fantasian one. Don't prod at her too much, she's not the kind that
likes being touched," Shining answered, sighing as he turned to Katie. "You
doing okay?"
"She's staring at me…" Katie mumbled, eyes locked in a staring contest with
Zecora. Shining simply nodded and continued to escort Twilight up the stairs,
soon leaving the first group and second to themselves.
Rarity leaned in so that the end of her muzzle barely brushed against Zecora's
ear. "She has a disdain that stems from merely being stared at," she whispered.
Zecora nodded, and broke eye contact with Katie, gaze sweeping across the rest
of the Fantasians. When she spotted Lance, her muscles tensed and her ears fell
back. Taking in his features—or, rather, what she could see that wasn't
obstructed by his uniform—proved difficult as his crimson eyes locked with
hers, almost daring her to do something ill-advised. She suppressed a shudder
and gulped before deciding to venture with words, "Are you the Fantasian
general I have heard of? Did you happen to—"
"I take it somepony told you?" Lance retorted, cutting Zecora off. At her
rather apprehensive nod, he sighed. "Yes, I am he. And I'm in a foul mood; last
night was hectic, to the point I came close to strangling something bare-
hoofed."
"Tell me there was at least a rhyme or reason behind it," Rarity mumbled under
her breath. Fluttershy went to her and cupped a hoof over one of her ears,
leaning in and whispering something into it. Rarity went wide-eyed as her
friend continued to mutter into her ear canal, waiting for her to retract
before mumbling, "Oh, dear… that's dreadful."
Maria bustled over and rose onto her back legs when she found herself in front
of Zecora. "What's that?" she asked, using a claw to prod at one of her golden
accessories which hung on her left foreleg.
Zecora turned to gaze at the foal for a moment. "A stack of gold bracelets,
little filly. Please stop touching them, lest they catch your villi," she
sighed.
"Okay," Maria murmured, pulling her claw away.
Zecora looked up and sat on her haunches. She turned her attention back to
Katie, who stiffened again. The two eyed one another for a few moments,
scanning her from head to hoof, before she realized that Katie was mostly
intact. "Miss, I must make a request of you. It is very urgent; one only you
can do," she intoned.
"G-guh?" Katie murmured, ears standing up and twitching. "W-what?"
"May I take some strands of your mane? I simply wish to use them, and not in
disdain," Zecora replied, frowning when the wraith's wings buzzed for a moment.
Katie considered this for a moment. On one hoof, Zecora was being very cryptic,
and the desire to have some of the crimson strands attached to her head and
tail had been more than enough cause for her to mentally note this. "It's
odd—out of all the things to ask me for, she wants my hair?" she thought, ears
twitching.
On the other hoof, all she required was some strands, and that was it—nothing
more, nothing less. She spent a few moments thinking this through before
trotting over, ignoring the niggling feeling that there was likely something
she still didn't get, and stopped in front of Zecora. "Only a few strands, no
more than five. I ain't got much left," she said.
Zecora raised a hoof and grabbed a lock of hair, using her other one to
separate four from the rest and deftly tugged them loose so fast Katie didn't
feel any pain from the action. She reached into her saddlebag and procured the
pouch, stashing the hairs carefully in it before returning it to the leather
holding compartment. "Thank you kindly for your hairs. I'll ensure they remain
in good care."
"You're… uh, welcome," Katie mumbled, backpedaling away from Zecora and bumping
into the base of the horse bust rump-first.
"Um, pray tell, why do you need the strands of hair?" Alexander piped up,
garnering a look from Zecora. He waited for an answer, which didn't take long
for her to articulate, though the resulting utterance left him raising a brow.
"I am a salve and potion maker, one who uses plants and herbs and other such
things. A strand of mane from anypony makes for a good ingredient, and such
good things ingredients bring," Zecora replied, pausing to consider the remark
she'd just uttered. Her eyes swept over the lot again, and she added, "May I
have some more strands of mane and a few feathers, please? I'd like to try
making more potions with them, and it should be a breeze."
Her remark caused Anna, Sarah, and Maria to cringe. Lance spoke up as Anna
shifted closer to him, "Don't tug too hard, and you can't take feathers from
either of the hippogryphs present. One needs to regrow her set entirely, and
the other has a broken wing."
"I could make a potion to help the filly regrow her feathers, though a trade-
off of a feather or two must be made," Zecora argued, using a hoof to gesture
to Maria for emphasis. She went on, voice rising as she stomped a hoof, "I've
done it with a chipped tooth before, and if a new coat of feathers needs
growing, my opinion cannot be swayed."
Lance shared a look with Maria, and she shrugged back at him. He contemplated
this for a moment before turning back to Zecora and sighing. "Take two
feathers, and prove to us you can help her regrow her coat. And only strands of
mane from the other hippogryph, alright?"
Zecora donned a smile. "That, I can agree to. Now, I need to make do," she said
cryptically. She stood up and began trotting around, taking feathers and
strands of mane, being careful to take a small amount from each pony and non.
When she got to Armin, he conjured a wad of chitil with a brief flash of magic
and hoofed it to her. Anna flinched when she came to collect some of her hairs,
shifting even closer to Lance—to the point she damn near crashed into his side.
"What's wrong?" Applejack asked, trotting over to Anna. "All she wants is some
hairs."
"I… had my mane tugged… a lot," Anna replied, her tone low and quivering. "A f-
few weeks back… when we went to the hotel."
"A few weeks when you we—" Applejack stopped mid-sentence as the memory of the
news article surfaced in her mind. Instantly, she realized what Anna had
indirectly referred to, and collected herself before speaking, "If Zecora tugs,
I'll stop her, alright?" Anna weakly nodded and flinched as Zecora selected a
few strands of mane and broke them free from the lock, getting close enough to
start using her teeth to sever them at a decent length without having to pull
at the roots.
She stashed the feathers and hairs and chitil in her saddlebag, being careful
to avoid dropping anything. She trotted back to Rarity and Rainbow Dash, who
both looked at her incredulously. The latter shrugged and found Sarah looking
at her, and it was then that Dash noticed the busted wing. She flinched and
asked, "What happened to you?"
"Some unicorn started a riot last night and fought me with a guitar before
snapping every bone in my wing with his bare hooves. And before you ask, I
kicked him in the gonads," Sarah replied with a huff and roll of her eyes.
"I'm a witness," Katie chimed in as Rainbow turned to look at her, one of her
pale forelegs raised as she spoke.
NoLegs gave a mew, and that was promptly translated by Fluttershy, "'I saw him
and he started the riot. When he confronted me and my friends, I tried stopping
him, and he kicked me.'"
"It went downhill fast enough that even the cat had to get involved?" Rarity
asked, gaping as she turned to Fluttershy. "Surely, that's one of the worst
possible things I've ever heard of!"
NoLegs mewed again, and Fluttershy glumly nodded. "He said he had to use his
sword and armor," she replied. "The riot got bad enough the ponies of Canterlot
started throwing vases."
Rarity gasped. "I don't believe it; I'm starting to think the cat exaggerates,"
she mumbled.
"No, he… isn't. I'm a victim of the vases," Anna murmured. "The riot just
happened so damn quickly, and…" she trailed off as another pony cleared his
throat in a masculine cough. Everyone turned to see two ponies trotting down
the flight of stairs.
"And it got bad enough that I had to get involved as well, with all of the
royal guards. In fact, our guests made a request to get out of Canterlot last
night, and I was too eager to get them out since things came to a head,"
Shining Armor finished for Anna as he finished the flight, his remark causing
Fluttershy and Rarity's eyes to widen. Not three feet behind him was Twilight
Sparkle, who still had scorch marks on her body, in addition to an oily
substance coating said marks. "You could say I had a field day last night."
"And Princess Celestia came this morning, and told me and Shining to watch
them," Twilight added, using a hoof to gesture around the room, making sure to
point at each Fantasian in doing so.
"But what about the ponies who managed the hotel? Those ruffians need a due
punishment!" Rarity exclaimed, face hardening within seconds. She stomped her
front hooves, attempting to make new holes in the floor before Shining rose one
hoof up. She stopped immediately, though she still maintained her fiery glare.
"The Fantasians have already testified against them, and the guards keep
finding more evidence against the hotel staff. It'll be a while before Celestia
even decides what to do with them, since more and more of their shady
activities have been coming to light in the past few weeks," Shining answered,
watching as Rarity's expression eased a bit. "At any rate, those guys aren't
going to get out anytime soon."
Rarity bristled for a moment, groaning in anger before taking in some deep
breaths in order to calm down and think. She considered Shining's reply before
nodding to herself and sitting on her haunches. "Alright, that I can
understand. Still, my point stands."
"With all due respect, those guys will get their just desserts. We just need to
wait for the evidence to stop mounting up and up before further action can be
taken," Shining retorted, a frown on his face.
Spike, who had decided to sit at the table while the fervor of conversation
went on, finally put in his two bits, "Hey, I'd rather deal with the general
and his troops than stallions who run a shoddy hotel. Those ponies were really
lucky." At his remark, Rainbow, Applejack, Fluttershy, Twilight, and Rarity all
nodded in agreement.
"Doubly so, since I was in the same room with them when Shining showed up,"
Matt stated with a firm nod. "I had to resist the urge to pound them into the
pavement right then and there."
"Why were you in the room with the perpetrators, though?" Spike asked, a brow
raised.
"Maria screamed and basically led me and everyone else to it," Matt huffed,
gesturing to the filly.
"I made bad ponies pay," Maria angrily hissed in a low voice, her claws balling
into fists.
"I can confirm that. She made them scream like they were babies and those
assholes curled up on the floor," Lance added with a nod.
Spike's brow shot higher, before lowering. "I think I'd rather not ask how
she'd pulled that off," he murmured.
"Same here," Applejack piped up, turning to Lance. "Can I ask you something?"
"Be my guest," Lance replied in a flat tone, rolling his eyes. "It's not like
I'm jamming a hoof into your mouth."
"Well, I'm gonna need help making apple cider next week, and it's a four-pony
job," Applejack began. She had a back leg shifting in a manner that made it
look like she drew invisible circles into the wood floor with it.
"Four-pony job? Cider?" Lance went wide-eyed, turning to Applejack as if
silently asking something else.
"Yeah. But, we also have special apples that need to be picked right as they
ripen, and I think they're gonna ripen next week! What's worse is that me and
my family can't do that and make cider in the same nick o' time!" Applejack
exclaimed, worry flickering in her eyes. "I was wondering if I could… borrow
some of your troops for the job next week, to help me pick the special apples?"
"... which troops, exactly, do you have in mind for this task?" Lance inquired,
blinking as a frown creased his brow.
"None in particular, but… I kinda shot my mouth off and told my brother about
your wraith, and now he wants to see her," Applejack answered, her legs
starting to shake.
Lance put a hoof to his chin, eyes darting between his fellow Fantasians as he
began contemplating. A few minutes passed before a smile spread on his lips as
he noticed the ivy that was part of Anna's cutie mark, in addition to a few
other things. "And… what if I find out you're lying, in a week's time?" he
asked Applejack, his eyes still darting around.
"I assure you, I wouldn't lie about something like this. I really need the
help," Applejack retorted in a sincere tone.
Lance nodded, and contemplated some more. Applejack did have potential to lie,
and that may have been true, but then again she had just as similar a chance to
be telling the truth. And he had to admit, she had guts to be asking him, of
all ponies, for aid in the form of lending a few extra sets of helping hooves.
He settled on a decision and nodded to himself before his lips parted.
"Bladerune, Starcovert, Windwood," he began, and instantly the three turned to
him and stiffened like planks. "You three are helping…" he trailed off,
mentally smacking himself before muttering under his breath, "Gah, I can't
remember her flippin' name…"
Applejack heard his murmur. "Applejack," she sighed, punctuating it with a
groan.
"Yes, Applejack, with these… special apples. We might be staying for a while
anyway; so, you lot follow her orders until the task is complete. Understood?"
Lance finished, his smile widening when the trio of ponies he addressed nodded
in unison. He turned his attention and gaze back to Applejack and stated,
"Would it be too much trouble to let us… sample the cider in return?"
Applejack smiled, nodding. "What can I say? You got yourself a deal," she
chirped.
Anna, Natalie, and Matt exchanged looks with one another, blinking as their
general's command echoed in their minds for a bit. They didn't have time to
contemplate the order, because Rarity decided to chime in. "Oh, relax—take a
breather. It's not even evening yet, no need to get tense," she stated.
Zecora took another look at Maria, and decided to speak up. "Little one, how
did you get so bald? Did your old coat get a very bad scald?" she inquired.
Maria tensed, lowering her head. "Bad hippogryphs," she muttered.
Zecora raised a brow. "And what did these 'bad hippogryphs' do? Tell me, what
happened, and by whom?"
"I wanted my cutie mark, and they… they killed mommy and daddy, and said it was
my fault that they died…" Maria glumly answered, still avoiding eye contact
with the zebra.
Shining strode over to Zecora in a heartbeat, raising a hoof and putting it
under her chin to close her mouth before she could speak further. "Please,
don't ask her any more about it," he said firmly, though gently. "She's… told
me all about it in the past few weeks, and frankly, I'd rather dunk my head in
bleach than to remember it."
Rarity leaned in to Zecora's ear again. She whispered lowly, and harshly, "I've
seen terrible things happen to that foal. Now isn't really the time to ask her
about it." Zecora merely nodded when the two unicorns retracted their muzzle
and hoof, shuddering as her mind began painting several unpleasant scenes the
foal could've been involved in that included the loss of her feathers.
She didn't have time to dwell on it, for Sarah spoke up. "Can we not speak any
more about this, please? At least, not yet?"
Armin decided to interject, looking at Shining with a frown marring his
features. "Is it alright if I shapeshifted? I don't want the locals of this
town flipping their tops into orbit if they saw me in my undisguised form," he
sighed.
Shining shook his head. "Not unless you could somehow do the same for her," he
replied, using a hoof to gesture to Katie. "She can't cast magic on her own,
most likely. You'll need to address that first and foremost."
Armin's frown turned upside-down in that moment. "I think I can work something
out, with a helping hoof," he replied coolly. He turned to Matt, giving him the
same smirk. Matt nodded, his horn briefly glowing with a gold aura which also
embraced Katie.
"The hell are you doing?" Katie shrieked as an orb of golden sparks flickered
to life around her, and when it faded a moment later, the Mythonians gaped. She
noticed the faces of Spike, the Mythonian mares, and the Captain morphing into
wide-eyed looks. "The hell are you guys looking at?"
Rarity mutely answered by letting her horn glow and conjuring a large mirror
from a flash of magic, setting it in front of the wraith. Katie took a good,
hard look at herself in the mirror. She immediately gasped, finding that she
now appeared to be a small grey foal with a stringy red mane, regular blue eyes
with actual white sclera, and a horn that looked rather short. She looked a
little on the thin side, but nowhere near the level of emaciation she had prior
to whatever spell Matt had bewitched her with.
Katie whirled around and shot a glare at Matt, and she spluttered out, "W-wha-
what did you d-do?"
"I know basic illusion magic. I sorta shapeshifted you for you," Matt replied,
a smirk on his face. "And only I or another unicorn can break it. At least,
unless you decide to use your wings while under the spell's effects."
"Hrmm… that is actually impressive, I must admit," Fenrir chimed in, nodding to
himself. He noticed a green flash, one of a sickly shade, burst in the corner
of his eye. Instantly, he turned to the source to find a pale lilac stallion
with pegasus wings and a light scarlet mane where Armin had once stood. "I take
it the perks of a changeling are getting the best of you?" he asked.
The pale lilac stallion nodded, grinning wide enough to show a fanged maw. For
a moment, his teal eyes flickered, revealing insectoid eyes for the barest of
instants before changing back. "And the best part? The locals won't yell our
ears off!" he cheered, thrusting a front hoof into the air like he was at a
party.
"May I request that you two only use the forms you have currently, if you do
decide to shapeshift again while in Equestria?" Shining asked, shooting a
glance at Matt and the two now-disguised changelings. The three nodded eagerly,
exchanging more glances with one another afterwards. Katie still shot glares at
Matt, who merely chortled in her direction.
"Mayhaps these illusions might come in handy…" Fenrir muttered under his
breath, his gaze turning to Matt languidly. He rubbed his chin with a paw, a
half-frown on his visage as he mused to himself in the back of his head, "And…
how does Matt know illusory spells? Whence did he obtain such an arcane art?
Could that be why he dispatched the…" His thought process halted abruptly, eyes
widening substantially as something seemed to click in his brain.
"I must know just how far the extent of his magical knowledge goes. If he's
able to shapeshift a magically-deficit changeling wraith, conjure barriers, and
break mirages with a simple spell… perhaps this is why Lance recruited him?"
his inner voice finished, the gears starting to turn in his head as he assumed
a complacent look on his face and lowered his paw. He noticed Rarity gushing
over Katie's disguise, raising a brow as the ivory mare who conjured the mirror
giggled happily.
"My, she simply looks divine now! And adorably so!" Rarity cooed, trotting over
to Katie and putting her front hooves on the disguised changeling's cheeks.
"Help! I don't wanna be touched! Stop!" Katie cried with narrowed eyes,
scowling as she began flailing desperately to no avail. Fortunately for her,
Rarity pulled back after composing herself.
"Sorry, darling, it's just that… oh sweet Celestia, you have undergone such a
makeover I could say your new look is quite the gorgeous one," Rarity stated,
beaming at this point. At her smile, and a gleam in the ivory mare's eyes, the
wraith cringed with a whimper.
***** Chapter XXI, Part I- Crèmed Waffles *****
"Why is this cat circling me? What reason is there for this spree?" Zecora
questioned, eyes following NoLegs as he ran around her hooves. The cat stopped
in front of her and rubbed his head on her right foreleg, purring with a grin
on his face.
"Methinks the cat was evaluating you, seeing if you were worthy of his trust,"
Fenrir piped up, a small grin on his face.
"Well, if the cat trusts Rainbow Dash and Shining Armor, then… then our
supposed salve maker must be a good zebra," Lance sighed, turning to Zecora.
"No offense."
Zecora nodded and rose a hoof to pet the cat. She turned to Twilight and began
speaking again, "Have you found a sharp blade yet? If not, there's no need to
fret."
"Actually, I have learned a new spell of the blade variety, and I was told it
was—supposedly—written by Starswirl the Bearded," Twilight answered with a nod.
She found herself under the gazes of Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash, each
of whom looked at her with brows raised.
"Wait, whoa, back up! You mean the Starswirl?" Rainbow asked, garnering little
more than a nod from the lavender mare.
"Starswirl? I beg your pardon, but how did he make a blade-type spell?" Rarity
inquired, frowning.
"Well… to cut a long story short, I don't know how he made the blade-type
spell, nor why. But he wrote a diary when Fantasia and Mythos weren't
separated. He somehow went to Fantasia and maybe crafted the spell there, then
came back and wrote the book. When I found a copy of that book, I found a
scroll with the spell inside it," Twilight replied, shaking her head. "And the
funny thing is, one of our guests also knows the spell in question." At the
indirect mention, Matt gulped and shuddered.
"That, and something another guest of ours told me… leads me to believe the
barrier had been created sometime after Starswirl made his travels," Shining
added, a firm frown set into his face. "To be honest, my head's still spinning
from all of this information I am now aware of. We don't even know when
Starswirl began travelling."
Applejack immediately interjected, turning to Zecora with a thoughtful look on
her face, "Now why would you want a blade, Zecora? Hairs and feathers, I can
sorta get, but blades just don't seem right."
Twilight answered for Zecora, "She… she found a wraith in the Everfree Forest,
and—"
Rarity, Rainbow, and Applejack cut her off in a unified shout, all screeching
"What?!" in high-pitched ear-splitting volume. This caused Twilight to turn red
in the visage on the spot.
"Let me finish, Faust-dammit!" Twilight shouted back with narrowed eyes,
immediately and effectively silencing the whole room while drawing the
attention of everyone in her immediate vicinity. She took a deep breath and
fell onto her haunches, her visage turning to its usual lavender hue. "Sorry,
got… carried away there."
"'s fine. We all tend to do that," Anna murmured, noticing a brief smile
crossing Twilight's face before it fell.
"Anyway, Zecora has found a wraith—one who is legless. She wanted me to… er,
painlessly send the wraith to the afterlife," Twilight finished, ears flicking
violently.
"Which is where the wraith's mane comes in," Zecora started, noticing the eyes
of the Fantasians and Shining turning back to her. "Since I found her, she
suffered, and that's how it's been. But, I moved her to my home where she is
safe and sound. Though to this life, she no longer wishes to be bound."
The group exchanged looks, before Katie decided to pipe up, "Did you decide
that, or did she tell you?"
"She told me last night, before I went to rest. If you want to come to my hut
and verify it, then be my guest," Zecora answered, turning her eye on the
disguised wraith.
"I opt that we stay put and relax a while. If anything else, we can spend most
of the day unwinding after what went down last night," Sarah interjected,
garnering looks from everyone else in that moment.
"I dunno about you, but I'm kinda itching to explore town a bit," Armin piped
up, spreading his wings. A few feathers fell off, revealing thin and
translucent membrane beneath, only to be covered up when more feathers grew
back in seconds thanks to a spark of green magic.
"Your shapeshifting spell's faltering already. I don't think you trotting
outside of these walls is a good idea right yet," Anna remarked, garnering a
sigh from the disguised changeling before he reverted to his natural form.
"Say, Matt, Anna, wanna trot around town a bit? My legs are starting to ache,"
Natalie said, garnering looks from the ponies she addressed.
In that moment, the cream-colored mare heard the sound of a stomach gurgling.
Matt donned a sheepish grin. "I sure do—let's hope we can grab a bite to eat
while we're out," he replied.
Anna nodded, a small smile framing her face. "Of course, we're probably gonna
have to grab bites for anyone that doesn't want to run around town," she
pointed out.
Natalie's mouth twitched up at the corners a bit. "We can do that—we're
unicorns," she stated matter-of-factly.
Lance shifted to lay down, front legs folding under his chest. He let off a
yawn. "Don't know about you, but I feel ready to drop," he mumbled, craning his
neck to rest his head between his forelegs and closing his eyes. "You guys do
whatever today; just let me know if anything went down after I wake up."
"Hey, we can show you three around town," Rainbow piped up, wings flaring wide.
"Me, Applejack, and Rarity live here."
Matt's grin widened. "Oh really?" he asked.
"Yes, really," Rarity answered with a nod.
Zecora spoke up, "I really do need to hit the road, as unto you I do not wish
to be such a load. Twilight, come with me, please; with your new spell, our
task should be a breeze."
Twilight nodded. She turned to Spike. "Can you watch the library with Shining
while I'm out? I really shouldn't be gone long," she stated.
"Well… should we hide the rest of the Fantasians while you're away?" Spike
asked, a brow raised. "We could put them in the basement."
"Considering I find myself wanting to see the 'legless wraith' Zecora talked
about, I think that would be a good idea," Shining sighed, turning to the
general as he cracked an eye open. "But, it's simply not my place to make
guests hide."
"'m fine with it, as long as I get a fucking nap," Lance mumbled, rising to
stand and letting out another yawn. Shining nodded with his horn once more
aglow, and he lifted up the table in his magic, revealing the staircase going
down below. Katie took the first few steps down before tripping with a back leg
landing in a decent-sized crack, prior to flipping inches above the stairs in a
full 360 degrees, and landing before skidding down the flight on her ass.
As she skid with the grace of an inexperienced ballerina, the illusion broke a
moment before she vanished from sight, followed by a pained and startled
scream. Armin rushed in after her, letting loose a string of curses. He was
followed shortly by Fenrir and Maria.
"If the wraith has sustained more than simple bruises, then I shall curse the
flight of stairs that gave her whatever wounds she has accrued!" the diamond
dog shouted as he ran down, only to trip himself and tumble down screeching as
well. Sarah and Lance exchanged glances before tottering down themselves, but
paused when they saw Maria ducking low, her body flush against a step.
"Big doggy slipped," the foal murmured. She stood up when Lance nodded with an
exasperated sigh.
"And nearly ran you over doing so?" Sarah asked, frowning as Maria nodded.
"Oh, for the love of…" Alexander mumbled, flaring his wings and flapping madly.
Becoming airborne, he wasted no time in flying over the general and the
hippogryph, darting past them into the makeshift tunnel. NoLegs followed suit,
rushing down with an alarmed yowl.
Shining closed the hole with the table after waiting for Sarah and Lance to
exchange looks, shrug to one another, and descend the stairs. He briefly winced
as another couple of cries rang out, though they were muffled by the table.
"Okay, that looked painful…" he murmured, flinching again when a series of
faint noises that sounded like objects falling and glass shattering echoed into
the room.
Natalie released a groan and punctuated it with a heavy sigh, her smile fading
as she shared a look with Shining before he lifted the table again. "Sounded
painful, too. I'll check and see if she's alright and if she needs healing, and
then we can head out," she sighed in exasperation, jumping into a gallop down
the stairs and vanishing down the hole.
"I hope nothing got broken…" Twilight grumbled, also jumping down the flight
and darting off in a gallop.
Harry let off a growl, catching Fluttershy's attention. "Oh? You want to go
down there with them?" she asked. The bear nodded and released another growl.
"Well, um, alright… I guess I can go down there with you and see what has and
hasn't been broken." With that, the two followed Twilight down the stairs,
followed by Angel. The rabbit paused before he shot Matt and Anna a look and
gestured with his paw, and the two sighed and went down with him.
"Maybe we should go down there, too. At least, before things get too out of
hoof," Rainbow groaned, flapping her wings and flying down the flight, leaving
a prismatic trail that faded in her wake. Zecora, Shining, and Applejack sighed
in unison, prior to following the pegasus in a single file line.
Rarity hesitated for a moment, and Zecora paused to turn around and motion with
a hoof for her to follow. The ivory mare nodded and cautiously descended the
flight, catching up to the zebra. As the group went onward, the table gently
levitated down and neatly closed the hole behind them.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
An hour or two passed that very same day, and Dazzle and Carrot stood in the
room of the gingerbread building with the door that lead outside, both wiping
thin layers of sweat off of their brows with their front hooves. On a nearby
table that was perched near the window with the criss-cross pattern, a few
basic breakfast platters were set up.
There was food on and around said platters, consisting of toast, eggs, some
biscuits, two jars of rainbow-colored jam, and waffles, each of which gave off
a different mouth-watering aroma. One plate had a pile of waffles stacked
higher than they stood tall, topped off with a glob of chocolate ice cream, a
few hefty dollops of whipped cream and plenty of syrup. To one side of the
table, two baby seats stood, adorned with milk bottles and bowls of baby food.
"Heh, two hours of making breakfast and setting up the table paid off well,
right, Dazzle?" Carrot asked, a wide grin on his face.
Dazzle nodded. "Oh, yes it sure does. I'm certain Pinkie will appreciate it,"
she replied, rising a hoof and holding it next to her muzzle. She took a deep
breath. "Pinkie, breakfast!" she called out loud and clear in a sing-song tone,
a smile on her face as she hollered. Her smile faded and her hoof fell when she
was greeted with silence. "Strange. It's only…" Dazzle paused to look at a
clock, noticing the minute hand on 12, and the hour hand on 11. "... eleven in
the morning, and she's usually up and going down the stairs right now…"
"She did say she might collapse watching the foals last night. Maybe she's
fallen asleep," Carrot replied, shooting Dazzle a concerned look.
"Could you go check up on her? I'm starting to get worried," Dazzle sighed,
turning to Carrot.
"I can do that," Carrot replied with a nod, and he kissed Dazzle on the lips
for a brief moment. Once he broke the kiss, he began trotting past her, briskly
going around the register counter with the glass display case and going
upstairs.
Carrot soon found himself in the hall, and he trotted down one end of it before
stopping in front of a door and raising a hoof to open it. He leaned inside,
donning a small smile at the sight of the babies in their crib, and Pinkie
curled up on the floor next to them. The mare had a quilt covering her body and
a pillow under her head. She also had a very frazzled mane, one that bordered
on being thickly tangled, though she had a content look on her face as she
dozed. "Pinkie Pie," he cooed, his comment causing the mare to stir a bit, but
not fully awaken. "It's time for breakfast."
"Breakfast?" Pinkie's eyes snapped open and she shot up onto her hooves, the
blanket sliding off of her body as the word 'breakfast' registered in her mind.
"Yes, breakfast," Carrot replied with a nod. "We have waffles with syrup and
ice cream today. Oh, and could you wake up the foals and bring them downstairs
for their breakfast, please?"
Pinkie nodded back. "Okie dokie lokie," she stated in a chipper voice, a smile
creeping up on her face. Carrot retracted his head and vanished from sight, the
sound of hooves hitting wood starting as he went before fading into silence.
She whirled around and peered over the crib, finding that Pumpkin and Pound
were already stirring awake and looking at her with languidly blinking eyes.
The babies blinked some more and started giggling as Pinkie scooped them up
into her forelegs, flailing their hooves about as their current holder beamed
at them. "Who wants milkie-wilkies?" Pinkie chirped, standing on her back legs
with a foal in each foreleg, and Pumpkin and Pound giggled louder and flailed
their limbs some more. The mare cantered out on her back legs and into the
hall, striding down that and descending the flight of stairs, being careful
enough to avoid dropping the babies in doing so.
She stopped on the last step, and took a whiff of the air. A sweet smell
similar to cinnamon buns hung thickly, and it was a scent that gave her a sense
of freshness and warmth. This smell was accompanied by a secondary scent of
cocoa and milk, along with just a tiny hint of maple and honey. Her smile
widened, and she darted past the counter before finding the table with the
breakfast stuffs. Pinkie put the foals in the baby seats and watched as Carrot
and Dazzle took up seats opposite of the foals, and she sat down in front of
the waffle totem pole.
She turned to the table itself, spotting a fork and a knife, both utensils
within hoof's reach. Pinkie picked them up, and bounced up from the chair to
the top of the waffle mound. She thrust the fork into the top waffle and
shoveled it into her face, ice cream and all, before landing back in her seat
and chewing loudly without spilling a single drop of frozen milk, whipped cream
or maple syrup. As soon as the waffle became mushy enough, she swallowed it
before leaping up straight, snatching another waffle with her knife, and
shoving it in before dropping back down. She did this with such speed it was a
miracle she didn't choke.
Carrot and Dazzle slowly chewed their eggs and biscuits and toast, sometimes
smearing rainbow-colored globs on the breads. They continued to watch with
smiles on their faces as Pinkie repeated the process of jumping, snatching, and
landing in her seat. They got done relatively quickly, because their portions,
though moderate, were much smaller compared to the golden syrup tower that was
rapidly losing parts. Carrot got done first, and went to the foals to help them
eat their breakfast. The babies favored the milk over the baby food, though
they ate the slush-type mush without much of a fuss.
Dazzle remained in her seat, watching with a content grin on her face as the
waffles seemingly vanished off of the plate. Pinkie sat in her chair when she
finished, a clean plate before her and her muzzle coated in a mess of crumbs
and syrup. She licked her lips and patted her stomach with a hoof before
burping loudly. "'Scuse me. That was great; thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Cake," she
chirped.
"Oh, it's nothing, dear," Dazzle replied, getting up from her seat and turning
to the window. She halted immediately. "Um, Carrot… who's that stallion?" she
asked.
Carrot finished feeding the foals and turned to the window. Outside, he saw a
black-and-white form with a blond mane peering in with his hooves on the window
and his face pressed against the pane, half-slanted eyelids and a frown on his
face that was laced with small amounts of drool. "I don't know that pony," he
murmured.
Pinkie also turned to the window and gaped. "Oh, I kinda made friends with
him," she answered. Carrot and Dazzle turned to her, both raising brows. Pinkie
elaborated, "Princess Celestia sent me to Fantasia some weeks ago, and he was
the first one I befriended."
"Well, he looks like he's starving… maybe we should open up. It's about time,
anyway," Carrot murmured, trying for a wobbly grin as he went to the counter.
Dazzle nodded and cantered over to scoop up the foals, awkwardly walking to the
kitchen on her rear legs. Both of the foals looked at Matt and waved their
little hooves at him. Pinkie cleaned up the table, collecting the dishes and
silverware and bottles before walking to the kitchen on her rear hooves.
Once inside, she strode to the sink and carefully maneuvered the dishes into
its recesses before turning on the faucet, scooping an 'open' sign and darting
right back to the room with the cash register and to the window. She hung the
sign up in the window, making sure the 'open' faced out, and jumped to the door
and pushed it outward with a hoof. Pinkie was instantly met by Rarity,
Applejack, and Rainbow Dash, who accompanied Natalie, Anna, and the still-
drooling Matt.
Dash chortled, rolling her eyes at the half-Clydesdale stallion. "Say, Pinkie,
what'd you eat to make him start gushing rivers from his mouth?" she joked.
"A waffle tower with syrup and ice cream," Pinkie answered with a shrug. "Come
inside, everypony, there's more than waffles here!" With that, she bounced back
inside, followed by her companions and the trio of Fantasians.
Natalie took in the interior's decor, and a content smile spread on her face.
She approached the register's perch, but stopped when a pair of giggling noises
hit her ears. She looked around, then down, to find Pumpkin and Pound at her
hooves, looking up at her with happy grins on their faces. "Oh, hello there,"
she stated in a friendly tone. "What are you two doing?"
"Oh, they're just being foals," Pinkie answered, her remark causing the infants
to turn away from the Fantasian and to her. They tottered over and sat in front
of the pink mare's hooves, giggling at Pinkie when she shot them a smile. She
turned to Matt, who wiped his muzzle with a hoof and nodded to the babies.
Anna, on the other hoof, cringed at the mere sight of them, though she did
smile at the infants nonetheless. She laughed nervously when Pinkie turned her
gaze on her. "Um…" she stopped as the foals galloped to her with giggles,
though their noises ceased when they actually reached her. Pumpkin and Pound
looked at the archer for a moment, as if wary, before they started giggling
again. Tiny wings flapped and lifted their owner, and an equally small horn
glowed and caused its owner to levitate.
Anna flinched as the foals rose up with magic and wings to meet her at eye
level. "Oh, um… wow. These guys are already, um…" she trailed off again as both
foals booped her on the nose and babbled in unison.
"They're just having flight and magic bursts. They tend to do that," Pinkie
chimed, bouncing over and grabbing the foals with her front hooves. Pumpkin and
Pound giggled again, shooting innocent grins at Anna.
Anna nodded back and trotted around Pinkie and the babies, making her way to
Natalie's side in an instant. The two exchanged looks and turned to the glass
display case, noticing the various baked goods and candies strewn out behind
the clear panes for the day. "Those look really well made," the green-maned
mare noted, starting to drool from the corners of her mouth.
"Made by hoof, and with plenty of love," Carrot replied, his wobbly smile
morphing into a genuine one. "So, what will you ponies be having this dandy
morning?"
Matt trotted up to meet with his companions, grinning. "Say, what's that
rainbow-colored stuff you had in those jars? I'd like some of that," he stated.
Carrot shook his head. "Sorry, but those are personal jars. That was zap apple
jam, and I'm not the pony who makes the stuff," he replied. "But, if you want a
pastry with that as the frosting or a filling, I think I could work something
out."
"Then… who is the pony that makes the stuff?" Natalie asked, raising a brow.
Carrot gestured to Applejack with a hoof, and the trio of Fantasians turned to
the orange mare as he said rather casually, "Standing right there."
Applejack slyly grinned at them. "Don't you worry none; I'll let y'all have a
few jars next week," she stated in a chipper tone. The trio of unicorns
exchanged looks, nodded, and turned back to Carrot.
"I think I'd like… that one," Anna stated, pointing a hoof at a chocolate cake
adorned with whipped cream and shards of chocolate jutting out of the dessert's
top.
"That one, please," Natalie chimed, using her hoof to gesture to a platter of
hor d'oeuvres that consisted of apple slices and small, seemingly-glimmering
magenta berries surrounding what appeared to be a ramekin filled with caramel.
"Maybe something like what she wants," Matt began, using a hoof to gesture to
the cake Anna wanted, "except with a rainbow jam filling."
"For here, or to-go?" Carrot asked, grinning.
"To-go, please," Natalie replied with a smile.
"Alright, it'll be done… in a few hours." At the disappointed sighs the
Fantasians gave, Carrot added, "Sorry, cakes take time to bake. You could
explore other food joints around Ponyville in the meantime; after all, this
isn't the only store here." The trio brightened a bit and nodded in
understanding. When Carrot nodded back to them and retreated into the kitchen,
Natalie turned to Rarity and the other Mythonian mares, who were chatting
amiably while they made their order.
Pinkie gasped, and Pumpkin and Pound made soft whinnies as she did so. "Wait,
so Twilight learned a new spell?" she asked.
"Well, yes, but she didn't show us until our little pale changeling and diamond
dog crashed in the basement," Applejack answered, sighing heavily. "And before
you ask, no, they didn't get badly hurt."
"I'm glad the wraith and Fenrir are alright. And who'd Twilight learn the spell
from? What book?" Pinkie continued, shaking in place. Her jittery motions
caused the foals in her forelegs to jump ship and land on the floor safely,
tottering off elsewhere while giggling.
"Starswirl the Bearded," Rainbow Dash replied, rolling her eyes with a huff.
"At least, that's what she said."
"S-Stars-swirl? Tha-that's super! S-so, wh-what do w-we do n-n-now?" Pinkie
continued in a quavering voice, still shaking—this time, though, her jittering
increased such that her mane bobbed up and down rapidly with the rest of her.
"Um, Pinkie, are you alright? You've just started convulsing all of a sudden…"
Rarity murmured, and as if her words broke a spell, Pinkie ceased shaking on
the spot. The ivory mare turned to the counter and gasped, seeing that Pumpkin
had somehow clambered onto it. The baby's horn lit up in a pale blue aura,
which embraced the cash register—and promptly tipped it over. While it fell to
the floor and landed on its back, its cash drawer did not open, and the hard
thump brought Dazzle galloping from the kitchen.
The noise also startled everypony else, who whirled around in unison to the
source. Pumpkin smiled at the group and giggled in glee, before grabbing the
register in her magic again and lifting it up. Pinkie rushed over and snatched
it out of the air, while Dazzle scooped up the baby at the same time. "Ah, ah,
ah, no playing with the register," the blue-coated earth pony reprimanded in a
motherly tone. Pumpkin turned to her and smiled innocently, waving her hooves
and barely noticing Pinkie as she put the register where it was before.
"As much as I'd like to stick around and help cooking, I think I'm gonna have
to help my Fantasian buddies with… whatever it is they want," Pinkie chirped,
taking a moment to pat Pumpkin on the head. "Now, be a good widdle Pumpkin-
wumpkin while your Pinkie-winkie's gone," she cooed. The baby giggled, and
Dazzle smiled with a nod.
"Just be sure to remind them to pick up their orders while you're out," Dazzle
chirped as Pinkie cantered over to Natalie.
"Can do!" Pinkie called over her shoulder, motioning for the Fantasians to
leave the building. The trio obliged and trotted out the door, followed by
Rarity and the other Mythonians. Once they were in the street, the pink mare
asked, "So, what are you guys up to?"
"Us?" Matt questioned, using a hoof to gesture to himself, Natalie, and Anna.
When Pinkie nodded, he replied, "Well, that orange-maned stallion told us to
hit another food joint, since our cakes will be a while anyway."
Pinkie beamed, and she hopped over to stand next to the half-Clydesdale on her
back legs. She wrapped a foreleg around his neck and said, "I know a few good
spots! Just stick with me!"
***** Chapter XXI, Part II- Storm of Branches *****
Zecora, Shining, Spike, and Twilight hastily made their way to the Everfree,
hooves moving in frenzied gallops while the drake simply rode on the lavender
mare's back. They passed some ponies in the streets as they madly rushed, with
some of the passerby asking if things were alright and whatever the reason for
the Captain of the royal guard's presence was. Twilight merely threw "It's a
long story!" at each and every soul that wanted an answer to one question or
the other and continued to run headlong towards the dense woodland.
Once the quartet came upon the path that dissected the forest, the ponies skid
to a halt as their legs ached and their chests heaved with breaths that burned
in their throats. Spike remained on his mobile perch, taking the time Twilight
and the other two spent catching their breaths to look at the sky. Clouds
gathered over the forest again, black masses that softly shook with thunder and
swirled around above the canopy. He squinted his eyes and spotted yellow dots
that, had he not concentrated hard enough, he couldn't see otherwise.
Spike jerked his attention back to Twilight as she started to trot again,
although this time at a much more leisurely pace. Zecora filed in behind his
makeshift mount, with Shining bringing up the rear as they strode upon the dirt
path. "So, what's the plan?" he asked.
"Dealing with Zecora's wraith, or after?" Twilight retorted in a raspy voice,
drawing a shuddering breath as a clap reverberated overhead.
"After," Spike replied tersely and nonchalantly, grabbing the unicorn's mane
with his claws.
Twilight slowed down some more, to a languid walk that caused Zecora and
Shining to do the same. "Uh… good point. I really should've thought of that
sooner," she murmured, ears flattening against her head when the drake groaned.
Spike assumed a not-so-impressed slant of the eyelids and a serious frown in
his brow, his shoulders sagging and his grip on the purple locks loosening ever
so slightly. "When we get back to the library, I'm giving you extra-strong
espresso," he sighed begrudgingly.
"Well, our Fantasians seem keen on scouring the libraries," Shining piped up
from behind. "Maybe I could take them to the Crystal Empire up north and help
them file through the shelves there."
Twilight's ears perked up. She craned her neck and stated over her shoulder,
"Oh, of course! That's a very good idea!"
Shining shot Twilight a grin. "Of course, I'll have to ask them about it once
we get back," he added. "I'll bet they'll want to see it once I tell them about
it!" The four continued on, paying little heed to the expanse of sky above the
Everfree when Zecora veered off the path and into the thicket.
"This way, and we have to move with haste. I hope a timberwyrm or a pack of
timberwolves didn't grind my wraith into paste," Zecora intoned as she waded
through the bushes. Shining and Twilight followed her, trotting side-by-side,
keeping their eyes glued to the path ahead and the zebra that trotted in front
of them.
"I've been meaning to ask, Shining… why'd you and everypony else drop by so
early?" Twilight questioned, shooting the Captain a brief glance.
"Yeah, it's… odd. Not even you would show up right after Celestia raises the
sun," Spike stated, giving Shining a vexed look.
"We feared that something far worse would have happened, had our Fantasians
stayed in Canterlot a day longer," Shining replied with a heavy sigh. "That,
and the general decided to head to the dungeons and fuss at the pony who I
believe to have started the riot. We'd have come sooner, if we didn't have to
yank him out of the cell halls first," he added, a frown setting into his
muzzle.
Twilight blinked and shook her head, her horn starting to glow. She used her
magic to push aside a few stray branches before they could swat at her face.
"Is that why he wanted a nap so badly?" she inquired, glancing at Shining
again.
"Part of it, yes," Shining answered with a nod.
"Wouldn't be surprised if he tried strangling whoever started that mess…" Spike
stated off-handedly, quickly finding himself getting a glance from the Captain.
"Trust me, he wanted to wrap his hooves around something last night. It's a
good thing he didn't," Shining half-mumbled, garnering a nod from the drake. He
looked ahead and stopped immediately, causing Twilight to halt as well. Zecora
also paused, lowering her front end and bending her knees as forms darted past
her and fled into rapidly-rustling shrubbery that fell silent. "What was that?"
he asked in a low whisper.
"I do not know. But we mustn't dally, nor trot so slow," Zecora replied, her
voice equally as hushed, still crouching as another blurred form rushed past
her and disappeared into the thick green undergrowth. When a third leapt over
the crouched zebra a moment later, the four tensed up as a low and deep growl
shook the canopy above.
Whether it was a boom of thunder, or something else altogether, they couldn't
tell—the ground failed to shake in the slightest and they hadn't seen the
source of the noise when they took a look around. This in itself sent a
tingling sensation of unease running through four spines in a series of back-
and-forth marathons, further intensifying as another low snarl hit their ears
and the cover of leafy branches shook again.
They waited until the Everfree fell into silence before making their move,
bounding forth in a unified gallop as if they were but one entity. But once
they found a clearing a few minutes later, the trio of ponies skid to a halt,
with Twilight almost knocking Spike off of her back as she stopped. The drake
clung to her mane, his body flush against the lavender mare's back and his eyes
darting everywhere as the bushes around the clearing seemingly shook to life
all at once.
The trees quivered too, as though somehow greatly agitated or frightened,
inexplicably shedding piles after piles of decaying branches in their tremorous
bout. They continued to shake, and Twilight caught sparse glimpses of rippling
green mana appearing at random intervals. She opened her mouth to speak and ask
just what was going on when the forest itself finally answered her question
before she could speak it. The branches the trees dropped floated into the air
by themselves, swirling like vortexes and breaking apart here and there, aided
by the mana.
A series of bestial howls rang out around the four while the levitating bits
and pieces of bark came closer together and began forming things. Twilight's
eyes narrowed, as did Zecora's, when the branch parts coalesced into sets of
four thin but sturdy legs, ending with paws that had darker and sharpened
pieces acting like claws. Then, tails formed, mainly of flimsy but flexible
branches adorned with many leaves. Torsos, hind quarters, and bulky front
quarters came next, connected by thin midsections that gave the appearance of
whatever was being formed had starved.
Lastly, heads were created, with ears that jutted upright. Said ears had tufts
of pine needles. More 'tufts' of wood formed next to cheeks, and thin canid
muzzles lined with miniature stakes for teeth. Leaves formed eyebrows which
framed glowing slits of sickly greenish-yellow that narrowed when more growls
echoed from the wooden masses.
The wooden things landed smoothly on their paws, staring straight at the ponies
and drake that still stood in the clearing. They crouched and crept into the
small expanse where trees didn't grow, circling the group and closing in with a
slow, cautious gait. Zecora shifted back towards Twilight and Shining, shooting
glances at both of them. "It seems the timberwolves have us trapped..." she
murmured.
"And they're closing the gap," Twilight finished for Zecora, a smile spreading
on her face in spite of the current situation. Her horn started glowing, its
aura taking on a white hue, and spinning runes materialized and shimmered above
her head. "But not for long," she added as a sword of light jutted out and flew
skyward for a bit, before halting as magic grasped it firmly by the hilt.
Twilight pulled the blade back down to ground level and boldly stepped forward,
waving the blade in a horizontal sweep once and sending the closest
timberwolves back a few paces.
The timberwolves growled louder, and a few began barking as Twilight came
closer to them and warded them away with the sword. Some of the more foolish
wooden beasts dared to lunge at the lavender mare, only to be hacked into tiny
pieces by the weapon. Still some more timberwolves thought it to be a good idea
to attack Shining and Zecora, but found that a quickly-cast magenta barrier
kept them from getting closer to their intended prey.
"Yeah, back off and let us through, you stupid wood planks!" Spike cheered,
grinning as the timberwolves snarled in response. They attempted to lunge
again, though Twilight's blade made very short work of them—by the time the
last wolf attacked and subsequently got smashed to splintery fragments, the
rest were nothing more than cut-up mounds of bark and leaves.
Twilight dispelled the blade, turning to Zecora and Shining as the latter
allowed the barrier to disintegrate. "You two alright?" she asked.
"Are you kidding? I'm in tip-top shape!" Shining replied, a wide grin on his
face.
"Same here, but we really shouldn't dally. We must get to the wraith in my hut
before the timberbeasts rally," Zecora added, assuming a serious look on her
face.
Twilight nodded and turned around, immediately groaning as the piles of wood
got enveloped in green mana again. They swirled about violently, this time all
of the fragments condensing into one vortex instead of many individual ones.
"What now?" she hissed as a long, large, and slender body formed from the bark
and leaves. Within seconds, and in the stead of a timberwolf pack, a timberwyrm
roared and caused the forest to ripple with mana as soon as its body was
completed.
"Zecora, I think you jinxed us," Spike stated, turning to look rather pointedly
at the zebra. The timberwyrm stared at him and his group, a low growl leaving
its throat as a long tongue made of leaves licked at its wooden chops.
"I did not mean to do so. I am of the opinion that the Everfree stooped so
low," Zecora argued as Shining went ahead and threw up another magenta barrier.
"We can argue about this later. Right now, we have a giant tree-snake to
dispatch!" Shining barked, turning to Twilight as she summoned up the light
sword again. The timberwyrm eyed the group warily, still licking its lips for a
moment before it retracted its tongue. The beast roared and arced over
Twilight, its mouth wide open as it rapidly came close to the barrier.
Instantly, its teeth sank in the magenta mass, but did not puncture it.
Instead, the half-dome shield flexed like bubble wrap that did not pop, and the
wyrm found itself wrestling with a barrier strong enough to hold against its
teeth. It pulled and tugged, wiggling and writhing about, trying to bypass the
shield to get to the pony and zebra beneath it. Yet no matter how hard it
tried, nor how much, the barrier simply refused to yield like a semi-rubbery
and stubborn jawbreaker.
Shining smirked tauntingly at the timberwyrm's futile efforts to break the
blasted barrier, and the beast retracted with a frustrated roar leaving its
mouth in short order. It decided to turn its attention to Twilight and attack
her with such speed she could barely react—the unicorn mare whirled around and
thrust her blade into the open mouth. She went wide-eyed as the sword managed
to plunge deep into the back of the wyrm's throat.
The reaction from the timberwyrm was instantaneous; it pulled back as abruptly
as the sword's going into its throat. It coughed and wheezed, as if struggling
for breath, thrashing its head about in an attempt to dislodge the weapon. Like
with the barrier, it was a useless effort, and in seconds it managed to cough
hard enough to start dislodging the material that made its body instead of the
sword itself.
After another few coughs, it simply fell apart again, littering the scene with
bark and leaves. The blade fell as the beast crumbled, plunging into the ground
with the tip of its blade and standing tall and proud amidst the debris.
Twilight trotted to the blade and grasped it with her magic, pulling it out of
the soil with ease. Instead of dispelling it, she held it to one side, being
careful to avoid letting it touch Spike and vice-versa. She nodded to Shining
and Zecora, the former dropping the barrier, and once more the trio took off
galloping.
As they disappeared into the thicket, though, they did not pay heed to a series
of howls ringing out through the forest's canopy—let alone to another swell of
green mana that enveloped the clearing they just left.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
A bubbling, pale green brew boiled in the cauldron of the hut, and Zecora set
about adding herbs and other ingredients, gathering more jars and opening them
to pour their contents into the mortar and pestle. She ground them into powder
and threw the plant bits in, almost seemingly at random. Shining, Gala,
Twilight and Spike watched as she added more things to mortar, ground them, and
threw them into the concoction. All four were wrinkling their noses as strong
and strange aromatic smells wafted through the air.
"That smells weird. What all's in it?" Gala asked, turning to Shining, Spike,
and Twilight. They stayed out of Zecora's way as she added more ingredients
like no tomorrow. All her question garnered was the shaking of three heads.
Zecora paused after tossing in another ground-up plant that her guests couldn't
identify at a first glance, reaching into her saddlebag before mumbling
something under her breath. She pulled out the wad of chitil in her hoof,
finding that all of the hairs and feathers she had gathered got stuck in the
mass of slime.
She grinned, though, upon spotting brilliant crimson strands just barely in the
goo, jutting out like sore hooves. The zebra plucked the strands with practiced
ease and took a moment to wipe them clean of any chitil they might have accrued
before gently lowering them to the bubbling liquid. Zecora dropped the hairs
and tottered away from the cauldron on three legs, striding over to a shelf
with an empty glass jar that had a cork sitting next to it. She crammed the
chitil and hairs and feathers inside, picking up the cork and sealing the
canister before going back to the brew.
The liquid bubbled violently, as though about to boil over, turning from a pale
green to a bright red—as vermilion as the strands of mane that had been added
to the mixture. She grinned as the contents of the cauldron shrank and shrank,
congealing with each passing second until it turned into a slimy mass that
faintly rippled with blue mana. She beckoned Twilight over with a hoof, and the
unicorn levitated herself over the cauldron as Zecora pointed to the bottom of
the large black pot. "Erm, what's that?" Twilight asked, lifting up the wad of
solidified gunk in her magic.
"That, my dear, is something that wraiths chew. Though, I do not understand why
it became red, nor the reason it glows blue," Zecora replied, taking the wad
out of the air with the same hoof she gestured with and cantering over to Gala
on three legs. She hoofed it to the legless wraith, who looked at it curiously
for a moment before opening her mouth and taking a small bite out of the stuff.
As she chewed the goo, she found herself slowly growing more exhausted.
It took a few moments for her to swallow before she took another bite, and she
took a moment to savor the taste. Herbs graced her mouth, and there were a lot
of them. The gelatinous texture did not appeal to her, at first. Though as she
swallowed the second helping, she found herself liking the rather odd meal. On
the third bite, however, exhaustion piled up fast the more she chewed—in fact,
Gala could barely swallow the mixture before yawning.
"That tasted funny and felt weird, but in a good sort of way," she murmured,
green orbs rapidly dimming. Zecora lightly waved the remaining mass of wad at
her, and Gala eyed it and noticed it was rather small. So she took the rest in
her mouth. She chewed again and, in one minute or two her orbs ceased glowing
altogether. She fell still with a soft snore before she could swallow the rest
of it. Shining grabbed the wraith's head in his magic and slowly tilted it up a
bit, using a hoof to gently rub at her neck before stopping as she ingested it.
"So, is that what it does? Knock her out?" Twilight asked, lowering herself to
the floor and letting her magic dissipate from her form, before trotting to the
now-sleeping Gala.
"In essence, yes. A peaceful death for this old foal would be best," Zecora
replied with a nod. She noticed the sunset swallowtail as it flittered over to
the wraith and crawled to her mouth, and the zebra raised both hooves the pry
the maw apart. The butterfly crawled inside, going down Gala's throat and
glowing with a faint red mana as it went down the esophagus.
"Why'd the butterfly crawl down there?" Spike asked, using a claw to gesture to
Gala's mouth.
"You'll see in a moment, little Spike. Let me say you and the sunset
swallowtail share something very much alike," Zecora responded cryptically,
nodding to Shining and retracting her hooves. Shining quirked a brow and kept
his leg near Gala, lowering her head and tenderly stroking her mane as if it
were a cat.
Twilight sighed and summoned up the light blade again. "So, decapitation,
right?" she asked in an uneasy tone. Zecora merely nodded again, and the
lavender mare turned to Spike. "Um, close your eyes." The drake obeyed, using
his claws to shield his eyes, and only then did Twilight back turn to Gala. She
hesitantly brought the blade to her prone neck, pausing as Gala smiled in her
sleep. Twilight shut her eyes tight and lifted the blade up, opening them just
once to make sure she'd hit her mark. She choked briefly upon seeing that
content smile on the wraith's face, but gathered herself and closed her eyes
again.
Shining did not retract his hoof, continuing to pet Gala's mane. "Do it,
Twily," he said in a quiet tone. The blade shook in the magical grasp, but
steadied shortly after. A moment later, a sickening slice filled the air after
some more hesitation from the lavender unicorn, and Gala's head and body became
two separate entities. The blade was dispelled, but not before the halves
erupted in a violent swell of crimson mana and fire that did not scorch the
floor.
Shining jumped back with a yelp that caused Spike to uncover his eyes, wincing
as his foreleg got singed a bit, and the ponies, drake and zebra watched as the
fires ate away at the corpse without burning anything else. Seconds ticked by
before turning into minutes, during which time the fires died off and all that
remained was a pile of ash that Zecora hastily swept up and stored in another
empty jar.
"What… happened?" Shining ventured, rubbing the singe mark on his foreleg and
looking at Zecora with a frown.
"The swallowtail engulfed itself and Gala's remains in flame. The mana within
the insect only activated when the wraith's death came," Zecora replied, gently
setting the jar of ashes onto a shelf.
"I saw the fire! But… why'd the…" Shining paused, and something clicked in his
head. He got up and winced as he set his singed leg down, so he lifted it up
and marched to Zecora on three legs. "Would you be willing to… uh…" he trailed
off again, sitting on his haunches and lifting his wounded foreleg to rub his
temples furiously.
"Zecora, Celestia sent me a letter, and she told me wraiths started cropping up
all over Equestria. That, and our Fantasian guests seem interested in
libraries. Would you be willing to accompany us… and them?" Twilight asked,
giving the zebra a straight face, her eyes glinting with a bit of hope.
"Since the dark task has been completed, I don't see why not. May I bury Gala's
remains first, while it is still in my mind as a little thought?" Zecora
inquired, giving Twilight a small frown.
Twilight saw a small flicker of some kind of emotion in Zecora's eyes and
slowly nodded. "If you want, I'll make a tombstone for her out of stone and
wood," she sighed. She let her horn glow, and used her magic to tenderly lift
up the jar of ashes. Zecora nodded back, and she rushed around the hut,
scooping up ingredients in containers she hadn't used in the brew, as well as
mortar and pestle and the jar of chitil and hairs and feathers. Twilight waited
until the zebra was prepared, and they trotted out of the hut, followed shortly
by Shining and Spike.
Immediately after setting hoof out of the hut, Twilight and Shining set to
work, gathering fallen branches and stones with their magic. Spike, in the
meantime, gave Zecora a look. "Where do you want her buried?" he asked.
Zecora pointed a hoof at a spot near the hut, smiling softly. "There, where
wild beasts will not disturb the grave. I'm glad we sent her to the afterlife;
a soul's been saved. But we need make haste and not stall; the dirt will serve
the ash jar as a fine mask. Spike, your claws are best suited for the task,"
she replied.
"So, you want me to dig a grave?" Spike asked. When Zecora nodded, he donned a
firm face and rushed to the spot, bending over and digging with his front
claws, shoveling dirt aside with the pace of a running rabbit. It took a bit,
but he formed a small hole that was as deep as he was tall. The hole was one in
which a creature of his size could comfortably sleep in, and clambered out as
Shining and Twilight trotted to him and stood at its edge.
The zebra moved to the hole and inspected it, as well as the accumulation of
wood and stones Shining and Twilight presented to her. She nodded once,
watching as Twilight slowly lowered the ash jar into the hole and set it down
to the floor, closing it off with dirt before putting the stones on top of that
once the grave had been filled.
Leftover stones were placed around the end of a sturdy piece of wood, on which
a cross had been formed and held on the spot by magic. Spike ran off to a
nearby bush and dug around for another moment, prior to finding loose vines
growing along the ground. He snatched them up, broke them free of their soily
confines, and ran back to tie the cross with the makeshift rope.
Then, silence filled the forest as soon as Spike finished tying up the cross.
The group stood, looking at the grave, each individual having various emotions
flickering across their faces. Shining had a sad frown on his visage, though in
his eyes there had been some small spark of happiness and relief. Twilight
looked at the ground on the edge of the new resting place, her visage shadowed
over by her bangs, eyes closed as she also donned a frown. Spike had a vexed
look at first, before it melted into a small smile with slanted eyelids.
Zecora kept a straight face, but she broke the expression by closing her eyes
and letting a small smile of her own cross her muzzle. "Perhaps death could
give her more comfort, now that she has passed. I hope she has found an
afterlife that boasts plenty of evergreen grass," she murmured under her
breath.
Twilight lifted her head and turned to Zecora. "No use mulling over her
suffering, now that it's come to an end. At least..." she paused, turning back
to Gala's grave, "she got a peaceful death, it was painless like she wanted,
and… she companionship in her last moments."
"There's nothing else we could have done, Twily—she was too far gone," Shining
said in a firm, though gentle and low voice. He placed a hoof on Twilight's
withers and added, "You're right, though. In fact… Zecora might help us see to
it that less wraiths who end up in her position…" he trailed off, using his
other hoof to gesture to the grave. "… suffer like she did," he finished.
"But not all wraiths suffer, Shiny. You've spent a few weeks with the pale
changeling, and I've seen hostile ones in Fantasia," Twilight retorted,
glancing at the Captain.
Shining contemplated this for a moment and nodded in understanding. "True that
not all of them suffer, but you've met hostile ones? That's worrying," he
murmured. The forest fell into a sort of tranquility again, one barely broken
by distant claps that rang overhead and faded. Zecora took the time to head
back into her hut, saddlebag shifting wildly as she went, and a half-hour
passed before she returned. As she rejoined the others, they shot glances at
her when the sounds of wood hitting wood hit their ears.
"I made the potion for the featherless foal. We need to hasten her down's
growth, lest the damage of being plucked takes its toll," Zecora sighed, and
the ponies and drake nodded. Again, silence took hold and lingered.
Spike groaned as minutes of quiet passed. After a good ten minutes went by, he
piped up after a loud clap echoed overhead, "Shouldn't we head back to the
library? It sounds like it's about to storm pretty bad."
"That would be wise. We need to make haste, before the forest cries," Zecora
added with a nod. She flinched as a loud clap shook the canopy again, and this
time the ground with it.
The other three nodded and they started to walk away from the grave. Twilight
paused to let Spike climb on her back before starting to trot. She burst into a
gallop, with Shining and Zecora following suit. Another clap shook the forest,
followed by a downpour of rain that soaked the trees and battered the quartet
without any semblance of mercy. The three tripped over errant branches and slid
a bit in forming mud after a few good minutes spent running, with Spike flying
off of Twilight's back and landing in a particularly watery patch of mud.
They got back up and gathered themselves, looking around to find that they were
in a wide patch of forest that inexplicably lacked trees and shrubbery. The
place looked as if a great angry creature uprooted everything and shook off the
dirt, which the water pelted over and over to form a semicircle of slippery
brown land. Turning their attention to the cloudy sky above after hearing a low
hum, Twilight, Shining, Zecora, and Spike could very easily see why.
Trees and shrubs and broken branches and leaves swirled in an angry swell of
green mana about above them, multiplying rapidly in number, coalescing into
something that they couldn't identify at first. Four bulky objects formed with
one set of two forming on ground level and the other forming well above the
forest.
The objects had appeared to be a mish-mash at first, but as they formed, the
wood and leaves created wickedly engrossed, enlarged claws with four digits
that fitted on the ends of the limbs. A torso came next, followed by broad
shoulders and hips, and then an elongated neck lined with spines.
At this point, the construct stood upright and towered over the forest. At
last, a lizard-like head, adorned with erratically-bending horns, finished off
the construct. Ivy vines sprung up all around its frame, forming tight weaves
around its less sturdy points to reinforce them, tightening around its host and
creating an extra layer of protection for the bits of wood.
This new creature thrashed its head with a fierce roar that pierced the air,
looking down at the small group with eyes that gleamed blood red instead of
greenish-yellow. Puffs of green-tinted air left its nostrils and mouth, and it
still growled menacingly at the lot.
"Um, I think we enraged the Everfree…" Twilight murmured, watching the creature
and barely registering Spike as he rushed to her and held one of her forelegs
with his claws.
"First timberwolves, then a timberwyrm, and now a timberdrake? I feel our lives
are at stake," Zecora whimpered, going wide-eyed as the beast donned a toothy
grin. The timberdrake let off another roar, this one louder than the last, as
Twilight mustered up the willpower to summon another blade of light.
"When will you quit already? Just leave us alone! Don't make me hurt you!"
Twilight shrieked as the monster's cry died down. It looked at her, narrowing
its eyes, its toothy grin only widening as she waved her sword for emphasis.
***** Chapter XXI, Part III- Brewing a Pyre *****
The timberdrake let off a growl, the ivy on its hulking frame shifting and
writhing as though a mass of insects that shared a singular mind. Twilight
glared at the beast, steeling her nerves and bringing her blade closer to
herself, in case it attacked. Shining cast another shield over himself and
Zecora, remaining steadfast and collected, eyes narrowing at the wooden
monstrosity before him. "Be careful, Twilight!" Shining called, smiling as the
unicorn mare glanced over her shoulder and nodded to him.
Twilight turned to Spike and addressed him immediately, "Get under the
barrier."
"But Twilight, what about you?" Spike asked, eyes widening like someone punched
him hard enough in the nose to make it hurt. "You could get smushed!"
Twilight sent the small drake a confident smirk. "Spike, I've dealt with worse.
I'll be fine," she retorted, leaning over to nuzzle him for a moment. Spike
returned the gesture and, deciding that being potentially smushed under the
timberdrake's heel with Twilight didn't sound like a terrifically good idea,
obeyed her command. He released her foreleg and ran over to the barrier,
running through a hole that Shining made so he could find himself under a roof
of safety.
He whirled around, catching just a glimpse of the hole he rushed through
closing, before Twilight galloped into action. The unicorn with the blade
surged forward, plunging her weapon into the top of the foot of the
timberdrake. She immediately gaped when the poison ivy reacted, shooting up and
entangling the light sword, rapidly encasing it in a green criss-cross
pattern—before simultaneously constricting and bending the sword in all sorts
of unnatural angles.
In less than one minute, the ivy broke the sword by constricting it hard enough
that the mana which had formed it went haywire and shattered into glass-like
fragments that faded into nothingness. Twilight stood stone still, trying to
process what had just happened, barely noticing that the ivy returned to rest
on the behemoth's foot.
The timberdrake let off a series of growls that came in rapid, short bursts
from its throat—as Twilight listened for a moment, she quickly realized it
almost sounded as if it were laughing at her. The beast did not move in any
other manner, however—she confirmed this by looking up and down its body as
best she could from her current position. The unicorn took a few paces back,
eyes warily gazing at the vines of ivy as they continued to writhe, yet
otherwise remained stationary on the wood.
"Urg, last thing I needed was a bunch of stupid vines breaking my Faust-damned
sword! How in Celestia's name do I—" Her thought processes halted as the rain
slowed to a light drizzle. Something clicked in Twilight's head in that moment
as, for a brief instant, five burning armored wraith stallions came to the
forefront of her mind. Then, pure white clouded her thoughts, and she felt a
sweltering, nigh-blistering heat building up from and around her horn. She
briefly surmised that, if not for the mud and water she was already caked in,
she'd have had a hornache just from this sensation alone.
Twilight continued to stare at the beast as it did another attempt to make
chortling growls, noticing green mana pulsating between the vines and the bits
of wood she could see through them. The heat rose as she envisioned those spots
erupting in purest white, scorching at least a hefty bit of the drake's form.
In a split-second after she painted that mental picture in her mind, the
timberdrake's foot found itself being torn apart at the seams as white flames
built up from within, pushing and seemingly pouring out of whatever tiny
crevasses they could. They erupted and roiled, causing the beast to screech in
pain, and it stomped its now-aflame foot a few times in an effort to stop the
agony. Twilight held firm, using some magic to keep herself steady as brief
tremors rocked the ground beneath her.
The lavender unicorn opened her mouth wide, a giddy grin on her face, and she
made to cheer when the heat from her horn fizzled out of existence as the rain
picked up in intensity so fast she didn't see it coming. Naturally, this also
meant that the flames building up in the monster's foot extinguished as well,
because the water drenched and filled the same nooks and crannies from which
the inferno was creeping out of. The creature ceased stomping and roaring,
going as still as a statue once more.
Immediately thereafter, she noticed the heavier downpour—both her grin and mood
fell with the flames that had gone out, and she groaned in frustration. "Of
course it has to rain harder now. I am starting to think the Everfree doesn't
like me," she mumbled, eyes narrowing in nothing short of irritation. The mare
glanced up to meet the creature's gaze head-on, and it looked back at her with
that same mocking, dagger-filled grin it wore after it was formed.
Twilight attempted to conjure white flames again, but as soon as heat built
around her horn, it simply dissipated as fast as it had come. She stomped a
hoof and snarled angrily, already having come to the point of gritting her
teeth and feeling blood rush through her limbs. Another attempt after that gave
her nothing except a dull throb of pain just under her horn, and she winced and
breathed through clenched teeth to keep herself as calm as she could.
She saw the ivy begin to writhe again, at first languidly shifting up and down
the beast's frame like ants scurrying to and fro. Then, they expanded and
contracted, similarly to how her blade was crushed, except nowhere near tight
enough to do the same to the timberdrake. Mana started pulsating around the
beast, wildly and seemingly random at first. Twilight's eyes darted to every
spot the mana erupted at, trying to catch it but always finding herself seconds
too late when they ceased before she could properly observe the phenomenon.
The mare stopped for a minute when she saw more ivy constricting around the
trunks of the trees that marked the makedshift arena. It was a thick layer of
green that all but drowned out the natural brown and formed a sturdy wall
between the trunks, effectively cutting off many means of escape then and
there. As she was distracted, she saw a flash of mana, a brief bout of gold
adorned with magenta six-pointed stars. "What in Faust's hooves is going on
here?" she thought, blinking before turning her attention back to the ripples
of mana that emanated from the behemoth of wood.
Only when she moved fast enough to see the start of a mana ripple did the
timberdrake finally strike, lifting a foot and kicking Twilight like she was a
mere stone—it kicked her hard enough to send her headlong into Shining's
barrier and break it. "Twilight!" Spike exclaimed, pupils shrinking to slits at
the sight.
Shining gaped and ran over to the mare as she landed on the ground, her legs
twitching as a grunt of pain left her mouth and the shards of his spell faded
into glimmering dust. "I'll live," she groaned as the Captain made to stand in
front of her prone form.
"Stay put Twily," Shining warned tersely before turning his attention to the
timberdrake. His horn started glowing, but he blinked when his distinct
magenta-hued magic fizzed out in the span of two seconds. "What the…?" he
murmured, trying to cast another spell, only to achieve another fizzle of magic
in addition to some heat building in his horn. His eyes widened when the ivy
flew off of the beast and rushed to him, and they averted when something hacked
and slashed its way through the tendril wall in a white blur. This blur made
short work of the plants, creating a hole large enough for a battalion to
squeeze through with no problem whatsoever.
His pupils shrank as this was immediately followed by a tan-and-green form
darting through the opening before the vines could close, skidding to a halt
right in front of him before they took the brunt of the attack. A shrill cry of
pain, between a pained whine and a startled bird-like squawk, hit his ears as
the tendrils wrapped around every inch of the new intruder.
Zecora gaped when another blade of light rushed in and slashed at the ivy, not
tearing it to ribbons, though it did force them to let go of whatever it was
that decided to defend Shining so brazenly. Spike's jaw dropped when two more
forms—one black and white and the other cream and red—burst into the clearing,
a staff and sword hovering next to them. Shining looked in front of him as the
ivy pulled back, finding that the one who took the attack in his stead was
Anna, who already had more welts cropping up in places as a result of being
snagged by venomous vines.
"What are you guys doing here?" Spike called out, garnering a look from Matt.
"Spotted that thing and decided it needed to go!" Matt replied, a frown set
into his face as Pinkie, Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash came into the
clearing and flanked him. "Hard to miss this sonuvabitch when he stands over an
entire freaking forest!"
The timberdrake turned its gaze onto the half-Clydesdale, who looked back and
waved his hoof threateningly. "Yeah, I called you a sonuvabitch! You got a
problem with that, Woody McTendril?" he called in a snide voice, garnering an
enraged-sounding roar from the behemoth. While it did this, Anna summoned her
flute and lifted it to her mouth, playing a tune that warbled through the air
and carried on to the thunderclouds above. Spike glanced up, seeing the pale
yellow blobs amidst the darkened gray, faintly hearing them screech before
rushing away.
Their fleeing the scene causing the downpour to halt in its tracks, but not
before it turned into a brief drizzle, like a waterhose being turned off.
Another tune came from the flute, and gusts of wind came to brush up against
everyone. The small dragon caught glimpses of water droplets flying out of the
monster's cracks and between the ivy as the gale came and went. He turned to
the beast as it lifted its foot again, and made to shout as it started to kick
when flashes of magic erupted around the foot and sent things thunking into the
limb. The drake stilled at the anomaly, and the timberbeast likewise ceased all
motion for a moment.
The ivy-laden monster grunted and looked down at its limb, finding a few
crystal arrows inexplicably lodged between its toes. It raised a leafy brow at
the anomaly before roaring in surprise as red gems erupted from the impromptu
splinters and encased the foot in a matter of seconds. Heat built up in the
forming rubies, pulsating at first before erupting in a swell of vermillion
flames that seemingly caused the crystals themselves to vanish with them.
This ended up setting the entire leg aflame as the fires spread, and it
screamed and tried to put the flames out with its front limbs, inadvertently
causing them to catch fire as well. Natalie threw in her volley, setting the
other leg on fire with a simple blast of white magic, and she grinned as the
wood and ivy crackled and popped in response.
Whatever water that remained covering the beast inside and out could not hope
to stop the encroaching flames, and so it evaporated under the intense heat. As
the wood began crumbling and the beast let out another piercing cry to the
heavens, Matt plunged the bare tip of Heaven's Gate down into the soil and
channeled mana to his blade.
The sword itself responded, the metal taking on a red-hot hue and glowing with
heat and power. Shining spotted a faint trail of crimson seep from the weapon,
erratically weaving around to the wooden construct as its legs crumbled into
ash and caused it to land in the muddy soil with a loud thud.
As soon as the small, crimson thread of magic connected with the timberdrake's
pelvis, the ground beneath it opened up and fire shot out of a small hole that
had formed partially because of the beast and partially because of mana
manipulating it, encasing much of the monster and causing what hadn't caught
fire yet to start being scorched. Matt slumped over with his horn turning a
brilliant scarlet, his magic fizzing out in a minute, with the fires from the
hole he made stopping as said hole closed up.
He almost dropped dangerously close to his sword, and he'd have at least slit
his own throat had Natalie not grabbed him with her magic and pulled his form
sharply back. Shining turned to Anna, finding her in a similar state on the
ground, horn bright red and flute clutched between her teeth.
Rainbow let off a low whistle as the timberdrake let off one final cry and
slouched, rapidly turning to ash and embers and falling apart into small
fragments. She rushed over to Twilight, who started standing up on shaky legs.
"Okay, what happened?" the pegasus asked, eyes wide with a mixture of worry and
awe.
"The Everfree decided to tell me to screw off," Twilight replied with a huff.
She lurched a bit, but Rainbow caught her with a hoof. "So, how'd you guys find
us, aside from the hulking monstrosity?"
"Poison ivy sprung up around the trees like an infestation, and we just
followed that and found you," Anna answered in a pained voice. "And when I saw
the ivy rushing towards you, I did the only thing I could to stop it. That, and
we caught Shining's magic signature."
"You learned my brother's magic signature?" Twilight asked, turning to the
fallen archer.
"Spending a few weeks with him enabled me and the others to do that," Anna
replied, and made to speak further when the Captain spoke up.
"That was incredibly reckless—the ivy could've crushed you to a pulp!" Shining
chastised, only to be met with a green-eyed glare.
"Says the pony who would've otherwise been plant food in the same exact
scenario he just presented," Anna grumbled back. Shining winced as if stung,
and he opened his mouth to retort, but closed it when he realized the archer
had a solid point. "And besides, I realized you were only doing your job, and
me accusing you of a mess when it wasn't even your fault… I just wanted to make
it up to you."
The Captain blinked and turned to the other Fantasians, quickly garnering a nod
from Matt and a mouthed "Sorry" from Natalie.
He nodded to them with a smile and a mouthed "It's alright" in return, causing
the duo to grin as well. His expression fell when another pony piped up.
"Let's get you guys back to the library. You look beat up, and I'm not sure if
Twilight's ready to stand yet," Applejack interjected, garnering nods from
everyone else with her suggestion.
"My horn's hurting," Matt complained. "Can someone pick up my sword for me,
please?" Shining chuckled and turned to Rainbow, who picked up Twilight with
her front hooves. The pegasus wasted no time in putting her on his back before
steadying her and letting the armored stallion walk around Anna and to the
sword still stuck in the dirt. He studied the sword before Natalie pried it out
with magic, briefly marveling as its shape and adornments before she moved it
it to hover at her side, being mindful of Matt as he faltered for a moment.
He garnered a smile from the Fantasian stallion, who made to stand with one
hoof reaching up to his still-heated horn, which retracted upon touching it and
flailed for a bit before returning to the watery dirt. Natalie eyed the
burning, scattered husk of the timberdrake, eyes widening when she noticed the
individual pieces had started shaking and rippling with green mana.
Zecora saw this too, and helped Anna climb onto her back. "We should leave the
Everfree soon, before it makes a bigger wooden goon," she intoned.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
A good hour passed, and Sarah spent that time by furiously preening her good
wing, holding it still with her talons while making sure to not accidentally
stab herself in the process. She watched as the other Fantasians dozed, pausing
to smile at Maria's slumbering form as the filly shifted under Alexander's
wing. The gryphon mumbled to himself about squids and kebabs, and just the
mention of squid caused the wounded mare's mouth to slightly water.
She took a moment to wipe a bead of saliva that had crept out of the corner of
her mouth with the back of her claw and continued cleaning her feathers. Her
eyes shifted between her wing and the others who slumbered soundly, to the room
in which they stayed. Books lined more nooks and crannies, but there were other
objects scattered about, like crystal balls and scrolls and odd machinery that
had lightbulbs and buttons arranged in keyboard configurations.
Next to a crystal ball, Armin had formed a strange bed that looked to be more
like a green, translucent, gelatinous-looking cocoon with the top cut out and
the sides raised just enough to keep him within it. His back was turned to her,
with a thin line of more green running across the back of his head and under
the ears.
To one side, a sink, cabinet, fridge, and dish cabinet stood. There were
microscopes on the cabinet's top, and leather bags with gemstones poking out of
their mouths. A door stood open next to the fridge, leading to a small hall
that ended with a staircase winding up. In one of the bookshelves, Katie laid
sleeping with a book on her face and her front hooves under her chin, a small
pile of books lying just under the shelf in question. Sarah giggled softly at
the odd sight of the wraith snoozing in the bookshelf, but stopped and resumed
preening.
She paused again when a snort hit her ears, and she looked around to find
Fenrir sleeping with his teeth bared and his lips curled back, a low growl
escaping his maw. "Get… away from the foal," he mumbled, still snarling in his
sleep. Sarah blew out a huff of air and closed her wing, silently creeping over
before poking him in the shoulder with a talon. The diamond dog jolted with a
sharp gasp, sitting up and glancing around for a moment. His eyes fell on the
hippogryph when she cleared her throat.
"You were dreaming?" Sarah asked, a frown set into her muzzle.
Fenrir nodded and rose a paw to cover his mouth as he let off a yawn. "Have the
three unicorns returned yet?" he murmured.
"No. I just woke you up so you wouldn't wake anybody else up," Sarah answered
swiftly. Fenrir nodded to himself and made to lay back down, turning to rest on
his back with his forepaws under his head. He closed his eyes and soon dozed
off again, his ear twitching as the hippogryph yawned and lowered her body,
shifting herself closer to him in a slow gait so as to not alarm him. Her eyes
fluttered shut, and silent minutes ticked by as she got herself comfortable.
In fact, she'd just been about to drift off when the sound of hooves hitting
wood reached her ears. Letting off a confused hum, she rose her head up and
cracked one eye open to see Shining cantering into the room with Twilight on
his back. They were followed by Zecora and Anna, and Spike and Natalie and
Matt. Soon after that, Rarity, Rainbow, and Pinkie came in with plastic and
brown paper bags in hooves and in magic, and some of the bags looked heavier
than the others. "Where's… the orange pony?" Sarah asked, noticing a distinct
lack of Applejack's presence.
Spike put his claws behind his head and stretched his arms in doing so. "Oh,
she went to her place. Y'know, chores and stuff," he answered.
"What kind of chores?" Sarah asked, a brow quirked.
"She runs a farm with sheep, hens, pigs… gotta have them fed and their pens
clean to keep them happy," Spike replied hastily. "Think of it like her tending
to a gazillion copies of NoLegs, in a few groups with different needs and
such." The hippogryph nodded and turned her gaze onto Rarity.
"What's in the bags?" she asked, using a claw to gesture to a plastic one.
Rarity smiled. "Oh, food for everypony—mostly baked goods. We went to
Fluttershy's cottage to get some fish she'd normally reserve for her animal
friends," she replied, using her magic to procure a very large trout and a
small cupcake from two separate bags from her bunch in question.
Rainbow cantered close to Sarah, keeping her bags carefully off of the ground,
and leaned to the Fantasian as much as she was able. "I told them about…
Lance's allergy to greens," she whispered.
Sarah donned a grin. "Oh, good. I was thinking about having seafood myself,
anyway," she murmured, and rose up in a sitting position. She reached out to
Fenrir with a claw again and lightly shook him awake. "They're here this time,"
she stated before the diamond dog could even grumble in protest.
"Do what now?" Katie asked, taking a moment to fling the book off of her head
before crawling out of the shelf she'd slept in. She immediately fell into the
small pile of books on the floor and grumbled indignantly, with the thud that
came from her fall causing Alexander to stir awake.
"What is babbling about who this day of time?" Alexander inquired, rubbing his
eyes with a claw. He rose up, closing his wings and shifting to sit on his
haunches.
"I cannot possibly hope to articulate a comment regarding whatever it was
you've just uttered," Fenrir snorted, looking at the gryphon with his eyes only
partially open. Alexander just shrugged in his direction before noticing the
wraith extracting herself from the leatherbound-paper pile and stumbling over
towards Lance. But the general already shifted and opened his eyes before a
pale hoof could even touch him, and he rose one of his own to bat it away when
it came too close to his face for comfort.
Pinkie looked at Armin and watched as he sat up, turning to the others to
reveal a sleeping mask of green material similar to his half-cocoon covering
his eyes. He lifted a hoof up to remove the contraption, barely registering
hooves coming his way, only to find himself face to face with the pink earth
pony in seconds. "What?" he asked.
"I was wondering if changelings eat food like ponies and gryphons do. After
all, what good are fangs if they're not used?" Pinkie replied in a chipper
voice, a smile framing her face. The smile broadened when Armin lazily nodded
and mumbled something about jelly. He grinned when Pinkie cantered away before
stretching his limbs and crawling out of the half-cocoon, turning to Lance as
he too made to stand.
Maria was the last to wake up, and she jolted upright immediately upon seeing
Zecora. "Where's the thing that you said makes my feathers grow back?" she
asked excitedly, shaking in place. Her eyes widened when Zecora chuckled and
reached a hoof into her saddlebag, wings spreading when the zebra procured a
corked-shut wooden flask that had something noisily sloshing about as she pried
it out.
"I see you're rippling with glee. Did you drink anything recently, like water
or tea?" Zecora replied, frowning when the foal shook her head. "You need to
have something to drink, little one. Otherwise, you could have stomach
problems, and those who are fond of such things would be none."
"Is the potion semi-solid or something?" Lance asked, trotting up to Zecora
with a brow raised.
"No, but there are herbs and spices in the brew. She might have a specific
allergy—I am only taking precautions if this is true," came the answer. The
general thought this over for a moment and nodded before trotting towards the
sink, only to pause upon finding Spike rushing over while holding a cup and
effectively beating him to it. The drake climbed on the counter with the glass
in hand, turning on the faucet and letting some water come out of the spigot
for a bit prior to filling the glass.
He turned off the contraption before jumping back down when he was satisfied
with how much water he acquired, spilling a little of it in the process,
leaving only small droplets in his wake. He waltzed over to Maria and watched
as Zecora gripped the cork in her teeth and tugged it out, releasing a faint
smell of plants and spice. "Drink it all, or the potion won't take effect. The
results would otherwise be less than perfect," she warned, giving the foal the
container.
Maria took the flask in her claws and obliged, taking one sip of the brew and
quickly making a scrunchy face. She struggled to keep the bit of brew in her
mouth from leaving it with a series of muffled retching sounds coming from her
closed jaws, and a claw from Spike coming up on her muzzle left her with no
choice but to swallow the mixture. Zecora blinked, and Rainbow piped up, "Yeah,
she's a meat-eater, too. I gotta say, she has it worse than Lance does."
"Good thing you called for a drink," Rarity murmured as Spike relinquished his
grip on Maria's muzzle, watching and shuddering as the foal brought the flask
to her mouth again. She stiffened as the filly chugged down the rest of the
mixture, tilting her head back and quickly going green in the face as she
emptied the container. She put it down once the last drop went down her throat,
and snatched the glass of water from the drake's hands before guzzling that as
well in quick succession.
"That tasted bad," Maria grumbled, ears flattened against her skull. A few
seconds after she said that, she thrust her claws up to her chest, dropping the
glass in the process as her entire body began quivering like she had been
strapped to a jackhammer. The other Fantasians watched as, with a swell of mana
rippling all over the foal's body, feathers of dusty brown started to rapidly
crop up on her bald spots. Then she fluffed out, feathers lengthening and
growing at an alarmingly fast rate that left all present in the room utterly
speechless.
After a few minutes, the ripple of mana faded from her form and the feathers
stopped growing, coating her in a messy down that looked more like a hairball
that sprouted from her chest and wings than anything else. A brief silence
settled in, one in which Katie broke. "By Godcat's fluffy fur, that's… just…
wow," she said.
Lance let off a low whistle at the anomaly and his eyes went wide. "Hot damn,"
he murmured, quickly trotting over to Maria and raising a hoof to rub her
between the wings. "How do you feel?"
"Belly… hurts…" Maria whimpered, wings folding against her sides as her claws
moved to rest on her stomach, a great cramping pain rising in her gut that made
it feel as if a full-grown stallion kicked her. She leaned into the hoof that
rubbed her, and the agony in her digestive system subsided a bit.
"So, what'd you make that bed out of?" Pinkie asked Armin, using a bag-laden
hoof to gesture to the half-cocoon when he raised a brow.
The changeling turned to said half-cocoon and sighed. "Oh, that. A substance
called chitil. Nothing special, really, especially when I can do this," he
answered, his horn starting to glow. His magic embraced the bed and the
discarded sleeping mask before lifting them up and compacting the two entities.
His magic continued working, turning them into separate wads of goo that he
meshed together and molded into a new shape—namely, that of a small chest.
"Ooooh," Pinkie cooed, eyes glimmering with awe. "So, it's like clay?"
"Sort of, except also like jelly," Armin answered with a nod as he made the
chitil vanish in a flash of magic. "Never leave home without it."
"So, who wants food?" Matt interjected at last, garnering the attention of
everyone else. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm starving right now."
***** Chapter XXII- Fruit Baskets *****
The group mulled about in the kitchen-machinery-room, with most lying down and
enjoying baked goods, a few fruits, and some fish. Maria waited a few minutes
for her stomach to settle before watching a cooking trout and fidgeting at the
gorgeous catch. This fish had been prepared carefully—sliced into fillets and
with its fin bones removed prior to being engulfed by searing flames, which
released an appealing aroma that made her don a pleading look.
Sarah sat next to the filly and multitasked—using one claw to hold a small
slice of chocolate cake filled with zap apple jam and the other to preen the
newly-grown down of feathers. "If you stay still, I'll give you a bite of this
cake," she murmured, sighing when Maria stilled with her wings spread. The mare
patted down feathers that still stuck out like porcupine quills with her free
claw, and carefully ran her limb across them to make sure they'd stay down.
"Well, at least she has her downy coat back," Armin remarked, watching Maria
being preened whilst raising a slice of apple dipped in caramel and popping it
into his mouth with some magic. He chewed for a bit and swallowed, nodding to
himself with a small smile.
"Indeed. A few good preening sessions should keep it in check, in case any
stray mana decides to mess with her," Lance agreed, laying down and hesitantly
using a hoof to put a handful of seemingly-sparkling berries into his maw. He
chewed once and his eyes widened like someone managed to kick him square in the
gonads, before the expression melted into a pleased look as he continued
mashing up the berries. "Maybe I could try these with salmon," he murmured once
he swallowed.
"Try not to eat all of the berries, then," Natalie remarked, plucking no more
than three in her magic in addition to a caramel-covered apple slice and
stuffing those into her face. Her visage lit up as she ground the fruits
between her teeth and swallowed. "Okay, I can see why you want these with fish,
Lance," she noted, garnering a satisfied nod from the general. "They go good
with apple slices, though."
Matt carefully watched the roasting fish fillets, waiting for the meat to
finish cooking. He held them up in his magic, conjuring some more flames when
the current ones came close to fizzling out, and turned the trout halves once
to ensure even cooking. Anna sat next to him, also watching the fish. A small
whine diverted her attention, and she shifted her eyes onto Maria as Sarah
pulled out a bent feather that refused to stay down.
"Was that feather already broke?" Anna asked, garnering a simple nod from
Sarah. The archer sighed in exasperation and turned back to the cooking fish,
blinking when two more prepared, raw fillets joined in the fray.
"I'd like to talk to you guys about something," Shining piped up, garnering the
attention of the Fantasian bunch.
"Whatever it is, can you save it after everyone's eaten? I don't want what
happened to me to happen to them—namely, loss of appetite," Katie piped up,
causing the Captain to look at her with a brow raised.
Lance spoke up, "I'd make some remark about the wraith and appetite, but I am
afraid she has a point. Would that be alright with you, Captain Armor?"
Shining rose a hoof and put it to his chin, considering the dual remarks for a
bit before nodding. "Alright, I guess it can wait," he answered, setting his
hoof down.
Alexander bit into a simple loaf of bread, one with a sugar and cinnamon
coating. He started beaming, and quickly ate the rest of the loaf with relish.
"That was most excellent," he stated with a pleased squawk.
"Y'think this is good enough?" Sarah asked, pulling her preening claw away the
filly. Anna stood up and trotted over to Maria. She inspected the coat of down
thoroughly, with Rarity coming up behind her to lend an extra set of eyes.
"Hrm…" The ivory mare tapped at her chin with a hoof as she helped inspect the
mass of feathers. She nodded and shared a look with Anna when their once-overs
were done, and the archer shrugged her shoulders. Rarity turned to Sarah and
answered, "Well, it is… adequate, I suppose. Overall a good job, considering it
was done with one claw."
Sarah smiled, and handed Maria the slice of cake. "Here you go, as promised,"
she stated. Maria took the slice of cake in her talons and looked at it like it
was an alien lifeform for a second before biting into it.
Maria chewed for a bit and swallowed, turning to Zecora and Pinkie Pie, who
both grinned at her. "Thank you," she murmured before delving back into the
slice of cake, a small grin forming on her face as the slice went into her gob.
Anna put a slice of trout to the side when it finished cooking, using a plate
to keep it clean as she and Matt watched the other fillets. She used her magic
to push the plate to Sarah before heaping another finished hunk of meat right
atop the first one without missing a beat. "Share with Maria. I saw her
eyeballing the meat," she said, hearing her sister chuckle at the remark.
Shining made to lay down, and helped himself to an ordinary-looking loaf of
bread. Upon chewing a bit and immediately feeling a semi-solid texture that was
sleek, in addition to that of flaky bread, he pulled away and looked at the
loaf's center to find a red substance inside a snug little pocket. He grinned
and finished up his bite, swallowing before remarking, "Cherry filling—what a
surprise."
Twilight reached over to a platter at her side and picked up a slice of cake
with zap apple jam with a hoof. She fumbled for a second before bringing it to
her mouth and taking a bite, making sure to get some of the filling in the bite
prior to chewing it with relish. In tandem with her motions, a faint rainbow
aura started rippling on her body as the cake was ground up. She swallowed
before taking another bite, her horn sparking and fizzing after the second bit
went down the chute. On the fourth bite, her horn glowed a very faint magenta
and the aura stayed for a good minute before shorting out once more.
The phenomenon prompted Anna to speak up, "Is it me, or are you gaining mana
back just from eating that slice?"
Twilight took a fifth bite and talked with her mouth full, being careful not to
spill anything in the process, "It'sh the shap apple jam."
"The zap apple jam?" Matt asked as he took a slim slice of cake for himself
whilst putting the remaining trout fillets on another plate. He took a bite for
himself and chewed for a bit, finding that his body faintly glimmered when he
swallowed the mouthful.
Twilight swallowed her bit of cake and nodded, watching as the Fantasian
unicorn took another bite of his cake. She answered, this time a little more
coherently, "The jam acts as a form of mana regeneration."
Anna quirked a brow as Matt made to bite his piece again and let her horn glow.
She tried levitating a slice of cake to herself from the same platter that
Twilight got her piece from, but her magic fizzed out as it hovered over
Spike's head. The drake saw the falling slice and shielded his eyes, only for
Pinkie to rush over to the cabinet, fling it open before procuring a plate, and
dart over to the drake in a matter of seconds. The earth pony slid on her
stomach and caused Spike to stagger back in the process, front hooves with
plate outstretched, and the archer sighed in relief as the cake landed on the
dish right when Pinkie's momentum could carry her no longer.
Pinkie stood up on three legs, using her fourth to balance the plate of cake.
"Cake saved," she chirped, bounding over to Anna and setting the dish in front
of her.
"Nice save. That was pretty fast," Anna murmured with an appreciative nod.
"Oh, it was nothing. I wouldn't let a cake slice hit the floor; it'd be a waste
of perfectly good food otherwise," Pinkie replied, watching as the Fantasian
mare picked up the slice with a hoof and took a bite out of it. She noticed a
ripple of rainbow-colored mana erupt around Anna's form as she ate the cake,
and the archer paused after swallowing when she noticed her hoof remaining
aglow for a few seconds.
Anna blinked, a small smile crossing her face. "Now I feel a little better,"
she chirped before taking in another bite of her slice. She halted when her
hoof glowed in another swell of rippling mana again, and her eyes widened as
her horn started shimmering with a green aura of its own accord. She
momentarily lowered the half-eaten slice when her magic fizzed out after two
minutes, before shrugging and cramming the rest into her cheeks.
Upon doing so, her body immediately glimmered with raw rainbow aura that lasted
for a good minute and thirty seconds before it faded again. Twilight and
Shining flinched at the anomaly, stiffening as the archer donned a sleepy look
and giggled like she had gotten drunk. "Nighty night…" Anna murmured before
collapsing onto the floor, miraculously missing the empty plate as she
faceplanted and started snoring.
"Maybe she should limit her zap apple jam consumption," Armin remarked,
trotting over before putting a holey hoof on the archer's withers. He shook her
for a bit, frowning when she only released a louder snore in response. "Yep.
Out like a light."
"I think she should've eaten the slice of cake slower," Matt sighed, turning to
the others to find that they had finished up their meals in the time that Anna
shimmered in seven pretty colors. He directed his attention to Shining.
"Alright, what did you want to talk to us about?"
Shining donned a smirk and relaxed. "Well, you know my wife Cadence, right?" At
the slow nods of over half of the Fantasians, he went on, "Well… there's a
place up north where she rules. It's not frigid or anything."
"And… if she rules this place, are you emperor or something?" Lance asked,
feeling there was something off about Shining's choice of words.
Shining nodded. "It's like a neighbor to Equestria—a subservient state of
sorts," he replied. "Celestia and Luna still call most of the shots everywhere
else, but me and Cadence have semi-exclusive reign over the patch up north," he
added upon garnering a series of vexed looks and a buzzing pair of wings.
"Stop beating around the bush and spit it out already," Katie stated, a hoof
tapping on the floor impatiently.
Shining chuckled and sent a sweet smile to the wraith before humoring her, "You
guys wanted a library, and my state-of-sorts has one that could keep you
occupied for days. Of course, I'll have to tell my batch of crystal guards to
watch you—sorry, standard procedure."
Natalie tensed at the words 'crystal guards,' and she gulped as her ears folded
back. "Define… crystal," she murmured tersely.
"Oh, the ponies—common and guard alike—sparkle like they're trotting crystal.
Nothing to worry about; they're good folk," Shining answered rather casually,
and with a wave of his hoof. "Besides, since wraiths are cropping up in
Equestria, I feel the need to check on my folk and see if any wraiths are among
them, and deal with any I do find accordingly."
"That is very sound reasoning," Fenrir agreed with a nod. "At what time do we
need to head out to the… patch of land that is northbound?"
Shining crossed his forelegs together, still grinning like a foal engaging in
playtime. "Well, since three of you have been requested to help out in a task
with one of my sister's friends, I say we leave the day after you lend your
helping hooves," he replied in a chipper tone. "Plenty of time to rest and
prepare, if you asked me."
"Question," Katie interjected, garnering the Captain's attention again. When he
nodded to her, she asked, "What do we do in the time between now and helping
harvest special apples?" At her inquiry, the rest of the Fantasians exchanged
glances and started whispering to each other. Except for Anna; she proceeded to
mumble something about grass in her sleep instead.
It was Twilight who answered, "I guess you could meet some of the locals." When
the wraith rose a brow, she went on, "They could give you guys directions, in
case you get lost in Ponyville. That, and you might make new friends."
"Alright, alright. So, we just dawdle here in this particular part of Equestria
to kill time…" Lance murmured, using a hoof to rub his temples. "I can get with
that—it's not like we have anything else to do at this time."
"Oh, that reminds me," Rarity interjected, turning her gaze onto the general as
she spoke. "Since Maria has sufficiently grown her feathers back, shall I still
make her that dress you requested?"
Lance blinked for a moment before going wide-eyed and hopping onto his hooves.
He relaxed and nodded a second after, but decided to reply, "Are you able to
enchant the dress or something? It's gonna have to rest against her feathers
comfortably."
Rarity nodded. "Oh, yes, I can enchant the dress as needed. I'll have to take
her, your wraith, and…" she paused, turning to the snoozing Anna as the archer
mumbled something about the color pink. "One of your advisors to take
measurements," she finished.
Lance's gaze fell on Anna. "Why do you need her?" he asked.
"Oh, to cut a long story drastically short, to keep Maria out of… er, trouble,"
Rarity answered, her voice briefly cracking when she uttered 'trouble.'
"Though, obviously, I can't take her and the other two to my Boutique when one
of them's asleep. That, and they might want specific details regarding their
garments—details only they can provide to me, unfortunately."
"Like, Katie might want a shell to tuck her wings under or something of that
nature?" Lance inquired, shifting to sit on his haunches when Rarity nodded to
him fervently. "Alright, I understand."
Spike walked over to Twilight, and opened his mouth to say something before he
started retching and his claws flew to cover his mouth. His cheeks bulged, and
he turned away as he lowered his claws and loudly belched, with green flames
pouring out from his maw. The fires evaporated to wisp-like smoke and then
coalesced to form a ribbon-sealed scroll of parchment that then dropped to the
floor and rolled a little ways towards Zecora.
This caused almost all of the Fantasians to go wide-eyed and gawk at the little
drake. "D-d-d-did he… j-j-just…" Alexander stuttered before pausing, gaze
darting to the scroll as Twilight lifted it with her magic and dragged it to
her face.
Twilight casually undid the ribbon and opened the scroll before noting the
stunned looks on the faces of her guests. "Yes, Spike did," she stated tersely,
eyes shifting to read the contents of the paper.
"What's the scroll say?" Natalie asked, garnering a smile from the lavender
mare.
"Oh, it's just Celestia asking me how things are holding up with you guys
around," Twilight answered, taking a moment to chuckle.
"I guess you can tell her we had an eventful day today," Shining remarked, a
twinkle of mirth shimmering in his eyes.
"Might as well spend most of the week just sight-seeing," Sarah stated,
stretching her good wing to full mast for a few seconds before closing it. She
turned to her still-sleeping sister and asked, "What explains her welts?"
Shining sighed. "A timberdrake that was covered in ivy lashed at me with its
poisonous vines, but she came and took the blow," he answered.
"I could make her an ointment. I will not disappoint," Zecora chimed in,
garnering a nod from Twilight after the two exchanged glances. The zebra
reached into her saddlebag with a hoof and procured her mortar and pestle.
"I'm impressed she's ignored it. Heck, she doesn't even seem fazed now—and
she's snoozing. I'd think that sleeping with itching welts would be painful,"
Shining noted, turning to the slumbering Anna as she mumbled something about
poison ivy and salad.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
A rather drab week passed, and the sun was at its apex in the sky, bearing down
mercilessly on the apple orchard. Under the branches of the trees, Applejack
and Big Mac worked tirelessly bucking at the thick trunks, shaking the trees
with pure brute force and causing the apples to fall from the branches into
waiting baskets below. Apple Bloom did likewise, and not far from her stood
Natalie, Matt, Anna, and an illusion-disguised Katie, all watching to see how
the Mythonians got the trees to yield their succulent fruits.
Applejack paused, and motioned with a hoof for Big Mac and Apple Bloom to
immediately halt. "Alright," she began, turning to the Fantasians, "you think
you got this?"
"The tree-bucking? I think we got the gist of it," Matt answered, a small smile
on his face.
"I can't—you're asking me to break my rear legs. I'm not built like a boulder
here," Katie huffed, crossing her forelegs together.
"You don't have to buck the trees—you look at the apples and separate the good
from the bad. A bad apple spoils the whole bunch," Applejack stated, turning to
the wraith and sending her a friendly grin.
"I'll help her on that front. She might collapse before she finishes sorting a
basket out," Anna piped up, using a hoof to gently pat Katie on her withers.
Applejack nodded in understanding, giving Apple Bloom a glance when she opened
her mouth to speak.
"You sure about that?" Apple Bloom asked, garnering a nod from Anna. The filly
turned to Applejack and continued, "Can I help them with sorting the good from
the bad? My rear legs kinda hurt."
"Go ahead. Besides, I want to see how good he can buck a tree," Applejack
replied in a chipper voice, using a hoof to gesture to Matt as she spoke. The
Fantasian in question sighed, and waited for Apple Bloom to scuttle over to
Anna and Katie before trotting to the tree she bucked earlier. After taking a
moment to inspect the baskets and noticing they were full, he simply trotted
one tree over and aligned his tail with it, raising a back leg after that and
tapping at the trunk.
"What'cha doing?" Big Mac asked, tilting his head at the display.
"Making sure I kick the tree and not the air. Last thing I need is to misfire
and hurt myself," Matt replied, setting his leg down and garnering a look from
the red-coated stallion. Big Mac and Applejack watched intently as the
Fantasian reared up with his front legs high in the air before bringing them
down and raising his back ones in seconds, and they blinked as the rear hooves
shot out and solidly connected with the trunk of the tree. It shook a little,
dropping around a half-dozen apples into waiting baskets.
In rapid succession, the unicorn stallion repeated the procedure a few times,
and after a good nine kicks managed to fill the baskets only half-way. "Either
the tree don't like you, or you're not made for apple-bucking," Applejack
remarked, a half-frown on her face. "You're doing good, though. Keep it up."
As soon as she said that, Matt kicked the tree again, and this time it managed
to drop a fruit that had the misfortune of landing on his horn right as he
reared up to deliver another kick. He dropped down without kicking and looked
at the apple cross-eyed, a vexed frown on his face. "You can have that apple,"
she sighed, her half-frown turning into an amused grin.
Natalie chuckled at the sight of the impaled, unfortunate apple, and shook her
head at the display. She turned to look at Apple Bloom, who had dropped to the
ground and started howling with laughter, and then to Katie as the disguised
wraith managed a giggle. Matt snorted and lifted a hoof to remove the offending
fruit from his forehead and took a bite out of it.
"So, where're the zap apples?" Matt asked after swallowing the first bite. He
watched as Applejack used a hoof to gesture to her immediate right.
"A little further up. Fill them baskets you got, and after the good and bad are
sorted, we'll take ya to the zap apple patch if we see y'all can buck and sort
good. Don't want any bad apples spoiling any bunches—a spoiled fruit's bad for
cider and jam, trust me," Applejack responded.
"Eeyup," Big Mac added with a firm nod of his head and a smile on his face.
Matt scarfed down the rest of the apple and handed the core to Applejack. "I
don't know what you do with the cores, and it's your farm," he stated, watching
as the earth mare chuckled and took the core in her hoof before tossing it over
her shoulder. He shrugged to nopony in particular and proceeded to give the
tree a few more kicks. When the baskets filled up, he simply gave it an extra
kick, though not hard enough to shake any more apples out from the branches.
Natalie donned a grin as she lit her horn up and used her magic to drag the
filled baskets to her and the others. "One pony per basket?" she asked, and at
Applejack's nod, claimed one for herself. Anna took another, and Apple Bloom a
third, and Katie the last one. The lot set to sorting quickly, with the bad
apples being tossed aside and the good staying in the baskets.
"So, yer a Fantasian filly?" Apple Bloom asked, causing Katie to look at
Natalie with a wide-eyed look. Natalie shot the disguised wraith another look—a
slightly stern one that had a flicker in her eyes.
Natalie's horn glowed brighter for a moment, and Katie heard the mare's voice
echo into her mind and magic briefly grasp her by the cranium. "Play along—just
pretend you're a filly. With Matt's illusion covering your ass, you'd be able
to convince her easy-peasy," she spoke telepathically. Katie nodded and turned
back to Apple Bloom.
"One of the two that came here. The other's having her feathers preened," Katie
responded without hesitation.
"Feathers? Is she a pegasus?" Apple Bloom continued, a brow raised as she
tossed aside a fruit with a worm sticking out where the stem should've been.
"Hippogryph," Katie answered, flinging an apple that squashed as soon as she
grabbed it with her hooves. She looked in the basket to see if any bad remnants
of said fruit had stuck themselves onto the other apples, only to move on when
she found none. "But yes, she has wings."
"Say," Apple Bloom started as she threw out another spoiled apple, "would you
like to join the Cutie Mark Crusaders?"
Katie stopped as she lifted a good apple for inspection, turning to Apple Bloom
and looking at her like she suddenly became an alicorn. "The what now?" she
inquired.
"The Cutie Mark Crusaders," Apple Bloom repeated, dropping a good fruit into
the basket before reaching for another. "A group of fillies trying to find
their cutie marks."
The disguised wraith considered this for a few seconds. She tried to mentally
piece together a response that didn't involve telling the Mythonian filly what
she really was, and inadvertently breaking the illusion in the process. After
another minute, she came up with such a response. "Unfortunately, no. After
what I've seen back home, I… kinda don't want a cutie mark. Sorry," she lied,
though her reply managed to make Apple Bloom sigh and chuck aside another bad
apple.
Apple Bloom waited for two minutes, during which time she tossed aside six
rotten fruits, before asking, "Would the hippogryph filly like to join?"
"You'd have to ask her to her face, and she's not here. Though she does seem
keen on getting her mark," Katie answered with a shrug, chucking aside three
bad apples like they were tiny pebbles. "Oh, and she has claws like a gryphon.
I heard those are easier to break than hooves, so if she does join, just take
that into account."
Apple Bloom nodded and picked up another apple. "I think I can do that," she
stated, seeing that the apple had bruises on its skin, but nothing else. "Say,
can you do magic?"
Katie shook her head. "Horn's useless. I might as well have a twig glued to my
head," she sighed. "Can't even lift things up the way most unicorns do," she
paused and turned to Natalie and Anna before finishing her remark, "no
offense."
"None taken. To be frank, I was once at that stage, too," Anna chirped, having
tossed aside another apple as she finished speaking.
"Ditto," Natalie added, prodding at a bruised apple she held in her magic with
a hoof. She turned to Applejack, eyes glinting in askance.
"A bruised apple's good, unless it squishes like a sponge and pops as if it's
an egg's yolk in your magic," Applejack stated, watching as Natalie carefully
squeezed the apple after lifting up both front hooves to it. When it failed to
rupture like a yolk, she shrugged and gently lowered it into her basket before
plucking out another.
Anna was the first to finish sorting the fruits in her basket, and she used her
magic to heft it to Applejack. The earth mare nodded and shuffled through the
apples herself before grinning in satisfaction. "At least Granny Smith gets a
break today," she chirped.
"Huh?" Katie hummed after tossing out another bad apple that fell apart in
rotten thirds as soon as she grabbed it. "How does she sort the apples?"
"She sniffs them. Her nose could tell year-old ice cider from fresh non-
alcoholic cider in a heartbeat, and a rotten apple from a good zap apple in
seconds," Applejack replied as Natalie finished her basket and forked it over
for another once-over.
"So, when we get to the zap apples, how do we sort the good from the bad?" Anna
asked, garnering a chuckle from Applejack as she started going through the
second basket of produce.
"We worry about that after we pick them," Applejack responded, her smile
widening as she finished her inspection.
"Alright," Katie stated, using a hoof to gesture to her basket. "I've finished
my basket."
***** Chapter XXIII- Upon Friendship's Rails *****
"So what's your cutie mark mean?" Apple Bloom asked Matt as Applejack came over
and shuffled through her apple basket.
"Uh…" Matt hesitated, a half-frown on his face. "Using swords and magic," he
answered after a full minute of silence.
"How'd you get it?" Apple Bloom continued, her inquiry causing the Fantasian
stallion to immediately stiffen.
"Long story," Natalie chimed in with a frown on her muzzle, shooting the
Mythonian filly a quick glance. "You'd probably be bored to tears hearing it.
And it's the same with my cutie mark, too."
"They talked for three days, and I slept a lot as they babbled on and on.
Seriously, I thought there was no end to it," Katie added off-handedly, her
remark causing Apple Bloom to sigh and roll her eyes before turning to
Applejack as she pulled away from the basket.
"Alright everypony, listen up," Applejack began, drawing the attention of the
assembled Fantasians to herself. "I'll show you to the zap apple patch of the
orchard. Big Mac and Apple Bloom will take the baskets to the apple grinder.
Y'all have done good enough with the regular apples—let's stop lollygagging."
And with that, she trotted onwards past some trees, with the unicorns and
disguised wraith immediately falling in step behind her.
In moments, the filly and stallion who stayed behind vanished with distance. A
few more moments thereafter, the group found an expansive patch of apple trees
spaced widely apart, separated from the rest of the orchard by a simple wooden
fence that stretched for a good distance.
The apple trees that were kept inside the fence boasted brilliantly-colored
fruit looking as if painted in seven colors, with vibrant green leaves and
stems shaped like lightning bolts. The leaves that weren't attached to the
apple stems were dark purple-red, and the trees a deep maroonish-violet
respectively. They also had three to four baskets at their trunks, and to one
side of the patch in an open spot stood a two-wheeled wagon with a harness
attached.
"These apples will disappear early this evening if they aren't picked. Oh, and
don't buck the trees," Applejack warned, garnering a few vexed glances. After a
minute, she groaned, "I'll show y'all why you don't buck these trees."
With that, she trotted to a tree, turned around, and bucked it as hard as she
could. The tree did not yield fruit; rather, it crackled with blue electric
sparks that enveloped her body and sent a good jolt through her system. This
resulted in her returning to all fours and staggering a bit, her limbs refusing
to bend at the joints as she moved. To top this off, her mane and tail were
singed and standing on end.
"Oh… so, we're dealing with magic trees," Katie murmured, a faint buzzing sound
echoing through the air around her as she spoke. The illusion broke from her
form in a flurry of fading gold dust, and her wings beat rapidly and lifted her
from the ground. She flew to the tree Applejack kicked at, and went straight to
the fruit. "So... " she paused, glancing down at the earth pony, "just pluck
and put in the baskets?"
Applejack nodded after taking a minute to shake off the tingling sensation that
her act of self-electrocution had wrought. "Yep. Just drop like crazy; zap
apples don't bruise easy," she replied. "Fill at least fifteen baskets. We
gotta make a lot of jam, and there's a little over forty or so trees."
"Fifteen?" Anna repeated, going wide-eyed.
Applejack turned to the archer and nodded again. "Yep. Normally, we'd do twelve
'round here if it's just me and Mac and Apple Bloom, but the extra three is for
you guys," she answered. The unicorns nodded back and let their magic get to
work, lifting themselves up and floating in the air to meet up with Katie.
Applejack watched them as the group tugged the ripe apples with ease and
dropped them into baskets that waited below, noting that they seemed to operate
on some sort of unspoken signal. Anna and Natalie kept to the middle of the
tree's branches, and Matt scoured the top, leaving Katie to pluck what they
missed at the bottom of the branches.
In a little over two minutes, three baskets below had been filled with ripe,
rainbow apples. The earth pony whistled lowly at the sight and turned to the
airborne Fantasians. "Now that is teamwork!" she remarked.
The three unicorns grinned at her, and Katie waved a hoof as she exclaimed,
"That was as easy as twitching my ear!" She darted over to the next tree and
wasted no time in plucking the apples. She was followed in short order by the
magically-aloft trio who made quick work of cleaning the branches of every
single fruit they could find—which wasn't hard, considering the prismatic
colors the apples boasted. Applejack couldn't help but smile at her
otherworldly hired help, and in that moment a thought hit her.
"Hey, could one of y'all lift me up? I'd like to help pluck, instead of
standing here stranded because I forgot a ladder," Applejack piped up, right as
the Fantasians cleaned the second tree. Natalie obliged the earth pony, using
magic to carefully lift her up and deposit her in a third tree before she and
her friends darted to another fruit-laden wooden monolith next to hers.
"Thanks a bunch," she chirped, and made to pluck a few apples when she heard a
faint sound of flapping pegasus wings. She looked up as a very pale blue form
whizzed overhead and stopped, hovering next to the tree.
"Who's he?" Anna asked as Katie hid in the branches, noticing the rather sudden
presence of a blue-maned pegasus stallion she didn't recognize.
"Soarin! What're you doing here?" Applejack questioned the stallion who had
come to the harvest unannounced.
"I saw you plucking the zap apples without your family overhead, and thought I
could lend a hoof. I don't see anything wrong about that," Soarin replied, a
grin on his face. He turned to the Fantasians and added, "Wait, wasn't there
four of you two seconds ago? I could've sworn I saw pale and red pony."
"Drat! I've been caught!" Katie groaned, still staying in the cover of the
branches.
Applejack pointed at another tree with her hoof, and Soarin followed it. "In
that case, you might as well start over there," she said. Soarin nodded and
flew three trees over, using his hooves to pluck as many zap apples as he could
possibly hold. The Fantasians shrugged and returned to plucking out their tree,
hopping over to the next and doing the same to it once they were done.
Applejack was slower; it took her over five minutes to scour every branch of
the tree she claimed, and she took another minute to deftly hop from one tree
to the next with either some magical aid or Soarin's hooves carrying her.
A little over two hours dragged on, and a few near-misses happened—Soarin
nearly crashed into Matt one time, Applejack almost fell from a branch too thin
to support her weight, and Katie accidentally bucked a tree and got knocked out
of the air for a bit when it electrocuted her. The group was able to get their
act together and finish plucking, though as they reached the last seven trees,
Big Mac joined the fray to lend a helping hoof too late. The trees still laden
with fruit crackled with blue sparks, and in those sparks their unpicked apples
vanished in seconds.
"Huh. Well, at least we got most of the fruit," Natalie remarked with a shrug,
garnering a nod from the earth mare and pegasus stallion.
"And that means lots of zap apple jam," Soarin chimed, a small grin on his
muzzle.
Big Mac sighed and turned to Applejack as she prepared the two-wheeled wagon,
which was quickly loaded with all of the baskets. The pile stacked higher than
the nearest tree was tall, and the Fantasian unicorns used their magic to hold
it steady. "I take it it's all said and done?" he asked, garnering a nod from
Applejack.
"Granny was right," Applejack chirped, a smile on her face as Soarin helped her
slip into the harness. "How was the cider-making?" she asked, turning to Big
Mac after the harness was fitted onto her midsection.
"Made a few dozen barrels, and Granny sent me to check up on y'all," Big Mac
answered with a nod. He turned to Soarin and asked, "I assume you helped?"
"Of course," Soarin replied, his grin widening. He turned to Katie, right as
Matt cast another illusion spell on her, and frowned immediately. "I'm worried
about her," he added.
Natalie waved a hoof at Soarin, and rather dismissively at that. "We are, too,
but all we can do is hide her condition with illusions," she said simply.
"We're still trying to work out how to… uh, yeah."
Katie sighed and clambered onto Anna's back. "I'm impressed I was even able to
pluck those apples. They're bigger than my hip bones, I swear!" she exclaimed,
garnering a roll of the eyes from the unicorn she started riding on.
"So, who's up for some cider?" Big Mac asked, garnering looks from the others.
Matt's muzzle broke out into a smile. "I'm parched," he answered. His smile
fell as Apple Bloom hit the scene galloping, and the filly skid to a halt so
fast she almost careened into Soarin's legs, though a bit of magic from Anna
grabbed her and helped her slow down before she could crash.
"Big Mac, Applejack, the cider line's already forming!" Apple Bloom shrieked,
panting between words and causing the two ponies she addressed to sigh. "Y'all
gotta come, right now!"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
By the time the group reached the farm gate with the zap apples in tow, where
Granny Smith had a few barrels, a massive grinding wheel with a treadmill and
spigot attached, and a booth with another spigot set up, a long line of waiting
ponies had already formed. Matt let off a low whistle at the sight, and noted
that the line seemed to go on for a good length, spanning at least two
hillsides marked with a white fence that stretched for just as long. In the
distance, barely visible because said hillsides blocked most of it from sight,
were the straw roofs of Ponyville's houses jutting up.
"Is cider that popular around here?" Anna asked, turning to Applejack with a
vexed frown on her face.
"It's like this every cider season," Applejack replied in a solemn tone, using
a hoof to gesture to the waiting line. "And we usually run out before everypony
gets one mug's worth." A smile crossed her face, and she added, "Though, I
could get my honorary family members to help press cider and make enough for
the town this time. I won't pester y'all no more, since you already helped with
picking the zap apples."
The Fantasians nodded, and so did Soarin, and they watched as Apple Bloom and
Big Mac rushed over to meet with Granny Smith. "Granny, I'm gonna take the zap
apples to the barn," she called out. Her cry wound up causing the elderly
green-coated mare to turn to her as a pony placed two gold coins on an open box
that stood the counter and left with a mug of cider after it was filled by
Apple Bloom.
"I'm coming with you to start on the jam," Granny called back, and made to
leave the stand when a hoof reached over the booth and tapped her on the
withers. She turned to find that the next-in-line pony who poked her was Pinkie
Pie, who was backed by Rarity, Twilight, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash.
"Maybe we could use the apple grinder to make more for everypony?" Pinkie
suggested, garnering a wide-eyed look from Granny.
"Well, it seems the number of barrels this season is… lacking, to say the
least," Rarity commented, looking at the few dozen barrels already set up and
sighing despondently.
Katie hopped off Anna's back and trotted over to the ivory mare, tapping at her
front leg with a hoof to get her attention as soon as she reached her.
"Applejack was busy with the zap apples," she stated.
"Yes, I know that. How could I not, when she's standing right there with a
massive quantity of baskets looming over her?" Rarity retorted, frowning.
"Granny Smith, would you like some more help this year?" Twilight asked,
trotting to stand at Pinkie's side. "It seems you and the rest of the family
will be pretty… occupied."
"Feel free to do just that," Granny replied, nodding her head. She then turned
to Big Mac and addressed him, "I'd much appreciate it if you manage the booth
for me while Applejack and I are dealing with the zap apples in the barn, so
please keep the ponies who want cider happy while I'm away. If you sell good,
you'll get extra zap apple pie slices."
The red stallion nodded to her, and Apple Bloom piped up, "Can I get an extra
slice of zap apple pie?" Granny turned to the filly and nodded, lifting a hoof
and ruffling her mane a bit. With that, she hobbled past the two at a slow
gait. She paused when she made it in front of the orange mare, turning her head
to find her grandfoal's companions jumping the fence and getting to work.
Rainbow manned the grinder, Fluttershy flew into the trees' branches fast
enough to shake the fruit from them, Pinkie collected the produce with a
basket, and Twilight started stacking barrels with her magic. Granny nodded and
turned back to Applejack, and noticed the impressive mound of baskets she and
her help had managed to accrue. "Whoo wee! Looks like there's gonna be more
than just zap apple jam tonight—there's enough for a small army right here!"
she remarked, her utterance causing the three Fantasian unicorns to grin
sheepishly.
Katie rushed over to the bunch and, again, climbed on Anna's back. "So, now
what?" she asked, tilting her head slightly.
Anna shrugged, and she turned to Applejack and Granny as the two started
trotting over to the barn. "May as well help them put the baskets down before
we see Shining Armor again," she replied. She and the other two unicorns
followed the wagon laden with baskets piled high, horns still glowing and magic
keeping the looming stack steady.
Upon reaching the barn, the baskets were lifted up in groups of three and
carefully put on the hay-covered floor of the first room. What's more, they
were placed next to the walls so that there wasn't any obstruction to a door at
the back of this room. By the time the wagon was emptied, there were three rows
of baskets on either side, give or take a few. Applejack slipped out of her
harness and trotted to the door at the back, followed shortly by Granny Smith.
Natalie was about to set hoof into the barn when a pale blue hoof stopped her,
and she turned to Soarin to find that the hoof in question was his.
"You guys did good. I haven't seen one unicorn self-levitate like that, let
alone three of them at once," Soarin stated, grinning as he lowered his
appendage. "How'd you do that?"
"Self-levitation's easy for us. Heck, we could probably do it blindfolded,"
Anna replied with a shrug. Soarin muttered something about fire, nodded and
spread his wings before flapping them and taking off, though he paused to give
the Fantasians a brief salute that they did not fail to return. With that, he
flew away, leaving the quartet to their own devices yet again. Natalie trotted
to the door at the back and opened it to peer inside, spotting Applejack in a
kitchen beyond the frame.
"Could you please save a barrel of cider for us? Me and the others are gonna
meet up with Shining soon," she stated.
Applejack turned to the unicorn and nodded. "If I have to, I'll stick a piece
of paper on a barrel with words scribbled on it so my sister and brother don't
sneak off with it for themselves," she replied. "The zap apple jam should be
done by the time y'all get back."
Natalie nodded in understanding, and sent the earth mare a serene smile.
"Thanks a bunch," she chirped.
Applejack smiled back. "It was no problem. Thank you for helping me with the
zap apples," she said.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Shining, Zecora, Spike, and the rest of the Fantasians stood at a train station
with a simple overhang arcing over them, in addition to a currently-empty set
of tracks and an equally-deserted ticket booth with a simple pane of glass and
a wooden desk behind that. This station was sitting on the bare outskirts of
Ponyville, and the Captain pointed his hoof at the assembled bunch and counted
to himself.
Using his magic to procure a simple, sterling silver pocket watch with a chain
after he finished counting, he flipped the lid once the thing finished
materializing and checked the time. Noticing both hands on the two of the small
clock face, which itself had its gears exposed and a smaller circle with an
additional hand ticking down the seconds that passed by, his face immediately
hardened.
"How long does it take for them to finish? General Boltwing, your unicorns and
second changeling should've been here by now," he grumbled, a frown on his
muzzle.
Lance sighed and shook his head, taking a moment to let a hoof connect with the
bridge of his muzzle. "Damned if I know; I manage an army, not an apple farm,"
he retorted.
Shining nodded in understanding and made the pocket watch vanish in a flash of
light. "Point taken," he agreed tersely.
Lance made to speak again, and set his hoof down after sliding it along the
bridge of his muzzle when his head became embraced by a brief green aura that
faded as fast as it had come. "They're on their way; just told me they passed a
bakery called Sugarcube Corner after asking for directions," he stated after a
moment.
Shining's visage eased up a bit. "Alright," he said, a small smile spreading on
his face. His ears twitched when he heard hoofsteps, and he whirled around to
find a blue stallion sporting a black mustache and a train conductor's uniform
trotting around the booth before the sound of a door opening hit his ears. In
seconds, the same stallion stood in the booth and positioned himself behind the
pane of glass and wooden desk proper.
"Apologies. Had to get some of the quality apple cider," the stallion stated in
a thick accent, with an innocent grin spreading on his muzzle. Shining chuckled
and rolled his eyes at the pony, who then asked, "So… how many of you are
hitching a ride, and to where?"
"Twelve of us, and to the Crystal Empire… right now, we're four short, and
waiting for some stragglers to show up," Shining answered. The mustachioed
stallion nodded and fumbled behind the pane a bit, before ducking beneath the
desk and vanishing from sight. A minute later, during which time the group
heard the sound of paper being tampered with, he resurfaced with a roll of
tickets in his hooves.
"Ten bits per ticket… except for him, he gets a seven-bit discount," the
stallion said, setting the roll down before pointing a hoof at the Captain for
emphasis when 'seven-bit discount' left his mouth.
"I'll pay the extra seven bits for my ticket," Shining stated, smiling as he
heard more hoofsteps that sounded distant at first. In seconds, though, the
noise picked up, and he could make out a heavy set of hooves in addition to two
more sets of soft-hitting ones. He turned to the entrance of the station and
found the Fantasian unicorns arriving, with the disguised wraith on Anna's
back. "What took you?" he asked once they skid to a halt and panted for breath.
"Applejack had to test us to see if we were good enough for zap apple trees,"
Katie responded curtly.
"That, and we told her to spare us a barrel before we left. We had to dodge the
longest line we've ever laid eyes on after that," Natalie added, gasping
between words and ears flattening against her head as she spoke.
Shining blinked for a moment and sighed. "Pretty hectic, I take it?" he asked,
garnering hasty nods from the four Fantasians he stared at. "I see."
"He was getting pretty impatient," Lance piped up, getting a look from Shining
almost immediately. He looked back at the Captain and added, "What? I have
witnesses."
"Captain got a little mad," Maria said, using a claw to gesture to Shining.
"I can vouch for that," Sarah chimed in with a nod.
"He frowned like he was gonna hit something," Spike added off-handedly.
Shining chuckled in response. "It is true I did get a teensy-weensy bit
agitated," he replied in a mock-joy tone. He trotted over to the ticket booth
and conjured a bag of bits, counting the money within before passing it under a
hole in the glass and to the mustachioed stallion behind it.
Then said stallion counted the money and nodded, and ripped twelve tickets from
the roll he'd fetched earlier before reaching under the desk and producing a
sparkling blue pen. He marked each ticket with a bold snowflake sigil prior to
forking them to the Captain, who then distributed tickets to the otherworlders,
Spike, and Zecora.
"What's this sparkly thing?" Maria asked, using a claw to gesture to the symbol
on her ticket as soon as it was handed to her.
Fenrir looked at the filly and immediately gasped. "Child, you've spent at
least five years in Frostbite, and you still know not what a snowflake is?" he
asked, his voice an octave higher than usual, and disbelief evident in his
eyes.
Alexander rolled his eyes and frowned. "I blame the bearded elder of that
accursed town," he scoffed.
"You've ever seen snow fall?" Shining asked, getting a nod from Maria. "The
individual bits of snow are snowflakes. And a snowflake's the symbol of the
Crystal Empire," he stated.
"So, how long's the train gonna be before it gets here?" Anna asked, shifting
to sit on her haunches. In doing so, she let Katie slide off of her back and
land on her tail. As soon as she finished speaking, a low, echoing whistle
pierced the air from afar. The group looked around before pausing as they
turned southward, and a train with a magenta caboose adorned with yellow hearts
came into view, hooked up to many cars of varying designs and colors that
trailed behind it. "Is that our train?"
"Yep. The Friendship Express is our ride, and it works overtime," Shining
answered with a nod.
The train came closer, and as it crossed a good distance and crystallized into
view a little more, the sound of screeching brakes hit the ears of the waiting
bunch and caused them to flinch as the locomotive slowed down considerably.
When it stopped entirely, the caboose passed the station, letting the cab
behind it land smack-dab next to an open platform as its door opened. Another
stallion with a red scarf and striped hat, this one sporting a yellowish coat
and a brown mane, emerged from the cab and shot a glance at the pony in the
ticket booth.
"All aboard now," the pony in the booth cried out in a loud voice, and
instantly the assembled group trotted up to the yellow-coated stallion.
"Tickets, please," the yellow pony stated. He inspected each ticket as it was
handed to him, and nodded before stepping aside and letting Shining, Zecora,
Spike, and their guests step inside the cab, which they found empty. He waited
until each and every one went inside prior to going into the cab himself and
closing the door afterwards, using a hoof to point at a southernmost door that
lead to another one of the train's many cars.
"A few cabs down, there are beds you can use. I'd advise you sleep while you're
riding the Friendship Express; it'll take a good twelve hours from here to your
destination at least." With that, he trotted to a door at the end of the cab
and opened it, going into the room beyond and shutting the wooden frame behind
himself. As soon as he left, the group opened the southern door and went to the
next cab. Upon doing so, the Fantasians stilled, their eyes widening.
"Have you guys ever rode a train before?" Spike asked, and when he got no
answer, he turned to look at the otherworlders. He immediately noticed that
they were busy eyeballing this cab's interior.
It was quaint; the floor was made of birch wood and the walls were painted
beige, with the addition of simplistic grey-pink flower designs. Some cushioned
seats sporting green translucent dividers with swirls reminiscent of wind
blowing lined either side of the cab. The windows of the cab had their blinds
pulled down, and sported orange trimming along their edges. Lamps with knob
switches on their undersides were bolted between the windows, and a few were
turned on to provide a little bit of lighting.
"Closest to this would be the Valkyrie back home," Natalie answered, trotting
over to a seat and sitting on it.
"The what?" Shining asked, turning to Natalie with a brow quirked.
"A massive tank with drills they left on Fantasia," Spike replied, moving his
claws behind his head as he stretched his arms. "I've seen it personally, and
it's about as big as the balloon of the Lavender Spirit airship. They called
that behemoth the Valkyrie."
"Lavender Spirit? You mean that airship with the fish insignia?" Anna asked, to
which Spike nodded. "Huh. I called it the SS Leviathan after I first saw it…"
Shining contemplated this information for a moment and nodded. He opened his
mouth to speak when Maria climbed on another cushioned seat and started jumping
on in. "It's so soft," Maria remarked, a giddy grin on her face.
"Don't jump too much; you might fall and land on your head, and that would be
bad," Sarah stated in a firm but gentle voice. The filly stopped jumping and
nodded in understanding.
Zecora chuckled at the display and went to claim a seat opposite of Maria's.
"Oh, do let the foal have her fun. After all, some play is better than none,"
she stated.
"Eh, you both have a point," Katie agreed, moving to sit next to Zecora and
behind a divider. "Foals are gonna want to do foalish things, but jumping on a
cushion seems like a terrible idea," she added. "I kinda envy her, to be
honest," she muttered under her breath, and in a way that Zecora couldn't tell
that her mouth had moved.
Armin, who wore his pegasus disguise, idly flapped his wings and shed a few
faux feathers before he took a seat. "This is… comfy," he murmured, prodding at
the cushion with a hoof while a new patch of faux feathers grew on his wings.
"I think this'll be good for a while."
Matt trotted over to Natalie, but rather than take a seat, he sat on the floor
next to her. "Hopefully the bed won't eat me when I hit the hay tonight," he
sighed, frowning.
Shining turned to Matt, blinking rather absentmindedly. "Beds… eat you?" he
asked.
"Only if they're small enough," Matt replied, nostrils briefly flaring as he
snorted. "Trust me, it's nothing short of aggravating."
Fenrir leaned against a wall, his stature slightly hunched to avoid letting the
top of his head collide with the lamp above. "I know the feeling all too well,
sadly," he stated.
"Hey, if a bed's too small, I could make comfy half-cocoons for you both,"
Armin chirped, garnering looks from the diamond dog and half-Clydesdale the
instant he spoke.
"I guess we could try it," Matt stated with a hoof rising to rub his chin.
Fenrir slowly nodded. "If it comes to it, I'd be very willing to attempt to
sleep in a half-chrysalis," he murmured.
"Hopefully, it won't be that bad. Just relax and take it easy for a while,"
Shining piped up, smiling faintly as he too went to claim a seat.
"Truth be told, this is the first time that I have rode on a train," Zecora
began, shifting to lay down on the seat she perched on, "and I appreciate the
cushion I have claimed."
Sarah stretched her good wing for a bit before claiming a seat next to Fenrir.
"I have a feeling…" she murmured.
"About what?" Fenrir asked, turning to hippogryph mare with his ears perked.
"I can't put my claw on it; I'm just feeling that… something's off," she
replied, turning to a window and raising a talon to grip at the bottom of the
blind. She pulled once and let go, watching as it rolled itself up on its own
and revealed to her a hillside that was stationary. She made to speak further,
but a shrill and low whistle cut her off before the cab jerked slightly and the
thundering stampede of metallic wheels filled the air. In seconds, the hillside
eased to one side and out of the limited view the window had offered.
"I was wondering what took them this long to start the train," Spike remarked
as, slowly, the locomotive turned its wheels and went onward.
"Maybe they just stalled a bit," Matt sighed with a shrug. "I'm not an
engineer. How should I know why the train delayed?"
"Perhaps there were other passengers who needed to get off," Alexander pointed
out, his tail swishing as he spoke.
***** Chapter XXIV- Irate Instigation *****
Sarah kept her gaze to the expansive plains and mighty forests that she saw
through the window, deciding to not engage in any conversation that her fellow
Fantasians were having as the Friendship Express went on its set path.
Eventually, though, somepony noticed her silence and went up to her. The
hippogryph heard a mare clearing her throat, and turned from the window to find
Anna next to her, looking back with a concerned look on her face.
"What's wrong?" Anna asked in a low tone, frowning.
"Nothing. Just watching the hills roll by," Sarah replied with a shrug. "The
sky in Mythos is so clear…"
"That's because the Cloudsdale pegasi schedule the weather around here, for
every single town in Equestria," Shining piped up from his seat, garnering
looks from the sisters as he spoke. "Did you guys see the mass of rainbow
clouds?" At their nod, he stated simply, "That would be Cloudsdale." When Anna
and Sarah's jaws dropped open, he quirked a brow and asked, "I take it you
haven't seen the early morning cloud-kicking?" The two shook their heads, and
the Captain sighed. "It's different for Fantasia, isn't it?"
"Ectoplasms run rampant," Lance answered when the twins failed to do so,
garnering Shining's attention in the process. "And they hate pegasus ponies. I
had to send a few of my gryphons after Rainbow Dash when she decided to scoop
up some of her friends and drag them to the sky at fast speeds. You can ask her
about it when we get back to Ponyville."
"I've seen it happen. I'm a witness," Spike added, raising a claw and nodding
in affirmation.
Shining nodded, and his horn glowed for a moment. Materializing in a flash of
magenta light, Sarah's eyes grew to the size of saucers as she recognized thin
strings attached to a lightweight metal frame that briefly shimmered with green
mana, which highlighted odd symbols carved into the steel.
"I believe this belongs to you," he said, turning to the hippogryph and
cautiously handing her the harp in his magic. Sarah took it in her claws,
incoherently sputtering for a few seconds. "The high mages figured out what was
wrong with it, and tweaked its innate magic a bit. Go ahead, try to play it."
Fenrir and Maria cried out in unison, faces contorting to display wide-eyed
horror when Sarah looked at the instrument and hesitantly rose a claw to one of
its strings. They made to protest, but fell silent as a string was tenderly
plucked, but did not radiate mana of any sort. The lyrist blinked and
experimentally plucked a few more strings, yet the only thing that happened was
a series of brief and serene twangs filling the air.
Anna looked at her sister's cutie mark, which still lacked the harp, and
watched it as her sister started playing her instrument more. A sweet tune that
did not devolve into a horrid cacophony filled the air as Sarah went on, and it
relaxed everyone in the cab as she kept picking at the strings tenderly. The
cutie mark of wind and halberd failed to change, even as the tune ended minutes
later. The archer jerked her head to Shining and spoke up, "What was wrong with
the harp?"
"It had a few curses—mainly forbidden cutie mark alteration and sound
distortion, to name a few. One of my soldiers told me about your sister's cutie
mark, and I sent word to the high mages, and they were able to get rid of the
various hexes and add new ones," Shining answered, a pleased grin on his face.
"Cutie mark alteration?" Anna repeated, both brows shooting up.
"Sound distortion?" Katie inquired, ears raising to stand on their ends.
Shining nodded once. "Yes. Long story short, if a pony plays it good, the
curses respond negatively, and vice-versa—so long as their mark had been
altered by the main hex itself first. I do believe we've all been through such
a song of the curse?" he stated, the remark causing Fenrir and Maria to pale a
little. "However, since the main curse has been removed, and new enchantments
put in place of the old ones, I do believe Sarah could will the harp to make
such a song whenever she wanted—bear in mind that I said believe."
"So, you have a hypothesis, and a small hooffull of evidence… lemme guess, you
didn't test it out yet?" Lance murmured, putting a hoof to his chin and rubbing
it thoughtfully. Shining turned to him and nodded again, and the general nodded
back in understanding. "Let's not make that hypothesis into theory right yet.
Getting booted off this train is something I don't want to happen until we
arrive at the station."
"A fair point," Shining agreed, still grinning. "And besides, I do believe I
have several spare pairs of earmuffs at the Empire. We're going to need those
before we test out the harp again." At this, Fenrir and Maria gave dual sighs
of relief and let their heads drop for a moment. They looked up at the door as
the yellow-coated stallion with the scarf and hat barged in.
"Is everypony alright? I heard screaming," the stallion stated, frowning as
worry flickered in his eyes.
Shining turned to the new arrival. "It's alright," he said in a serene tone.
When the scarf-wearing stallion's face did not shift in any way, he added, "No,
seriously, it's fine."
"You sure about that?" the yellow pony asked, worry still flashing in his gold
irises.
"Yes. I mistakenly hit my head on the lamp above me," Fenrir answered, using a
paw to gesture to said lamp for emphasis.
"And I fell off the seat and stubbed my talon," Maria added in an overly
innocent tone, raising a claw and putting a knuckle to her mouth.
"Well… alright then," the yellow stallion sighed. With that, he turned and left
the room, closing the door behind himself on his way out.
"Let's put this away for now…" Anna murmured, her horn glowing. In a flash of
emerald light, Sarah's harp vanished, despite the instrument still being in her
talons up until then. Her sister responded by sending the archer a very sour
look that boasted a pronounced frown and eyes narrowed to jade slits.
Fenrir reached over with a paw and grasped the hippogryph by her shoulder,
being mindful of her broken wing. When Sarah turned to him, her glare eased up.
"Just forego the harp for now," he said calmly and simply. He smiled when she
nodded, and relinquished his hold on her shoulder, grin widening as she turned
to the window with a blush painting her cheeks.
Anna turned to the diamond dog and immediately noted his smile, and she could
not resist opening her mouth to speak about it, "You're grinning madly. You got
something going on with my sister?" At this, everyone else in the cab turned to
the sod, and he began blubbering in wide-eyed surprise. Fenrir's smile fell, a
blush painted his cheeks, and he turned away whilst inaudibly grumbling to
himself. "What's that? Speak up, I can't hear you," she persisted, a smile
cropping up on her muzzle when he failed to comply.
"Natz, do you have a spare bag of popcorn on you?" Matt asked, turning to
Natalie as he spoke.
Natalie donned a wry grin and slowly nodded, her horn glowing. "I brought
several," she replied in a low voice.
"Do you and Sarah touch each other under the tails?" Maria asked, again in an
innocent tone. Fenrir's pupils shrank, his eyes widened to the size of saucers,
and all that left his mouth was a choking sound in response.
"N-no!" Sarah exclaimed, her voice an octave higher than usual. She wasted no
time turning to the filly with more or less the same look on her face, except
her cheeks were much redder than those of Fenrir's. "W-what makes y-you think
that?!"
"The fact that you're blushing and stumbling over your own words are quite
telling," Alexander remarked, garnering a squawk of alarm from Sarah, who made
to hastily bury her face in her talons.
"I don't need my horn to see the crimson on your cheeks. Golly, your faces are
red as ground cherries! You two are giving me a run for my bits here!" Katie
piped up, a giggle escaping her mouth as she waved a hoof at her mane for
emphasis.
"That's pretty bad," Spike remarked off-handedly, shaking his head as Fenrir
hunched over with his red snout pointing to the floor and lowly growled in
annoyance.
"I think it would be best to leave those two alone for a while," Armin stated
in a snide voice, turning to Lance as he started chuckling.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The sun had fully set after a few hours, and still the Friendship Express
churned on in the moonlit gloom. Everyone stowed themselves away in a few
darkened cabs laden with bunk beds, with Shining, Lance, Armin, and Alexander
falling asleep as soon as they got on the mattresses. Others, like Matt,
Natalie, and Anna, stayed awake for a bit prior to nodding off. Spike, Katie,
and Maria all shared a bed, and they jabbered so much they went from one topic
to the next in the span of seconds. Zecora watched the three prattle on, and
occasionally chimed in with her two bits before they fell asleep as well.
In the next cab over, all by themselves, Fenrir and Sarah sat in front of an
empty bed, silent as stones. Their ears were swiveling seemingly at random,
catching even the faintest of noises until all they heard was the train wheels
turning and the occasional bump that accompanied it. The hippogryph sighed
deeply and rose a claw to rub her eyes with, shoulders sagging for a moment as
the diamond dog rested his paw on her withers.
"Seriously, Maria had no basis to make her accusation…" Sarah grumbled, still
rubbing her eyes.
"That wasn't so much an 'accusation' as it was an embarrassing inquiry that
should not have come from the mouth of a foal," Fenrir snarled, nostrils
briefly flaring as he huffed.
"And besides, I don't even fornicate with anybody," Sarah stated, removing her
claw from her face before crossing her forelimbs together. At this, Fenrir
turned to her with a brow quirked.
"Not to be crass on my behalf, nor coming across as one with ill intent, but I
feel the need to question your statement. Are you a virgin?" Fenrir inquired,
garnering a nod from the hippogryph.
"Can't even stand the sight of someone's private parts, let alone if they're
swinging in the open," Sarah replied, shuddering for a moment. "Unless it's in
the event where a rapist gets his or her shit harmed in any way, shape, or
form."
Fenrir nodded in understanding. "A chaste mare... " he mumbled, deliberately
closing his mouth and keeping his remark unfinished when he saw Sarah turn to
look at him from the corner of his eye.
"Let's just share a bed tonight. We're not doing anything else—we need our
rest, and don't need to confirm Maria's suspicions in the process," Sarah
scoffed, and with that, she turned around and climbed into the bed first.
Fenrir followed her, though only after she had gotten comfortable, and made
sure his back faced outward. A minute after they had settled, the sound of
trotting hooves hit their ears, and shortly after that many Mythonian ponies
they did not know came in from the south end of the cab and took the other
beds.
"What's a diamond dog doing here?" a stallion asked a mare as he claimed the
top bunk directly above said diamond dog he spoke of.
Fenrir groaned and lifted a paw up, knocking on the bottom of the top bunk. He
craned his neck and met with the gaze of the stallion who questioned his
presence after he went to poke his head down. "I am a vagabond, much like you
are at this current time of day. Please do not ask why I am present on this
locomotive," he said in a low whisper. The stallion nodded and retracted his
head to his bunk, and the diamond dog sighed before turning his head back to
Sarah.
"A filthy mutt has no business travelling on Equestria's railways, let alone on
her roads," a mare with a haughty-sounding voice scoffed as she trotted past
Fenrir. "I'm impressed he can speak normally."
Fenrir let off a quiet growl, but did not move from his bed or say anything in
protest. All he did was ball his paw into a firm fist, though he relaxed when
Sarah patted his shoulder with a claw in support. He smiled at the hippogryph,
before immediately frowning when somepony else decided to pipe up, "Does he
have a bird with him? I see a claw on his shoulder!"
Sarah sat up and scoffed, "I'm a hippogryph." With that, she laid back down and
sighed, before scowling as the arrogant-sounding mare decided to stick in two
more of her bits.
"Equestria has no conceivable use for half-eagle mongrels. Why, has anypony
else heard about what happened to Chanson Cheval?" the conceited-sounding mare
asked, and instantly the cab erupted into hushed murmurs between ponies that
were loud enough to mute out Sarah's snarl of contemptment.
"Yeah. Heard he lifted a foreign hippogryph's tail in front of the Captain of
Their Majesties' Royal Guard," a stallion piped up. "Gave her a good bashing,
too."
"What got into that sorry stallion? What drove him to try and get his dick wet
with a half-gryphon?" another asked.
"Quarter-gryphon," Sarah murmured to herself, her claws balling up.
"I do not believe he was trying to fornicate with such a mongrel. Don't be
ridiculous—who'd even attempt to perform coitus in public, especially with that
misguided Shining Armor a few paces away?" the vain mare hissed in a dismissive
tone. "That fool should've sent that gryph to the dungeons, instead of
Chanson."
Sarah sat up again, and this time made to climb past Fenrir to get off the bed.
"Oh yeah, well that gryph is currently in the same cab with the rest of you!"
she exclaimed, the red that was cropping up on her face concealed by the
darkness.
She immediately heard a sharp "harrumph!" as a mare climbed out of a bed on the
other end of the cab and lit up a horn with a golden light, revealing a pink
body and orange mane both cleaned and held up with fancy-looking sticks. This
mare sported metal shoes and an expensive evening gown, one hewn of
multicolored silk, that wrapped tightly around her forelegs and cascaded down
her back legs in a manner that obscured her cutie mark.
"And what business do you have, exactly?" the mare in the gown asked in the
same haughty tone, eyes of silver narrowing to glare coldly at Sarah.
"Currently? I'm gonna tell you to your face up front," Sarah replied in an
equally cold voice, and she marched over to the mare until their muzzles were
inches apart. "Shut the fuck up, you self-centered, ignorant, arrogant, holier-
than-thou, making-an-ass-of-yourself cockface." The other ponies in the cab
shared a collective gasp of surprise and alarm that the snobbish mare echoed as
she reeled and took a few paces back in shock.
Fenrir turned over, climbed out of the bed and rushed to the mares before
stepping between them when they took a step towards the other. "Ladies, please
return to your bunks. I do not wish for you to fight any further," he said.
Sarah sighed and trotted over to her bed, climbing in without even grumbling to
herself. The diamond dog didn't join the gryph until the gown-wearing mare
gathered herself and begrudgingly went back to her bed.
"Celestia-damned mongrels, why don't you canter off back to your dirt hole? You
and any intellectually-inferior children you might produce would be much better
off tilling fields than trying to sound sophisticated and trample on roads you
have no business being on," the prissy mare scoffed one last time.
This caused Sarah to fly into a rage, and she jumped out of bed faster than
Fenrir could grab her. The gryph ran halfway to the mare before the diamond dog
got up, caught up with her, snatched her by the tail, and pulled her sharply
back.
He did this all the while Sarah managed to shriek out, "Prepare thy ass,
haughty cunt, for a noble and honor-bound bitchslapping!" Fenrir wrapped an arm
around the hippogryph's midsection and hoisted her off of her claws and hooves,
keeping hold of her as she wildly thrashed about in an attempt to break free
and deliver a smackdown to somepony.
The door on the northernmost end of the cab burst open, and Shining Armor
trotted inside. "I heard the whole thing. Cease with the hostilities,
immediately!" he barked, his outburst causing the vain mare to turn to him and
Sarah to cease her struggling and screaming. He turned to the gown-wearing
unicorn and added, "You're speaking ill of easily-provoked foreign diplomats
who came all the way from Fantasia. I would advise you do not speak to them,
especially since you have nothing nice to say."
"Fantasian diplomats?" the conceited pony asked, quirking a brow as a bemused
grin crossed her muzzle. "They don't even look the part."
"That is true in that they don't look like much, but that hardly matters. It's
best for you and everypony else in this cab to leave them be," Shining warned,
eyes shifting to the ponies who wisely stayed in their beds. He then turned to
Sarah and added, "And you, calm down. Let me take care of this." Sarah nodded
to him and took a few deep breaths, though Fenrir was reluctant to put her
down. The two watched intently as the prissy mare approached the Captain, her
movements garnering his attention.
"You are but a fool, Shining Armor," the gown-wearing unicorn started, her
smile morphing into a wicked grin. "My cousin Chanson would be a much better
Captain of the Guard than you. Why, I think he could whip your troops into
shape at velocities and volumes you could only dream of."
Shining narrowed his eyes. "All I saw was a fool who broke several laws while
he performed his little stunts. I dare say, it seems foolishness runs in
his—and by extension, your—family," he replied coldly.
The mare stopped her advance, eyes widening and a foreleg rising as a startled
gasp left her mouth. "F-foolish, you say?" she inquired, her voice faltering.
"S-surely, you jest."
"I do not jest," Shining stated, his gaze level. "You'd rather believe your
cousin is perfect in every way, instead of accepting that the things he has
done were wrong."
"Why, I never!" the mare hissed, stomping her raised hoof onto the floor with
the might of a pouting child. "Chanson never did anything wrong! It was that
blasted hippogryph!"
"Lies, lies, and more lies," Shining retorted, shaking his head as he spoke.
"You seem dead set on spreading misinformation wherever you trot. Honestly, I
pity anypony who fell into whatever pitfalls you've succumbed to."
The mare's left eye began twitching. "Lies, me? I believe it is you ceaselessly
spouting out and simultaneously espousing those lies," she stated in a firm,
cold voice. She begun advancing again, only stopping when the Captain spoke.
"You poor, deluded soul," Shining said simply. This remark caused the mare to
let out a wordless, bestial snarl, and she wasted not one second in closing the
distance to him. Everypony gasped as her hoof shot out and connected solidly
with his left eye, causing him to stagger into the cab behind him from surprise
while leaving a sizeable horseshoe-shaped mark in the process. She made to
lunge again, but an aura of magenta magic halted her before she could move.
"Ma'am, I'm afraid I'll have to put you under arrest for assaulting a royal
guard and the Emperor of the Crystal Empire. You will be detained at the
Crystal Empire upon arrival," Shining growled, summoning a magic inhibitor and
capping the mare's horn with it. At first, the vain pony didn't move, instead
staring at him in wide-eyed shock—almost as if she could not comprehend even
the slightest thing in what was going on.
Then her eyelids slanted and she started stomping her hooves, sucking in deep
breaths before making rather unconvincing whines of protest. "I didn't do
anything wrong! It's that dumb hippogryph's fault!" she cried out, her attempt
at crocodile tears making Fenrir and Sarah just roll their eyes in unison.
"Um, yes you did. You did a big no-no," a stallion on a bunk bed piped up,
causing the pompous mare to whine more.
"And you are behaving rather childishly on top of that," Fenrir added, putting
Sarah down before raising a paw and letting it connect with his face.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The following morning, the group had been dropped off at a station that stood
in a grassy plain, and in the distance loomed some sort of tall, tealish
structure that managed to reflect a great deal of sunlight. A road of crystal
had been set into the dirt and it started just shy of the station, marked by
pairs of thin crystal columns of varying colors. Shining still had the detained
mare whose head hung low, as well as a black eye that had formed from where she
managed to sock him.
Lance eyed the mare in the gown and asked, "Lemme guess, she did something
stupid?"
"Straight-up gave me this," Shining answered, using a hoof to gesture to his
new bruise. "I'll have her taken to the Empire's dungeons, after I find some
guards to escort her."
Matt nodded. He turned to the road and pointed to it. "And that will lead us to
the Empire?" he questioned.
"You'd be right on the money," Shining replied, and he trotted to it after
hefting the arrested mare in his magic, dragging her with him. The Fantasians
and Zecora followed him, with Spike hitching a ride on Lance's back. A cool
breeze wafted by as the bunch started following the sparkling road.
"Chanson didn't do anything wrong…" the detained mare mumbled.
"The day he stops being an assclown is the same day I lose my virginity while I
go into heat," Sarah snapped, her remark causing Lance to shudder and pause for
a moment.
"What's wrong?" Spike asked, tilting his head.
"It's just… the way she said that… it disturbs me. Greatly," Lance replied in
an uneasy voice as he began trotting again. "I-I'd explain it to you better,
but you're a kid, Spike. It's… let's not speak of this again."
"Alright…" Spike grumbled, slowly nodding. With that, the group went on without
further incident and found themselves passing under a magenta crystal gate
roughly thirty minutes later. Still the road continued to stretch, and in place
of the crystal posts thereafter, shrubs and a few small trees sprouted. They
continued on, and another fifteen minutes passed before they found a street of
the Empire.
The street was also hewn of crystal, and so were the various buildings on
either side of it, for that matter. Some were simple houses that gleamed in
many colors, while others were shops boasting elegant signs and the occasional
crystal statue. The street was fairly linear, giving the Fantasians and Zecora
a decent view of the tealish building.
A few ponies were out and about, tending to stands and lawns and such, and all
of them had glittering coats and manes that appeared to reflect and refract the
very sunlight at the same time. Even their eyes and cutie marks glistened in
this manner, and most had small grins on their faces. Some noticed Shining's
presence and ran up to him before bowing their heads. "You may rise," Shining
stated, and the ponies that bowed stood up straight. He gave the group a level
look before asking, "Could you move, please? I need to get to the palace, and
so do my guests."
"Yes," one of the ponies said, a stallion with a yellow coat and greenish mane.
"Um, why're you holding that mare in your magic? And what's with the black
eye?" he asked.
"She punched me in the face last night, and will be detained shortly," Shining
replied with a sigh. The assembled crystal ponies nodded, and with that they
cleared a path. They eyed the Fantasians as Shining trotted on down the road
with them following him.
"That one has eyes… eyes as red as Sombra's," one golden-coated mare whispered
fearfully to another, using a shaking hoof to gesture to Lance for emphasis.
"What's the Great and Honorable Spike, the Brave and Glorious doing on his
back?" another mare with a blue coat asked without whispering, shuddering for a
moment.
Spike heard the question and answered the second crystal mare, "He's just one
of the visiting Fantasians. His eyes are red, sure, but he's a good pony. Trust
me."
The whispering mares sighed in relief and nodded. They waved at Spike, who
casually waved back at them with a friendly smile, and the group went on to the
tealish building. "What did they call you?" Lance asked, craning his neck to
look at the drake on his back as he trotted with the others.
"Oh, Great and Honorable and Brave and Glorious," Spike replied with a shrug.
"Why do they call you that?" Lance continued, a brow quirking up.
"Long story. Short of it is, I helped save the Crystal Empire," Spike answered
with a grin. Lance sighed and turned his head to face forward, and noticed he
had fallen a little bit behind the others as he chatted with Spike. He rushed
up to meet them before slowing his pace.
As the group trotted onward, the crystal ponies took increasing notice of their
visitors and emperor. They either said polite hellos that usually went to
Shining or Spike, or make concerned remarks about Lance's eyes that were simply
ignored. Almost none of them heeded the levitating gown-wearing mare, and when
a few did and asked about her, they were told she was under arrest.
It took less than ten minutes to reach the teal structure, and the Fantasians
gawked as they found that much of it stood on four rather slender but sturdy
legs forming four brilliant arcs and a flat ceiling. Underneath this overhang,
smack-dab in the middle jutted twin teal spikes, with one going up and the
other going down. Between them, smoothly floating by itself and spinning slowly
was a heart hewn of this same crystal, and for a moment it pulsated with pure
mana. "Holy…" Anna remarked, breathing in deeply.
Shining turned to the Fantasians and noticed them gawking. "Like what you see?"
he asked, garnering hesitant nods and wide-eyed looks from his visitors. He
heard hooves coming from behind, followed by a stallion clearing his throat,
and whirled around to find himself face-to-face with a crystal unicorn sporting
purple and silver armor that gleamed like his body.
"Emperor Armor, may I ask why you have a mare floating in the air?" the armored
crystal pony asked in a flat voice.
Shining gestured to his black eye and answered, "She did this to me last night,
and I detained her for assault. Take her to the dungeons, at once." The armored
crystal pony nodded as his horn lit up, and he grasped the mare in his magic as
the Captain relinquished his hold on her.
"Chanson didn't do anything wrong, you mongrels…" the mare growled as the guard
escorted her away. Just as the guard made it to one of the massive legs of the
structure, she spoke again, this time shouting, "Chanson didn't do anything
wrong, you filthy, deluded mongrels!" The guard went into the leg, dragging her
with him, and the Fantasians simply blinked at the anomaly.
Anna turned to the nearest leg and trotted to it, quickly finding a winding
staircase that went up and down. "Oooooh… I see," she murmured before galloping
back to the others. "The legs have stairs inside them." The other Fantasians
turned to her and gawked, and she motioned for them with a hoof to follow her.
Spike hopped of Lance's back before they went to the anomaly after Anna rushed
back to it.
"Stairs? Going up and down?" Natalie asked, looking at the flight Anna lead her
and the others to. "That's… odd. This must be pretty big to require multiple
floors."
"That's the case with the palace. Think of it like Canterlot's castle, except
going into the ground and sky at the same time," Shining remarked as he rushed
up to the group who eyed the flight of stairs like it was their first. They
turned to him and donned calm looks before nodding in understanding. "Lemme
show you around, and then we can hit the library," he added, trotting over to
the heart that floated and spun languidly between the crystal spikes. The
others followed him, vexed gazes falling onto the heart itself.
When they came near it, the heart began glowing a faint yellow for a moment,
and then it turned a dull, dark red before reverting back to its teal hue.
"What the…" Shining murmured, leaning in close to the heart, but not close
enough for his muzzle to touch it. The colors shifted again, to yellow, then
red, and teal. "The Crystal Heart hasn't done this before…" He leaned back and
shrugged to himself before turning and addressing his guests, "Whatever you
guys do, do not touch this."
"Is it fragile?" Lance asked, tilting his head.
"No. You could disrupt its innate mana, and it's acting a little strange as
is," Shining answered, turning back to the Heart as it cycled through three
colors again.
"Disruption of innate mana is certainly strange. You mean to tell us this is
the first time you've seen the Heart do such a change?" Zecora asked, using a
hoof to gesture to the Heart as a frown framed itself on her muzzle.
"That is very odd… maybe we should ask Cadence about it when we get the
chance," Spike suggested with a shrug.
Shining nodded, also frowning. "I guess I'll show you to the library first…
maybe it has a book about this phenomenon. While you guys are in the library,
I'll fetch Cadence," he murmured. With that, he trotted over to one of the
sturdy legs and descended its flight of stairs, with the Fantasians, Spike, and
Zecora following suit. They trotted in single file, and reached the end of the
flight a minute later.
As soon as they stopped, the Fantasiasns paled as a large library made of
crystal spanned out for several yards before them, on four separate floors that
were kept apart by crystal panes and many more staircases going between them. A
glass pane had been placed overhead, letting the sun's light shine upon the
scene.
"By Godcat's teats… this is huge!" Matt cried, irises shrinking at the sight.
"This'll take days, if not weeks, to go through!"
"I don't even know how much of this is organized, sadly," Shining sighed,
shaking his head. He blinked when he saw a blur of pink with bits of purple and
yellow whiz past two shelves on a lower floor.
"Oh, where is it, where is it, where is it?" a mare's voice repeated over and
over as the blur came and went, the tone erring on the panicked side. "Amethyst
Maresbury said it was in this row!"
"It seems we have another pony scouring the shelves," Shining noted. "And I
think I know who it is."
"Cadence?" Spike guessed, garnering a nod from Shining.
"Let's follow her," Shining replied, wasting no time in galloping to the
nearest flight of stairs that lead further down.
***** Chapter XXV- All That Glitters... *****
Shining galloped between a set of bookshelves, with Zecora, Spike, and the
Fantasians on his heels. In their sights, a pink-purple-yellow blur rounded a
bend, and they did likewise. "Cadence, I need to talk to you!" Shining cried
out, hoping that his utterance could stop the blur. The rapidly moving form
halted with a startled shriek and slowed down with legs flailing as it tried to
stop itself from crashing into a bookshelf, revealing a pink alicorn mare with
wide eyes that turned to the Captain.
"Shiny!" Cadence exclaimed as her hooves managed to touch two shelves and halt
her in her tracks, though her wings still flapped madly to keep her aloft. She
detached herself from the bookshelf and flew down to meet up with the group,
and as soon as she did she noticed the presence of the visitors Shining brought
with him. "Um…"
"I promised to take them here. Twily found something in her library—Starswirl
supposedly made a spell that she learned and went to Fantasia and wrote a book
about it," Shining said in a single breath. "And then I came here and saw the
Crystal Heart acting strange—"
"The mana changes color when it shouldn't? Yeah, it's happened ever since I
came back to the Empire after that disastrous parliamentary meeting," Cadence
cut him off, frowning. "I've been flying up and down this floor over and over
again, and the librarian here said there was something about the Crystal Heart
in these shelves." A few seconds passed and she murmured, "Did… you say
something about Starswirl?"
Shining nodded, and opened his mouth to speak again, only to close it when Matt
beat him to it, "And we'd like to find out more about this Starswirl pony."
Cadence nodded and sighed, her wings ruffling as she noticed the purplish-blue
blemish that encompassed Shining's eye. "Um, darling, what happened?" she
asked, her tone taking on a worried note.
"A mare punched me on the train last night, so I did the only thing I could:
take her with me to the Empire, find the nearest guard, and have him take her
to the dungeons on assault charges," Shining replied, taking a moment to shoot
a brief glance at Sarah. The hippogryph donned an uneasy smile and trembled for
a moment before he turned back to the alicorn and added, "And if I hadn't done
anything, at least one of the Fantasians gladly would've."
"So, you took the brunt of an attack… to keep our guests from going out of
line?" Cadence asked, a brow quirking up. When Shining nodded, she sighed and
sent him a soft smile.
"And one of the other Fantasians kept the one who got angry from going off her
handle," Shining stated, turning to shoot a brief glance at Fenrir.
"I merely ensured that things would not needlessly escalate," Fenrir chirped
with a grin on his face. Shining chuckled and turned back to Cadence.
"Well, they do seem to be reasonably in check. Though at the very least, next
time you do something like taking another black eye, please send me a letter
detailing the how and why," Cadence sighed, her wings twitching for a moment
before stilling when Shining nodded again.
"I might not necessarily make the letter on the same day, though," Shining
chirped. "Things might escalate beyond my control, leaving little time to even
write out the first two words."
"Still, at least try. You know how much I worry when you're on the line of
duty," Cadence sighed, taking a moment to wrap her forelegs around Shining's
neck and kiss him on the lips.
They broke their loving embrace with startled cries and beet-red faces seconds
later, when Maria decided to pipe up, "Do you two play under each other's
tails?"
Shining turned to the filly, and made to say something in an attempt to defend
himself when Anna rose a hoof with a sigh. "I'll talk to her about that later
tonight," she said in a miffed tone, shooting Maria a narrow-eyed look of
disapproval. The filly met her gaze and shuddered with a small whimper, before
Anna broke eye contact to look at Cadence. "She doesn't know any better. Did
the exact same thing to my sister yesterday," she added.
Sarah crossed her forelimbs together and grumbled under her breath, "You
started it…"
Cadence nervously chuckled, eyelids slanting as she laughed. "I-I see," she
murmured with a shaky nod of her head. She took a deep breath and her face
hardened. "Shining, I think we should get Amethyst Maresbury over here."
Shining nodded, his face also hardening. "Sounds like a plan," he agreed.
"Who's Amethyst Maresbury?" Anna asked, garnering looks from the Captain and
the alicorn.
"The librarian who manages this crystalline behemoth of a book collection,"
Shining answered, his visage easing up and a smile cropping on his face.
Lance took a cursory look around him before turning to the Captain and stating
in a very blunt tone, "I don't know how the hell this Amethyst pony can even
manage this. If they're a unicorn or pegasus, fine, I can understand that."
"Amethyst is an earth pony," Cadence stated, donning a nervous grin once more.
Her remark only caused Lance to sit on his haunches, bring his front hooves to
his head, and groan in annoyance. He stopped making noise when she added, "And
there are a lot of volunteer crystal ponies who help her out."
"So, um… should we let her get the books, or what?" Natalie piped up, her
inquiry causing Cadence and Shining to exchange glances again.
Cadence sighed and turned to look at Natalie before answering, "I've spent the
last few hours trying to find books on the Crystal Heart. Maybe we should see
Amethyst and have her and her volunteers look, since I have yet to find
anything."
"Oh, Cady, I've been meaning to ask you something," Shining interjected, once
more garnering a look from Cadence.
"Hrrrmyes?" Cadence half-hummed, a brow quirked.
Shining's shoulders slumped a bit as he murmured, "Have you seen any wraiths
around here? I've ran into two that… er, needed to be sent on their way before
I came here."
Cadence shook her head. "No, but I did ask the citizens to let me know if
anything was off," she replied.
Shining's shoulders slumped further, and his head dropped. "I see," he mumbled
under his breath before straightening his posture and looking Cadence square in
the eye. A smile splayed his lips as he added, "I see you were three trots
ahead of me."
Cadence smiled back, and giggled. "That I am," she chirped. The two shared
another kiss, this one swift and chaste, and turned to Maria once they broke
it. The filly opened her mouth to comment, but Anna came over and tapped at her
withers with a hoof, causing Maria to shut her mouth and stiffen. The alicorn
turned back to the Captain and leaned towards him to whisper in his ear, "Um,
how do they discipline the foal, exactly?"
"They just talk to her firmly," Shining whispered back with a shrug. "At least,
that's what Sergeant Riverwater told me back in Canterlot." He turned to his
guests, all of whom looked at him and Cadence expectedly, and he blinked before
uttering, "Well…"
"Emperor Armor!" a masculine voice called from above, accompanied by the faint
sound of galloping hooves. Shining quirked a brow as the sound came closer for
one moment before softening the next.
"Down here," Shining called back, looking up at the crystal overhang and
spotting a very soft shadow overhead. "I'm under you." His ears twitched as the
galloping hooves faded for a second, before a unicorn guardspony with a yellow
coat tumbled down the stairs he barely saw at the end of a long row. The guard
got up to his hooves, shook his head, and looked around dazedly before Shining
called out once more, "Take a right, and keep going."
The guard obeyed, breaking out into a full gallop. He crossed the distance in
minutes, but skid and lowered his head when he saw too late that the Fantasians
obstructed him. He felt his horn touch hair, then spread something fleshy ever
so slightly—before an alarmed screech hit his ears full force and everyone
backpedaled from the source in response.
He felt the object release his horn as whatever it had been attached to jumped
into the air, and he looked up to find Natalie held aloft by her own magic, her
face beet-red and her front hooves clutching a spot between her rear legs. He
also noticed that her eyes were wide and her mane and tail stood straight on
end, making her look a little like a frightened cat.
"I felt something poke me in the hooch!" Natalie wailed, her voice several
octaves higher than it normally was, while her magic still had her suspended in
the air.
Shining rose a hoof and let it connect with his face. "What's your name and
rank, soldier?" he groaned.
The guard shivered for a moment, noticing Matt trotting towards him for a few
seconds—before another screech hit everyone's ears and caused him to abruptly
halt. Seconds after that, Natalie came crashing on top of the half-Clydesdale,
sending both of them sprawling to the floor.
"Give me your name and rank, soldier," Shining hissed, his hoof inching its way
down the bridge of his muzzle.
"U-uh… Private Z-Zircon, sir," the guard replied in a shaky voice, his eyes
widening when Shining opened his mouth again.
"Private Zircon, please for the love of all things holy, watch where that horn
of yours goes!" Shining growled, lifting his hoof for a moment before sending
it to the floor hard enough the resulting stomp briefly echoed. "I'm afraid
I'll have to put you on another course of disciplinary action because you just
sexually assaulted one of our Fantasian guests!"
Zircon's legs shook as Matt slowly hauled himself to his hooves, using magic to
carefully lift Natalie up to rest her on his backside. He turned to look at the
mare, who mumbled about horns and places horns shouldn't really go, her face
still beet-red and her eyes still wide as saucers.
Then Maria spoke up again, her remark making the color drain from Zircon's
face, "Are unicorn horns up the special place bad?"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The group stood with the Crystal Heart in eyesight, though Shining Armor wasn't
present with them. The only one who didn't stand was Natalie, who opted to sit
on a cushion with an ice pack on top of said cushion. Matt gave her worried
looks every couple of minutes, but she returned the expressions with faltering
smiles that didn't convince him that she was alright.
The Heart continued to twirl slowly, changing colors as it did since the bunch
first arrived. Red, yellow, teal. Red, yellow, teal. After a few cycles,
however, Alexander cawed when the Heart changed to a very bright green instead
of teal. He rose a talon and scratched his temples with it as, once more, the
cycle began anew—with green encompassing the Heart before the teal did.
"That's very odd," Spike noted, rubbing his chin with a claw as he gave the
Heart a vexed look.
"It's strange," Cadence agreed with a nod. She turned to Lance and sighed when
she noticed his gaze was fixed in the Heart's direction.
"Do you know anything about what could've made it start changing colors?" Anna
asked, shooting a worried frown at the alicorn.
Again, Cadence shook her head. "I haven't the slightest clue. I only became
Empress of the Crystal Empire a year and a half ago," she replied.
"That's plenty of time to have learned about the damned thing," Lance scoffed,
eyes averting to Cadence as he spoke.
"The Heart's ancient—thousands of years old. You're implying that I needed to
cram any extensive studies on it into a single night, which even I couldn't
physically do when I have had an Empire to lead on top of that," Cadence
retorted, frowning. "And that library is ginormous! You may as well have asked
me to find books on Fantasia while I was at it!"
Lance flinched before his shoulders slumped, and he returned to staring at the
Crystal Heart. "Touché," he replied tersely.
"Are you okay?" Maria asked, rearing up on her hooves while raising her talons.
She gripped Natalie's front leg with her claws and garnered nothing more than a
nod and a faltering grin.
"Just let her be for now," Sarah sighed, trotting over to the filly before
using her claws to pull her away from Natalie. "She's probably getting over the
whole horn-up-hooch thing still."
Natalie let off an uneven, mirthless laugh that had Matt looking at her as if
she was starting to lose her mind. He put a hoof on her withers and patted her
gently as she continued to chuckle strangely, but before long she fell silent
again. "Natz…?" he ventured, and once more received the unnerving grin she gave
Maria.
"I-I'm f-fine," she stuttered, pupils dilating and legs trembling as she spoke.
"You don't look fine to me, and I'm the pinnacle of everything that's not
okay," Katie scoffed, flinching as the gaze accompanied by the crazed smirk
turned in her direction.
"I-I'm fine," Natalie repeated, her voice a little more steady but still
unnerving.
"Natz, you're far from okay," Matt chided from behind her. He turned to Cadence
and asked, "Since it's gonna be a while, can we go ahead and spend the rest of
the day in a few guest rooms?"
Cadence turned to him and nodded. "Sure thing. She looks a little… ah, out of
it at the moment," she replied. She turned to one of the legs of the palace
structure and trotted over to it at a brisk pace, with her guests following her
every move.
"Should I make an herbal remedy for her pain? She's trying to convince us she's
alright, but it's in vain," Zecora stated, eyes averting between Natalie and
Cadence when the latter turned to look at her.
"No, since… you'd probably have to stick your hoof up there, and…" Cadence
paused to sigh and gather her thoughts before finishing her comment, "It
wouldn't be a great idea."
The alicorn and zebra both turned to Matt as he piped up, "Don't worry, I know
how to get her to relax."
Cadence quirked a brow. "How are you going to do that?" she asked, her tone
laced with disbelief.
Matt sighed and frowned. "It's… uh…" he started, but a look from the seemingly-
crazed Natalie silenced him faster than anybody present could speak up.
"A private matter?" Cadence asked, her brow raising higher. Matt mutely nodded
with a nervous grin plastered on his white muzzle, and she sighed. "Alright… I
guess I could lead you to the guest rooms now," she murmured, wings ruffling
for a moment as she turned back to the stairs and trotted up them instead of
down.
The group followed, falling into a single-file line and trotting slowly as they
cantered up the flight. Upon reaching the end of said flight, which gave way to
a hallway with a round bend that was marked with crystal pillars galore, a few
guards who were already present saluted Cadence with either hooves or wings and
stood aside to let her and her guests pass.
One guard, however, used a wing to stop Natalie in her tracks. "Miss, are you
well?" he asked in a flat tone, frowning when she merely shook her head and
giggled unnervingly. He retracted his wing and let her go on her merry way,
seeing her tail shift and swish lowly between her rear legs as she trotted on.
As soon as Cadence, Spike, Zecora, and the Fantasians were out of sight, he
turned to one of his fellow guardsponies. "What was it that made her… don that
look?" he asked, garnering a series of shrugs and flat looks as responses.
"Haven't the foggiest," an earth pony guard replied. "I did hear that Private
Zircon got in trouble again, though." At this, some of the other guards
snickered like fillies, before ceasing their laughter and assuming stoic looks
as they set to moving from their posts to follow the group. They trotted around
the bend, noticing a doorway at the end that stood ajar, and they hastened
their pace to get to it. Cantering into the next hall, they caught a brief
glimpse of their quarry as they turned down another corner, and doubled their
efforts to catch up.
Fenrir looked over his shoulder, and noticed the guards dogging his and the
others' steps. "What has brought you to follow our movements like a line of
lost ducklings?" he asked, a brow quirking. His inquiry caused the groups to
abruptly halt, with his fellow Fantasians turning around to see what the hell
the inquiry was about.
The guards shifted in place, though their stoic expressions still held firm.
One spoke up, his wings briefly shuddering as he spoke, "We wanted to ensure
that you and the Empress were alright." The other guards nodded once at his
remark, with none of them so much as blinking or letting their ears twitch
during the unified movement.
Fenrir raised a brow. "Is that all?" he asked tersely. He approached the guards
and knelt before them so he could be at eye-level with them, leaning in a
little close to the nearest one before adding, "Or is there… something more to
your little bout of tottering after us?" His inquiry caused the guards to shift
and move a little closer together, and at this his lips curled up into a grin.
"Alright everypony, play nice," Cadence piped up, her voice accompanied by the
sound of beating wings. Fenrir's smirk fell and he looked up, finding the
Empress hovering over both him and the guards, looking down at them with a
straight face. She descended and touched down at Fenrir's side, noticing that
the diamond dog kept himself in a kneeling stance. The alicorn sighed and
turned to the guards before asking, "Why are you not at your posts?"
"We… erm, wanted to check on… u-uh, the unicorn with the crazed look on her
face," a guard stammered out. "W-we think sh-she might try something…"
Cadence held up a hoof, signaling for the guard to hush. "It's alright," she
said in a firm voice. "One of her companions said he could and will calm her
down—how, I don't exactly know. But she should be well, after I escort them to
their guest rooms."
Another guard fidgeted in place. "Um, Your Highness, are you certain of this?"
he asked, eyelids slanting as worry flickered in his eyes.
Cadence nodded. "Yes, I am very certain," she replied in a softer tone.
"Though, if you're that concerned about the matter, maybe I could have your
posts moved to outside the rooms. But only if it's alright with them."
"I'm all for it, after what happened in Canterlot," Katie piped up from behind,
her utterance causing the guards to turn away from their Empress. Murmurs from
the other Fantasians erupted as soon as she said those words, mostly coming
from the general and his advisors, and they ran rampant for a good two minutes
before stopping as Cadence cleared her throat.
"Oh, and… one more thing," Cadence began, pausing until she was certain the
guards looked at her and nopony else. "Make sure that Private Zircon doesn't
trot anywhere near them. I don't want another one of his accidents happening
again."
"Are you saying his horn going under Natalie's tail wasn't the first time?"
Matt noted, garnering Cadence's attention.
The Empress turned around and glumly nodded. "One time, it went under Shining's
tail," she replied with a frown. "He wasn't a happy camper after that."
Matt went wide-eyed, the image of Zircon's horn going up his Emperor's rear end
forming and staying in his mind. He could only imagine the reaction the sorry
bastard must've had in that moment before he shook his head to rid himself of
the thought. "Um… ouch," he murmured.
"Well, let's head on to the guest rooms. They shouldn't be much further in the
castle," Cadence sighed, closing her eyes and shaking her head.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Matt and Natalie occupied a large room all to themselves, and it had a singular
large bed whose frame was forged of crystal and loaded with a cloud-like
mattress and fluffy pillows. Over at a wall a dresser and a table and chair
stood to one side, and opposite of that was a window with no glass pane set
into the frame. Natalie was laying on the bed, eyes closed and a blissful
expression on her face as hooves carefully kneaded onto her back. "You okay?"
Matt asked her.
"Mhm," Natalie hummed, taking a moment to sigh contently. "Nothing like a good
back rub to relieve some stress." She tensed when she felt a hoof push a little
too hard on her spine, "Gah! E-easy there…"
Matt lifted a hoof and moved it to her withers. "Sorry. Just wanted to punch
that Zircon stallion, and… got a little carried away," he murmured.
"May as well get in line. I'm wanting to kick him in the face," Natalie replied
with a giggle. She felt the hooves come off of her back, before a big and fuzzy
body laid on the bed next to her. "My turn?" she asked, cracking her eyes open.
"Yep," Matt chirped in response. He watched as Natalie rose to sit up and
grinned as she lifted her front hooves onto his back. He patted at the mattress
and pillows with a hoof and remarked, "Damn, this bed's comfy enough I could
fall asleep right now."
"The bed is great and all, but don't go to sleep on me yet. Where to?" Natalie
asked, prodding at his back with a hoof.
Matt chuckled and shrugged. "Don't have a particular preference at the moment,"
he answered. He relaxed as hooves glided across his back, prodding and rubbing
and working away any kinks that may have been present. "Maybe Zircon did an
accident, but if he managed to stick his horn up Shining's ass…"
"You think that may have been intentional?" Natalie questioned, her hooves
going up to Matt's withers.
"Yeah. Up your hooch, that may have been purely accidental," Matt replied. "But
there is no way I can see it as an accident if it went up his Emperor's butt."
"Hrm… it does seem odd," Natalie noted with a sigh, her hooves trailing lower
again. "Maybe he did it to see if he could get away with it."
"Maybe, maybe not," Matt mumbled with another shrug. "Eh, no use dwelling on
something I know next to nothing about."
"True enough, I suppose," Natalie agreed with a thoughtful nod of her head.
"You think the huge library has something about Starswirl?"
"It's so huge I think there's several books about that pony," Matt stated,
waving a hoof dismissively. "I'd be surprised if there isn't at least six books
with him as the central topic." He relaxed and took a deep breath, closing his
eyes and looking as if about ready to doze off, only to twitch when Natalie
halted abruptly. "Something wrong?" he asked.
"Oh, I was wondering if you were good now," Natalie replied with a giggle. Matt
simply nodded, and sighed when she retracted her hooves and flopped next to
him. Her ears twitched when she heard a loud pop accompanied by a fizzle. When
the fizzle faded and a meow hit her ears, she sat up before glancing around the
room and noticing NoLegs on the table, looking at her with another meow coming
out of his mouth. The cat leapt off of the table and made his way to the bed,
prior to levitating himself and landing next to Matt.
Speaking of, the stallion turned to the cat with a brow quirked. "What is it?"
he asked, eyes snapping open when the cat prodded at his muzzle with his tail.
NoLegs meowed again and jumped off the bed, scampering over to the window and
using his only limb to gesture for the unicorns to follow him. The two hopped
out of bed and trotted over as the cat jumped upon the open sill, and peered
out to find a crowd of far-off specks gathering before the palace. "The hell?
Are those crystal ponies?"
"I dunno Matt. Maybe they're moving crystal statues?" Natalie guessed, doing
her best to examine the street below while simultaneously trying to keep
herself from accidentally knocking NoLegs off of the sill. The cat meowed once
more, using his tail to gesture to the bottom of the window. The unicorns
peered below, noticing some kind of bizarre stage set up, and they couldn't
determine much else as it was purest white and had flecks of color that they
assumed were ponies on and around it. From the stage, they heard a distant and
somewhat-familiar voice call out.
"I present unto you, the most recent addition to the Crystal Empire!" a
stallion bellowed out from below, and instantly a myriad of voices cheered and
cooed and clapped before falling silent. Matt and Natalie's eyes widened when
the streets began glowing, a bright teal appearing in spots at first before
seemingly enveloping the roads with what they could only assume was pure,
concentrated mana. Then, once every single street shimmered with teal power,
the glow fled the streets faster than it had filled them.
A full minute of silence passed, and the unicorns and cat still looking down
from the window exchanged vexed, wide-eyed looks with each other. Natalie and
Matt made several attempts to speak, but words died in their throats as they
struggled to comprehend what the hell just happened below. Not even NoLegs
could break the befuddling tranquility that set in, as his meows likewise
stayed lodged in his throat and refused to leave.
A wave of teal mana shot out, and the three turned back to the window as it
rose up and up, encompassing what they could see of the Empire. Before they
could protest, it went into their room through the window and hit them face-
first, and they closed their eyes as if expecting pain—but the mana hit them in
a way that was inexplicably painless. It merely touched them and left as fast
as it had come, as it were. Cracking an eye open, Matt saw that Natalie and
NoLegs were relatively unharmed.
And the two sparkled like they were living crystal, but other than that nothing
had changed, really. His eyes snapped fully open and he gaped at the anomaly.
"Y-y-you…" he managed to croak out, only to stop speaking as his jaw locked up
in an embarrassing manner that made him appear like a fish gasping for water.
Natalie's eyes opened, and she looked around before finding Matt just staring
at her with his jaw dropped open. "Uh… you're… your coat and mane… your
everything is gleaming like a polished rock!" she exclaimed, her remark causing
the stallion to lift one of his hooves for inspection. By Godcat, she was
right—the hoof gleamed as much as the mare and cat he stared at.
"I... uh…" was all Matt could manage before the door to their room burst open.
Once it hit the wall and stilled, Lance galloped inside, and like Matt and
Natalie and NoLegs, he was also shimmering—down to the uniform. Immediately,
the general sat on his haunches before doubling over. He burst out laughing at
the looks on the faces of the unicorns and cat, as if they fell for an
extraordinarily elaborate prank.
When he had managed to calm down, he wiped his eye with a hoof before setting
it down with a rather dopey grin spreading on his face. "Don't worry, it'll
wear off in a few days," he stated with a snicker escaping his lips once he
finished speaking.
"You mean… our...?" Natalie couldn't finish the question, her mind refusing to
process what was going on.
"Yeah, our now-sparkling coats. A nearby guard told me that this happens every
time the Crystal Heart gets a little more power or something. The wave of mana
hits the entire Empire, and since we're in the Empire, we got blasted too,"
Lance replied with a nod. Still grinning, he added, "You should've seen the
look on Anna's face, by the way. Her eyes look like they expanded to the size
of saucers."
Natalie sighed in resignation, her ears twitching when a scritch-scratching
noise acting in tandem with the clip-clop of hooves echoed into the room. A
minute later, Sarah came in, her body also glimmering like a cut and polished
gemstone. "This is… a first," she murmured, using a claw to gesture to herself
as she spoke.
NoLegs meowed and hopped from the window before wading over to Lance, tilting
his head as he approached. "I'm impressed even you are gleaming," Matt sighed,
gesturing to the cat as Lance rose a hoof to pet him.
"Spike and Zecora are also gleaming," Lance sighed, setting his hoof down once
he finished petting the cat. As if on cue, hooves hitting crystal echoed into
the room again, followed up by the zebra entering unannounced with the small
drake on her back. The former had a vexed look on her face, while the latter
just grinned and waved casually.
"I feel a swell of happiness that wasn't in me before. And now I am gleaming
like that door," Zecora remarked, turning to the door of the room as she spoke.
"Eh, it happens," Spike stated matter-of-factly, waving a claw dismissively.
"The swell of happiness part, or the I'm-now-glittering part?" Sarah asked,
looking at Spike with a brow raising up.
"Both," Spike replied, turning to the hippogryph with the cheeky grin still
lingering on his visage, not noticing that NoLegs, Matt, and Natalie turned to
him with vexed looks. "But it's just around here, anyway," he added, using the
same claw he waved to gesture around the room.
Fenrir bustled in, likewise sparkling from head to paw. "Does anyone else
happen to feel over-groomed at the moment?" he asked, his inquiry garnering
nothing more than a series of perplexed looks.
"I don't feel over-groomed. I don't know what you're harping on about," Sarah
replied after a few seconds had passed, with nothing more than a shrug of her
shoulders and a shake of her head accompanying her statement.
Katie rushed into the room, and while she was still illusion-disguised, she too
was gleaming. "I'm sparkling! I am freaking sparkling!" she cried, faux eyes
wide with confusion.
"And so are the rest of us," Matt pointed out in a huff, watching as Anna,
Alexander, Armin, and Maria ran into the room. "Join the club."
"Can I stay sparkly? Pretty please?" Maria asked, eyes wide with hope. Her
inquiry immediately garnered the attention of everyone else in the room.
"Eh, I guess you can. Nothing's stopping you from being sparkly," Armin stated
with a shrug.
"As long as you stay in the Empire's borders, yeah. Besides, we have to stay
put for a few days, anyway," Spike replied, again waving his claw.
"You sound like you've become walking crystal before," Anna noted, turning to
the drake with a frown set into her muzzle.
"And you told me you saved this Empire before. Is there a correlation of some
sort?" Lance added, raising a hoof to rub his chin with it.
"Yep. In fact, one actually lead to the other," Spike answered, grinning once
more. Before anyone else could speak, he added in a casual tone, "I just
retrieved the Crystal Heart and helped Cadence put it back where it was
supposed to be, and the crystal ponies powered it with love and mana, and bam!
Everypony sparkled, including me!" At this point, the others in the room looked
at him slack-jawed, though Zecora had to crane her neck to look at him.
Natalie and Matt exchanged looks again. "I'm starting to think there's
something under those scales that we underestimated," Natalie remarked, earning
a mute nod from Matt. As soon as she finished speaking, Spike's cheeks bulged
and he coughed out some green flames, though he made sure to direct them in a
way that they couldn't scorch anybody present. The flames turned to smoke,
which then turned into a scroll with a red ribbon that fell and bounced on the
floor.
Anna scooped up the scroll with her magic and opened it, unravelling it to scan
its contents before immediately paling. As she stared at the letter with her
pupils shrinking to tiny dots, her crystalline shimmer faded substantially,
making her look more like she had taken a dunk in a tub full of soapy water.
"N-Natz…" she murmured in a tight, small, and shaky voice. "C-come h-here…"
Natalie trotted over, a brow raised. "Huh? What is it?" she asked, and the only
response she received was the opened scroll being magically shoved in her face.
She pried it off with a hoof and examined it for a minute, only to drop it in a
few seconds. Her sheen faltered as well, and she turned to Fenrir and spoke in
a low, serious tone, "Get Shining Armor. Immediately."
***** Chapter XXVI- ... Is Excessively Cold *****
Shining and a few guards with helms marked with red and teal hair stood on a
stage with a crowd before them, and they sparkled as much as the assembled
ponies did. He watched as a unicorn mare and pegasus stallion trotted off, with
a little unicorn foal held in a saddlebag-like open-top holster on the mare's
back. He smiled at the infant, who giggled back at him, and turned to look at
the assembled crowd as they trotted up to the couple and fawned over the baby.
Cadence, who also gleamed, stood next to Shining. "A cute little filly. I hope
she grows up to be a fine mare," she remarked, exchanging a look with the
stallion.
Shining nodded with a grin, and made to speak when a brief, golden glow
embraced his cranium and faded in seconds. A masculine voice echoed into his
mind, and it had a deathly serious tone to it, "Meet me at the guest rooms.
It's urgent."
"Cady, I just got a telepathic message…" Shining stated, his grin falling as he
spoke.
"From who?" Cadence asked, a brow raised.
"I haven't the foggiest. All I know is it told me to meet up at the guest rooms
and that something was urgent," Shining replied, shaking his head.
"Why the—" Cadence paused, and her eyes slowly widened. "Our guests!" she
exclaimed, wings flaring wide.
"What about them?" Shining asked, a brow raising up.
"I escorted them to the guest rooms! If one of them sent you a telepathic
message, and said it was urgent…" Cadence trailed off, and immediately,
Shining's eyes widened as he got what she meant.
"In that case, let's head that way…" Shining murmured, his ears twitching as
murmurs graced them. He turned away from the alicorn to find that the crowd of
ponies looked at him, and that they were whispering amongst themselves. "It is
alright. Just carry on as you normally would," he ordered in a calm bellow, and
the crowd instantly hushed. He took a moment to look at the assembled guards
and addressed them, "Make sure things run smoothly while I go sort something
out."
The guards nodded with salutes, and with that, Shining and Cadence rushed off
of the stage and to the nearest leg of the castle. They reached a flight of
stairs and galloped up it in a frenzy, then blazed down the hall with the bend,
going into another hall, and took a left in a matter of minutes. They went down
a few more halls, only stopping in one with many doors upon seeing Matt waiting
outside of a door expectantly. They skid to a halt and took a moment to catch
their breath, barely noticing that the Fantasian held a scroll in his magic and
that his crystalline shimmer had receded quite a bit.
When the rulers of the Empire managed to gather themselves, they turned their
attention to Matt. "What's so urgent that you sent me a telepathic message
about?" Shining asked in a flat tone.
"This," Matt replied, forking over the scroll he held. "It came through Spike,
and the girls began to freak out over it. Natalie insisted that somepony get
you over here, so I volunteered."
"Uh-huh," Shining murmured with a nod as he took the scroll. His eyes widened
as he saw pictures of two unicorn stallions, and a third earth pony one with
visible scars going clean over his eyes, plastered onto the parchment. Below
the pictures, a simple message had been scrawled in impeccable hoofwriting
which he read aloud.
"'Dear Shining Armor, this is Sergeant Riverwater. I am sending this through
Celestia, and I'm also afraid to report that the hotel staff whose business had
been shut down have escaped—when, I don't exactly know. All I know is, they've
been out for a while, and their sentence has yet to be carried out. The
Canterlot division of guards have yet to find them—they could be anywhere in
Equestria at this time. If you are still with the Fantasians, keep them away
from the hotel staff if you are able,'" Shining said, eyes glued to the letter.
Five minutes passed, and nopony said anything during that time. Eventually,
Shining began to scowl. "Joy, last thing we all needed—" He threw his hooves
and the scroll up into the air, his glimmer faltering so fast it made him seem
duller in appearance than before. "—rapists escaping the dungeon before they
can be dealt with!"
Cadence's eyes flicked between Matt and Shining, and she asked in a soft voice,
"Do you want the guards to be on lookout tonight?"
Shining nodded, still scowling. "Yes," he answered. He used a hoof to gesture
to the scroll and added, "And tell them to watch for those three, and toss them
into the Empire's dungeon if they see them."
"Can I punch one of them next time I see them?" Matt asked, his voice tight.
Shining shook his head. "Unless there are no guards around, and it's just you
and them when it happens, or if it's purely in self-defense," he replied.
"Kinda like what happened to them before I trotted into that room…" He shivered
at the thought.
Matt nodded. "Alright," he stated tersely. "In the meantime, I'll keep my eyes
peeled for the bastards."
Shining nodded back. "Fair enough," he sighed. "We'll assemble the guards and
brief them. For now, you stay put with you and yours." Matt nodded again and
trotted into the room whose door he stood beside, finding himself with his
companions once more. Natalie donned a stoic look, Anna had one foreleg wrapped
around Lance's neck and the other around Sarah's, and Maria sat next to Fenrir.
The filly was red in the face and had narrowed eyes.
"You're squishing me…" Sarah croaked, turning a little blue in the face.
"I-I can't breathe…" Lance groaned hoarsely, going towards a shade of purple
the longer Anna held him.
Speaking of, Anna let the two go and mumbled in a low voice, "Sorry…"
"If I see—" Maria started, but she stopped when one of Fenrir's paws rose up
and hovered in front of her muzzle.
"Yes, we are aware. You will bring unto them more righteous retribution,"
Fenrir groaned, rolling his eyes at the foal. He turned to Anna and added, "You
do realize there is a very high probability that those foul stallions are not
in the Crystal Empire as we speak?"
Anna nodded, though she shuddered faintly.
"Furthermore," Fenrir began, maintaining eye contact with Anna as he spoke, "if
and when we do possibly bumble into them again, we will detain them quicker
than they are able to detain you. Is that understood?"
Anna nodded again, and she began taking a few deep breaths as slowly as she
could manage. Taking a moment to think over Fenrir's remarks, she realized he
had a very valid point. "You're right—what are the chances they're in the
Empire with us?" she asked, a small smile spreading on her face. Her body began
glowing again, almost as if she were transforming into living crystal once
more.
"But what if they are in the Empire with us? Sure, there's a teeny-tiny chance
of that happening, but suppose those corpse-fondlers decided to start poking
around the palace, and managed to evade any guards in doing so?" Katie piped
up, a faux frown on her illusion-disguised visage.
"Then one of us stays up for the whole night and sounds the alarm," Alexander
replied, his wings shifting. "And you yourself have a particularly high-pitched
screech that can break a unicorn's concentration, if they happen to be casting
any spells." At this point, all eyes fell on the wraith and Alexander added,
"You're staying up until sunrise tomorrow."
"Wait, so I'm the alarm?" Katie asked disbelievingly, a brow raising up.
"Essentially, yes, but only for tonight," Alexander replied, turning to Lance
and garnering a nod of approval.
Katie crossed her forelegs together. "Alright, I can deal. I'll yodel as loud
as I can if I see the three stooges snooping around in the halls," she stated.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The guards stationed outside the rooms that night found themselves with their
hooves clutching spears tightly, a foreign extra amidst their posts, and a
heavy darkness blanketing them. Katie had shaken off her illusion, though she
could not shake off the crystalline shimmer she'd acquired, and stood vigil
with her clawed shoes on. She cared little about the looks the guards sent her
way every few minutes, and every time they asked how she'd gotten so bad in
shape, she'd merely mutter "Long story" and leave it at that.
"If you were a Mythonian changeling…" a lilac-coated pegasus guard muttered
under his breath, hoping that Katie couldn't hear him.
But her long ears stood to attention, and hear him she did. "Lemme guess, your
spear up my ass?" she scoffed coldly, her utterance causing the pegasus to
stiffen on the spot. "Just be glad I can't drain you of your love because I
have a jagged stump of a horn," she added, her voice oozing with sour notes of
bitterness.
"She's just a changeling with shoes," another guard murmured, turning to the
lilac pegasus as he spoke. "She wouldn't hurt a fly."
"You think I can't fight?" Katie asked, turning to the second guard with a brow
raised.
"You wouldn't stand a chance. You're small, burdened quite heavily with
atrophy, cannot use active magic since your horn's just a broken stump, and all
you have are frail wings and a set of shoes as your defenses," the guard
pointed out, frowning as he turned to the wraith.
"Doesn't mean I'm completely useless. Even I have my strengths," Katie
retorted, wings buzzing for one minute and folding flat against her back the
next.
"I'll admit, you got me there," the guard conceded with a nod. "I'm just saying
you look…"
"Weak?" Katie finished for him, punctuating her response with a huff. When the
guard nodded again, she rolled her orbs at him and chose not to say anything
else, largely because she couldn't make a good enough rebuttal against his 'you
look weak' point to save her hide.
A few more minutes ticked by in silence, and the wraith looked down at the
floor to find that it managed to reflect the light of her orbs, although it had
done so poorly. If anything, she was seeing two dull cobalt spots between her
front hooves instead of azure—she figured that the darkness of the hall must've
played a part. Shrugging her shoulders to no one in particular, she glanced
back up and gave her surroundings a cursory glance.
Nothing had changed, from what she could tell. The guards kept giving her
looks, though this time none of them uttered so much as a peep of concern. She
made to examine her shoes and make sure they were fitted properly onto her
hooves when she noticed a creeping chill accompanied by very soft tremors
slowly inching their way up her legs.
She lifted one leg up and brought it very close to her muzzle, and caught sight
of the faintest of reflected light that wasn't very noticeable at first. In
addition to this, the horseshoe attached to her raised limb pulsated with blue
mana, and she felt a coldness in the air that hadn't there before. She stared
at her limb, barely aware that the guards around her suppressed shivers
themselves.
She set her leg down and groaned, "Great, I may need to take my shoes off for a
bit."
"And why is that?" the lilac pegasus asked, turning to her with a puzzled frown
on his muzzle. He blinked when he noticed his breath began to form small clouds
in front of his face, and he shivered again.
"Ice is growing on my legs," Katie replied, waving a frost-laden hoof for
emphasis. "My shoes are enchanted."
"Is that why it suddenly turned cold in here?" another guard questioned,
garnering a nod from Katie.
"Yep. The enchantments bring down the temperature of wherever they're activated
at—just enough that I can turn stab wounds into popsicles, if it comes down to
it," Katie replied, her wings briefly spreading and buzzing again.
The guards exchanged glances with each other, and those who had wings curled
their feathery limbs around their stomachs as the temperature dropped a little
more. The earth ponies and unicorns made to siddle close together, but Katie
stopped that by uttering, "You guys are wearing metal armor. You'd only freeze
quicker if you huddled up fully dressed as you are."
Another guard piped up, shooting Katie a vexed look as he spoke, "Are you able
to de-activate your enchantments or something? Methinks you're channeling mana
through your hooves."
"Are changelings even able to channel mana through their hooves? Especially
this one, since she's hornless?" the lilac pegasus inquired, gesturing to Katie
with a wing.
"Yes I am, to answer both questions at the same time," Katie replied with a
giggle. As the guards looked at her, they noticed her shoes pulsating with blue
mana for a few seconds before the glow died down. The temperature shifted
again, and the halls turned comfortably warm in seconds. The assembled bunch
sighed in relief and took a minute to relish the favorable mild heat, hardly
noticing that any ice coating the wraith's legs rapidly melted in the same span
of time.
A door opened, and into the hall stepped a bleary-eyed Armin. The changeling
had shed his disguise with a brief flare of green flames, though he sparkled as
much as the guards even after the fires that engulfed him died off. "Who did
what with mana now?" he groaned, raising a holey hoof to yawn into.
"They asked if I could channel mana through my hooves, which I just stopped
doing," Katie answered, making certain to punctuate her response with a buzz of
her wings.
Armin blinked and rubbed his eyes, yawning again. "So, why do changelings
channel mana through their hooves, and have unicorn-like magic on top of that?"
a guard asked.
"Makes it… easier to shapeshift into an earth or unicorn pony," Armin replied
with a sluggish shrug. "What's the point… of taking one of those forms, without
access to innate magics? If that were the case… you may as well ask me to dress
up in a sheep costume."
The guards exchanged glances with one another, as if expecting the tag-wearing
changeling to shapeshift into one of them. The lilac pegasus asked, "And if you
have access to innate and active magics simultaneously… would that make love-
sucking easier to pull off?"
"Convincingly, and theoretically, yes," Armin replied with another yawn. He
smacked his lips and added, "I'm going back to bed." With that, he turned
around and trotted back into the room, but not before he assumed his pegasus
guise again. The door clicked shut behind him, and the guards were once again
left alone with the wraith and an otherwise-empty hallway.
The lilac guard grumbled under his breath, "This is gonna be a long night…"
"What're you on about this time?" Katie asked, ears swiveling as she
articulated her question.
Another pegasus guard that was stationed next to the wraith, one sporting an
orange coat and a blue mane, piped up, "Don't mind Zephyr Bolt. Sometimes he
gets cranky."
Katie turned to the guard next to her, a brow rising to her hairline. "I doubt
that wanting to shove his pike up my ass would constitute as 'cranky,'" she
scoffed.
Zephyr decided to insert his two bits, and he looked at the orange guard as he
scoffed, "Flash Sentry, I'm not cranky. I just find it distasteful that the
Fantasians brought changelings with them."
"I can't help what I am, okay? You shut your cakehole!" Katie hissed, turning
to Zephyr with narrowed eyes. Before she could channel mana through her hooves
and bring down the temperature of the hall to water-freezing levels, an orange
hoof moving to rest on her withers stopped her. She turned to Flash, who sent
her a wry grin.
"She's right, Zephyr. It's like if I inexplicably wanted to be a unicorn one
morning—deep down, I'd be denying myself for what I am," Flash stated, turning
to Zephyr and shooting him the same grin he just gave the wraith. "I can't just
hack off my wings, glue a twig to my head, and proclaim myself a unicorn. I
just couldn't pull it off, because I can't use active magic. That's alicorn and
changeling territory."
Zephyr huffed and grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. The
unicorn guard nearest to him gave him a nudge with a hoof, and smiled fondly at
Flash. "Well said, Sentry," he chirped, garnering a sheepish grin from Flash.
He then turned to Katie and addressed her, "Do you work for anypony?"
Katie shook her head. "I'm just tagging along with the general and his unicorn
trinity," she replied.
"And why is that?" Flash asked, a brow quirked.
Katie turned to him and did not fail to answer, "Back on Fantasia, they gave me
a warm place to sleep. And when I found that Lance had changelings under his
command, the desire to trot with him grew that much stronger."
"And…?" Flash persisted, sensing that the wraith had left something out of her
response.
"I wanted to find out how, exactly, he got the changelings he has to obey him,"
Katie concluded, her orbs dimming as she spoke. "Gryphons are one thing—I
couldn't give a flying hoot, so long as they didn't tear into me with their
beaks. Changelings are another kettle of fish altogether."
"Did you broach this topic with him?" Zephyr piped up.
"No, because somepony else beat me to it," Katie replied curtly. "He pretty
much dodged the question with a vague answer—and as a changeling myself, to me,
that's very fishy if you asked for my input."
"Like how you dodged our inquiry every time we asked?" Zephyr murmured, his
wings flaring for a moment.
"You really want to know why my face is split in two? Why I'm a trotting stick
insect? If I told you, you'd shit your post every night for six months on end
just thinking about it," Katie replied, crossing her forelegs in a pouting
manner. "No disrespect, Zephyr Bolt, but I'd rather you kept your job as guard
of this castle."
Zephyr and Flash exchanged wide-eyed looks, blinking as Katie's tirade lingered
in their minds. Their wings shifted uncomfortably as they began imagining
several unpleasant scenes in which Katie could've been rendered pencil-thin and
with her face marred by her split grin. They shook their heads to rid
themselves of the thoughts. Whatever the case for her damaged horn and atrophy
and other issues, they resigned themselves to the fact that she wasn't going to
spill the beans anytime soon.
Once again, the hall fell as silent as a tundra after it weathered a vicious
snowstorm. And this time, the tranquility lingered for quite a while.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Anna dreamt as she slept, and the dream world decided to place her in an area
that was pitch-black as far as the eye could see. Instinctively, she channeled
mana into her horn and conjured a green light from its tip, illuminating her
surroundings and finding herself on a trail large enough to fit three ponies if
they trotted side by side.
This place, wherever it was, boasted a large stone structure jutting out to one
side and an edge marking the road's width on the other. She looked at the rocky
surface, then up to find that it seemed to simply go so high it was impossible
to see if it had a top, as if pure black had consumed it.
The mare trotted to the edge of the road and peered down, careful to avoid
slipping off. She found the same thing with the bottom, which turned out to be
a steep drop—if anything, she may as well have been standing on a floating road
with a rock wall in the middle of nowhere. Anna sighed to herself and turned
around before freezing.
Something was off from second numero uno—where, logically speaking, half of the
road should have been, there wasn't so much as an inch of path behind her. The
unicorn turned around again and shook her head before moving away from the edge
of the road and trotting onwards. She found that the trail wound up and up,
like a flat curvy ramp that was constructed by nature itself. Minutes passed
without incident, but as Anna climbed and climbed, she couldn't suppress a
series of creeping chills that tingled along her spine and occasionally caused
her tail to jerk.
She kept trotting on for what felt like hours on end, and eventually stopped to
catch her breath, eyes locked onto the trail. "Wh… where does it end?" she
asked herself, panting between words. Anna turned to the rocky wall, and
noticed a particular opening that she was certain hadn't been there before.
Or, was it there to begin with, and she narrowly avoided trotting past it just
now? Anna wasn't sure. She simply ignored it for the time being and began
cantering along the path, and her horn illuminated the trail and the rock wall
at her side. Paying just a smidgen more attention to these two things, she
noted that nothing had really changed—even as she spent what felt like more
hours following the damned road.
Once again, she halted to catch her breath after a while, making sure to look
over the wall as she stopped. An opening was there, a gaping entrance to a
black abyss from which a silent cold draft blew. Anna shuddered as the fleeting
zephyr caressed her body, and for a moment she stiffened as it managed to go
under her tail and touch her most sensitive areas. "N-not gonna stick around
for this," she murmured, and with that she resumed trotting—this time at a
brisk pace.
The road and wall remained consistent as she went on. Constant. Steadfast.
"Just how much longer do I have to travel before it ends?" she pondered as she
continued to climb up and up. Stopping for the third time, she found the same
damned things—trail, wall, hole-in-wall. Another breeze came from the opening,
this one colder and strong enough to lift the hairs of her tail and make them
waft to one side. A hoof flew to her mouth and muffled a startled groan as the
gale poked at her nethers, the feeling not unlike sticking an ice cube between
her secondary lips.
Then the glow coming from her horn changed colors abruptly, from a brilliant
green to a near-blinding crimson. A voice hit Anna's ears, just barely an
echoing whisper, "The sinner's back. The sinner has come for round two."
Immediately, the archer responded—she broke out into a frenzied gallop, making
sure not to slip off of the road's edge as she fled from the hole in the wall.
As she ran, her heart starting to race a good fifty miles a minute in her
chest, she noticed that the accursed breeze didn't touch her once.
But the whispering voice dogged her every step, as if its owner constantly
floated just behind her ears, "Give up, filly. Running from your sin won't do
you any good."
"I didn't sin!" Anna barked, adrenalin coursing through her blood and causing
her to gallop as fast as her legs could carry her. Though after a few minutes,
her limbs gave out and she tripped, landing ungracefully upon the road with
ragged breaths.
"Then why do you flee if you didn't sin, hrrrrm?" the voice asked as Anna
scrambled to stand. It laughed when the unicorn fell down, her legs shaking and
trembling as she hauled herself right back up. "Oh, do stop with the futile
effort," it scoffed. The archer disobeyed and started galloping again, but as
she raced along the road, she glanced over her shoulder.
Darkness met her vision, and she turned back before skidding to a halt. She
gasped when her front hooves slipped off of the edge of the path, and had she
not grasped herself in her magic and sent herself to the wall, she'd have
fallen off to the all-consuming black below.
"Slipping off and tumbling to your doom would have been the better alternative
to living with your sinfulness," the voice growled as Anna peeled herself from
the wall and started galloping once more.
"I don't have any sinfulness to live with, you invisible prick!" Anna howled in
a hoarse voice, eyes squinting and vision blurring as she continued onward. Her
legs burned, her chest begged for oxygen, and her eyes watered as she denied
her body rest.
"Oh really?" the voice scoffed in a mocking tone. "Then tell me what this is!"
Anna skid to a halt and screamed as she felt an object with a deathly cold and
absurdly rough surface wedge itself into her rectum. Her legs buckled, and she
laid down on the trail as a burning pain surged through her nerves in a matter
of seconds, her front hooves reaching around in an attempt to pry whatever-it-
was out.
Anna stopped when she felt metal clamp around her forelegs at every joint, and
she tried moving them to find that they were now cemented to the trail. Her
back legs kicked at the ground uselessly, and this only left her with her ass
in the air and her tail being swept to one side. She looked at the rock wall,
and began panicking as from that accursed opening a shadowy creature trotted
into view. It had glowing orbs that stared back at her, taking in her current
position for one moment before dimming the next.
It crept towards her, and two more dark beings emerged from the crevasse and
flanked it. Anna made to tell them to stop right where they were, but a black
limb shot to her muzzle and held it shut against the road. One of the creatures
trotted around out of sight, and she cringed as a limb—claw, hoof, or paw, she
couldn't tell—prodded at her left cutie mark.
"She's marked," the creature behind her scoffed as it continued to poke at her
hip.
"Doesn't matter—her talent's useless," the thing holding her muzzle shut
stated.
Anna started struggling, making muffled whines of protest as she felt a limb
trail to her nether regions. She made to thrust her back legs outward in an
attempt to buck the living daylights out of whatever was behind her, but her
rear hooves only found air to sail through. Worse still, the limb kept trailing
on undeterred, as though detached from its owner. When it managed to touch its
undeserved prize, she stopped thrashing and squealed when it grabbed her by the
clit and twisted.
"There we go. Be a good little filly. Don't want this happening again, do we?"
the creature behind her hissed, tugging at the sensitive nub for emphasis.
Anna's ears fell back against her head as a new wave of agony hit her, but it
became a dull throb when her clit was released. A musky scent filled her
nostrils, and all it did for her was make her stomach start turning. Anna
squealed again when her clit was yanked at again, and this time it was pulled
and twisted hard enough she released then and there from sheer pain.
"Awww, looks like our little sinner likes it," one of the shadows scoffed in
mock-disappointment. Anna began struggling, and she doubled her efforts, but
all it took was a smack to her rear end to get her to cease immediately. Limbs
grasped her hips, and she felt a form press itself flush against her back.
She woke up right as she felt something pressing against her entrance, eyes
wide open and staring at the ceiling. Anna laid there for an indeterminate
amount of time, as stiff as a statue and with her heart thundering madly in her
chest. "Just… a dream," she whispered to herself, though her method of self-
comfort did little to ease her. Slowly, she sat up and looked around, her eyes
falling on a form that lay next to her in a bed lined with crystal.
And she instantly met with crimson eyes framing a burnt orange face. "You look
like you've seen a ghost," Lance murmured, blinking sleepily.
"Had a… another nightmare," Anna murmured in a low voice, fidgeting in place.
She idly crossed her rear legs, only to blush and find a rather wet patch of
cloth under them.
"Good thing I'm not currently wearing my uniform," Lance murmured, sitting up
with a sigh. "Did something prod you there in your dream?" he asked, using one
of his wings to gesture to Anna's rear legs for emphasis.
"G-grabbed… and pulled… it hurt," Anna murmured, shuddering as she recalled the
unpleasant sensation. The mere thought of it only made her cross her rear legs
to the point her inner thighs began aching from being pressed together.
Lance sighed and moved a hoof, letting it rest on her shoulder. "If it helps,
just stay up and trot around for a few. It was just a fucked up dream, and
nothing more," he stated in a calm voice, his wings shifting uncomfortably when
Anna fidgeted immediately. He quirked a brow and asked, "Wait, you were…?" When
the mare next to him nodded hesitantly, he physically slapped himself in the
face with a hoof. "Forget I said that…"
With that, he himself got out of the bed, and Anna followed suit on a wobbly
set of legs. He turned to look at her, noticing that her tail hung heavily
behind her rear legs, and that some strands clung to her fetlocks and gaskins.
"You okay?"
Anna shook her head. "Still… dealing with…" she trailed off as her back legs
buckled, forcing her to sit on her haunches.
"Would a midnight bath sound good?" Lance asked, watching as Anna made to stand
again.
"That would be good," Anna murmured in reply, nodding fervently.
***** Chapter XXVII- On The Wings of Rumors *****
Anna and Lance trotted a few laps around the bed, with one forcing herself
awake and attempting to not stumble every which-way, and the other trailing her
every move in case she did fall. The unicorn fell a few times, but she always
got back up with either a helping hoof from the general, or simply using the
bed for support before trying again. Some five minutes passed in this manner,
and both halted when the door to their room creaked open, whereupon Katie came
in uninvited.
"I'm hearing some serious clip-clopping going on in here. What's the deal?"
Katie asked, both brows raised as she noticed Anna wobbling in place.
"You… uh, really want to know?" Anna murmured, frowning when one of her back
legs buckled again.
For a moment, Katie's orbs wavered and dimmed, and she continued staring at the
two ponies in the room as she contemplated whether or not to ask. "On second
thought, no," she replied after another minute, and with that she left the room
without closing the door behind her.
Anna sighed, and her horn started glowing. In a flash of magic, three brown
sheet-like cloths materialized before her, and she turned to Lance as he
trotted up to said cloths.
He turned to her and asked, "Are you going to don one, too?"
Anna nodded. "You might freeze if Katie decided to activate her shoes again, as
bizarre as that sounds, "she replied.
"I doubt she could make icicles grow on my feathers," Lance retorted with a
huff, though he gave a nod as he spoke. He glanced at his sides, making sure
his wings were shut, and relaxed as he felt cloth cover his midsection and
stomach. A third cloth came over his head, and he felt it brush up against his
ears, withers, and haunches.
"You good now?" Anna asked, causing him to turn to her and nod again.
"Just stay with me, and everything should be fine," Lance sighed, and he wasted
no time in trotting to the door. Anna summoned another cloak and threw that
onto herself before catching up, and only when she stood next to him did he
step into the hall outside.
"Why are you two up?" Zephyr asked from his post, watching as the two
Fantasians left their room.
"We couldn't sleep, and figured a bath would wind us down," Lance replied,
stopping himself from letting his wings shift even the slightest bit under the
cloak. His ears twitched as he felt the guards' gazes turn to him. "Is there a
bath house or something we could use?"
Zephyr exchanged looks with his fellow guards, and for the most part, almost
all of them shrugged in silent response. Flash turned to the duo and sighed in
exasperation. "At this time of night?" he groaned.
"Afraid so," Anna stated with a nod of her head.
Flash and Zephyr turned to Katie, who merely looked back and forth between the
two guards, as if they were on crack. "They told me the same thing, now please
stop staring," she hissed, her wings buzzing furiously as she spoke, yet not
lifting her so much as an inch from the ground.
Then, Flash hung his head and sighed before he begrudgingly turned to Zephyr.
"So, who gets to play usher tonight?" he asked, a frown on his face.
Zephyr's eyelids partially drooped, and a frown set into his own muzzle, giving
him a not-so-amused look. "I'll do it, if only to get away from the damned
changeling sitting next to you," he grumbled.
"I'm thinking of enlisting her in my army," Lance hissed, shooting a stone-cold
glare at Zephyr that could cut through solid steel if it were able. "As a
fourth right-hoof—lieutenant general, to be exact. Don't even think of picking
a fight with her, lest you want to fight me," he warned, and instantly Zephyr
stiffened under the intense gaze and mutely nodded.
Katie turned to the general, her orbs growing wide as saucers. "R-really? Me?"
she all but squeaked in surprise.
Lance turned back to her and nodded. "Of course, you'd have to prove yourself
to be worthy of such a position. I have my doubts, but honestly, I think you
may be able pull it off despite your rather… glaring issues," he replied.
With that, he watched as Zephyr began trotting away from the guards, and made
to follow him with Anna falling in step behind him. As they rounded a bend and
vanished from sight, Katie remained sitting next to Flash, looking at the bend
with her jaw once more dropping open and gently swinging like a door.
Flash put a hoof on the wraith's withers. "Hey, you okay?" he asked, garnering
nothing more than a shake of the head as a response.
Another guard sat on his haunches, dropped his spear, and threw his forehooves
into the air. "I can understand unicorns as right hooves, but a wraith? Th-th-
that's unheard of!" he exclaimed. "Not even Shining Armor would do such a
thing, let alone with a wraith so bucking tiny!"
Flash sighed and shook his head. "Then again, the stallion that just left isn't
Shining Armor," he retorted.
The two guards flinched as they heard Lance release an echoing shout marred
with irritation, "I heard that! I heard every damned word! Don't make me come
back up there!"
One of the other doors in the hall opened with a shrill creak once the yell
faded, and Flash directed his gaze to it to find Natalie shambling out with one
of her front hooves rubbing her eyes. "The fuck is Lance bitching about this
time?" she groaned, ears flattening against her head.
The guard who dropped his spear answered her, "Um… he said he'd make the wraith
a fourth right hoof or something, as part of his army. Me and Flash don't
exactly agree with that proposition, and unfortunately your general heard us."
Natalie's eyes widened instantly, and she dropped her hoof. "He wants to what?"
she asked, her voice but a squeak as she turned to the sitting stallion.
"Exactly," the guard who dropped his spear sighed. "I don't get it, either."
"Katie, did he—" Natalie stopped upon turning to the wraith she addressed and
noticed her jaw hanging open. "Katie… you okay?" All she received as an answer
was a silent nod with a mouth whose lower half clacked up to meet with the
upper, and briefly connected via pale gums before descending back down like a
door that hadn't been installed properly.
"She's been like that since he told her she'd be considered for something like
an advisor-type position five minutes ago," Flash murmured, shaking his head.
"I think she needs a nap, personally."
Hooves echoed into the hall, and from the same room Natalie came out of Matt
stumbled to meet up with said mare in question. "Who did what to who for how
many cookies?" he asked.
"Matt, we're gonna need to have a word with Lance," Natalie replied, turning to
her fellow Fantasian as he gave her a sleepy-but-vexed look. "He wants to make
Katie a fourth right-hoof."
Matt's eyes went wide. "As in… something along the lines of lieutenant
general?" he asked.
"With how thin she is… a private at the most. I don't see her getting
lieutenant general or even colonel anytime soon," Natalie murmured with a
hesitant nod. "Still, we're gonna have to talk with him about that. She
wouldn't… she wouldn't be able to hold the position if she got it."
"He probably had a reason to consider it, but… you're right. We're gonna have
to ask him about it—even from him, the idea of an emaciated wraith as part of
an army is ludicrous," Matt agreed, drawing a heavy sigh. "I'm starting to
think he took mushrooms or something."
"But, if he had mushrooms, then why was he trotting normally earlier today?
Furthermore, how do you think he got mushrooms?" Natalie retorted, frowning.
"He can't stand greens too well. I'm inclined to believe the same would be true
for fungi."
"Touché," Matt sighed, ears flattening against his head.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Zephyr led the two onwards for minutes on end, winding down several corridors
with Lance and Anna in step not too far behind him. The guard grumbled to
himself about changelings and them being damned, but he made it just
unintelligible enough that Lance had to tune out all other noises simply to
make out 'changelings' and 'damned' in his little bout of rambling.
Anna chose to keep quiet for a while, watching Zephyr carefully to see where he
was going to trot next. Every time his left or right wing twitched, he'd turn
down a corresponding hall seconds later, which enabled her to hear him mumbling
like a child trying to avoid telling their father something. Every so often,
she turned to Lance with a look that could only be called disturbed, but he
refused to meet her gaze.
The air hung heavily, and not in a good way. It was the kind of thick that made
it difficult to breathe, difficult to think clearly, and especially difficult
to speak louder than a whisper. Every time she opened her mouth to talk, no
sound came out. She wanted to say something—anything—to break the silence. Yet
she found she could not articulate even one syllable, without first having to
take a few shallow breaths that set her already-wobbly legs into jittering-
like-crazy-overdrive.
Which, in turn, caused her to almost trip and crash into Lance a few times. She
stopped herself with her magic, and eventually she resorted to just levitating
herself in the air like a ghost that refused to leave the mortal plane when her
hooves slipped from beneath her a time too many. She did not stray from either
of the pegasi, and kept herself an inch or so above ground. But when Anna
looked at Lance again after a few moments, she flinched when he looked back
with a stoic expression on his face.
"We'll talk when he's out of earshot," Lance mouthed, briefly pausing to use a
hoof to gesture to Zephyr for emphasis. Anna nodded, and the two turned to
their guard-turned-usher just in time to see him take a sharp left. They
followed him closely, and watched as he turned to a door and opened it.
"This way, you lot," Zephyr groaned, and trotted into the room the door belong
to. Anna and Lance exchanged looks before they entered, finding an expansive
room lined with a few lockers on one side. Beyond that, a few showerheads stuck
out of the furthest wall, though it lacked stalls and curtains. "This is the
guard showers. Take it or leave it."
Lance nodded to the guard. "Thank you kindly. Could you leave us to our
privacy, please?" he asked in a polite, if slightly miffed, tone.
"Can do, since you brought your marefriend with you," Zephyr replied, causing
Lance to blubber for a few seconds. With that, he trotted out of the room,
slamming the door shut behind him in his wake. The two Fantasians flinched as
the sound echoed sharply, briefly ringing in their ears for a good few minutes.
Anna turned to the door and glared at it like it was Zephyr himself. "Who does
he think he is, Celestia's uncle?" she grumbled.
"Just because we happen to share a bed does not mean we're dating," Lance
huffed, also glaring at the door.
Anna tuned to Lance. "Maybe he's just mad at you because you run things
differently than what he's used to," she murmured with a shrug. "Either that,
or just mad that you can get close to mares and he can't."
"Well, whatever the—" Lance began, only to stop when he realized what Anna just
said. He turned to meet her gaze again, an incredulous brow quirked.
"I meant physically, not intimately," Anna clarified, frowning. "Unless you
were dreaming again…"
"Fair point, but still. Whatever the case may be, that guard has no reason to
complain, let alone assume shit," Lance sighed, his shoulders slumping a bit.
He shrugged and turned to the showerheads at the far wall, and began trotting
to them, with the mare following him via self-levitation. The two reached that
wall in seconds, and cast off their cloaks halfway through the trip to avoid
getting them soaked.
Anna laid down after turning on two showerheads, making sure she was under one
of the torrents. At first, the water was freezing cold, before the chill got
replaced with a very mild warmth that bordered on boiling hot. Lance sat on his
haunches, and both were heavily drenched after some seconds. "Why'd you…" She
stopped when her companion opened his mouth.
"Say I'd give Katie a position of power in the army?" Lance finished, turning
to the mare who nodded back at him. "I did that to get that guard to stop
griping. I wouldn't actually give her such a position—but, suppose that I did,
theoretically. What would happen, if she had that power?"
Anna looked at the stallion and blinked a few times before her eyes widened.
"Ooooh," she groaned with a nod. "You basically gave her a metaphorical
shield…"
"Yeah. I couldn't sleep at all, and decided to keep tabs on things. So, while
you were dreaming, I crept to the door every few minutes to see if things were
going smoothly. At one point, I heard Katie say something about how he was
gonna shove his spear up her ass," Lance replied, nodding back.
Anna's pupils shrank. "You're kidding," she murmured.
Lance shook his head. "Yeah. I had to do something to keep things from
needlessly escalating. Otherwise…" he trailed off, shuddering in spite of the
torrent of warm water that hailed upon him.
"I see," Anna mumbled, and she turned to the wall to stare at it. The crystal
faintly showed her reflection, as well as that of the general's, but both were
distorted because of the erratic bumps and curves of the material and by fog
from steam building up. She stood up, her legs still shaky, and glanced around
before finding a shelf divided into boxes standing at one end of the line of
showerheads. In them, she noticed, were little white bars that looked rather
dry at a distance.
Her horn lit up, and she grasped one of the white bars in her magic before
making it come to her, and she found it to be rather small. "Found some soap, I
take it?" Lance asked, garnering a nod. "Well, could you hand a bar to me too,
please?"
Anna responded by plucking out another bar of soap and forking it over, and she
stepped out of her rain of water to start rubbing the bar she claimed along her
haunches and back legs. She did this in such a way Lance hardly had any clue
she was cleaning her rear end first—at least, until she applied the bar to her
tail and quickly built up a thick layer of suds along the hairs.
He waited until she did her shoulders and front legs before starting on his own
body. Immediately upon making the bar go up and down his left front leg, it
began slipping wildly. When he tried making it go still in his front hooves, it
slipped out of them like a banana peel and managed to hit him square in the
nose like a bullet.
This wound up causing him to recoil so sharply he fell on his back. His wings
clanged loudly, feathers scraping against the crystal floor like knives, and
the runes on said feathers began glowing with a sickly light. The floor itself
glowed beneath him, and for a fraction of a second what looked like teal mana
shot up and embraced the pegasus that landed, which only caused the runes
themselves to glow even brighter.
Lance screamed as his body was immediately encased in a sphere of tealish-
colored lightning that lasted for a few seconds, the pure shock causing him to
start flailing his legs on his back as it dragged on for a few more seconds.
Anna watched with a horrified look as more mana erupted from the floor,
enveloping the stray bolts before they could hurt him any more.
When the dual glows faded and the runes ceased glowing with a few lingering
crackles, she quickly turned the showerheads off with her magic and rushed over
with a shriek of alarm, standing over Lance while using her hooves to tuck his
wings beneath him. He groaned as she positioned his front legs at his sides,
effectively covering up the wings, and both heard the door flying open before
hooves hitting crystal graced their ears.
"What happened?!" a masculine voice cried.
Anna turned to the lockers, and found that Zephyr had barged in. "He, uh,
dropped the soap, and skid against the floor after he fell," she answered. When
the guard gave her a glare, she added, "We weren't horsing around, honest!"
"I see. Don't scare me like that next time," Zephyr groaned, and with that he
turned and left.
When the door slamming hit his ears again, Lance asked in a pained wheeze, "Did
he… see my wings?"
"He didn't. I tucked them in before he even opened the door," Anna answered in
a low whisper. "Want me to help you scrub, since…" She stopped when he rose a
foreleg slowly, noticing that when he bent it at the joints, it jittered
slightly and then stiffened part-way. "I'll… take that as a yes." Being careful
to avoid touching him with her magic, she used her hooves to slowly get him to
sit up first, and then stand.
"Next time… I'm s-securing the soap… in a damn net," Lance groaned, his wings
shuddering and slightly rattling against his sides. As the wings stilled, his
legs trembled slightly from the aftershock, but he made them stiffen for a
moment. Slowly, he went back under the torrent of water, with Anna guiding him
along the way. He leaned against his current showermate and shivered in pain as
she scrubbed him with the soap bar that flew into his face, though she simply
cleaned his legs and tail and neck before having the suds rinsed off.
Once both of them were clean and the soap bars were stowed away where they'd
been found, Anna turned off the showerheads by letting her magic twist the
knobs, and the two stood in silence. After a few minutes, she decided to break
the tranquility by asking, "You good enough to walk?"
Lance pulled himself away and tried to trot around her, but his legs gave out
halfway and he ended up landing on his stomach with his limbs sprawled out.
"Give me… a few," he grumbled in reply. Anna nodded and tried to trot herself,
but when her legs wobbled, she simply stopped trotting after a few seconds and
willed them to stop shaking. "What are you… doing?"
"Trying to walk right so I can carry you back. I don't trust that guard outside
those lockers," Anna replied, once more attempting to trot without shaking and
stumbling every which-way she could, before she fell down herself. She got back
up and tried again, and again after she fell down a second time.
Lance nodded and watched as she made several attempts to steady herself,
getting up when her hooves slipped out from under her, and in a few moments her
legs stopped trying to give out. Whether she was forcing herself to be as
steady as could be, or she had merely recovered from her dream, he couldn't
tell—though he was inwardly grateful that she was definitely trying and
succeeding. He found himself half-dragged into a sitting position, before the
cloaks he cast off were replaced on his form.
Anna used hers to dry him off, without doing the same for herself, and wrapped
the fourth cloak around his midsection for good measure. Then she sat in front
of him with her muzzle pointing at the shelf of soap bars and away from him.
"Afraid you're gonna have to piggyback it," she sighed. Lance blushed a little,
but slowly pressed his chest and stomach against her as he put his hooves
around the barrel of her chest regardless.
Then she lifted herself into a standing position, and dragged him with. His
rear legs dangled beside hers, and they bent at the fetlocks, which meant his
pasterns and hooves now touched the floor front side down. She sagged a little
beneath him, but not so much that her legs could end up buckling and send them
both crashing to the floor.
"Are you… part earth pony?" he groaned inquisitively.
"No. I'm guessing it's your innate pegasus magic making you light enough for me
to do this," Anna replied. "You gotta be light to fly, after all… if and when
your wings get fixed," she glumly added, feeling Lance nod against her neck.
With that, she began inching her way to the door with her mane and tail still
dripping as she moved, her companion's pasterns dragging against the floor in
defeat. She made sure her movements were sluggish enough to not let him tilt
one way or the other and throw her off-balance, but fast enough she made it to
the obstruction in a minute's time without rubbing him raw in the process.
She halted upon hearing voices talking on the other side. Quirking a brow, she
carefully aligned herself to the door and pressed her ear to it, and Lance did
likewise while causing her to sag a little on the side in the process. The door
held them, though, and they listened closely. "... I'm telling you, you're a
lunatic!" a mare cried out on the other side.
"Listen, Prism, the Emperor has gone nuts! He's trusting an equally-crazy
Fantasian who has changelings in his army!" an unfamiliar-sounding stallion
retorted. "For Celestia's sake, they even got Spike the Brave and Glorious on
his side!"
"That's nonsense, and you know it," the mare who the two assumed was Prism
huffed. "I saw a bunch of ponies earlier, and a diamond dog and some gryphs.
Nothing more, nothing less, unless you count the striped one they had
accompanying them."
"I saw two of them shapeshift before my eyes! The Fantasians have buckmothering
changelings with them!" the stallion yelled, and Anna cringed when his response
was punctuated by what sounded like a stomping hoof. "I'm gonna set the Emperor
and Spike the Brave and Glorious straight, and have those vile Fantasians
deported—by any means necessary!"
"You'll do no such thing! The Emperor is your superior, and if he wants some
Fantasians to stay, then so be it! As long as they don't do anything even
remotely like what Sombra did, I'm perfectly fine with it!" Prism shot back,
and with that the sound of galloping hooves echoed into the room. Then, they
faded, bringing about a silence that lingered for what felt like hours. In
fact, the silence was so thick that as Anna shuffled away with Lance on her
back, neither set of hooves—whether being lifted up and down or being dragged
along the floor—made not one peep.
They shared one glance, each knowing what was on the other's mind. Somepony
wanted them deported 'by any means necessary,' and wished to 'set the Emperor
and Spike the Brave and Glorious straight' in the process? They turned back to
the door in unison, but dared not approach it again—not until another galloping
set of hooves filled in the silence before they too faded. "You'll see, Prism!
You'll see that I was right!" the stallion beyond the room bellowed, his voice
rapidly turning into a dull echo when the hooves themselves had silenced.
"... Levitate us to the guest rooms. We have to warn the others as soon as we
can," Lance ordered in a low voice, causing Anna to stiffen.
"But… won't that set off your wings again?" Anna asked in apprehension, her
voice faltering when 'set off' left her lips.
"It won't, if you just use levitation," Lance replied. "I'll let you know if
they are set off, though." Anna nodded, and embraced both herself and him in
her magic. She did the same with the door and flung it open, and they flew out
of it and into the hall like they were fired from a slingshot. They darted down
the hall as one, but not before looking both ways and finding that Zephyr was
oddly absent.
"Where is that guard?" Anna mumbled under her breath.
"Probably returned to his post with the others. But him not waiting on us to
finish cleaning up… it's awfully fishy," Lance murmured, his brow furrowing.
"Unless maybe another guard found him, told him to go back to his post. Only
way I can see that happening would be if guard two had a superior rank or
something."
"We'll check whether or not he returned to his post, and see what happens from
there," Anna sighed.
"And act if need be," Lance finished for her with a nod of his head. "If
they're itching to do what I think they're gonna do, we need to act as soon as
we can." He paused for a moment, before his face hardened. "Actually, let's
hold off on returning to the guest rooms."
"Change in plans?" Anna inquired.
"Yes. I want to see if we can find Prism first. She—I am assuming it's a
she—might still be somewhere in this damned castle," Lance answered, ears
folding back against his head. "If we don't find her, then we go to the
others."
With another shared glance and dual nods, they made haste and set off to find
out where Prism was, still embraced by a green-tinted magic.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
It wasn't until the sun rose did they return to the guest rooms. The guards
were still stationed, but Katie was oddly absent. However, Zephyr was present
at the scene as stoic as ever, his eyes carefully trailing the floating ponies
in such a way they didn't know he was looking directly at them.
Matt waited outside a room with an opened door, and beckoned Lance and Anna
inside with a hoof before going in himself. They floated in after the blond-
maned stallion and the mare's horn turned a bright red-hot that shimmered
through the green, and it fizzled violently before her magic immediately waned.
As a result, Anna and Lance crashed to the floor in a heap. The former was
grunting as a headache settled in, and the latter began groaning as the mare's
body ended up pressuring his ribs a bit from how they were positioned.
The half-Clydesdale sighed and shook his head when they crashed, trotted to
them and helped them up with his magic. Only after he successfully dragged them
to the bed and disentangled the two without complications, he turned around to
close the door behind them with magic. "Alright, explain why you two flew
instead of trotted along the hall and why you didn't show up earlier," Matt
sighed, a frown etched onto his muzzle as his gaze fell onto the ponies in bed.
"Lance's wings set off. He tripped, and the feathers scraped... against the
floor, and those damned runes jolted him... bad enough his legs were half-
paralyzed," Anna groaned, bringing a hoof up to rub her temples. "We… couldn't
sleep, and took a shower. After we finished, the guard who escorted us
vanished, and we heard…"
"Somepony—a stallion, I believe—wants to, I quote, 'set Shining and Spike
straight,'" Lance stated in a hiss. "We heard him yelling at a Prism pony, and
he thinks the Emperor's gone mad for trusting me. We went looking for the Prism
pony first, before coming back—it's why it took us so long."
"Did he say your name?" Matt asked, a brow quirked.
Lance shook his head. "He did mention the fact that I have changelings in my
army, so I assumed he was talking about me," he answered. "Oh, and the
pony—whoever in fuck he is—wants our asses deported."
"But… they can't deport us. Most we did was fuck up a timberdrake and shut down
a hotel just by spending the night," Matt sighed, shoulders sagging as he
spoke.
"Won't stop whoever we overheard from trying to find a reason to have us
booted, though," Lance retorted. "The Prism pony he argued with didn't agree
with him." He paused for a moment. "And where's Katie?"
Matt gestured to the other end of the bed with a hoof as hooves hitting crystal
filled the room. As soon as the clip-clopping halted, Lance turned to find an
illusion-disguised Katie looking right at him, her front hooves resting on the
frame of the bed. "Right over there. And I have another twenty questions—"
Lance turned his attention back to Matt, and cut him off in a harsh whisper, "I
said that I'd make her a fourth right hoof to get one of the guards to stop
bitching at her. I heard her say something about him wanting to shove a spear
up her ass. And no, I won't actually go through with making her a right hoof
unless she does something exceptional, thank you very much."
"Guess that explains a lot," Katie huffed, eyes narrowing for a moment.
Matt nodded in understanding. He turned to the table that sat at one end of the
room, and Lance did likewise. Both saw Natalie sitting next to it in the chair,
looking at them with her chin resting on one of her front pasterns and both
front legs on the table. "So, boys, we have another problem?" she asked
sarcastically, eyes half-lidded and a bored frown on her face.
Both stallions nodded. "We'll have to keep an extra eye on Armin and Katie, if
what Lance said is true," Matt replied.
"I was there with him, I'm a witness…" Anna grumbled indignantly, turning her
head to glare at Matt.
"Well," Natalie began, rising to stand from her chair. She leaned on the table,
using her front legs to support herself in doing so. "We'll keep an eye out,
alright? There's only one pony who wants to 'set Shining straight' as far as we
know, and counting Spike and Zecora, twelve of us. Thirteen, including NoLegs."
"You're right, Natz. That pony's very likely outnumbered," Lance agreed with a
nod. "But still, they may catch us off-guard. I don't want a repeat of that
damn hotel all over again."
Natalie nodded back. "How about we take turns watching for suspicious activity?
This time, we have guards with us," she murmured. "It'll be much safer."
"True, and one of them might know who's wanting us deported," Lance stated. He
frowned, though. "But they may not know until tomorrow, or the next day. Hell,
they might never know at all, and we'd be none the wiser."
"Doesn't mean we can't keep our eyes and ears peeled," Anna retorted with a
huff. "However… should we tell Shining about it, or no?"
The eyes of the other four turned to her immediately, and a series of frowns
upon muzzles greeted her. Matt rose a hoof and rubbed his chin with it, humming
thoughtfully. Lance's wings shifted beneath the cloth, though fortunately the
hexes upon them didn't activate at all even as they brushed up against the
cloaks. Natalie's brow furrowed, though only slightly, and she got off of the
table before trotting over to the others. Katie's ears twitched, but she showed
no signs of movement otherwise.
"That's… actually a good question. He might not believe us when and if we tell
him there's a pony plotting against him," Lance murmured, sighing heavily.
"Maybe… maybe we'll wait a day before telling him. Just in case we happen to
overhear that crazy pony you guys said you heard," Natalie stated, slowly
nodding as she spoke.
"Maybe Shining himself will overhear that pony himself, if he's lucky," Matt
added, setting his hoof down.
"But there's as much a chance none of those things could happen," Katie pointed
out, shaking her head.
"But there's a chance the pony could tell Shining something ludicrous—like,
suppose they said I went and raped a mare with my horn," Anna began, scowling.
"They may do something to implicate me and convince the guards I was there at
the crime scene when it happened."
"They'd have to replicate your bow, or one of your arrows first," Natalie
remarked, causing Anna to shake her head.
"Perhaps so, but these are crystal ponies we're talking about here. They may
just as well have a bow similar to mine—then again, how should I know? We don't
know much about the territory we're currently in," Anna replied, her face
hardening. "For all we know, there could be multiple bows forged of stone and
crystal, exactly like mine."
Matt and Natalie shared a glance, and the latter spoke up, "The only ponies
with weapons we've seen so far are the guards and Twilight."
"Unless hooves count as weapons," Anna scoffed. "In which case, most ponies
have at least one."
"Including us," Matt pointed out matter-of-factly.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Anna hissed sarcastically, a mock-smile forming
on her face.
"You're welcome," Matt replied, a grin spreading on his muzzle.
"Alright, you guys, calm down," Lance barked, and instantly the two unicorns
turned to him before they had the chance to start arguing. "It's no use even
starting a fight, when somepony who I have reason to believe wants to bring
harm onto Shining's on the loose."
The trio of unicorns and the disguised wraith nodded, and they took a few deep
breaths and a minute to shift a bit. Matt and Natalie sat on their haunches,
and Anna rose to sit up. "Of course, we're also gonna have to tell the others
about this…" Natalie murmured, garnering a slow nod from the other three ponies
in the room. Katie let go of the bed and dropped to all fours.
"In any case, we'll also need to tell Maria to keep mum about it," Anna added,
sighing once more. Her shoulders sagged for a bit, and she began rolling them
as if to work out kinks in their muscles. "And my sister, too. I certainly
don't want a repeat of Chanson."
"At any rate, we don't know who this mystery pony that may or may not want to
hurt Shining even is. I think we should keep eyes and ears out for any names
that may come up," Matt piped up, his ears folding back as he spoke.
"Exactly. All Anna and I know was that it sounded like a stallion, and that a
pony named Prism bickered with him," Lance murmured, wings twitching ever so
slightly under the garbs.
"You think we should keep an eye out for this Prism? They may know the pony who
wants to 'set Shining straight,' if you get my drift," Natalie said, tilting
her head.
Lance put a hoof to his chin and rubbed, prior to languidly sitting up and
nodding his head. "Sounds like a plan to me," he replied. "As soon as we find
this Prism pony, we're gonna whistleblow to Shining. Hopefully, with another
pony who talked to the stallion that wants to potentially harm him, we could
have something to go on. In the meantime, we'll check the library to see if its
manager and her volunteers have found anything."
"I can get behind that," Natalie agreed.
"Seconded," Matt added, a small smile forming upon his muzzle.
"And if we're really lucky, we may be able to find the Prism pony at the
library," Anna piped up, also grinning herself.
"If I run into the pony that wants us deported, I'll ask him if he wants a
pretty convincing lie, or the ugly truth. Otherwise, I'm gonna stick around
with you guys, in case this damn illusion wears off on its own," Katie stated,
trotting around the bed to meet up with Natalie and Matt.
"Then it's settled," Lance murmured, his eyes glinting as he spoke. He laid
back down, head resting with his forelegs under his chin. Anna followed suit,
yawning as her head met with a pillow. "Matt, Natz, I trust you two to tell the
others what we just relayed to you. Katie, don't wander off—if your illusion
wears off prematurely, it could lead to something terrible. In the meantime,
Anna and I are gonna catch up on some sleep. Wake us up if something happens."
Matt and Natalie nodded in understanding, and waited until Anna and Lance had
fallen asleep before gently pulling the bed's covers over them with magic.
After that, Katie climbed onto Matt's back, and the three silently crept out of
the room, softly shutting the door behind them on their way out.
***** Chapter XXVIII- Three Trots Behind *****
Maria jumped into the air as she and the other Fantasians, along with Zecora,
Spike, and Flash Sentry languidly shuffled down a rather lengthy hall, wings
madly flapping. Yet every time she did this, she stayed in the air for less
than five seconds. But before she could land and hurt herself, Fenrir or
Alexander caught her mid-drop, and lowered her to the ground. "Flying's hard,"
she complained after a few tries.
"Your feathers grew back… two days ago? Regardless, you might want to give your
wings a rest," Alexander remarked, using a talon to gently poke at the filly's
wings for emphasis.
"B-but—" Maria began, wings spreading as if she were preparing to try again.
Fenrir cut Maria off before she could even start griping, "He's correct. Your
body needs time to adjust to having a full coat of feathers once more. By
attempting to become airborne, you only risk bringing harm onto yourself. Do as
he says: take it easy for right now."
Maria deflated, wings folding at her sides. "Okay…" she groaned.
Natalie turned to Katie, who still rode on Matt's back. "I think she's trying
to emulate you," she remarked.
Katie responded with an eyeroll. "She's gonna need two sets of wings to pull
that off," she huffed.
Flash, who trotted next to Natalie with Spike on his back, decided to pipe up,
"I, uh… overheard your little talk this morning."
Natalie turned to the guard, both brows shooting to her hairline. "And if we…
don't report it, you will?" she inquired hesitantly.
"It's sort of my duty to do so," Flash replied with a nod. "And if I don't, one
of my fellow guards who were stationed that night will. Gotta inform the
Emperor that somepony's conspiring against him."
"True enough," Matt agreed, sighing.
"I could just scorch them with my fire breath if they tried laying a hoof on
me," Spike interjected, waving a claw dismissively. "That is, if they were
actually going to go through with this 'setting me straight' thing."
Zecora rose one of her front legs to her chin and idly tapped with a hoof,
using the other three to trot in doing so. Her eyes averted to Flash and she
murmured, "Tell me, dearest guard, have the crystal ponies always been like
this? I speak of the despising-of-the-changelings that seems… quite amiss."
"For the two or so years I've been stationed here, just about," Flash replied
with a shrug. "I find it odd they treat Spike like a walking god, but
changelings just seem to rile them up."
"I'm impressed the crystal ponies haven't talked about him yet," Matt retorted,
using a hoof to gesture to Fenrir for emphasis. "Look at him, he's a good few
inches taller than me! He's a walking, talking definition of beardog!"
Fenrir chortled, and aptly responded by shifting to walk on all fours. "If I am
a beardog, then you, my good stallion, are but a horse," he chirped, a wry grin
on his muzzle. This caused Matt to start spluttering incoherently, and Katie to
break out laughing.
"If he's a horse, then I am part rook," Alexander added, a grin on his beak.
"Magpie," Sarah interjected, garnering a guffaw from the gryphon.
"Oh, please, I have not one speck of white on me," Alexander retorted, still
grinning.
"But with a crystal coat, some of your feathers look dark metallic blue," Sarah
scoffed, a wicked grin forming on her muzzle.
Alexander replied by spreading his wings and giving them a once-over, only to
find that some of his feathers did indeed seem a dark metallic blue instead of
black. This was most predominant on his wings and chest, though his back legs
and tail and claws were still dark and sooty in comparison. "I blame refraction
of light," he mumbled.
"Is Fantasia cloudy?" Flash asked, looking pointedly at the gryphon. "Lack of
sunshine could also be a factor."
Alexander's head dropped, and he sighed begrudgingly. "Ectoplasms are so
rampant they linger for days on end," he replied.
Flash immediately froze. "You're… kidding, right?" he inquired, eyes widening.
Natalie shook her head. "Afraid not," she sighed. "But they're stuck in
Fantasia."
Flash gulped before taking a few breaths to calm himself and resumed trotting
once more. "I-I see," he murmured, ears flattening against his head for a
moment. "I… I almost don't want to imagine how bad the ectoplasm problem is
over there."
"You aren't on Fantasia. You're on your home turf. Lighten up," Sarah sighed,
and instantly Flash nodded and his ears perked up.
"Y-you're right," Flash murmured, his face setting with a stoic look. "The
ectoplasms can't get me here."
The group rounded a bend, finding themselves in a shorter hall with a winding
staircase at its end. Flash trotted ahead of the guests, and beckoned them
onwards with a wing after gaining a bit of distance from the group. They
followed him, watching as he trotted up the stairs instead of down, and wasted
no time in ascending the flight single-file after him. The bunch made it up one
floor, and strode down a few more halls without speaking. A few minutes had
passed in silence and hall-navigating, when the guard-turned-usher stopped
before a set of double doors that were open.
From the room whose doors had been parted, the guests heard a myriad of voices
mumbling before they shushed, and a tense silence took precedence. Exchanging
glances with the others, Matt crept over and he peered inside to find a large
auditorium, motioning for everyone else to come over with a hoof. Every one of
his companions tiptoed over to the door and looked inside, seeing that every
seat was filled with guards of all creeds, all watching a stage upon which an
armored and furious-seeming Shining stood.
The Emperor's blue eyes were sweeping mercilessly across every single pony that
was seated, glinting with nothing short of pure rage that accompanied a hard
frown on his muzzle. His eyes briefly met with those of his guests, and he idly
nodded to them before turning his attention back to the guards.
They heard him bellow out in a chilling, commanding voice, "I have absolutely
no idea which one of you wise guys would wish our guests to be deported when
they have done nothing wrong—or even if it was one of you to begin with." He
paused, eyes coldly darting across the crowd once more. The guards stiffened
under his gaze, and some murmured for a moment or so before hushing up.
Shining took the settling silence as his cue to go on, raising his voice as he
spoke. "But if I hear so much as another peep regarding a desire to 'set me
straight,' or to do likewise to my adoptive nephew no less, there will be
consequences. I'm not sure which one of you is responsible, or if the guilty
party is present, but you can be certain I will find out who came up with that
oh-so-bright idea. Am I understood?"
"Yes sir!" the crowd shrieked in unison, as loud as they could.
"Excellent," Shining hissed with a nod of his head. "Now, return to your posts,
and tell your fellow guards who have not attended this assembly what I have
just told you. You are dismissed." He paused to turn to the door and beckoned
his guests with a hoof. "But not until the door is cleared out." The Fantasians
hesitated, but they filed into the auditorium and stood between the seats.
Zecora, Spike, and Flash followed suit, and the entire lot kept themselves out
of the way of the guards as they stood up and began trotting out of the room.
Some of the guards that passed the guests gave them looks, most being stoic in
nature. But Katie and Armin saw sparks of loathing, and a few of fear, in some
sets of eyes that belonged to otherwise-emotionless visages. Only when the room
was cleared out and the seats all but empty, Shining hopped off the stage and
trotted to his visitors, stopping just shy of Zecora and locking his eyes on
the orange-coated escort. "Flash, what is your purpose here?" he asked.
"I… I was told about somepony conspiring against you, sir. I was bringing the
guests so they could tell you in more detail," Flash replied, frowning. He saw
a gleam in Shining's eyes and hastily said a statement sounding more like an
inquiry, "Um… it seems like somepony already told you, though?"
Shining nodded. "A little birdie aroused me from my sleep and informed me of
the whole deportation thing last night," he replied. He sent a fond smile at
Spike, and cantered over before raising a hoof and patting the drake's head
with it. "And if anypony tries to hurt you, you have permission to breathe fire
on them."
Spike nodded, and smiled at the gesture of affection. He spoke up when the hoof
retracted, "But does Cadence know about this?"
Shining nodded. "She's been informed as well," he answered. "It's easy to
inform two ponies when they share the same bedroom."
Matt and Natalie exchanged looks, frowning and blushing a little at what
Shining just implied. They turned to Maria as she tossed in her two bits,
"What's deportation?"
"We'll tell you later, okay?" Sarah murmured, raising a talon to ruffle the
filly's mane.
"Okay," Maria chirped with a nod.
Shining's gaze softened and darted from individual to individual, before he
noticed a lack of two ponies and frowned. "Where're your general and…" he
began, but Matt rose a hoof to signal him to stop speaking.
"Asleep," Matt replied tersely, rolling his eyes at nothing in particular. "You
know Lance, him and his damn naps. Anna's napping with him—neither could sleep
last night, so they told me."
"Couldn't stand, either. They had to be lugged into bed," Natalie added with a
sigh.
Katie raised one of her forehooves and waved it dismissively. "Anna's horn
turned as red as my mane," she concluded.
Shining nodded in understanding. A huge grin broke out on his face. "Alright.
Flash, I have a request for you," he began, turning to the only guard who
remained present.
Flash stiffened under the intense gaze of blue. "Y-yes sir?" he asked.
"Please return to the room the general's staying in. When he and his
subordinate awaken, escort them directly to me," Shining answered, still
maintaining his grin. "And don't wake them up, unless somepony tries to murder
them or something of the sort. In the meantime, I'll escort the rest of our
guests to the library."
Flash's face hardened, and he spread a wing in a salute. "Yes sir," he replied.
With that, he sat on his haunches and let Spike clamber off before standing up
with wings flared. He wasted no time in flapping madly, becoming airborne, and
flying out of the room.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
A good hour or two passed before Shining managed to lead Zecora, Spike, and the
otherworldly tourists to the gargantuan library that gave Twilight's a run for
its bits, after he sorted some other things out. Before them, between the
shelves, stood a large hooffull of crystal ponies. Some were pegasi, some were
unicorns, and some were earth ponies.
A particular middle-aged earth pony mare with a mulberry-ish coat, large gold-
rimmed glasses, and a greying pink mane met Shining with a smile. She had a
crystal green hat with a pink stripe running between brim and crown on her
head, which bobbed a little as she nodded.
"So, I take it you and your volunteers found something, Amethyst?" Shining
asked.
Amethyst nodded her head again. "We found a few spellbooks that have spells
Starswirl has written," she replied, turning to glance at the crystal unicorns
behind her. They let their horns glow, and from a few individual flashes of
magic that exploded in a manner not unlike a fireworks show, a good eight
pristine books appeared and gently floated in the air. The natives handed the
books to their Emperor, who took them in his magic.
"I see. Was that just from today?" Shining inquired.
Amethyst turned back to him. "Yesterday, m'lord. We were just starting to do
another look-see today," she answered.
"Alright, carry on," Shining stated, and he floated the stack of books over to
Matt, who sat on his haunches and grabbed the bunch with his front hooves.
Natalie sighed and snatched the topmost book with her magic, flipping it open
and holding it in front of her muzzle. She turned a few pages and shuddered
when one page with runes and spiders making up a spell greeted her. She turned
a few more pages, and relaxed when a simplistic set of runes without arachnids
appeared, though her brow furrowed slightly nonetheless.
"Is it alright if I cast some of the spells from these books?" Natalie asked,
garnering a look from the Emperor.
"... are you able to read the runes?" Shining asked, immediately garnering a
shake of the head as his answer. "Only two spells today from those books,
because you don't know what you're casting."
Natalie nodded without complaint, and she began scanning the book before
closing it with another satisfied nod. She turned to Amethyst and asked, "How
much do you charge for overdue books?"
Amethyst rose a hoof and pushed her glasses slightly up the bridge of her
muzzle. "One bit, per every day the book's not returned. Those books are
valuable, so we have a week's worth period before the late fees start heaping
up," she answered.
Natalie sent Amethyst a grin. "If nothing else, we'll have a guard remind us
that the books need returning before we leave the Empire," she chirped.
"Alright, alright," Amethyst murmured with a nod of the head that made her
glasses slip all the way to the tip of her muzzle. She rose a hoof and adjusted
the lens again before adding, "The Crystal Faire's in three days. You sure you
don't want to stick around for the festivities?"
"Wait, there's a Faire?" Sarah asked, a brow raising up to her hairline.
"Oh, yes," Amethyst replied, a smile playing on her face. "There're many
events—we joust, make sweets with crystal berries, sing an anthem…"
"Joust?" Sarah parroted, eyes widening. "That sounds awesome."
Fenrir immediately snapped at the hippogryph, eyes narrowing to golden slits,
"Your wing is broken, and bound in a cast! You are not going to partake in an
activity that can add more damage you could do without!"
"Well, if she wants to joust, we'll have to do something about that wing,"
Amethyst interjected, garnering the attention of the dog and gryph before they
could spark a fight amongst themselves. "And the lances are tipped with balls
anyway—minimizes the chance of casualties."
"My point still remains," Fenrir huffed, crossing his front paws.
"Well, maybe one of the books has something that can help you with the wing
issue," Amethyst retorted, using a hoof to gesture to the stack Matt was
juggling.
Matt looked at the stack cross-eyed. "Um… alright, then. But if we can't
understand the runes…" he paused, shuddering, "then how will we know which
spell to cast?"
Amethyst began to grin again, and she turned to one of the crystal unicorns
behind her. Instantly, from another flash of magic, a ninth book materialized
and was quickly put on the very top of the stack. She turned back to Matt and
answered, "Good thing for you, we also had a book on ancient runology, and how
to translate the runes in those books. I guess it'll keep you very occupied."
Matt and Natalie shared a glance, before the mare swapped out the book she
opened with the most recent addition to the stack. She made sure to not make
the first book land in a way that could throw her companion off-balance, and
opened the second before flipping through the first few pages. She wasted no
time going wide-eyed and letting off a low whistle.
"Yeah, this book will keep me busy for a while," she stated, staring at a page
that was more or less a list divided in two. One side boasted ancient runes,
and modern translations were scrawled on the other side, though both were
written into neat little lines that spanned the length of the whole paper.
"When was this book written?"
"A few months ago, and by a unicorn who specializes in runology," Amethyst
replied, beaming.
"Well, that specilization's showing through, because I haven't even turned
another page yet and I am impressed with how much is on it," Natalie remarked,
closing the book to take in the cover's features. It was impeccably bound with
a rich red leather so polished that when she rubbed her hoof on it, she
could've sworn it felt like cloth instead. The title wasn't anything
special—'Translating Ancient Runes and You' printed in gold—but the author's
name caught her eye. "The author… has a peculiar name."
"What do you speak of?" Fenrir asked, turning to Natalie with a brow raised.
Natalie turned to him and used a hoof to gesture to the book. "The pony who
wrote this is, from what this cover tells me, Sacred Tome," she answered.
Amethyst chortled, garnering the attention of the unicorn and diamond dog. "Oh,
you can find her house not too far from here. Sacred moved in with her pegasus
coltfriend three months ago, and just had her filly two weeks back," she
stated.
"Does she work here?" Natalie inquired, and Amethyst nodded.
"She shows up on odd days, because her new foal's been keeping her occupied.
Filly's rambunctious," Amethyst chirped. "Drives both her and her stallion up
the wall and down the ceiling."
Natalie sighed. "Alright. What's she look like?"
"Light green coat, teal mane," Amethyst answered, still grinning. "Her
stallion's got a brown coat and a blue mane."
"Alright. We'll be sure to keep an eye out for her," Natalie murmured. When
Shining looked at her, she added, "And congratulate her on her filly being
born."
"Already beat you to that punch yesterday," Shining snorted, a wide grin
spreading on his muzzle. "Kind of like I did this morning."
"A step ahead of us, yet a full three trots behind your wife. I ponder about
your efficiency when you and your beloved work as one," Fenrir remarked, noting
that the Emperor's grin looked rather cheeky.
Shining's grin widened some more, to the point it began rivaling Katie's carved
one. "Really?" he mused in a chipper tone.
"Really," Fenrir replied tersely, nodding his head once.
Armin piped up, looking at Amethyst, "So, what's this Crystal Faire thingy do?"
Shining turned to the disguised changeling, still smiling like a giddy foal.
"Basically, it lifts up the crystal ponies' spirits so that they can power the
Crystal Heart," he answered. "I think you guys should stay a while; the library
isn't going to search itself, and it's a monolith to go through."
Zecora donned a smile. "If I may, could I participate in the Faire, perhaps
with a little preparing? If nothing else, I'd like to participate in jousting
to see if I could do something rather daring," she chirped. She turned to Sarah
and added, "Perhaps I could make a potion to heal the wing, and that way rid
her of her tight-looking sling."
"Are you able to mend broken bones with an herbal concoction? I still have some
doubts—a coat of feathers, well… that I've seen firsthand," Fenrir piped up,
turning to Zecora with both brows raised. "But a few bones…"
Zecora rose a hoof, signaling for him to stop right in his verbal tracks.
"While it is true that feathers and bone are two separate things, I can still
heal her so she could spread both wings," she replied. Without missing a beat,
her hoof dropped a little. "After all, Shining brought me here to make salves
for certain ponies and such. I went with him out of concern—let me heal her, I
could at least do that much," she finished, using the same hoof she raised to
gesture to Sarah.
Fenrir's brow furrowed, but he nodded with a glimmer in his eyes. "Very well
then," he murmured, nostrils flaring as he huffed.
"And maybe the Faire could help us pinpoint Mr. Wise Guy," Katie interjected,
almost immediately garnering everyone's attention with her utterance. She wore
a cheeky grin on her illusioned visage, one stretching ear to ear, and her
false eyeballs twinkled.
"'Mr. Wise Guy?' Who could you possibly be—" Fenrir stopped, his eyes widening
so much they looked about ready to jump out of his cranium. Slowly, he closed
his eyes and nodded, taking a moment to sigh. "Oh… I see…"
Katie turned to Shining, a false grin so big on her face she may as well have
silently challenged him to a smiling contest. "So, how many crystal ponies
attend the Faire?" she asked.
"Every single one, usually," Shining replied, his own smile faltering for a
moment. Then the grin he wore broadened, and he could feel his cheeks starting
to hurt. "I see you're starting to… get ideas. You and I need to talk when we
return to the palace."
He turned back to Amethyst and nodded to her and her group of ponies, and they
bowed before tottering off to start going through bookshelves again, quietly
muttering to themselves and asking what the hell their Emperor alluded to. He
trotted around Matt and the others, and the Fantasians and Spike and Zecora
fell in step behind him, with the acquired books being juggled in dual magic
auras. They went along in silence, until they found the stairs that connected
the library to the palace a few minutes later.
Then Spike spoke up, just as Shining put a hoof on the first step of the
flight, "How will we know who this 'Mr. Wise Guy' is?"
Shining stopped, turned to his nephew, and sighed. "He'll—or she'll, if it's a
mare—give themselves away. Either they'll bark the loudest, or they'll talk of
deportation out the wazoo," he answered.
"What if he does neither?" Matt asked, frowning when Shining turned to him.
The Emperor's face hardened. "Hrm… sadly, you have a point," he groaned. "But,
there's a chance they could give themselves away with a different method."
Matt's brows rose up. "Methods? Who'd have a method to get us deported?" he
asked.
"They could give themselves black eyes, or shove one of you while falling back
at the same time to make it look like you pushed them," Shining replied,
shaking his head. "Mind you, those are two of the… easier and less-damaging
ways they could pull it off."
"And the more damaging ways would be…?" Fenrir inquired, eyes narrowing again.
"Blunt force, especially if they have a shovel or something of the sort."
Shining paused, closing his eyes. "Since at least two of you want to partake in
the Faire, I think…" His eyes opened. "I think I might spice things up a bit."
"How?" Alexander asked, wings flaring.
"Yeah. I don't see how you could spice things up this Faire," Spike piped up,
crossing his arms.
Shining began grinning again. "I was thinking… archery," he stated. Turning to
Natalie, he added, "And you so happen to know somepony who can help me set up
the new event I have in mind…"
Natalie's eyes widened. "Wait, you plan to… to draw out Mr. Wise Guy? With a
new sport?" she asked.
Shining nodded. "I have several unused bows and targets that have gotten a
little musty. The guards don't really use them anymore, since spears are easier
to wield. Who better to help me add a little something special than an archer?
Besides, our Wise Guy will very likely show up once the new sport's become part
of the festivities."
"There's a catch, isn't there?" Katie asked disbelievingly, ears twitching as
she spoke.
Shining shook his head. "Not unless you count the bows I happen to have being
enchanted," he replied.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Lance and Anna slept well into the day, and without any sort of nightmares
plaguing them. In fact, it wasn't until the early evening that they woke up
with matted, tangled manes and visible bits of grit in the corners of their
eyes. The archer clambered out of bed first and stretched her legs, feeling her
hips and shoulders pop painlessly. "Mmmm," she hummed. "I feel so much better."
"Ditto," Lance agreed, also climbing out of bed and flexing his limbs. He
noticed his legs shifted a little slower than he'd have liked, and winced every
time he bent them at the joints. "Great, still got lingering shock in my
muscles."
"It'll go away in an hour or two," Anna sighed, trotting over to meet with her
companion. "You want your uniform back?"
Lance shrugged. "Not unless Shining wants to talk to me or something," he
replied with a roll of his eyes. Upon shifting his wings and feeling an
uncomfortable tightness around them that he swore hadn't been there before, he
changed his mind, "Actually, yeah. My wings still hate me."
Anna giggled and gently used her magic to tug the myriad of cloaks off of the
general's body, and she took a moment to look at his wings and spread them,
noticing that they were so stiff she may as well have been trying to bend pure
stone with her hooves. In addition to this, every time she so much as touched
them the wrong way, Lance grit his teeth and gave grunts and hisses of
disapproving pain. She wasted no time getting him dressed in his uniform after
that, making sure to keep the vest beneath the coat unbuttoned to give his
hexed limbs a bit of leeway.
"Next time, don't prod so much," Lance groaned through still-clenched teeth
when she finished.
"Alright," Anna sighed. Her ears twitched when she heard a creak, and she
turned to the door to find it opening. Flash Sentry poked his head inside, and
sent a grin at her.
"You two just getting up?" he asked.
"Already got up," Anna answered, her remark causing Lance to turn to the guard
who wasn't fully in the room. "Why do you ask?"
"Well, I was to escort you two to Shining once you were awake… but I may need
to hold that off to get you two brushes. You both have bad cases of bedmane,"
Flash chirped in response, donning a cheeky grin.
The two Fantasians exchanged glances before turning back to Flash. "Alright.
Take us to Shining. Maybe he has a drawer full of brushes—now that I think
about it, he kinda has to, since Cadence has a mane that's longer than mine,"
Anna sighed. Her remark wound up causing the guard to break out laughing.
Flash put a hoof to his mouth to silence his bout of laughter. When he managed
to corral his fit into a series of muffled chortles, his hoof parted from his
lips and he beckoned for the two to exit the room. He left, opening the door
with a wing before the guests could even trot to it. As soon as they stepped
outside, he took a moment to watch their movements. When he deemed them to be
able to stand and trot on their own, he took point.
And he didn't take one step forward when Anna opened her mouth to comment, "Um,
why're you the only guard here?"
Flash turned to Anna and sent her a sheepish smile, after noticing that the
hall they stood in was completely devoid of guards. "The Emperor's going to
give you another batch of guards for the night. But that won't happen until the
sun fully sets," he answered. Upon receiving a pair of vexed looks, he added,
"Oh, and somepony told him about the whole deportation thing. So he assembled
half the guards and gave them a piece of his mind this morning."
Lance and Anna, yet again, shared looks. "Yes, somepony already beat you to
it," Flash sighed, frowning as the Fantasians turned to look at him. A silence
lingered, so heavy one of them could've sworn they heard something hit a large
thick structure at least three whole floors below. "And he said that whoever it
was… well, was gonna get dealt with."
"How does he plan on finding them, and to deal with them once he's sure he has
the right pony?" Lance asked, eyes narrowing slightly. Again, the echo of
something landing onto something else filled the hall when the guard hesitated
to speak.
"He didn't say," Flash groaned, his wings slumping for a moment. "But he was…
he looked really ticked off about it."
"So, we can safely bet that hooves will start flying, at the very least?" Lance
inquired, his brows shooting up.
"Only if he loses control of himself," Flash murmured with a shrug.
"Personally, I see a few rounds of boot camp as the minimum."
"And the maximum?" Anna piped up, her brow slightly furrowing.
"Dishonorable dischargement, maybe dungeon time," Flash whimpered, shuddering
as if those very things were about to happen to him. "I can only see that
happening if our mystery deporter-pony goes to extreme lengths and is a guard,
though."
Lance decided to change the subject, "So, where's Shining?"
Flash sighed again. "Last he told me, he said he was gonna escort the others to
the library," he answered. With that, he began trotting down the hall with the
two stragglers falling in step behind him. The three went in silence, turning
down a few halls which were empty. The silence settled in again, and not even
the triad of hooves hitting on the crystal floor in a steady rhythm could break
it. When they went down a floor, they heard something sounding like it blew out
of an organ's pipes filling the hall, followed by a loud thud and a pained cry.
Exchanging glances, the trio rushed down the corridor and skid to a halt part-
way after having the worst case of chagrin to come across the strangest thing
they'd seen yet: a disillusioned Katie sitting on and operating a unicycle with
an accordion in her front hooves. To add to that, she somehow got a jester's
hat on her head, and little bells adorning the garment furiously jingled as she
tried and failed to stop herself from going into a wall. They gaped in unison
as she peeled herself from the wall, and began circling them, her orbs wide as
saucers.
To say she was playing badly while trying and failing to balance herself on the
one-wheeled contraption despite her wings buzzing… Simply put in a nutshell,
the display was so horrendous one of the three ponies who came across her may
as well have asked her to lift up the entirety of Canterlot, with her ears
alone. "K-Katie? W-what the hell are you doing?" Lance asked, his voice an
octave higher.
"A-Armin cast a spell on me! I-I can't stop!" Katie shrieked in response, wings
madly beating to no avail. "Help!" she cried as she swayed dangerously close to
the floor in front of the general, only to spring back up and crash into the
closest wall like she had a bungee cord tied to her neck. The accordion gave a
distorted note upon impact, and one that sang through the air like a persistent
alarm clock that didn't want to stop. Despite this, the unicycle didn't seem to
sustain an inch of damage, and neither did the accordion.
Lance responded by letting a hoof connect with the bridge of his muzzle as the
hapless wraith managed to extract herself from the wall again. "For fuck's
sake…" he grumbled, lowering his hoof before sharing a glance with a concerned-
looking Anna. "Undo whatever hex she has had cast onto her. I'm going to find
Armin and have a little talk with him after we fix this."
Anna nodded, and looked at Katie as she collided with the wall like a magnet
for the third time that day, causing the instrument she held to screech along
with her. She spotted mana rippling across the hat, and used her magic to
swiftly remove it. As soon as the belled cap was off her head, the accordion
and unicycle vanished in flashes of light. Katie plummeted to the floor, but
Flash moved in and caught her with both his wings before her face could meet
the walkway. Then the hat itself vanished before Anna could inspect it, and she
sighed in exasperation.
"Make the pain stop… I think I need... an ice cube bath…" Katie groaned weakly,
orbs spinning wildly in their canvases. Flash used his wings to tenderly rest
her on his back, and he stayed still as Lance stormed over to check her for any
more wounds to add to her repertoire of sorts. Upon finding nothing else of the
like, he sighed and tenderly patted her head with a hoof.
"Would an ice cube bath… er, help with your pain?" Lance asked after hesitating
for a moment.
"Quirk… of being… a frost wraith," Katie groaned, slowly nodding in reply.
"Don't want to… be a popsicle myself… though."
Lance nodded and turned to Flash. "You think we could work out such a thing for
her, while I raise hell at Armin?" he asked.
Flash nodded. "At any rate, we could. Just a unicorn and a spellbook with
something that can make ice in it would be enough to prep up a tub for such a
thing," he answered, making sure to not move too suddenly. "Let's find the
Emperor, and fast. Because if your other changeling cast a spell with a hat… I
don't want to think of what he got his hooves on."
***** Chapter XXIX- 'Khamfromithe' *****
Katie relaxed in a tub full of water, with bits of melting ice cubes floating
at the surface, either sailing by themselves or clinking against the crystal
and each other like glass. She idly floated, head dunked in the chilled waters
and mane and tail lazily dragged along by miniscule waves without a care. She
hummed appreciatively, ears twitching as the cubes touched with the dullest of
taps.
The bathroom she was in wasn't anything special; there was a squat crystal
toilet built into the floor near the tub, with some pipes and a handle raised
for flushing. Close to that was a sink with a mirror at the far end of the
room, and an empty towel rack beside that. A door stood opposite all of this,
closed and cutting the room off from the outside world. Katie was the only soul
present. A serene silence lingered, and she opted to just let her legs dangle
about in the liquid and relax face-down in the water.
Of course, she looked like she'd die remaining in such a stance, but she didn't
give a hoot. That is, until she heard the door creak open after a few minutes
of being nigh-entirely still, followed immediately by hooves hitting the floor.
She jerked her head up to look at the source, ears standing stiff as mountain
peaks, to find that Anna had trotted in. "How're you doing?" Anna asked as she
came in.
"Dandy," Katie replied in a chipper voice. Anna trotted closer and peered over
the rim of the tub, and right then the wraith let her hooves touch the bottom
of the container. Blue mana pulsated throughout the water, resonating with the
crystal and dappling along the ice cubes like a current. The archer squinted
and peered a little closer into the water. Almost immediately, she saw that
Katie had gone in with her horseshoes on thanks to the blue mana rippling
across the wearable bits of shaped metal.
And she flinched as the temperature of the room dropped, but it didn't go low
enough for her breath to start clouding in front of her face. The wraith who
was bathing didn't flinch; rather, she swished her legs in the water almost
like she was dog paddling. Anna's brow rose as miniscule chunks appeared in the
liquid that weren't there before; had she not known better, she'd have assumed
that Katie was swimming in semi-solidified gelatin that had ice cubes
distributed throughout. "You do seem dandy," she remarked.
Katie responded by tucking her legs up to her chest and stomach, flapped her
wings once, and performed a barrel roll in the tub. Anna flinched again as cold
water and icy bits shot out as a result of said barrel roll and hit her and the
floor outside the tub. To add to the icing on the cake, the wraith giggled once
she managed to stop spinning seconds later, looking at her guest with nothing
short of amusement—if having a carved grin upon her face counted as a
legitimate expression thereof.
"That I am," she chirped.
Anna smiled. "Alright. Yodel if you need anything," she said. With that, she
left the bathroom, making sure to close the door behind her. Katie sighed
contently, and did some more barrel rolls in the water, sending another few
sprays of droplets and melting ice chunks everywhere else. Upon stopping, she
tried to flap her wings again, but rose a brow when she noticed they felt much
heavier than they should've been and just refused to budge.
She looked at them, and groaned upon seeing the water freezing some more. As it
froze, her wings got caught and were weighed down with some bits. So, Katie
simply clambered out of the tub, and she went as slowly as she could to keep
herself from accidentally tearing new holes into her wings.
She immediately slipped off of the tub's rim before landing face-first in the
floor, turning into a sprawled-out heap as the rest of her hit the crystal with
earnest. The resulting thud rang in her ears, despite being soft, and to add to
that her ribs began aching. Katie groaned again and made to stand, but her legs
slipped out when she managed to haul herself up, thus sending her back to the
floor.
She tried again, but found that getting up was like trying to ice skate with
roller blades—long story short, Katie fell for the third time that day. But she
kept at it, slipping and falling every time she rose, until she got frustrated
enough to jam the claws of her shoes into the floor. This glued her to the
spot, though this time she didn't collapse on herself.
Her orbs widened, and if she could do so, she'd have frowned in agitated
embarrassment. She sucked in a breath, wincing as she felt her lungs expand and
push against her ribs and heart, but before she could call for help the door
opened again. She heard hooves clopping on the floor, and she craned her neck
in an attempt to look beyond the tub to find a tall form peering back down at
her from the other side, with a white and fuzzy hoof resting on the tub's rim.
"The hell did you do?" Matt asked, sending Katie a rather amused smile.
"Kept falling, so I went 'fuck it' and jammed my claws into the floor," Katie
responded in a bitter hiss. She watched as Matt let go of the tub's rim and
trotted around to get a better look at the anomaly she spoke of, and he sat on
his haunches as his grin fell.
"You could've asked for a towel," Matt huffed indignantly, using a hoof to
gesture to the puddle the wraith was currently stranded in.
"I was about to yodel for help," Katie scoffed, eyes narrowing. "Next time, I
will get a towel."
Matt sighed and shook his head, his horn glowing. A gold aura embraced the
hapless wraith and lifted her up, parting her from her shoes. Then, the aura
grabbed said shoes and wiggled them for a bit before easily prying them out of
the floor. He stood up and trotted to the toilet, dragging her with, only to
groan in annoyance when he found a lack of towels on the rack. "I guess you'll
have to airdry," he murmured, and set her and the shoes down before trotting
over to the tub and peering into the water.
One second went by, and it was one he didn't waste; his magic aura formed a
small sphere that dunked into the water like a rock. It sunk to the bottom, and
then darted around like a roach in a desert, probing the chilled liquid until
it found a small metal ring jutting upright. The ring was grabbed by shimmering
yellow and pulled on, and Matt grinned as he heard a small pop, followed by the
tell-tale sound of water draining into a pipe thereafter.
The stallion lifted the object out of the tub with his magic, finding that it
was an ordinary tub plug. He threw it in the sink and went back to Katie, who
stood on wobbly legs and shook excess water off of her body like a dog. His
grin widened as her wings flapped like loose book pages, before sticking to her
back thanks to a trace amount of water and ice still weighing them down. He
lifted her again and put her on his back, prior to making her shoes vanish in
individual flashes of light and trotting out of the bathroom.
Immediately, they found a rather peculiar sight, and Katie jammed a hoof into
her mouth as she began giggling. She and Matt bore witness to Armin trotting
around a bedroom in a frilly black dress with a white headband on his head, and
a metal ring inscribed with runes clamped on the base of his horn. In addition
to this, his wings jutted out from the back of the dress, though they were tied
down by a layer of chitil, and he held a feather duster in his mouth. He was
dusting off a table when he noticed the two who just left the bathroom staring
at him.
"Thininh anfth Flanth mafth me khashle maifth fthor ah dhay," he said through
the duster.
"Th-this… is the worst Shining and Lance could do to you?" Katie asked after
briefly removing her hoof from her mouth, her voice oozing with amused
disbelief. She was trying to work out whether to further laugh at Armin's
plight, or take pity on the bastard.
"Khamfromithe," Armin replied.
"Lance and Shining talked about it, and this was the best they could do," Matt
translated, shooting Katie another amused smile.
Katie nodded, lodging her hoof back in her mouth and barely suppressing her
laughter. She held on with her other hoof as Matt began trotting again, and in
seconds the two were in a hall where they found Natalie and Anna next to
another door chatting amiably. The two mares ceased their jabbering and turned
to the stallion and wraith with straight faces, though Anna's mouth was
twitching at the corners slightly.
Natalie spoke up, "I heard she was splashing around in the tub."
Matt nodded. "There was a ring of water around it, and she told me she kept
slipping," he replied.
Anna's mouth curled up into a smile. "What would you expect? I've seen her
barrel roll in the water."
Natalie turned to Anna, an incredulous brow raised. "Wait, so if she can barrel
roll in the water…"
Katie removed her hoof from her mouth and cut Natalie off, "Don't ask me to
fly. My wings are still wet."
"Fair enough," Natalie murmured under her breath.
"So, what're you two up to?" Matt asked, eyes darting between Natalie and Anna.
"Just came to check on things," Natalie replied, donning a grin herself. Anna
nodded once Natalie finished speaking, as if to confirm her companion's remark.
"Alright. Have you found anything in those books yet?" Matt continued, sighing.
The mares exchanged looks, then turned back to the stallion and shook their
heads. "Looking through one book to translate the other eight has given me a
bit of a migraine," Anna sighed, her smile turning into a frown. "I'm on break
right now, as far as books go."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Shining waited until night fell to patrol the castle walls himself, decked out
in his purple suit of armor and trotting like he had a battalion's worth of
ponies in step behind him. He stalked the gleaming corridors, a stoic look set
so firmly into his face it would take a herculean effort just to crack it. His
hoofbeats echoed as he moved, rebounding in such a way it would have felt that
the castle was abandoned had he not known any better.
Apart from his steps, the halls were silent. Deathly silent. Not even the
occasional crystal guard he trotted past dared to make one noise, as if they
were nothing more than lawn ornaments. Shining nodded to them, but otherwise
paid them no heed, and continued on his way. The faint light of the moon
bounced off the walls from whatever cracks and windows it could shine through,
giving the place a dull and rather eerie shimmer of silver.
Still he marched, occasionally turning down some halls and patrolling seemingly
without purpose. A spark erupted in his eyes, but he quenched it by just
blinking once as he passed another guard at his post. His ears swiveled,
attempting to catch noises, but all they could get were hard and armored hooves
hitting crystal. When he cleared one floor, he went up to the next and trotted
down all of its halls before ascending again.
As soon as he hit the third floor, his ears caught something else—two voices,
faintly talking to one another. He stopped to listen, the loud echoing of his
hooves being replaced by the faint, lingering echoing of the two beings who
spoke.
"How in Mythos do you preen your wings?" a masculine voice asked.
"Very carefully," a hollow, feminine voice replied cryptically. "And I make
sure my shoes aren't on first."
Shining let a grin creep up on his face. He knew who those voices belonged to.
He began trotting again, this time making sure his hooves hit the floor as
delicately as possible so that they wouldn't drown out the voices with their
thuds.
A third voice, masculine and irritated, chimed in, "Flash! For Faust's sake,
stop talking to that changeling!"
Shining's smile faded, and he picked up the pace. He heard Flash reply,
"Zephyr, let me be blunt: no. She is my friend and our guest, so zip it."
"Start being diligent!" Zephyr hissed, his voice loud enough that Shining
guessed a few of the other guards a floor below would have heard it. He started
galloping, rounding a bend, a frown forming on his visage.
"Are you trying to arouse the rest of the Fantasians from their slumber? I
don't want to see General Boltwing get cranky again!" Flash retorted, his voice
angry with just a pinch of panicked.
"I don't give a horseshit! Stop talking to that changeling!" Zephyr roared.
Shining made to gallop faster, and in less than a minute he managed to find the
guest rooms, along with Zephyr Bolt and Flash Sentry sending each other glares.
"Why do you…" the former began, but stopped upon noticing that his Emperor was
present.
"Because I can," Flash replied simply, also turning to Shining, who then nodded
to him. "So," he began again, turning to Katie who stood next to him, "what do
you like to do in your spare time?"
"Take naps and piggyback," Katie replied, ears twitching as she shrugged her
bony shoulders. "Even wraiths need rest."
"Sentry, don't—" Zephyr began again, but stopped when Shining trotted straight
up to him and looked him square in the eye.
"Let them chat. It's not hurting anypony, least of all you," Shining hissed,
garnering a nod from Zephyr. The Emperor backed off and went to the nearest
door before knocking on it. It opened with the aid of a green-tinted aura,
revealing Anna and Lance standing in the room with frazzled manes and bloodshot
eyes. The two trotted out into the hall, staring intently at their host.
The general took a moment to glance at Flash and Katie as they went on about
hobbies, before he turned back to Shining. "I was wanting to punch Zephyr in
the face…" he grumbled indignantly and tiredly.
"H-hey!" Zephyr hissed, turning to Lance with a scowl. He stiffened when
Shining turned to him again, and gulped when the Emperor held his gaze for a
full minute.
"Wanting and doing are two different things. Relax, and zip your lip," Shining
hissed, then he turned back to Lance. His gaze softened, "Do you want me to put
Zephyr elsewhere?"
"Please do," Lance replied with a sluggish nod. "I can't stand hearing him yell
for a minute longer." With that, he turned around and trotted back into his
room, with Anna following suit. The door closed shut behind them, and Shining
turned to look at Zephyr once again.
"Stay put, and don't utter a word," Shining commanded in a low tone, garnering
a shaky nod and a small "yes sir" as his response. He relaxed and trotted one
door over, slowly opening it with his magic to find Alexander and Maria
snuggled up in bed. The two gryphs were sound asleep, and near them were two
guards, with one watching the window and the other turned to the door as the
Emperor poked his head inside.
"Things are going swimmingly, m'lord," the guard facing the door mouthed.
Shining nodded with a small smile and closed the door, making sure not to
accidentally catch his neck with it in the process before heading down another
door and opening it silently. A rather amusing sight met him in this third
room; Fenrir was curled up on one side of the bed, and Sarah had taken the
other side with a pillow in her claws and half the damn blanket stuffed between
her rear legs.
Shining wanted to chuckle at the sight, but held the desire at bay—guests or
not, they still needed their sleep. He nodded to a guard stationed in the room
with them, and slinked out into the hall. The Emperor went one door over and
yet again poked his head inside, finding Armin in a half-chrysalis by his
lonesome. The blankets and pillows that were supposed to be on the bed were
with him, keeping him warm and cozy. He shrugged and went to the next room,
finding Zecora and Spike asleep, with NoLegs resting on the zebra's backside.
The last room yielded Matt and Natalie snuggling together, mumbling in their
slumber. In addition to this, the guard stationed in their room had a frown on
his face. Shining quirked a brow, eyes glinting in askance, and the guard
mouthed, "They're dreaming." The Emperor nodded and closed the door, though not
before he first listened to the Fantasians' sleep-murmurs and heard something
along the lines of "I didn't sin" coming from both of them.
Right as the door clicked shut behind him, he wasted no time in trotting over
to Zephyr Bolt and giving him another look. "You, follow me. We're patrolling
the entire castle tonight," Shining hissed in a low voice. Without waiting for
him to follow, he turned around and marched down the hall, pausing to shoot a
fond smile at Flash and Katie as they continued to talk about this and that.
Zephyr fell in step behind him, and together the two left the hall and went up
one floor in a matter of minutes.
Only the sound of their hooves hitting the floor permeated the fourth floor's
halls, and once again things fell into what was otherwise a strong silence.
Neither dared to speak as they patrolled throughout the fourth floor, with one
going just three steps ahead of the other. Shining's face was set with a stoic
expression, but Zephyr's was constantly flickering between narrowed-eyed anger,
a worried frown, and a brow slanting in uncertainty.
Upon reaching the fifth floor, Shining finally spoke up, "So, Private Zephyr
Bolt… what has our wraith guest done to rile you up?"
Zephyr froze, with a lump in his throat that immediately appeared and refused
to go down. He made to speak, but no noise came from his lips. He may as well
have been silently choking on a hunk of rock.
"Well?" Shining asked impatiently, without bothering to turn around and meet
his private's gaze. He stopped marching, knowing his subordinate had already
halted himself.
"F-Flash has u-ulterior motives, Your Highness!" Zephyr spluttered out, his
remark causing Shining to whirl around so fast he stepped back like a hoof
solidly connected with the side of his muzzle.
"'Ulterior motives?'" Shining parroted, his brow furrowing. "Do tell." He
noticed that Zephyr was once again hesitating, so he egged him on, "Go on,
Private Zephyr Bolt. Humor your Emperor."
"Fla-Flash… may be h-helping the Fantasians overthrow you! Maybe take Empress
Cadence as their own! W-why else would th-they have changelings?" Zephyr
managed, his shimmer fading as he began to sweat bullets.
Shining's eyes narrowed, and he slowly walked up to his private, looking him
square in the eye when their muzzles were inches apart. "And how, exactly, were
you made aware of such drivel?" he asked. Zephyr failed to articulate a
response, standing frozen in place as his pores oozed out clear liquid like a
spring in a grotto. After a minute passed in full silence, Shining hissed in a
whisper, "You made it up, didn't you?"
What felt like an eternity passed, and Shining didn't get a smidgen of an
answer for such a while that he could've sworn time had frozen. After a few
minutes, Zephyr finally broke the silence, "Uh, s-sir… c-could you please, uh…
forget everything I-I said?"
Shining pulled his head back, though he kept his cold glare locked on the
guard. "No," he said in an eerily calm tone of voice, watching as the color all
but drained from Zephyr's face. "I don't believe I can. You were committing
insubordination, and for that… appropriate action must be taken."
Zephyr's rear legs buckled, and he sat on his haunches with a whimper. Shining
went on, his calm voice taking on a very cold undertone, "You will undergo
disciplinary classes all over again. You could have sparked a war just by
instigating our guests—be excruciatingly grateful you didn't."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The Friendship Express churned on into the night, carrying with it another
batch of passengers as it wheeled on the rails going north. In one of the bed-
cars, which only had seven passengers inside it, Rainbow Dash sat on a bottom
bunk. She was chatting with Twilight, who sat on another bottom bunk directly
opposite of her. "So, why are we going to the Crystal Empire again?" she asked.
"Because Shining took Spike with him, and I want to see how they're doing with
the Fantasians," Twilight replied, frowning. Her head dropped as she added,
"And… I'm also worried about Zecora. She's probably never been to the Empire
before."
Applejack, who laid on the bunk directly above Dash, decided to insert her two
bits, "You thinking them crystal ponies might try something?"
"Yeah… it's… last time we were there, I looked through the library and found
not one record of zebras ever entering or staying in the Empire," Twilight
sighed dejectedly, still frowning. She rose her head, looked at Applejack and
added, "But… we didn't have all day to go through the library that time…"
"Chaotically tragic, is it not?" a masculine voice piped up, causing Twilight
to turn away from Applejack and to the top bunk directly next to her. Sitting
upon it was a grey unicorn stallion with a short black mane and an unusually
blue horn, his red eyes framed by golden sclera staring intently at her. "But,"
he began, noticing that Twilight's eyes started twinkling, "you could have
another go to look through it again."
Twilight nodded. "You're right. But…" she trailed off.
"'But' what?" the stallion asked with a wry grin, a brow raising.
"It's the Fantasians, ain't it?" Applejack inquired in a flat tone, garnering a
slow nod of the head from Twilight as her answer. She spoke up after a minute,
waving a hoof dismissively in doing so, "They're with your brother, Twi. As
long as he keeps their tails in line, they ain't got nothing to worry about. I
don't see what you're fussing over."
Rarity piped up from the bottom bunk next to Twilight, "Applejack, darling,
they may still… misbehave, for a lack of better words. All it would take was
one pony instigating them for Tartarus to break loose."
"'Spose you're right, Rares. But them crystal folk don't have a reason to egg
them on—whatever Shining and Cadence says, goes. And if they told them to let
the Fantasians alone, then they're pro'lly leaving them alone," Applejack
countered, her brow furrowing. "'Sides, you're not much better either."
Rarity winced like a wasp had stung her on the cheek, but she chose not to
retort to Applejack's statement. "Doesn't mean everypony in the Empire's going
to do it. Sooner or later, Lance and his pals are gonna get themselves neck-
deep in Trouble with a capital T," Rainbow argued, crossing her forelegs as
Applejack peered over to look at her. "That is, if they haven't already."
Pinkie Pie, who sat next to Dash, sighed in exasperation. "I hope they're
having fun at the Empire," she remarked.
"What sort of fun?" the stallion asked, taking a moment to purr. He vanished
off his bed one minute, only to reappear beside Pinkie the next, though he
frowned when she didn't jump in surprise. "The safe kind, or the chaotic sort?"
"The safe kind, where they just take it easy," Pinkie replied, turning to the
stallion with a frown.
The stallion nodded and shared looks with Dash, Twilight, and Applejack. "Well,
with the way you mares speak of the Fantasians, they seem to be a chaotic bunch
of ponies," he commented.
"But not all of them are ponies," Pinkie huffed, sending the stallion another
frown that came from her brow. When he rose a brow in response, she elaborated,
"Only… three of them can be fully considered ponies. There are three
hippogryphs, though one doesn't really look like a hippogryph, one's a full
gryphon, another's a diamond dog, and the last two are changelings."
"And that's excluding their pet cat," Rarity added, causing the stallion to
vanish and reappear next to her on the spot.
"Pray tell, what's so special about their cat?" the stallion asked, smiling
when Rarity huffed.
"He can perform magical feats with his tail… and he's also legless," Twilight
answered for Rarity, her remark causing the stallion to simply materialize
right in front of her in seconds.
Said stallion's brows rose further up, all the way to his hairline. "That…
sounds very chaotic, now that I dwell on it. Tell me, have you seen the cat
perform magical feats?" he asked.
Twilight nodded. "Mostly levitation and teleportation," she answered. "From
what I've witnessed, anyway."
The stallion rose a hoof and tapped at his chin with it, and as he did so a
grey goatee that wasn't there before cropped up. In addition to this, a pointy
tooth jutted out of under the left side of his lip. "Y'know, that's almost like
making pigs grow wings with which to fly…" he murmured.
"Perhaps Fantasian cats have evolved different mechanisms. After all, the
worlds were separated for a while, and we still don't know much about that
which was recently connected to us," Twilight sighed with a shrug of her
shoulders.
"True enough," the stallion agreed with a nod, setting his hoof down after
tugging at his goatee with it. He flashed a toothy grin at Twilight before
vanishing and reappearing on his bed. "But how should I know?" he asked, and in
a flash of magic he changed from a simple-albeit-odd stallion to a chimera with
mismatched limbs, a draconic tail, and the head of a goat sporting dissimilar
horns. He rested his cheek on a gryphon-like claw and added, "That damned
barrier was created before I came to be as I was."
"That's not very reassuring," Fluttershy remarked from a bed next to Rarity's,
a frown on her face as she eyed the chimera. "Are you… sure about that,
Discord?"
Discord's nostrils flared as he snorted. "Unfortunately, I am. Pity that I
didn't get to see what sort of chaos Fantasia had during my brief time ruling
Equestria," he replied with a frown. The frown turned into a smile as he added,
"Though… if you girls went to Fantasia again and brought me with…"
"I doubt you could handle cannibalistic hippogryphs that mutilate foals'
genitals!" Rarity exclaimed in one breath, her remark taking Discord completely
by surprise. The chimera's eyes widened and he turned to the ivory mare,
looking at her like she just finished getting shitfaced at a frat party.
"I-I… what?" Discord managed, his jaw still moving up and down even as words
started eluding him.
"My point exactly," Rarity hissed, eyes narrowing at the mere thought of what
she spoke of. "Your dumbstruck expression tells me all I need to know about how
you feel regarding what I have just relayed to you."
Discord began scowling, processing Rarity's remark revolving around
cannibalistic hippogryphs. He leaned over his bed, like a wicked serpent
aroused from slumber by a foolish adventurer, and he asked in a low voice,
"What… became of those hippogryphs?"
"We left them in their town—they told us they killed their mares and foals,
except one we managed to get out of there," Applejack replied, wincing as
Discord turned to her with nothing short of anger painting his face. "Their
town was built in a frozen wasteland, one without trees or grass shoots. If
they hadn't had food for the past couple of weeks at this point, I reckon they…
they froze to death."
"Discord, what would you have done if you were present?" Twilight asked,
watching Discord intently. For a few minutes, he didn't move an inch—not even
the barest of twitches left his form.
Then, the chimera's scowl morphed into a demonic look, a wicked gleam in his
eyes as his lips curled up into a ghoulish grin. "I'd have them turned into
rabbits before sicking great fire-breathing dragons on them," he replied. The
look faded, and he sighed. "And… what became of the one you managed to get out
of that wasteland?"
"Currently with the other Fantasians. Last we seen of her, she was doing a-OK,"
Applejack replied, a small but genuine smile forming on her muzzle. "Zecora
helped her feathers grow back, and Lance and his pals helped her gain a bit of
weight by feeding her right."
Discord relaxed, and proceeded to curl up in his bed with a nod of
understanding. "Remind me to summon clowns for her when we reach the Empire,"
he murmured, eyes closing. "Or maybe I could show her flying pigs."
"You'll have to talk to Shining about that first. After all, we're heading into
a place he pretty much rules at," Twilight pointed out, proceeding to lay down
herself.
"I'm pretty sure I could convince him to let me do it," Discord murmured
dismissively, waving a lion's paw for emphasis.
***** Chapter XXX- Faux Magma *****
Matt and Natalie both sat up abruptly, their eyes snapping wide open as the
artificial shimmers faded from their forms and sweat dotted their brows. They
heard a pony clear his throat and turned to the guard that was stationed in the
room with them. "Are you… erm, well?" he asked.
"Wish I was," Natalie answered without hesitation. She rose a hoof and wiped
her forehead with it as she added, "But it was just a nightmare—I'll live."
"We've been having nightmares for a while, though," Matt murmured, worry
tinging his tone. He gave the guard a level look and asked, "You have any ideas
how to make them less frequent?"
"Aside from talking about them, no," the guard replied with a shake of his
head. He donned a frown as he continued, "And… with the way you two spoke of
sin in your sleep, I have a feeling I don't want to know."
Matt and Natalie shared glances, then turned back to the guard. "We'd… have a
hard time telling you about our nightmares anyway," Natalie sighed, ears
flattening against her head. A few seconds of silence passed, and the three
could've sworn they heard someone beating their hoof from within the hall
outside the room.
The guard cleared his throat and awkwardly mumbled, "I'll take that as 'I don't
want to know.'" When he got two nods in response, he let his brow slant
slightly and shrugged his shoulders. "Just go back to sleep. You need your
rest." The two unicorns in bed just exchanged looks again, going wide-eyed for
a moment at the rather bizarre suggestion. Then they obeyed, flopping back down
on their pillows with their manes fanned out from under their heads like the
wings of pegasi.
The guard watched as two sets of blue eyes closed, and waited for a few minutes
until he was certain that Matt and Natalie had fallen asleep. He knelt forward,
head bowed low and front legs bent, and he murmured a small prayer just soft
enough he couldn't wake the two up. "O Princess Luna, shine your moon's light
on these foreign souls. Shine on them with thine radiance, and dispel whatever
demons plague them so they rest with trouble no more."
He jolted upon hearing rustling, and stood straight for a minute before
relaxing slightly. He noticed Matt turning in the bed, mumbling about waffles.
The mattress creaked slightly as he moved, like a swinging door that wasn't
closed properly. The room fell silent, save for soft murmurings that came from
two ponies who had conked out.
As he turned to the door, he did not notice the moon was setting outside, its
light dancing across the room through the window. Nor did the guard notice a
faint teal glow embracing Matt and Natalie's forms, accompanied by tiny and
silent sparks reminiscent of faraway stars.
To him, it was another night spent playing watchman without rest. To the
sleeping ponies he was guarding, it was an entirely different matter as soon as
they entered the realm of dreams. Matt trotted along a chilly corridor of
stone, his horn glowing softly, Heaven's Gate drawn and at the ready. He moved
slowly, eying stalactites and stalagmites that jutted out seemingly at random.
Only his hooves and the occasional drip of water filled the mostly-empty hall,
echoing ceaselessly into a black void that was both ahead of and behind him.
He walked on, slowly and delicately, as if afraid he'd trip and find himself in
a situation he wasn't ready to deal with. His eyes strained to make out the
path ahead; his horn could only provide so much light, and that was not
accounting for him also juggling his sword simultaneously. The air turned thick
and humid, and Matt stopped as soon as he felt a small drop of warm water land
on the bridge of his muzzle.
His brow rose, and he plunged the tip of his weapon into the ground. It went in
only an inch or so, and he turned to inspect his handiwork. "It'll have to do,"
Matt mumbled, positioning himself behind the hilt of his blade. He rose his
front hooves and channelled more mana into his horn, feeling a bit of
exhaustion settling in as cracks formed along the floor and darted up what he
could see of the walls.
Heaven's Gate responded, this time taking on an icy cold blue hue that had
heavy clouds of chilled air surrounding it. A faint thread of deep blue mana
weaved its way around the blade, going down into the cracks that were forming,
filling them up in every single nook. The air became colder, and Matt watched
as water formed around the cracks before spontaneously freezing solid, turning
into little ice crystals that glowed with power.
The temperature continued to drop, and ice crystals kept forming until Matt
pulled away from his weapon. He made it vanish in a golden light, and sighed as
his horn felt red-hot. The light he had glowing from the tip of his horn also
vanished, rendering the entire cavern dark save the trace amounts of
illumination provided by the small spikes of frozen water he willed to grow.
The now-cold air gave him some relief from the pain that had settled in, just
barely making his encroaching headache bearable. Matt rose to stand, eyes
following the crystals and where they were placed.
The crystals were spaced far enough apart that there were still patches of
sable between them, but not so far away that he'd have to trot a few paces just
to discern the placement of the subsequent ones. Matt donned a smile, and
started trotting ahead again, glancing at his ice patches and making sure he
didn't accidentally step on any of them along the way.
He found the end of the corridor in a few minutes, quirking a brow at a wooden
door that stood out thanks to glowing ice formations surrounding it. "The
hell?" he asked, cantering over to it with a hoof extending out to grasp at the
doorknob.
Before he could touch it, the obstacle swung open on its own accord, and next
thing he knew a form with a glowing horn bumbled into him and caused him to
fall over backwards. He and the other entity screamed in surprise, and his eyes
met with surprised blue ones on a cream-colored face. "Natz?" Matt asked as the
door swung closed behind the pony that had tackled and laid on top of him.
"Matt?" Natalie asked, her eyes widening substantially. For a moment the two
stayed there, staring at each other in disbelieving silence. Then she scrambled
off of him and grabbed one of his front hooves, helping him haul himself up
onto his legs. "I-I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, her response punctuated by
something slamming into the door with enough force to make it splinter and
crack. The two jumped and backed away from the door, with the mare turning
around and backpedaling far enough to keep up with her companion.
A hollow voice rang out from behind the door, "You can't hide forever! You
can't just run from your sins, Starcovert!" Then, silence fell as the door
transformed into a slab of impenetrable stone, alongside the glowing ice that
had marked it. The two ponies shared a glance, but chose to turn around and
head deeper into the corridor without commenting on the absurdity of the door
suddenly becoming something it wasn't supposed to be.
They walked in silence, with Matt taking point. They followed the ice crystals
for a few minutes, stopping when the path ended where they'd first been formed.
Natalie made to speak, but all that left her mouth was a hum as she glanced
around. Then, her horn ceased glowing, and she flinched before relaxing as a
fuzzy hoof wrapped around her barrel in wordless reassurance. Matt broke the
embrace and began leading the way again, stopping when he felt teeth clutching
some hairs of his tail, but shrugged that off and kept going with Natalie
falling in step behind him.
The two went on without uttering one word, feeling their way around in the
sable, front hooves outstretched slightly as they touched every nook of the
floor and some parts of the walls, almost like blind ponies' canes. No matter
how much they strained their eyes, no matter how much miniscule light their
pupils could absorb, neither could see jack shit. Both ponies constantly let
off annoyed groans as they continued ambling about their surroundings, hooves
tapping blindly in the inky darkness.
At least, until Matt stepped on something that had a slimy texture to it after
an indeterminate expanse of time had passed. Before he could make another peep,
the substance began glowing brightly, revealing itself to be some wad of
illuminating goo. Both he and Natalie stared at the seemingly-self-activating
substance with dumbfounded looks painting their faces. Matt pulled his hoof
away from the slime, noticing that it didn't try to cling to it nor the hairs
draping it, and at this his brow furrowed. "Alrighty then," he murmured,
backing away from it and watching it carefully.
The goo did nothing, except glow and faintly wobble. "What is that stuff?"
Natalie asked, frowning. "It looks like something Armin would make…"
"Dunno," Matt replied, shaking his head. His ears perked when he heard another
hoof squelching in slime, and whipped his head to the right to find that
another wad just a few paces away had started spontaneously glowing. Standing
next to it was a darkened form, the end of one of its limbs caught in the gel,
and it had glowing eyes that were zeroed in on both Matt and Natalie.
Before it could speak, though, the goo expanded in size and enveloped its body
so fast it could not even let out one syllable of surprise. The two ponies
watched, their dumbfounded looks morphing to looks of horror as the slime
devoured the shadowy creature and dissolved it like a vat of acid before it
shrunk to a simple wad that managed to burp.
Matt and Natalie exchanged looks, then turned back to the gel that had just
eaten a creature for breakfast. They gulped and slowly moved on, this time
being careful to avoid stepping in as much slime as they could manage. More
things with glowing eyes started jumping out at them from every angle after a
few minutes that they spent trotting, but each and every single one made the
fatal error of stepping in slime that made short work of eating them.
Eventually, they came across another door, its form illuminated by glowing
slime. "You first," Matt said, frowning.
"I'm not risking becoming goo gumbo," Natalie replied, shaking her head
furiously. She wrapped a leg around Matt's neck and added, "And I won't let you
do the same, either."
Matt sighed and turned around to look at the path behind him to make sure
nothing else would jump out and possibly attack, half-dragging Natalie along
with him, only to stop still and gape. There was a door behind them, only
visible because of the slime's light. He turned around again, and found the
same thing, and at this he began feeling a little light-headed.
"Okay, what the fuck?" he growled, his brow furrowing as the world began
tilting just slightly to the left. Natalie broke her hold on his neck and
trotted up to the first door—or second, she felt she wasn't certain anymore—and
opened it with a hoof before trotting into whatever was beyond.
"Matt, you gotta see this!" Natalie cried, and hesitantly Matt trailed after
her. He stopped next to her side, and his eyes widened.
Both he and Natalie found themselves in some bizarre mix between an entirely
lifeless wood, and a cavern interspersed with glowing wads of sickly green,
translucent goo. The trees formed a thick wall, reinforced by black stone and
gelatinous bundles that gave off light, and the wall circled all around them.
The floor was, oddly enough, made of marble instead of stone.
They looked around, finding themselves trapped like lab rats, with the only way
out being through that damned door they came in from. Natalie trotted up to,
then along the wall, using one hoof to check for cracks and the like. She used
the other three to move on, leaning on the odd structure for support from time
to time. After she'd inspected half the wall, Matt asked, "Anything?"
"Not yet," Natalie replied, stopping for a moment to glance up. A rocky
overhang blocked whatever sky there was from view, and any tree branches that
reached high enough to touch it strangely acted like roots, pushing up into the
stone ceiling in a furious web of wood. She also took note that some branches
started elongating spontaneously, trying to go up like sickly, malformed claws.
Deciding that she dallied for long enough, she started trotting along the wall
again, this time in more of a three-legged hobble than a proper jog.
Matt watched his companion closely, slowly spinning just to constantly keep her
in his sights. He noticed that stone and wood morphed, almost immediately,
after Natalie tottered past it. The stallion then stopped and turned directly
opposite of where Natalie was going, finding that the two components of the
wall became a great big heap of goo that produced so much light he had to
shield his eyes with a hoof. "The fuck?" he murmured, watching as the goo then
started shrinking, changing from a very bright green to a moderate teal as it
compacted.
Natalie halted as well, also taking note of the phenomenon. She parted from the
remnants of the wall she hadn't touched and galloped over to Matt. She made to
rush past him before she found herself skidding to a halt when he trust the
hoof that he shielded his eyes with in front of the barrel of her chest. The
mare turned to him and asked with a furrowing brow, "What's the big idea?"
"I don't know what that stuff is doing, or if it'll eat us next. I think we
should still stay away from it," Matt replied, using the same hoof to gesture
to the color-changing, glowing gel. He watched as the now-teal mass continued
to shrink, his brow furrowing as it began sizzling and popping like bacon in a
cast iron skillet. The goo wobbled and formed bubbles, transitioning from teal
to red, now looking more akin to tranquil magma than anything.
Then the two heard a stallion screaming, and before they could look around to
discern where the sound was coming from, a loud crash that rang in their ears
echoed into the space. This was followed by a form and some loose debris
crashing on top of Natalie. She and the new arrival sprawled out in a heap, the
impact causing Matt to jump back with a startled cry of his own. He eyed the
new arrival, his pupils dilating as he stared at the tell-tale copper feathers
soldered onto steel limbs. "Lance?" he asked disbelievingly.
Lance rose a hoof and let it drop with a groan to signal that he heard Matt. He
rolled off of Natalie, who gave nothing more than an indignant grunt of pain.
"You two okay?" Matt asked, getting little more than a dual sluggish shaking of
heads.
It took a moment for Lance to register whose inquiry he'd just answered, and
almost immediately he scrambled onto his hooves and looked around before his
red eyes fell onto Matt. "How the—" Lance started, eyes widening. Matt rose a
hoof and shrugged, and this caused his superior to close his mouth before
another word could roll off his tongue.
Natalie hauled herself up, her legs wobbly from being knocked down so suddenly.
She turned to Lance and asked, "How'd you get here?"
"I was… on a rock surrounded by lava," Lance started, turning to look at the
gel that bubbled. "And I was trying to get away from it, but being stranded…
well, I couldn't get away. Next thing I know, a door appeared in the floor. So
I jumped through it, and then I'm hurtling down through the sky, and crash
through stone…"
Natalie looked up, finding that there was goo bubbling on what was once a rock-
and-branch roof with a Lance-shaped hole letting in some silver light from
beyond. "You fell through that?" she asked, raising a hoof to point at it.
Lance followed her hoof and nodded. "That slime wasn't there before, but yes I
did fall through that… and while we're on the subject, how's the goo not
dripping down on us as we speak?" he replied, a frown creasing his brow.
"Might as well ask us why we're surrounded on all sides by…" Matt paused,
turning his head every which-way to find himself staring at goo that was almost
entirely around them at this point. "Whatever the fuck this stuff is," he
finished as he turned to the blasted door that the mysterious substance hadn't
yet touched. He rose a brow at the one fragment of wall that remained devoid of
bubbling semi-solidified slime, and his ears twitched as a set of galloping
hooves echoed into the space.
A chilly breeze wafted around the place, briefly caressing the three as the
noise became louder, as if its source was getting closer. The zephyr lifted
Natalie and Lance's tails, but Matt's was so thick only a few strands broke
free and danced in the scant few seconds that the wind had touched them. The
gale stopped when a cry of "Get away!" rang out, though the noises of hooves
hitting a hard surface still lingered.
Next thing any of them knew, a tan-beige form bumbled in, tripped, and then
landed with her face meeting the floor. Her ass stayed in the air for a bit,
before she awkwardly pushed herself off the marble and rose to stand on shaky
back legs. The door slammed shut behind her before it vanished and left a hole
in the wall, causing her to jump and fall again, though she got back up as
hastily as she ran into the room.
"Anna? You look like you just got done having a heart attack," Lance commented,
watching as the new arrival shook her head and groaned.
Anna lifted a front hoof and tenderly poked at her lower jaw with it, wincing
and groaning every time the two entities connected. She opted to ignore Lance's
remark for the moment, instead reverting to all fours and summoning her flute
with a flash of magic. "I don't think aching jaw and instrument go great
together. You should take five," Matt advised, getting a wide-eyed look almost
instantly.
Anna's flute vanished as it had appeared, and she rushed to Matt in such a
manner that he got the impression she couldn't believe what she'd been seeing.
"Is… that really you?" she asked, wincing as each word came out of her mouth.
When Matt nodded, she turned around and lifted her back legs, bucking him in
the barrel and causing him to stagger a few paces back. "Y-y… I was… you…"
Lance rushed over and wrapped his forelegs around her chest before she could
attempt to kick at Matt again. "Calm down. I don't know what happened to you
before you came here, but take deep breaths and think rationally for once.
We're confused enough as it is—a pinch of panic really wouldn't be good right
now," he ordered in a calm tone of voice.
Anna began struggling instead. "C-could you l-let me go, first?" she asked,
still wincing. "I-I can't c-calm down with you h-holding me!" Lance sighed and
obliged, and watched her as she started taking sharp, lengthy inhales of air
for seconds at a time before letting them out quickly. Then she sat on her
haunches, still inhaling and exhaling, her jaw shaking almost like it had been
detached entirely from her face.
Matt poked at where Anna kicked him with a hoof, and he found that there
weren't aches or tender spots anywhere. He sighed and turned to the hole where
she'd entered from, finding that goo expanded over it and plugged the damn
thing tight—just as something with glowing eyes came up fast enough to solidly
connect with the blocking substance. "Fuck!" it exclaimed in a muffled voice
that was eerily like his, "She outran me again!"
Natalie and Lance took notice of this, too, and both immediately understood why
Anna attacked Matt. Neither chose to comment on it as the creature with glowing
orbs scoffed and turned away, letting off muffled curses directed at Anna until
it simply went out of sight. The four rolled their eyes after silence settled
in, and shared a series of brief looks.
The goo continued to bubble and boil, keeping them trapped on a patch of marble
in what the group could only surmise was the middle of nowhere. Lance trotted
up to one of the patches of substance and poked it with his hoof, his brows
shooting up when it did not scorch him, freeze his leg, or do anything else of
the sort. He whirled around to look at the others, meeting equally-perplexed
gazes.
"It's safe to touch," he said, using his back hoof to kick at the gel for
emphasis. It wobbled, and some bubbles popped as a result, but again it didn't
harm him in any way. He proceeded to stand on his back legs and lean into the
substance wings-first. Once he was sure it could support him without setting
off the bewitchments attached to him, he wasted no time in crossing his rear
legs out of simple modesty.
Matt and Natalie shared concerned looks, then they trotted over to
experimentally prod at the bubbling gel. It didn't react to their touch, but
simply wobbled and popped in places as it had done for Lance. Then Natalie
shoved Matt into the gel with her magic, garnering a shout of surprise, only to
shriek herself as Anna came over and shoved her into the gel. "Alright, stop
inflicting karma on each other," Lance ordered, and the three scrambled away
from the goo with horns aglow.
"Now, now, General Boltwing, let them have their fun. It's not like the slime
will devour them," a female voice chastised, echoing as if coming from
everywhere at once. The quartet looked around, trying to find the source of the
remark, yet found that they were the only ones present. "Up here," the voice
called again, and the Fantasians glanced up to find a form just above the wad
of goo on the ceiling, barely discernable as a silvery light shined on a patch
of marble below.
The goo parted with the aid of a teal aura and the hole Lance made widened as
chunks were pried out by the aura, until it was big enough an airship's balloon
could fit through it. They heard the flapping of wings as from the hole drifted
a blue alicorn, her horn glowing softly. "Luna?" Matt asked, his brows shooting
up. "What are…"
Luna rose a hoof, signaling for him to stop speaking. "We're in the dream
realm… specifically, your dreams after I pulled some strings and meshed them
together," she answered. She landed on the floor and closed her wings, donning
a worried frown.
The four exchanged glances again, then turned back to Luna with raised brows.
"So, you can… get into dreams and basically do as you will with them?" Lance
asked, his torn ears twitching.
"Yes, but I don't usually do anything if the dreams are good or neutral. I also
visit nightmares…" Luna trailed off, shuddering and closing her eyes for a
moment. "And to be honest, you four have… had very disturbing nightmares ever
since you came to Canterlot."
Again, the Fantasians exchanged glances. This time, Anna spoke up, "You've been
monitoring our dreams ever since we stayed one night in that shit hotel?"
"Celestia talked me into it," Luna answered, sighing heavily. "And yes, ever
since you've arrived, I've been monitoring your dreams."
"What was the catalyst for Celestia talking you into contacting us while we're
asleep?" Matt inquired.
"A request from…" Luna paused, raising a hoof to rub her temples with it. "Um…
oh, yes. A request from Sarah to not send anypony else to Fantasia, especially
pegasus ponies," she answered.
"Sounds… reasonable enough, I suppose. If 'reasonable' meant 'invading on our
privacy,'" Lance grumbled, crossing his forelegs. "So," he started,
disentangling himself from the goo and reverting to all fours awkwardly, "what
did you want to talk to us about?"
"The nightmares that are plaguing you—or, rather, the origin thereof," Luna
answered, almost immediately getting wide-eyed stares and rapid shaking of
heads. "What?" she asked, a brow raising at the sudden shift in behavior her
guests were displaying.
"You don't want to know," Anna replied in a quivering voice, her lips pulled
into a tight frown.
"Has… seeing our nightmares driven you to ask such a question?" Natalie
inquired, her lips also forming a frown.
"Partly, yes," Luna stated with a nod. "I haven't come across such… disturbing
dreams in an awfully long time."
"I'm starting to wonder why you go dream-hopping to begin with," Lance
murmured, sitting on his haunches to cross his forelegs again. This time, his
wings flapped languidly, and Luna took notice of this.
"I usually 'dream-hop,' as you would say, to… provide advice. Act as a sort of
royal therapist, if you will," Luna sighed, still eyeing the flapping metal
wings when they abruptly stopped and their owner froze. Matt, Natalie, and Anna
also stiffened, and at this the alicorn's brow slanted. "But my advice only
goes to those who willingly ask for it." She trotted to them and extended a
front hoof, watching them intently.
Not one of the Fantasians extended a hoof in return, and Luna gazed into all
four sets of eyes to find that she saw sparks of worry and fear accompanying
frowns. There was also something else gleaming in the irises of her guests,
something that made her frown deepen in concern. She lowered her hoof and asked
in a low voice, "Are you… feeling something along the lines of despair?"
None of them answered her inquiry, which only caused her frown to deepen still.
Then, they turned to stare at the floor, the whole lot, each one only giving a
dejected sigh and little else. Luna's eyes darted to each of them, trying to
search for their expressions, but all she got was forelocks and crests and
bangs obscuring their visages. "Perhaps it's a bit too much for you to speak to
me about?" she asked.
The Fantasians just nodded slowly in unison. "We'll… we'll tell you when we
feel ready to do so," Lance managed at last, turning his head up to meet Luna's
gaze.
Luna nodded back in understanding. "I see. Very well then," she replied, and
her horn started glowing teal. The entire area became enveloped in the soft
aura, and before long the four woke up in their beds to start their third day
in the Crystal Empire.
***** Chapter XXXI, Part I- Pleased to Make Your Acquantaince *****
Maria tottered about in the hall that lead to the guest rooms, trying to fly
over and over again. The guards who were stationed there watched her, and some
dove to catch her when she fell. Her wings flapped with the speed of a
dragonfly and the grace of a dodo, and her landings weren't overtly
spectacular, either. Katie and Flash watched, with the latter smiling at the
foal's attempts and the former just shaking her head whilst sighing dejectedly.
"It's tragic," Katie remarked as another guard snatched Maria out of the air
before she could meet up with the floor. When she saw Flash turn to her in the
corner of her eye, she elaborated before he could speak, "Whoever taught her
that just madly flapping and jumping would get her somewhere along the lines of
'out of flight school' should be ashamed of themselves."
"Do you know who taught her how to fly?" Flash asked, his smile fading.
Katie slowly turned to the orange pegasus and sighed again. "Let's just say
hippogryphs who hated cutie marks with a burning passion… very bad
hippogryphs," she answered. "Weren't worthy of keeping foals around, much less
mares—pieces of, pardon my language, horseshit."
"Poor parents, I assume?" Flash inquired, garnering a shake of the head as his
answer.
"They… the very bad gryphs... took hers out," Katie whispered as Maria fell
into the hooves of another guard, using her ear to gesture to the foal in
question for emphasis. "And all of the other foals, and their mothers, for that
matter."
She watched as Flash's eyes widened considerably, to the point they started
rivaling small saucers in size. She said nothing more, feeling that the orange
guard got the barest idea of what had happened, and returned to keeping her
orbs locked on Maria.
Flash did likewise with his eyes, and for a few minutes they stood there,
watching the filly as she kept trying to fly only to repeatedly fail at it.
This brief routine only stopped in its tracks as one of the doors of the guest
rooms swung open, revealing a cloak-wearing Lance as he trotted out. Maria,
who'd been stopped from landing in the floor, squirmed out of the forelegs of
the guard that caught her and cantered over to the general. "Daddy, can I fly
yet?" she asked, and the reaction she got was instantaneous.
Lance's eyes widened, and his pupils shrank. His lips pulled into a wide frown
for approximately one second before his jaw dropped open and a choking sound
came out. "G-guh?" was all he could manage, disbelief and shock lacing his
tone. Katie turned to Flash as Lance stood there dumbfounded, her jaw also
hanging open. She rose a hoof and pointed it at Maria, orbs wavering as if on
the verge of spinning in their canvases.
"Daddy?" Maria asked again, and Lance shook his head rapidly.
The general started spluttering for a minute before he rose a hoof and coughed
into it. "I just woke up, ask me again later," he grumbled after regaining his
composure.
"Okay," Maria chirped, and she sent him a smile before bounding over to Katie.
Katie turned to the two, orbs darting between the filly and the stallion as the
former came up to her. She closed her jaw for a few seconds before speaking,
"Uh, Lance, I think you've just found yourself saddled with a kid. I'm not sure
if that's good or bad."
Lance let his head drop, sighing dejectedly. "Help me," he murmured.
"Afraid I can't do that, no matter how hard I try," Katie replied, grunting as
she found herself getting a rather tight hug from Maria as soon as she turned
back to the filly. "Stop, you're squishing me," she groaned.
"Who's getting squished?" Anna asked as she trotted out of the room, going
around Lance so as to not directly bumble into him. The instant she spoke up
was the same instant Maria relinquished her hold on Katie and bounded over to
the archer like a bullet fired from a pistol.
"Mommy, can I fly now?" Maria asked. Anna seized up, jolting to stand on her
back legs with her face turning a shade of purple in seconds. The archer began
spluttering as well, though this time she shook so much that Flash and Katie
got the impression she wouldn't stay upright for long. The filly reached up
with a talon and grabbed a small mound with a darker tan nub between Anna's
rear legs. "What's this?" she questioned.
Anna looked down and flushed another layer of beet red as soon as she realized
what the foal had grabbed. She batted the small claw away with a flash of
magic, before using both of her front hooves to cover up her crotch. "Do-don't
t-touch th-that!" she barked, ears flattening against her head as she started
backpedaling into her room, and on just two legs.
She wasn't the only surprised one, she found, as her eyes darted to both sides
of the hall. "D-did the foal just grab her by the teat?" a unicorn guard asked,
his eyes wide.
Lance gaped again, before he shook his head and rose one of his front hooves to
hit himself on the bridge of his muzzle. "For fuck's sake…" he groaned, eyes
screwing shut as his ears also fell against his head. He too started backing
up, but stopped when he felt his rear bump right into Anna's hip, causing her
to stumble sideways. He cracked an eye open and averted it to her, watching as
she thrust both front hooves out to catch herself before the floor could greet
her. "You first," he murmured as she hauled herself up.
Anna nodded and galloped back into the room, her face still purplish-red in
color as she went. Lance sighed, lowered his hoof and turned to the guards,
before stopping upon seeing Flash and Katie just stare at him slack-jawed. "You
two, make sure Maria doesn't molest anypony else." The two nodded, and the
general fixed his gaze onto the foal in question. "You're grounded for a week.
No flying," he said curtly, and he trotted into his room backwards. When he
reached the door and made to close it, the filly began to bawl.
"Bu-bu-but, daddy—" Maria began as the tears began forming in the corners of
her eyes.
"No 'buts,' young filly," Lance said in a reprimanding hiss, eyes narrowing.
"You did something you knew you weren't supposed to do—do not make me send you
to your guest room." With that, he closed the door, and let his head drop.
"It's not fair!" Maria cried on the other side of the door, her fit immediately
accompanied by the harsh, shrill sound of little claws as they repeatedly raked
against the door. Lance forced himself to stay put, biting his lip to keep
himself from snapping at the foal. He listened as she complained about how it
wasn't fair, that she wanted to fly, before her words became a big jumble the
longer she pouted. He waited until both the tantrum and the scratching ceased
minutes later before he turned to Anna to find that she just crawled back into
bed and shielded herself with the covers.
He trotted over to her and sat next to the side of the bed she had taken,
sighing dejectedly. Lance didn't speak until Anna poked her head out of the
covers, "Is it just me, or are things taking a turn for the strange?"
"Between being visited by Mythos's lunar alicorn in our dreams, and me being
called 'mommy' as soon as I leave the room… honestly, I don't really know,"
Anna replied, frowning. "With how angry you sounded… I'm impressed you didn't
just straight-up drag her to her room."
"There is a fine line between being firm, and being abusive," Lance retorted
with a shake of his head.
"Coming from the guy who hit one of his changeling soldiers, and stuck said
soldier into a maid's getup," Anna pointed out, her frown deepening.
"Me smacking Armin was to keep him from being torn a new one by Sarah," Lance
groaned, turning to Anna with a frown of his own. "And the maid's getup...
don't lie, you saw why. A fully grown changeling who fucks up despite knowing
better is one thing; an abused filly that seems to think molesting grown-ups is
okay is an entirely different ball game."
Anna nodded in agreement, and her shoulders slumped. "Do you think grounding
her went… too far? She sounded pretty upset," she murmured.
"No. But her squalling about it… maybe her biological folks grounded her. She
screamed like she was awfully familiar with the concept," Lance replied,
shaking his head. "And that's not even my—" he stopped to clear his throat
before continuing, "—our kid anyway. Grounding's the most I can do without
going overboard."
Anna sighed and threw the covers off with a hoof, shifting into a sitting
position. She rubbed one of her forelegs with that same hoof, her frown
softening a little. "Well, now that I think about it… she may see us as her new
parents because we remind her of her old ones. That isn't so bad…"
"True, and we don't know much about what her folks did or didn't allow," Lance
agreed with a thoughtful nod of his head. His frown also eased up, and he sent
the archer a straight face. "I mean, what's the worst that can happen at this
rate?"
"Maybe a flub helping Shining scour his library, but that's about all I can see
happening," Anna replied with a shrug.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Twilight and her companions disembarked at the train station when the sun
reached the apex of the sky, with Discord among them and he was disguised as a
pony. This time, his sclera was white, and his irises were a dull orange. He
gave the mares accompanying him a sly, if toothy, grin. "So… where to,
Twilight? You know the Empire better than I do," he stated coolly.
Twilight sighed. She turned to the others and asked, "Alright, girls, before we
head off, do you want to see any particular thing in the Empire?"
"I want to see how Maria's doing," Pinkie piped up, jittering in place.
"I'd like to buy some crystal berries," Applejack stated with a nod of her
head. "Maybe me and my family could make a zap apple recipe with them."
"Um, I think I should find NoLegs and Fenrir," Fluttershy murmured with a small
smile.
Rarity's horn glowed, and a trio of pony-shaped mannequins appeared in a flash
of magic, with balls of light surrounding them and obscuring much of their
features. "I have three dresses that I desperately need to deliver," she
chirped, turning to look at the individual garments and flashing a smile at
them, almost as if they were living beings. She made the mannequins and dresses
vanish before anypony could try to look through the light balls and at the
garments for more than a few seconds, and she turned to Twilight, still
grinning.
Twilight stared at Rarity with an incredulous look. "Why did you have light
surround the dresses? Is it some sort of surprise?" she asked.
Rarity nodded curtly. "It's a surprise—one that I will only spoil when I have
the recipients actually try them on," she replied.
Twilight nodded back, and turned to look at Rainbow Dash. "What about you?" she
asked.
Dash spread her wings and began flapping them, quickly becoming airborne. "I
dunno about you guys, but I think I'm gonna just kick back and relax for a
while," she chirped in reply. Her eyelids partially drooped, like she was
getting bored and fast as she added, "That, and I don't want to see any
fireworks today."
Twilight's brow rose, but before she could open her mouth, Discord spoke up.
"Dearest Dash, what do you mean by fireworks, pray tell?" he asked, turning to
the airborne pegasus with the toothy grin still on his face.
Dash turned to him and rolled her eyes. "What if the crystal ponies find out
what you really are?" she retorted, crossing her forelegs. "And don't get me
started on the Fantasians."
"The crystal ponies… I'll admit, you do have a valid concern there," Discord
agreed, nodding his head thoughtfully. He proceeded to cross his forelegs
together, and he didn't fall over in spite of the fact that he did not rear up
on his back legs for balance. "But the Fantasians probably don't even know who
or what I am, much less my capabilities. If I just kept this form and my lips
sealed around them, then there's no harm done."
"But didn't you want to, I dunno, summon clowns and flying pigs last night?"
Twilight questioned, turning to Discord with a frown.
"I was very tired last night—you could say I wasn't thinking at the time,"
Discord argued, keeping his forelegs crossed. "But then again, I still do
derive some of my joy from not making sense—part of my many quirks, after all."
Twilight opened her mouth again, only to close it and sigh through her nostrils
when she considered his point. She turned to the road that gleamed, stretching
out all the way to the Empire. "I suppose we should get a move on," she
murmured.
"Now, now, there's no need for roads when you have me by your side," Discord
chirped. "Now then, envision in your mind's eye the spot in the Empire you
girls wish to congregate at."
He waited until they complied before separating his forelegs and wasting no
time performing the act clapping his hooves thrice, and mana burst from his
hooves before jumping from one mare to the next. When it came back to him a
minute later, he got a vision that he immediately began to discern. Upon seeing
in his mind the overhang with the twirling Crystal Heart, he grinned. "Alright
ladies, brace yourselves now—we shall arrive at the place of congregation
shortly," he warned, clapping his hooves one more time.
Before any of his companions could make a single noise of protest, a flash of
pure white light enveloped them on the spot, and they felt themselves hurtling
at speeds that quickly made everypony but Twilight and Discord woozy. It felt
like it spanned hours, yet lasted only seconds when five of six ponies flopped
onto a piece of crystalline street like the drop of a dime, eyes wildly
spinning in their sockets. The sixth swayed in place for a moment, but quickly
shook off her disorientation after a few seconds had passed.
Twilight turned full circle to absorb her surroundings, before stopping as soon
as she saw the Crystal Heart. She blinked as it changed from teal to red, prior
to going yellow and then green. She turned away from it when she heard hooves
hitting crystal, and found two guards and a small red-maned filly with a set of
clawed horseshoes approaching from one of the legs of the palace structure. The
trio wasted no time in rushing to the new arrivals.
"Okay, I wasn't expecting to see you six here… like, a day or two after me and
mine left Ponyville," Katie remarked, her ears twitching as soon as she and the
guards accompanying her halted close to their unexpected guests. Her faux eyes
turned to Discord and she added, "Who in hell is that dude? I could've sworn
I've never seen him around these parts before."
Discord's ears twitched, and he shared a glance with Twilight. "Are Fantasian
foals known for cursing?" he asked, using a hoof to gesture to Katie.
"I'm not a foal—I only look like one at this time," Katie replied before
Twilight could speak. Discord's brow quirked, and he stared intently at the
filly—only to find that it wasn't a filly who answered his inquiry. His eyes
grew to the size of saucers, and he turned to the other mares as they hauled
themselves up with pained grunts.
"Are any of you girls seeing what I am seeing?" Discord asked, and when the
mares shot glares at him, he proceeded to point a hoof at Katie for emphasis.
They followed his limb, and one by one, all five slowly nodded in perfect sync.
Then, he turned to the guards, opening his mouth to ask, only to close it when
they nodded to him before he could utter his question a second time.
"We are well aware of what she… happens to be," one of the guards stated.
"We cannot do anything to her, so long as she behaves in our premises," the
second added. "And so far, she has behaved very admirably."
"So… where are the others?" Twilight asked, looking at Katie.
Katie pointed up with one of her clawed hooves. "Guest rooms, third floor, a
little to the right of the palace," she responded. "I've been stationed to play
watchmare with these two," she added, using the same hoof she pointed at the
overhang with to gesture to the guards, who then nodded as soon as her limb had
dropped.
Pinkie shook her head rapidly before darting over to the wraith, all of her
disorientation forgotten. "How's Maria doing?" she asked, a wide smile forming
on her face.
That smile dropped when Katie flinched prior to answering, "Uh… let's just say
she's in trouble right now, and is being disciplined. I don't think you need to
know the details."
"Is she being spanked?" Pinkie pressed, eyes widening.
"Fortunately, no," Katie replied, shaking her head. "At most, time-out."
Rarity tottered over to Katie, looking at the guards with a bit of a pleading
look. "Um, my good stallions, would it be alright if I… erm, took your extra
watchmare away for a bit?" she asked, using a hoof to tenderly pat Katie on the
head.
The guards exchanged looks, then turned back to Rarity. "What for?" one of them
asked.
"Oh, she ordered a dress from my Boutique before arriving at the Empire, and I
need to have her try it on to make sure it fits her… unique contours," Rarity
explained, donning a rather shaky smile.
The guards turned to Katie, who donned a wide-eyed look on her illusioned face.
"Holy—how could I forget?" she cried, false pupils shrinking to the size of
pinpricks. She turned to Rarity and asked, "Um… can it wait a bit? I need to
fetch Anna and Maria so they can try theirs on, and that won't be until after I
make a round with the guards."
Rarity put a hoof to her chin and hummed, considering Katie's remarks. After a
minute had passed, she dropped her limb and nodded in understanding. "Very
well. Just be sure to see me once your rounds are done, alright?"
"Can do," Katie answered with a nod of her own.
"Can I ask, why are you making rounds with the guards?" Twilight interjected,
also coming over to the wraith with a puzzled frown on her face.
"Lance decided to deploy me, even though I'm not a soldier in his army," Katie
answered, tilting her head slightly.
Twilight's brow rose slightly. "Because… why, exactly?" she ventured.
Katie crossed her forelegs together. "Long story, but the short of it is your
brother's keeping a hawk's-eye on the area, and so are his stallions and mares.
I'm just helping," she stated.
Twilight turned to the guards, eyes glinting in askance. One shook his head,
while the other uttered, "You'll have to ask him yourself, ma'am. Or perhaps
one of the other Fantasians."
Twilight nodded and turned to Pinkie and Fluttershy. Her eyes flicked between
them, before settling on Discord. "You, you, and you," she started, lifting a
hoof to gesture to the three she looked at for emphasis, "we're visiting the
other Fantasians."
One of the guards turned to Katie and gently nudged her with a hoof. "Go ahead
and escort the lot. You know where the guest rooms are," he said.
Katie sighed begrudgingly, turning to Twilight as the lavender mare in question
turned back to her. "Sounds like we have a change in plans…" she murmured,
turning around and cantering over to the leg she left from just moments ago.
Reluctantly, Twilight and her chosen companions followed her after a minute's
worth of hesitation, while Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash tottered off to
do other things.
They found and proceeded to climb up a staircase nestled within that leg leg
single-file. As they cantered on their way up, Twilight asked, "Um, is the
Crystal Heart supposed to be changing colors?"
Katie shook her head as she passed a door on the side of the flight, ignoring
the frame altogether in favor of ascending a few more steps. "According to
Shining and Cadence, no," she answered. "What's worse is Cadence straight-
admitted that she knew next to nothing of the Heart itself. But… I can't fault
her for that. I know next to nothing of the Godcat-damned thing, much less
Mythos in its entirety."
"Did anypony touch it…?" Twilight continued, her brow raising higher.
"Not that I know of. Me and the others were specifically told to not lay so
much as a strand of mane on it," Katie answered with a shrug. She passed a
second door without paying it heed, still going up the flight with the others
still trotting after her. "Seriously, who's that stallion with you?"
"Me?" Discord asked from the far back.
"You're the only stallion I've seen with a horn whose color doesn't match that
of your face, no offense," Katie retorted with a huff.
Discord took on a grin with a sly cast to it. "I shall tell you who I am when I
meet with your fellow Fantasians," he answered, his remark causing shudders to
run up the spines of Twilight, Fluttershy, and Pinkie. If Katie had bothered to
look behind her instead of just trotting onward at that point, she'd have seen
that their pupils shrunk to pinpricks in seconds.
In a few minutes, they reached a third door that marked the end of the flight
of stairs, whereupon their wraith-turned-usher halted abruptly. Katie turned to
the door and opened it with a hoof, barely glancing over her shoulder to
confirm that the four who followed her were still present, before trotting down
a hall and rounding a bend. The quartet followed after her, shifting to trot
shoulder-by-shoulder, and as they caught up to her Discord noticed their
guide's slight limping gait.
"Pray tell, did you suffer an injury to the back legs?" Discord asked,
garnering a sigh from Katie.
"No, but I did suffer a guitar to the hips," Katie answered nonchalantly,
nostrils flaring as she snorted. "And a marble column to my face."
Discord blinked. His eyes narrowed slightly as he asked, "Just how were you
able to get out of taking a marble column to the face without your skull
cracking? Wouldn't that have caused, say, a flattened muzzle at the very
least?"
"Beats the fuck out of me," Katie replied with a shrug. She rounded another
bend to the left, ears stiffening upright for a few seconds before dropping
again as Twilight and her company continued to dawdle after her. They went down
a few more halls without exchanging words, and silence settled in said halls
they stalked upon until they came up to the place with the guest rooms. One of
the doors opened, from which Spike and a red-faced Maria emerged, and Twilight
took two steps forward before hearing the filly sniffle.
"Just say you're sorry, don't grab anypony in that place anymore, be extra
good, and maybe Lance'll unground you early," Spike murmured, patting Maria on
the back when she hiccuped.
"R-really?" Maria whimpered in a trembling voice, raising a claw to wipe her
nose with it. She looked at Spike with hope gleaming in her eyes, but also a
faint spark of dread.
"Yeah." Spike nodded, a small smile accompanied by the tiniest hint of worry
burning in his eyes. "Like I said: apologize, be really extra good, and play it
cool. If you do that, I'll bet ya ten bits you'll be ungrounded before the
Crystal Faire." His eyes widened, and both he and Maria turned to find Twilight
staring at them as she cleared her throat.
"Um… what happened, exactly?" Twilight asked, a frown on her face.
Spike rolled his eyes. "Maria got in trouble, so I'm trying to cheer her up,"
he replied.
Twilight shot a glance at Katie, who merely narrowed her eyes and mouthed, "Do
you really want to know what happened?" When Twilight nodded slowly, the wraith
took off one of her front horseshoes and slapped herself right under her horn-
stump with the bared hoof. She began grumbling indignantly as she lowered said
hoof back down to put her shoe on after sliding it along the bridge of her
muzzle.
Fluttershy piped up, looking at Twilight the entire time she spoke, "Um, I
don't think it's a good idea… if you don't mind me speaking out, that is."
Pinkie decided to stick in her two bits, but not before she bounded over to
Maria and scooped her up in her front hooves. "I know ways of making being
grounded not so boring," she chirped. "But," she continued when Maria
brightened a little bit, "you have to promise me you'll be super-duper-extra
good. Pinkie promise?"
Maria's smile fell. "What's a Pinkie promise?" she asked.
Pinkie's eyes went wide. Then she donned an awkward smile. "Just Pinkie promise
for me, alright?" she asked, her tone bordering a bit on the shaky side. Before
Maria could answer, the two heard a door open, and they turned to another door
swinging brazenly into the hall. From behind that door, Lance and Anna trotted
out into the hall, and both turned to the gathering that had formed only ten or
so feet from them.
"What's all this hubbub about?" Anna asked, trotting over to Pinkie upon
noticing she and the others were present.
"What she said," Lance added, also trotting over. Pinkie noticed that the
general had a straight face, while Anna possessed a slight frown on her muzzle.
"We weren't expecting you and yours to show up."
"We were just checking up on things," Twilight answered, tottering over to
Spike and patting him on the head with a hoof. "Like my adopted dragon, for
instance."
Lance nodded in understanding. "I see," he murmured, his eyes shifting to the
orange-eyed stallion that had still stood next to Fluttershy. "And… who's he?"
Discord began to grin again, and when he blinked his eyes, the sclera turned
yellow while the irises became a bright, bold, blood red in color. He rose a
hoof up and held it to the barrel of his chest, and Lance's eyes widened as
that same hoof quickly turned into an orange cat's paw. Then the changing
stallion vanished in a flare of light, only to reappear in front of Lance in a
cloud of smoke.
"Well met, General Boltwing! I've heard so much about you," Discord chirped,
his smile widening. He wasted no time grabbing one of Lance's hooves with the
paw and shaking it hard enough to leave the Fantasian pegasus with his eyes
spinning in their sockets.
Lance promptly landed on his haunches as soon as his hoof was released, swaying
back and forth like a pendulum that was caught in a rising tide of water. "H-
hello to you t-to," he murmured. "Who th-the fuck're y-you?" His inquiry went
unanswered as Discord snapped the digits of his paw, and an accordion appeared
in a flash of light before landing square on the general's head, right between
the ears. The sudden thwack-to-the-head was somehow accompanied by a loud honk
that only sounded at the precise moment of impact.
This caused Pinkie, Spike, Maria, and Anna to jump in surprise. "Di-did-did
that accordion… honk just now?" Anna asked, pupils dilated and voice laced with
disbelief.
Lance shook off the accordion, which honked as it fell onto the floor before
vanishing from sight. He leveled a stone-cold glare at Discord. "The fuck was
that for?! What did I ever do to you to deserve that?!" he cried, eyes
narrowing to thin, crimson slits. Discord guffawed and snapped his digits
again, causing a clay-potted plant to appear and crash into Lance's head. The
ceramic shattered and scattered into thousands of pieces, leaving just a wad of
dirt with a flower heaped on the general's cranium.
Discord rose the paw and adjusted the little bloom so it stood upright. Then,
he picked it, brought it to his nose, and took a hearty whiff of the plant. His
eyes went wide, and he stared at the plant. "Goodness me, it reeks of metal,
smoking powder, and… something most unpleasant." He sniffed the flower again,
seemingly unaware that Lance was still trying to drill a hole into him with the
glare he cast. "Hrm… yes, that's quite a bizarre scent if I've ever smelled
one." The cat-armed stallion tossed the flower aside, whereupon it vanished
alongside the mound of dirt and scattered bits of smashed clay.
"Who are you, and what was all that for?" Lance demanded, his face just
starting to turn a twinge of red. His pupils dilated as the odd unicorn before
him morphed into a chimera and stared into his eyes with a wide toothy grin on
his face.
"Name's Discord, Spirit of Chaos, only draconequus in Equestria, was petrified
twice over and the one who decided to mess with your head by making illusory
objects land upon your skull. Pleased to make your acquaintance," Discord
replied, offering his paw to Lance. The general stared for a moment or two, the
color draining from his face, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as
he proceeded to collapse into a heap on the floor.
Discord's paw fell, and his shoulders slumped. "I was expecting something more
of a stallion whose cranium I've just smashed objects upon…" he grumbled, his
smile immediately turning into a sullen frown.
"Is daddy okay?" Maria asked worriedly, eyes wide as she stared at Lance's out-
cold form. Discord turned to her and smiled.
"Oh, don't worry, little one. He's alright as can be—after all, illusory
objects falling on heads only gives mild concussions," Discord replied, his
smile faltering for a bit.
Katie looked at Twilight, her orbs dimming. "Somehow, I'm not convinced," Katie
mouthed, using a hoof to gesture to Discord and Lance for emphasis.
"Discord, that was very wrong of you to do," Fluttershy interjected, giving
Discord a cold glare on par with those of Shining and Lance. The glare caused
Discord to falter for a bit, and his smile fell again as he stared into her
eyes. Her eyes gleamed, and her voice turned cold, reprimanding, and angry to
reflect it as she went on, "You could have… made Lance want to tear your wings
off or something. When he wakes up again, you're going to make it up to him.
You're going to apologize."
"But why would I need to apologize to him?" Discord asked, his ears flattening
against his head. Fluttershy's eyes narrowed, and she flapped her wings and
flew right up to his face so fast he couldn't react.
"You're going to do it, or… or… or be turned to stone again!" Fluttershy
hissed, whereupon Discord's pupils shrank. "And you don't want that, do you?"
Discord shook his head, and slowly, Fluttershy descended until her hooves
touched the crystal floor.
***** Chapter XXXI, Part II- Zephyr a la Fortississimo *****
Anna stared at Discord, her mind reeling so fast she barely registered
Fluttershy's threat of petrification—let alone the draconequus's taken-aback
look that stemmed as a result of said threat. Several emotions ran rampant, and
her visage kept contorting in a subconscious effort to display them all. Her
brow slanted one second, her eyes almost bugged out the next, and on the third
second she went slack-jawed.
She stood there, continually staring, every fiber of her body frozen except for
that of her rapidly-shifting face. She wanted to move, and willed her legs to
budge, yet her limbs didn't comply in the slightest. Maria turned to the archer
and saw her stuck in her trance, and she wiggled out of Pinkie's hooves before
cantering over and using a claw to poke her on the foreleg. "Mommy, are you
okay?" she asked, frowning when Anna's eyes widened again.
Anna blinked before the inquiry registered in her head. She jumped before
backpedaling so fast she landed on her haunches, her still-wide eyes falling
onto the foal. "Uh… no?" she managed, her throat quickly drying out in the span
of seconds as her face stopped on the wide-eyed look and ceased changing
through any more expressions. Her hooves flew around Maria as soon as she came
closer, wrapping her in a tight embrace, as though their owner feared that
Discord would stow the foal away to parts unknown.
Speaking of, Discord looked deflated—shoulders slumped, wings sagging, ears and
mouth drooping, and much of his lengthy tail resting flat on the crystal floor.
Fluttershy watched him, eyes still narrowed, like her turquoise gaze could
slice through solid steel.
While Fluttershy kept the draconequus glued to the spot with her stare, Pinkie
cantered over to Anna and smiled in greeting. "Discord's just having a relapse;
he should be okie-dokie-lokie soon," she chirped.
"Okie-dokie-lokie?" Anna repeated in a high-pitched squeak, her voice raspy.
She lifted one of her hooves from Maria and used it to gesture to Lance as she
began to prattle, "H-he just hurt Lance—you call that a relapse?! Discord j-
just guaranteed that Lance'll declare war! He guaranteed it, I swear! As soon
as he wakes up, we're all going to die!"
Before the frightened unicorn could ramble any further, Pinkie simply jammed a
hoof into her mouth, wincing as teeth clamped on it in an attempt to spit it
out. "If Lance wants to declare war, trust me, Twilight, and the other girls to
talk him out of it," she replied, a glint in her eyes.
"Who wants to declare what?" a masculine voice asked as another door swung
open. Pinkie and Anna turned to the door to find that Matt just began to set
hoof into the hall, unaware of the fact that his general was wounded and on the
floor only a few feet away.
"Daddy got hurt," Maria answered for Matt before Pinkie could open her mouth to
speak.
"Daddy?" Matt repeated, his brows raising. "I thou—"
Katie trotted over to the fuzzy unicorn and sighed in exasperation, quickly
cutting his musings off. "She decided that General Boltwing is her new daddy,"
she groaned sarcastically, watching as Matt's eyes almost bugged out of their
sockets instantly.
"W-w-wh…" Matt began mumbling incoherently, his brain scrambling to formulate a
response. He dropped to the floor, his legs tucked under him as he shifted to
be eye-level with Katie. "Y-you…"
"She's… not k-kidding," Anna piped up as soon as Pinkie removed the hoof from
her mouth.
Matt stayed on the floor, eyes darting between Katie and Anna fervently. As
soon as his mind stopped scrambling and started absorbing the intel, a grin
cropped up on his face. Then he stood up and trotted over the wraith's form,
making a beeline directly for the mares and foal. Ignoring Pinkie's presence
for the moment, his smile widened before falling as soon as he noticed the look
on Anna's face. "Something wrong?" he asked.
Anna lifted one of her hooves from Maria, and once again gestured to Discord
with it in silence. Matt followed her limb and, upon seeing the draconequus,
paled on the spot. Yet again his brain had shut down, refusing to process the
mere sight of Discord in all of his chimerical glory, and as he stared his head
began to hurt.
"What's this?" Discord asked, turning to Matt and finding himself engaged in a
staring contest. He vanished in a flash of light before reappearing in front of
the dumbstruck stallion, eyeing the horn on the Fantasian's head. "Sir, do you
have a mutation or something? I ask not to offend, but because this is the
first time I have seen a full-grown stallion with a smaller asset that… doesn't
match the size of the body."
"I'm only half-unicorn," Matt grumbled, his face tightening the longer Discord
stared at his horn. "Get away from my silver forehead-dagger, or I'll poke you
with it," he threatened with narrowing eyes as the draconequus leaned closer,
forcing his quarry to lean back.
Discord retracted and hummed thoughtfully, lifting his paw to stroke at his
goatee. "Hrm… that might explain it. Still, I've seen half-unicorns with bigger
horns," he stated, his remark causing one of Matt's eyes to start twitching.
"Oh, Discord, don't antagonize him," Pinkie called out, bouncing over to Matt's
side in an instant. When Discord turned to her with a brow quirked, she stood
up on her back legs and wrapped a foreleg around the half-Clydesdale's neck.
"He's one of my friends—by default, he's your friend too."
"I'd think more along the lines of 'friend-I-just-met-today' than 'friend-I've-
known-for-a-few-years,' if I went by your logic, Pinkie," Discord retorted, his
paw retracting from the tuft of hair on his chin.
"But you also attacked my other friend, who's still on the floor," Pinkie
countered, using her free hoof to gesture to the sprawled, still-unconscious
heap on the floor that was Lance Boltwing.
Discord's irises shrunk. "No wonder Fluttershy got mad at me… why didn't you
tell me you made friends with the flipping general sooner?" he asked.
"You never asked if I made friends with him or not," Pinkie answered, a slight
frown on her face.
Discord slumped again when he heard the general moaning, and turned to find the
sorry bastard hauling himself up on three hooves, with the fourth rubbing at
the spot between his ears. "This is gonna be a long day, isn't it…" he groaned.
"Where is… that fucking goat-faced… chimera?" Lance groaned as he stood on
three wobbly legs, a bit of color returning to his face. "I'm… gonna hit him…
with my gunblade…" That declaration was followed by him collapsing to the floor
again, the fourth hoof still on his head.
Twilight trotted up to the stallion who, if the hoof on his head and his pained
voice were a set of indications, was still nursing a killer concussion. She put
her hoof on his withers and sighed, garnering his attention. "Try as you might,
with how shaky your legs are now, you might want to wait a bit," she warned.
Lance tried standing again, once more on three legs, as if in defiance of her
suggestion. He managed to get up and stay up for a few more seconds prior to
one leg slipping out from beneath him when he shifted slightly, which caused
him to fall on his side. Twilight jumped back, ears folding against her skull
as she heard a dampened clang of metal as the pegasus landed.
Pinkie and Fluttershy turned to the general, having also heard the noise. Both
zipped over to him, though the former took care to remove her leg from Matt's
neck beforehand. "What was that?" Twilight asked in disbelief, getting a wide-
eyed look from Lance as an immediate response.
"Uh… m-my gunblade?" Lance stammered, paling like a deer caught in headlights.
His ears fell back when the three mares who stared at him exchanged glances.
"Can we see?" Pinkie asked, garnering a rapid shaking of the head from the
distraught general. "Why not?"
Twilight's horn lit up, and she grasped Lance in her magic. She lifted him up,
and he began struggling vehemently, unintelligible words sounding more like
keens of protest escaping his mouth as he momentarily forgot his facade and let
his wings flail under their cloth coverings with reckless abandon. "I dunno
about you girls," she began, glancing at Fluttershy and Pinkie, "but it seems
like our Fantasian pegasus here has something to hide."
"Um, General Boltwing, if your wings are broken, then why're you madly flapping
them?" Pinkie asked, her inquiry causing the flailing stallion's struggling to
halt right in its tracks. Slowly, he turned to the three once more, the color
draining from his face for a second time that day as he loudly gulped.
Discord came over via flash of light, vanishing and reappearing to start
standing next to Fluttershy, with one brow raised high and the other
threatening to overshadow the eye and lids below it. He reached out with his
bird-hand, firmly gripping both the cloth wrapped around the floating pony's
midsection, as well as the loose cloak above that. "May I?" he asked, garnering
a shake of the head from Lance.
Twilight shared a look with the draconequus. "Go ahead—at this point, I'm
inclined to think his wings aren't as busted up as he told me they were," she
said. Discord obliged, tugging off all of the cloth so fast Lance performed
barrel rolls in the magic that had him suspended thereafter. Twilight turned to
the general and watched, and he twirled to the point that he was just a blur of
burnt orange, dark crimson, and steel grey.
"I'm afraid I can't let you spin any longer, General," Twilight groaned after a
full minute passed without a sign that the hapless stallion would cease rolling
in one spot on his own. Her magic fully seized him at that point, forcing him
to still immediately, though his head had enough leeway to sway for a bit
before he let it drop with a pained groan.
As soon as the three mares and Discord laid eyes on his wings, they paled a
little. Discord used his paw to grab one of the sorry bastard's wings and
spread it slowly, then closed it before flexing it repeatedly. "Hrm… seems to
still function, despite the metal belying otherwise," he murmured, using his
talon to feel up the individual feathers. The runes lit up at his touch, softly
glowing but otherwise not doing anything.
He released the wing, watching as the limb drooped like its owner's head, the
runes fading after a few seconds ticked by. He turned to Twilight and inquired,
"What, exactly, did he tell you?"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Shining Armor sat in the front row of the auditorium, a pair of earmuffs to one
side of him. He looked back at the double doors, seeing a pair of unicorn
guards stationed on either side of the frame, with one a deep ocean blue and
the other a slate gray. They also had earmuffs on their heads, and stared at
their ruler intently. Shining nodded to them, and they used their magic to
close the door and form a small bubble over themselves.
Then, the Emperor turned to the podium and saw a single music sheet stand with
a small book opened upon it, with an overhead light shining down on it like a
play was about to start. His ears twitched, enabling him to hear the soft
echoing sounds of hooves hitting and claws scraping against the crystal. "The
guards are ready, Lyregale," he called out.
He eyed the stage as, from behind and then around it, Sarah bumbled into view
on her back legs with her harp in her claws. "Might as well take center stage
while you're at it," he added, and sighed as she put one end of the instrument
in her mouth before climbing onto the podium. He'd have made a remark about the
oddity of her methods, if she still didn't have that accursed wing cast
strapped on her like a neon blue sign that said 'I can't fly.'
Shining never took his eyes off of her, but as soon as she readied herself and
wiped her harp on her wing cast, his hoof strayed to the pair of earmuffs in
preparation. She flipped through the small book, enabling her one-pony audience
to catch the barest of glimpses of music notes, before stopping and blinking.
"These… these are spells," she murmured, turning to him with a brow raised in
askance.
"Your sister had them. Take that up with her," Shining replied, waving the hoof
that wasn't on the earmuffs dismissively.
"You're telling me my sister had a small grimoire?" Sarah inquired, garnering a
nod from the Emperor. She sighed in exasperation and simply flipped through the
book before settling on a random piece somewhere in the middle, eyeing a
composition of primarily-high notes with some low notes scattered here and
there. Her eyes widened, lighting up in a way that Shining thought they started
reflecting the overhead light.
"Wait… this is the same one I tried when Chanson challenged me…" she murmured
in thought, pupils shrinking for a moment. Then, her eyes darkened ever so
slightly under the shadow of her bangs, and a smile came onto her face.
"Maybe…" She continued to stare at the composition before her, absorbing the
placements of the notes and letting her mind drift into a haze as her claws
began tenderly plucking at the strings.
The notes rang throughout the auditorium, and as the first few strings were
plucked, the harp and music sheet began glowing in soft green mana. Shining
watched intently, a frown cropping up on his face as a distinctly green-tinted
aura-like gale which wasn't in the expansive room before blew throughout.
It circled the room slowly, taking its sweet time to rustle his mane to let him
know it now had a presence, enabling him to better see the trail of viridian as
it came and went like a puff of smoke. A few feathers dislodged themselves from
Sarah's good wing, floating about in the zephyr like flower petals. His eyes
betrayed a spark of worry as one such feather drifted past him, its tip just
barely tickling his nose as the glowing winds dragged it in a current that made
it pirouette of its own accord.
As Sarah kept playing, the gale grew stronger. Shining's mane danced in the
breeze, his frown deepening as he heard the tell-tale sound of a page being
flipped, followed immediately by another. The harp kept glowing, at this rate
pulsating with raw mana, and the lyrist playing it stared not at the music
sheets as they kept turning—she lifted her gaze and stared straight ahead with
a vacant expression.
The guards dropped their barrier and trotted over to their Emperor, with the
blue one pulling off his earmuffs. "What's happening?" he asked, using a hoof
to gesture to the still-playing hippogryph on stage.
"I'm not sure," Shining replied, rising from his seat and dropping his earmuffs
as his front hooves connected with the floor. He nodded to the guards, a firm
look on his face, and only when they silently nodded back did he make his move.
He burst into a gallop and jumped on the stage, but as soon as his hooves
connected with the podium the gale picked up in intensity. Sarah's claws
started moving faster, plucking the strings in such a calculated and precise
manner that the Captain began wondering just what had caused her to turn so
distant all of a sudden.
The gale grew stronger yet, now with enough strength to send the entire music
sheet booklet right off the stand, causing it to land and slide away on the
podium. Wind was violently billowing right in his face and lifting his bangs
clear off his forehead, forcing him to squint his eyes. Mana pulsated from the
harp still, and this time its energy rippled all across Sarah's body as if it
were a polished surface and nothing more.
Her eyes, he noticed, seemed cold and dull, a small frown forming on her face
as she kept playing without any sign of stopping. Shining knew then that he had
to stop her immediately, and his horn glowed and his magic grabbed the cause of
her behavioral shift right at the source.
He tugged his head sharply back, like another pony decided to punch him in the
face, and his aura responded accordingly. The harp was yanked out of Sarah's
claws, and it soared up and up until it was well out of her reach. Shining
turned back to the lyrist in question and watched her jolt straight back to
awareness as the gale finally began to die down along with the vestiges of
pulsing mana.
Her eyes went wide, and her ears fell back as a stray loose feather landed
tenderly upon the very tip of her muzzle. She shook her head in disbelief,
letting the feather drift to the floor. "Wh-wh—"
"I think that the harp began controlling you. It's okay—nopony got hurt,"
Shining assured her, trotting up to her and just letting her collapse onto him.
Sarah wrapped her claws around Shining's neck, her breathing rapidly hitching
as his words sank in like lead weights. "C-controlling… m-me?" she squeaked in
nothing short of pure horror. Shining mutely nodded, raising one of his hooves
to embrace her tightly. "I… didn't… the high mages…"
"Rest assured, I'm going to have a long talk with them. I'll drop you and yours
off in Ponyville, where Twilight can watch you while I address the high mages
after the Crystal Faire," Shining murmured, his tone firm but gentle. "I know
all too well how it is to be controlled… you can bet your wings I'll raise
tartarus at the high mages as soon as I see them."
"Um… sir, the harp," the blue guard piped up from in front of the podium.
Shining briefly lifted his hoof from Sarah to wave it dismissively.
"I'll have her sister secure it, and the music sheets," Shining replied, his
horn still glowing. His magic picked up the sheets, and he let go of his guest
after a minute had passed. She climbed on his back, and he looked at her before
seeing her pale substantially. "Too shaken to walk?" he asked, garnering an
immediate nod as his answer. "I understand. Would you like to see your sister?"
Another nod gave him all the answer he needed.
Shining sent her a small smile. "Alright. Hang tight," he stated. When he felt
claws wrap around his barrel tightly, he turned to the double doors and bounded
off the podium, landing smoothly and briefly stopping to make sure that she
wouldn't fall off and that he still had the harp and sheets in his magical
grasp. When that was done, he galloped to the double doors, flung them open,
and rushed out of the auditorium while leaving just two guards and a few loose
feathers in his wake.
The two guards in question exchanged looks, with the blue one who took his
muffs off early letting his eyes grow to the size of saucers and the other gray
one immediately going slack-jawed. "That was… interesting," the wide-eyed guard
murmured.
The gray one threw off his earmuffs and sighed. "Hey, at least we came
prepared," he replied.
"Might as well start trotting around inside the palace with open umbrellas. The
Emperor warned us of potential headaches, not wind manipulation via
instrument!" the blue one barked, using a hoof to gesture to the discarded
earmuffs. "I'm not sure if the Emperor has gone off his rocker or what!"
"At least he prevented that gale from becoming so strong we would've been swept
off our hooves!" the gray guard retorted, firmly frowning at this point. "I for
one would not want to know what that harp could do!"
"... point taken," the blue guard groaned, slowly nodding in agreement. He
began trotting to the double doors, with his fellow coming up behind him. They
assumed stoic faces, taking deep breaths to compose themselves as they went out
into the hall, just barely catching the fading echo of galloping hooves. They
glanced around, trying to find the source of the noise, but alas they found
naught except themselves in that hall.
They exchanged glances upon noticing the emptiness of the crystal corridor. The
blue spoke, "Do you think the Emperor took a detour, Solid Step?"
Solid Step shook his head. "Not unless he accidentally dropped the hippogryph.
He's not one to take shortcuts, and you know that as well as I do, Aquamarine,"
he replied.
Aquamarine sighed and nodded. He began trotting again, down to one end of the
hall before rounding a corner and vanishing from sight. Solid watched him
disappear, pondering for a few minutes on end on whether or not he should stop
standing still and make an effort to catch up to his companion. He remained
entirely unaware that something rounded a bend from the other side of the hall,
silent as a stalking cat and as slow and concise as a praying mantis.
When the figure slipped and made a noise not unlike a hoof hitting the floor,
Solid whipped around, his head darting everywhere in an attempt to scope out
the source. He saw nothing, and slowly turned back around before languidly
trotting where Aquamarine had gone. Behind him, the form silently slipped out
from behind a nearby crystal pillar and crept ever closer to the lone guard.
Solid Step kept his back turned, his already-slow trot decelerating into a
hoof-dragging walk.
Solid Step then stopped at the bend and took his sweet time to contemplate some
more, but the poor bastard didn't get the chance to come to a decision, still
blissfully ignorant to the presence that scoped him out and closed in without
hesitation. Hooves flew around his neck from behind, gripping him in a firm
chokehold before he realized what had happened, and his eyes went wide as the
weight of the situation set on.
He tried to look at his attacker as he began struggling to break free, but he
paled when all he could make out was a form wearing a cloak black as night that
obscured all of their features. He felt his body weaken, his throat
constricting and lungs begging for oxygen that was rapidly depleting.
He bucked, he reared, he pranced madly up and down the hall, even tried lifting
the form from his neck with his magic—no matter what he did, nothing was able
to shake the creature off. He felt something clamp down on his horn, and jolts
went through his system, temporarily dazing him and taking any and all spells
he had known straight out of the equation.
Even so, he regained his senses and began anew, throwing all of his strength
into attempting to get the form off of him. He crashed side-first into a wall,
tossed himself into a pillar, and even to the floor, but still the entity would
not relent. As the minutes ticked by, his more physical attempts to throw the
figure off were met with a tighter grip and a face turning a shade of blue, and
every time he tried to cast a spell he got another shock running through his
system.
His exertion, the shock treatment that came from his horn being repeatedly
rendered useless, and the hooves around his neck just tired him out to the
bitter end. "It's night-night time now," a hollow voice murmured, right as
Solid's vision became white for the barest of seconds before turning black on
the spot. The figure released its hold on the guard and let him drop to the
floor, quiet but harsh wheezes leaving the mouth of the hapless unicorn as he
lay there with a blue face.
"That was too easy," the figure hissed to itself, chortling lowly before
silencing itself and languidly walking along the halls. If Solid were still
awake then, he'd have seen that it swayed from one side to the next, its form
ever-threatening to tip over only to swing in the opposite direction like a
metronome. It slipped around the same bend that Aquamarine had taken moments
ago, disappearing from sight almost like a shadowy afterimage.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
"You did what?" Shining growled. He was in one of the guest rooms, sitting at a
table with Discord directly opposite of him. A naked Lance was also sitting to
one side with a scowl in his face, and Fluttershy sitting across from said
Fantasian.
Fluttershy spoke up, "Discord made an accordion and a potted plant land on his
head." She used a hoof to gesture to Lance, who grumbled incoherently as soon
as the limb fell in his direction.
Discord crossed his mismatched forelimbs, a frown so set into his face that it
seemed the corners of his mouth were trying to leave their boundaries, which
made it look like his muzzle was starting to melt. "I said I was sorry, and he
accepted," he murmured.
"Forgiven, but not forgotten," Lance chimed in, ears flat against his head, his
eyes darting up every few seconds like he was expecting an anvil to take a turn
crashing on his skull.
Shining nodded, taking a scant few seconds out of the time of his day to let
the triad of remarks sink in. He turned to Fluttershy and asked, "Are you going
to punish him, or no?"
Fluttershy shook her head. "No; his apology was sincere. But I will keep a
better eye on him," she replied, turning to the draconequus who mutely nodded
when she sent him the briefest of glares.
"And is he aware that he could have caused something I think we'd all rather
avoid?" Shining asked, garnering a nod from Fluttershy as she turned back to
him.
Fluttershy remained silent, and Lance took that as his cue to answer for her,
"Thoroughly." Two nods, one from Discord and one from the yellow pegasus,
occurred simultaneously after the general's one-word utterance had left his
mouth.
Shining let his shoulders slump, his eyes closing as a sigh of relief left his
lips. "For a moment, I was worried I'd have to intervene. Again," he murmured.
He opened his eyes and sent Lance an unreadable look. "So… how are things on
your end?"
"Last few hours were confusing as fuck," Lance replied, taking a moment to
throw his front hooves into the air to emphasize his claim.
"Having met Discord notwithstanding, what do you mean?" Shining asked, a brow
quirked.
Lance gave Shining a serious look, his lips pulled into a tight frown. "I've
become an adoptive father," he replied.
Shining doned a bemused grin. "C-come again?" he asked, his brow raising
higher.
"It's true," Discord piped in, rolling his eyes in such a manner that resembled
screws being twisted out of a wall. His paw rose, and he used it to scoop out
his oculars right from their sockets without bleeding or even snapping his
central retina veins or caverna sinuses in the process. Lance turned to him and
jumped upon seeing the empty sockets, and the draconequus just casually shook
his eyes in his paw before casting them unto the table like crude dice.
The eyes, upon hitting the table, proceeded to morph into a pair of cards that
stood up for one minute, only to land backside-down and reveal a duet of
pictures that somehow moved in their little frames. One was of a forest with
wind billowing and rustling its branches, and the other a glistening moon in a
night sky accompanied by several small stars, in addition to a shooting star
that smoothly arced over the celestial body.
Shining, Lance, and Fluttershy all looked at the cards intently, then the
stallions turned to Discord to find that his eyes just regrew in their sockets
like it was nothing. Discord shrugged and gestured to the cards with his talon.
"Twilight told me what she discovered about Starswirl last night," he said.
Shining and Lance shared a look, then yet again turned to the draconequus with
hope glimmering in their eyes. "I'll admit, I was around during Starswirl's
time," Discord began, watching as the dual glimmers brightened considerably.
"But, I was just a child at the time—couldn't master any of my powers, and
thus, could not go to and from Fantasia. Why, I was only made aware of this
before I went to sleep," he said, frowning when the hope faded and got replaced
by small flickers of worry.
"So, you hardly know jack shit…" Lance groaned, turning to Shining with a frown
on his face. "Is it me, or is the boat getting crowded?"
"I'd like to think so, at this rate," Shining murmured, turning to Discord.
"So… when were you petrified the first time?" he asked, hoping to glean another
smidgen of useful information.
"After the barrier had been set up," Discord scoffed in reply. "I was planning
on heading over to Fantasia, but as soon as I reached adulthood—which was
millennia upon millennia ago—guess what prevented me from doing just that?"
Lance proceeded to let one of his hooves connect with his face. "That which
broke weeks ago," he grumbled.
"Ding! We have a winner! Here, have a million bits!" Discord cheered, the
digits of his talon snapping. A flash of light flared above Lance, and from it
no more than a million bits materialized, rained down onto him, and covered him
up so fast he couldn't protest. A hoof managed to raise up from the pile,
swinging about uselessly for a few minutes before it found purchase on the
table and the general managed to haul his front quarters out.
The pile of bits vanished as they had come, and Lance shook his head rapidly.
He turned to Discord and sighed in annoyance. "Can you not suffocate me,
please?" he asked, more in exasperation than anger.
"It's why I made the moolah vanish once you managed to emerge from the pile,"
Discord replied, grinning for the barest of instants. "In all seriousness," he
began, his grin fading as he turned back to Shining, "I wish I had known what
made the barrier break into tiny little pieces."
"I've been trying to find that out from the Empire's library myself," Shining
groused, frowning himself. "But it's so big that even a small team of
volunteers that are helping the librarian are having… a bit of trouble."
Discord rose a brow. "And what all have you managed to glean from the library
here, thus far?" he inquired.
"A few spellbooks… and another book that translates ancient runes found in said
books," Shining groaned, his head dropping. "And that was yesterday."
Discord's eyes widened. "How all is that mess sorted?" he murmured.
Shining lifted his head. "I haven't the foggiest," he answered, shaking his
head and shrugging for emphasis. "To ask me to go through it on my lonesome, or
even with Cadence helping me… you might as well ask me to assassinate Celestia
and Luna with nothing more than a butter knife—I couldn't pull it off. No way,
no how; not even time itself would be on my side."
"I've seen the massive clusterfuck," Lance added, waving a hoof dismissively.
Discord nodded and hummed thoughtfully. He then let his eyes dart between the
Emperor and the general before deciding to ask, "Any books on bound wings and
wing enchantments?"
Shining's brow rose. "Why?" he asked.
"Let me show you…" Discord trailed off, using his paw to grab one of Lance's
wings. He stroked the copper feathers with his talon, and Shining's eyes went
wide as the runes once more lit up in response.
"Yes, Shining, my ass is indeed enchanted ten ways to Sunday," Lance murmured,
sighing in resignation as his eyes narrowed upon turning to the table.
Bitterly, he added, "And I sincerely doubt the Empire has books on enchanted
wings."
"If nothing else," Shining began, lifting a hoof and reaching over to pat Lance
on the withers, "the other libraries in Equestria could have something about
the topic."
Lance turned to look at Shining, doubt flickering in his eyes. "The high mages
of Canterlot couldn't rectify this," he retorted, using a hoof to gesture to
his wings. "Instead, they made an entire damn room blow up."
Shining's brow slanted, but only slightly. "Maybe the book that translates the
ancient runes would help. The runes on your feathers looked… odd," he murmured.
Lance held his gaze, staring at Shining like he'd consumed an alcoholic
cocktail laced with hallucinatory drugs. "What're the chances of that?" he
asked in a low voice. "That book may well be useless, and who could look
through it in an entire day to determine such? Besides, I don't even know what
spell the unicorns who did this to me used. I'm gonna go on three legs and
assume that book doesn't even have one rune that matches what's on my false
feathers."
Shining's mouth twitched up into the smallest of smiles. "My sister," he
answered tersely. "She can leaf through that book, and may find something
useful."
"Really?" Lance asked, his pupils shrinking a bit.
"Yes. Spells and runes and books are Twilight's speciality," Fluttershy piped
up, smiling when Lance jerked his gaze to her. Her smile fell as she added,
"But… if even she can't disenchant you… I honestly don't know what will."
***** ChapterXXXII- Gleaming Cornucopia *****
Natalie was back-down on a bed in one of the guest rooms, her legs flailing
about and her mouth wide open as a series of laughs escaped her throat. For ten
whole minutes she had been like that, just howling nonstop like she was being
molested all over by the tips of floating feathers. Matt sat next to her,
waiting patiently for her to calm down, frowning when her face began turning a
hue of red.
"L-L-L-Lance… is a-a fa-ha-father!?" Natalie screeched between laughs, her
front legs pounding at the mattress while her back ones wasted no time kicking
off the covers and sheets. Then she flipped over, one forehoof still hitting
the cloud-like material while the other came over to rest beneath her chin.
Matt mutely nodded, and though he found the thought of his own superior
attaining fatherhood rather amusing, his ears began ringing as his companion
continued to laugh herself silly. His horn glowed, magic seizing Natalie's
muzzle and clamping it shut, though it left a small hole in front of her
nostrils. "Breathe, girl. You're gonna bust a lung at this rate if you keep
laughing," he warned in a firm voice.
Natalie did as instructed, but she still managed to emit a few muffled chuckles
that gradually hushed until all that her fellow Fantasian heard was a series of
inhales and exhales through nostrils that repeatedly flared. "I know," Matt
began, pausing to chuckle, "it's fucking hilarious." When he was certain that
she wouldn't assault him with another cackling fit, he relinquished his magical
hold on her maw, watching as she opened wide to suck in a deep breath.
"It's just… I don't know what that foal sees in him that could scream 'daddy
material,'" Natalie replied in an amused tone, shaking her head rather solemnly
in spite of a grin that formed on her face.
"Nor do I, to be honest," Matt sighed, shrugging. He spoke further when Natalie
made eye contact with him, "Also… Twilight and her friends dropped by, and they
brought some… thing I think you should meet physically."
Natalie's brow rose. "Beg your pardon?" she asked, her voice betraying none of
her earlier amusement whatsoever.
Matt stood up and trotted to the door of the room, stopping to wait for her to
follow. "Just… you gotta see him," he said, his form not budging an inch until
his friend climbed out of the bed and cantered over to him. He opened the door
with a hoof and stepped out into the hall with her tailing him, going past a
few doors before veering to the left and heading for another door that was
already slightly ajar. Natalie closed the door behind her and also arrived at
the already-barely-open obstacle.
The half-Clydesdale rose a hoof and tapped at the doorframe instead of the door
itself, knocking no more than five times. "Come in!" a masculine voice called
from inside the room. The two obliged and opened the door the rest of the way,
tottering inside to find Discord, Fluttershy, and Shining gathered around
Lance, with the draconequus waving in greeting as he and the Emperor examined
the extent of the damage on the general's back.
At a nearby table sat Twilight, scanning the pages of a book that lay bare
before her with her horn aglow, and she waved with a hoof before flipping a
page with her magic. To one side of the book was a piece of paper, along with a
small inkwell and a quill that floated in her magic that she used to jot down
notes upon said paper. She occasionally stopped writing, breaking away from the
paper and what notes she had already scrawled to look at Lance's wings while
Discord revealed the runes with his talon.
Natalie paled upon seeing Discord, and she stiffened on the spot. Fluttershy
turned to her and sighed. "He won't bite. I've already had a talk with him,"
she said in a reassuring tone.
"I can vouch for that," Lance piped up, raising a hoof and waving it in
confirmation.
Twilight pried her gaze from the page she was reading and the notes she had
thus far, turning to look at Shining. "How bad is the damage?" she asked.
Shining turned to look at his sibling, a frown on his face. "Very. I can see
smidgens of his wing joints, and they're pink and bald. What little I can see
of his feather tracts are… they're swollen. It's like the feathers that haven't
regrown want to get out," he answered.
"And what about the runes on his false feathers?" Twilight continued, raising a
hoof and making an invisible circle in the air with it, urging Shining to go
on.
"Ask him, not me," Shining replied, using a hoof to point at Lance for
emphasis.
"Damned if I know!" Lance exclaimed, waving his hoof again, this time in a
dismissive manner. This caused Twilight to groan, and Matt and Natalie to roll
their eyes and shake their heads in unison. Twilight nodded and turned back to
her notes, which filled half of the paper, and flipped through another page in
the book to start scanning the next batch of rune translations.
Matt decided to speak up, "So, what is going on here?"
"I'm trying to translate the runes on his wings so I can make a counter-spell
to get the metal off of his backside," Twilight answered, her tail swishing and
swashing as if swatting away bugs that had yet to latch onto her. "I'm still
impressed that, from a technical standpoint, he wasn't even lying about the
state of his wings!" she groaned, and began gritting her teeth again at the
mere thought of it.
"Would you have believed him if he said his wings were layered with metal,
without seeing them before 'they're caked in steel and copper' came out of his
mouth?" Natalie retorted with eyes going half-lidded and a small frown forming
on her muzzle, causing Twilight to stiffen with her remark. Her swishing tail
stopped, resting flat on the floor with some of its hairs curling up like
broken guitar strings.
"No…" Twilight answered, slumping and with ears folding back. She took another
look at the steel-bound limbs and her frown deepened. "Now that I think about
it, Spike and the others wouldn't have believed it, either. Up until today, I
always thought of hex-bound wings that use metal as an anchor point… absurd,
along with a myriad of other things. Heck, I used to think wraiths were just
monsters in old foals' tales used to scare fillies and colts into behaving."
"Therein lies my point," Natalie scoffed, garnering a slow nod from the mare
whose tail stopped moving. She turned to Shining and asked, "Is it alright if I
took a trot around the Empire's streets for a while?"
Shining turned to Natalie, a brow raising and a tight frown forming
simultaneously. "What for?" he replied.
"Sightseeing," Natalie stated tersely with a shrug. "I have little to do in the
palace, and I'd like to stretch my legs and breathe in a little fresh air…"
Shining turned to look at Lance, who promptly waved a foreleg dismissively.
"Ah, what the hell. I see no harm in it," Lance murmured, giving Shining a
short nod of his head. "If you find a tavern, don't cause a hassle—it's all I
ask," he added, turning to his subordinate and just barely missing the
Emperor's brow raising even higher.
Natalie nodded. "Alright. I'll be back by sundown," she promised. With that,
she trotted out of the room by herself, leaving Matt and the others to turn to
the spot where she stood before her departure.
Shining turned to Matt for a minute, then back to Lance. "Why would she head to
a tavern? Furthermore, why'd you tell her not to raise a fuss if she does find
one in these parts?" he asked.
"One, it's your Empire. What good would it do for me or my subordinates to
heckle your citizens needlessly?" Lance retorted, and he paused to draw in a
breath before releasing a heavy sigh. "Two, a tavern's basically an all-in-one;
the tool shed of the business world. Food, drinks, some even have beds and free
samples. Fuck, may as well slap in an exhibit for foals while you're at it!"
Shining's brow lowered so fast that Matt missed it just by blinking his eyes
once, though his face did not contort in any other way. "So, she might get some
more food or something to that effect?" he asked.
Lance nodded. He barely heard Matt mumble under his breath, "I hope she doesn't
get hurt…"
Shining turned to Twilight once again. "How's progress so far?" he asked.
"I'm… if I were to estimate, ninety-five-percent done translating the runes. I
just need to translate one or two more, and then I can work on the counter-
spell," Twilight answered, using her magic to lift the paper up and positioning
it so that it faced her brother note-side forward. The entirety of the
parchment had been filled impeccably, and it had just an inch of blank space
left on the bottom.
"Damn, you're efficient," Lance noted, turning to the paper and letting off a
low whistle.
"Do you need another sheet just for the counter-spell itself? That one's about
full," Discord stated, using his paw to gesture to the floating parchment for
emphasis.
Twilight donned a grin, and made another piece of blank paper materialize in a
flash of light. "I've already got spares, thank you," she replied, a glint in
her eyes.
Shining grinned, turning to Lance. "That's my sister—always shows up prepared,"
he chirped.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Natalie trotted through the streets of the Empire, her artificial crystal sheen
renewing as she hummed a merry tune. She spotted remnants of power in the roads
themselves, bright teal pulses of mana that shot out as the residents trotted
past and around her to do various activities. Some of said residents waved,
others watched her in silence, and the occasional guard stationed here and
there mutely nodded to her as they stood diligent at their posts.
The Fantasian strode down several alleys, keeping to herself and just enjoying
the scenery. Everything seemed to glow in the sun's rays, reflecting just
enough light to betray several colors reflecting off of the many surfaces, but
not enough to blind her in its grandeur. It was around mid-afternoon when she
passed through one alley that was on the very outskirts of the Empire, only to
stop upon hearing an awful lot of clamor coming from her right.
She turned and found a door, with an overhead and gorgeous sign that boasted
many colors tacked above its frame, and its small rainbow seemed brighter
against the dark blue backdrop of the building it was attached to. "Crystal
Berry Tavern," she murmured to herself upon reading the sign, barely hearing
something land in a harsh thud. "Why's it in an alley? And what's all that
noise?" she pondered, lifting a hoof to open the door and see what the hubbub
was about, almost immediately being assaulted by loud shouting coming from all
conceivable directions possible.
Natalie had found herself bearing witness to a vicious brawl between three
stallions in the center of the tavern, two slender earth ponies and one unicorn
with a green mane and orange coat. To either side and the far back, an
assortment of other ponies stayed to the walls, all eyes watching as the trio
struggled for dominance.
All three were haggard in appearance, with messy coats, unkempt manes,
bloodshot eyes, and heavy bags under said eyes. Hooves flew everywhere, and the
earth ponies managed to subdue the unicorn who was repeatedly trying to shove
them off in a matter of minutes. "Listen here," the burlier of the two earth
ponies, one sporting a brown coat, hissed as he and his companion forced the
struggling pony's back to the floor. "You ain't hitting on my wife! You ain't
touching my wife!"
"I can stick my cock in whoever I please!" the unicorn shouted in a familiar,
if slurred, voice. "I stuck my cock in one of the Fantasian diplomats! I'll do
it again and then I'll do the same for your lousy whorse of a wife!" Natalie
recoiled, both realization and horror hitting her like a freight train, her
eyes all but widening at the remark the pinned stallion just uttered.
She steeled herself when the second earth pony, this one with a blue coat,
snarled like an animal. "Aren't ya one of those crooks who—" he was cut off as
his quarry turned to the door, eyes immediately zeroing in on the tavern's
newest arrival. The ponies holding him followed his gaze, frowning when they
noticed the mare's presence.
"You!" he hissed, his horn igniting in vicious sparks. Jolts ran rampant
throughout the two ponies holding him down, making them scream and collapse in
seconds. As soon as they had fallen, the orange unicorn languidly stood up on
unsteady hooves, his form swaying like a leaf in a breeze, eyes gleaming with
rage.
Natalie averted her eyes to both sides of the tavern, and she noticed that a
few ponies who were seated at tables instead of staying close to the walls sat
stiff as boards, all eyes watching the unicorn that tried to maintain a steady
balance. "How the fuck did you get here, Napkin McSmalldick?" she snapped, her
own pair of oculars turning back to the pony who electrocuted two stallions.
Napkin stumbled back at the insult, his eyes widening for the barest of
instants. Then he stepped forward, donning a fierce grin, his horn still
crackling with sparks just waiting to be set loose on another hapless victim.
"I won't give you details, Starcovert," he replied, taking a few more steps
forward. "I'll have you pinned and your guts spilled when I am done."
"Come and get me—I'm right here," Natalie huffed with narrowing eyes, lifting
one hoof and beckoning him to bring it on. "I'll have you crying in less than
ten seconds."
Napkin's grin widened, forming a hellish smirk. He wordlessly surged forward
with a snarl, his right hoof outstretching as soon as he was within range of
his new target. Natalie summoned a barrier not a moment too soon, watching as
her shield took the punch and held firm. Her enemy's horn ignited some more,
and it let loose a wicked bolt of lightning that encompassed the red field,
mildly shocking her and making it crack simultaneously.
She stood her ground, gritting her teeth to keep cries of agony at bay, eyes
narrowing some more as pain shot through her system like a bottle rocket.
Another bolt assaulted her barrier, stronger than the last, and the cracks
widened and spread in response. She channelled more mana into her horn, waiting
for the exact moment when her defensive wall would shatter.
And in seconds, shatter it did. Napkin went on the offensive again, his hoof
flying towards Natalie's face as soon as the red shield became little fragments
that fell like dead flies, only to scream as a magical retaliation hit him
square in the face and sent him flying back before his physical attack could
connect. He sailed clean over the earth ponies he shocked earlier, his horn
crackling for a few seconds as the world rushed past him and left him at what
felt like warp speed.
The other ponies in the tavern gasped as he landed and skid all the way to the
back of the establishment belly-up, where a bar and stools had been
constructed, the magical assault propelling him all the way to the other side
with no break in velocity. The stallion stopped at the bar, his horn snapping
in half upon contact with the bar's foot, and he groaned as the attack that
firmly clobbered him and made him slide in one go bounced off without
inflicting more harm.
He saw it was distinctly star-shaped, looking like a giant golden thing with a
hollow center—if anything, it was as if a giant glowing cookie cutter had been
converted to ammunition, and it dispersed into little fragments like its
caster's shield. One of the stools that was near the bar tipped to one side,
only to be grabbed by a blue aura and tilted the other way. It fell, firmly
whacking Napkin right on the head, but not hard enough to knock him out.
Napkin lay there completely disoriented, a great big aching sensation settling
in his cranium and burning in his backside all the way down to his tail. He
lifted his head up, searching for the doorway, grumbling under his breath as he
saw the shadow of Natalie still standing there unfazed.
The earth pony duo hauled themselves off of the floor and shook their heads,
looking around dazedly as if unaware of what had just happened. Their eyes fell
on the Fantasian mare, who simply lifted a hoof and pointed forward. "Look
behind you, at the bar," she instructed, and the two turned to find their
mumbling sadsack who had yet to realize that half his horn lay next to his left
hoof on the gleaming floor.
The brown stallion turned to look at Natalie. "What happened to him?" he asked,
using a back hoof to gesture to Napkin.
"Tried punching me with an added dose of shock therapy, so I fired a spell in
his face and taught him how to fly," Natalie responded, her shimmer fading a
bit. She stepped in the establishment, head darting and eyes searching for
anypony who looked alert and bright. Her gaze fell onto a young mare with a
gold coat and amethyst mane that sat just a few chairs over from the tavern's
entrance. "Could you get a guard, please?" she asked.
The golden-coated mare nodded. "Cer-certainly," she replied in a shaky voice.
She got up from her table and trotted over, stopping to eye the tavern's recent
arrival from head to hoof. "I'll t-tell them th-that…"
"Natalie Starcovert sent you," Natalie finished for her, garnering another nod
before the gold-coated mare bumbled out the door and galloped away, leaving
nothing more than the fleeting echo of hoofsteps in her wake.
Napkin tried casting a spell, but pure mana erupted from his horn stump and
encompassed him entirely, sending jolt after jolt through his nerves. He
screamed in agony, writhing desperately in an attempt to crawl out of his bout
of self-inflicted pain, yet each movement only amplified his torment tenfold
and kept him glued to the spot. Only as he lost consciousness did the mana
holding him dissipate, with nothing more than shallow and raspy breaths leaving
his mouth signaling that he was still alive.
Natalie cantered over to the two earth ponies, noticing her limbs were now
stiffer than she'd have liked, but ignored it upon seeing some bruises forming
on the stallions' bodies. "So… what happened before I showed up?" she asked.
The blue stallion spoke up, "Spanked my brother's wife with a hoof, and called
her a slut."
Natalie's brow rose. She turned to the brown pony, who nodded slowly. "And then
he tried reaching under her tail, and we both… snapped," he concluded.
Natalie mentally let her hoof connect with her face, but outwardly sighed. "So…
he was being stupid?" she asked, garnering nods from the earth ponies before
her. She groaned and shook her head, eyes going half-lidded in seconds. "It's
to be expected of somepony willing to rape diplomats just because of two hot
pieces of flank…"
The two stallions exchanged glances, both fidgeting uncomfortably before they
turned back to the mare in front of them. They turned and shambled to a table,
hooves dragging as they moved, allowing Natalie to make a beeline for Napkin's
out-cold form. Her hooves also dragged, her legs' stiffening lessening as she
approached the familiar stallion at a snail's pace.
All the better too, as he started mumbling and moving his head about—a sure
sign he was waking. His eyelids fluttered, ears twitching this way and that,
his left hoof jutting just enough to barely connect with the hornbit that lay
before it, sending it rolling before it stopped at his back knee. "What…" he
managed, eyes slowly and fully opening, his vision hazy as a cream-and-red blot
swam into view.
"I was able to retaliate this time," Natalie hissed in a low voice as she
inched closer to her former tormentor. Napkin blinked a few times, and each
consecutive blink cleared his foggy sight until it was crystal clear, and they
widened as he realized just who was closing in on him. He made to cast another
spell, but deased entirely when his enemy stopped her advance and added, "I
wouldn't advise that. Look past your left hoof; you'll see what I am talking
about."
Napkin did as instructed, and he gaped upon spotting half his horn on the
floor, a jagged break-off point at one end signaling that it hadn't been
removed cleanly. He turned to Natalie and shoved the stool that landed on him
away from his form, noticing that his target still stood some feet away. His
eyes narrowed coldly at her lingering presence. "You… bitch," he seethed,
rolling on his stomach in an attempt to start hauling himself from the floor.
"I thought you despised crude language, or is my memory failing me?" Natalie
growled, though her inquiry did not halt the stallion's movements at all. If
anything, he moved faster, working every fiber in his body in an effort to
stand.
When he hauled himself up, he turned to her slowly, a deadly gleam in his eyes.
"Listen here, you cunttastic whorse," Napkin began, his brow furrowing. "I'll—"
"I'm not a whorse. And even if I was, I'm not your whorse," Natalie cut him
off, her horn starting to glow again. Napkin snarled and lunged, but another
earth pony stallion with a teal coat and an apron lunged from behind the bar,
tackling the unicorn to the ground before he could close the distance between
himself and his quarry.
"Look here, miserable shit-stained vagrant," the teal stallion snarled, locking
eyes with Napkin the entire time he spoke, "you caused trouble here. You aren't
welcome—in fact, you overstayed. I don't know how you got past the guards, but
you ain't slipping from them this time." He turned to Natalie and added, "Lass,
you may as well take a seat. I'll hold him 'till the guards show up."
Natalie nodded, and trotted up to the bar, and slowly the other guests sans two
went to the empty tables and filled them up. Others came up to the bar, with a
stallion or two sitting at the ends thereof. She claimed one of the stools for
herself and sighed, turning to a unicorn mare sporting a light grey coat and an
apron who stood in front of the various glasses and alcohols that looked back
with wide eyes. "Ya want something?" the apron-wearing mare asked.
Natalie's horn flared in light, and next to her in a burst of glowing mana, a
small bag of bits materialized and plopped on the bar. "Strongest and sweetest
drink you have available, ma'am," she replied, frowning.
The apron-wearing pony's pupils instantly shrank. "You asking for the… the…"
Words died in her throat, and she looked around to find that the other patrons
had all turned their heads to Natalie with wide-eyed, slack-jawed looks
painting the faces of the entire lot. "The Gleaming Cornucopia?"
"If that's your strongest and sweetest, then I'm all for it," Natalie replied
like it was a casual thing, waving a hoof dismissively before gesturing to the
bag of bits. "How much do a few glasses cost?"
"For a bundle? Running around fifteen bits per glass," the stallion holding
Napkin piped up, garnering a look from Natalie. He looked at her and added, "So
few ponies ask for the stuff just because it's as strong as tartarus—not many
got the livers or the stomachs to be able to hold it." When Napkin shifted in
an attempt to get away, he wrapped a foreleg around his neck and squeezed
firmly, but not firmly enough to start choking him.
Natalie nodded, and opened the small pouch to start counting the bits within.
"I have enough in here… for twenty glasses," she said as soon as she finished
counting.
The mare behind the bar paled. "T-twenty?" she stammered, her ears falling
against her head. "Y-you sure?"
"Definitely," Natalie chirped in reply, using her magic to hand the apron-
wearing mare the bag of bits. The mare just stared at the Fantasian,
flabbergasted and stiff as a statue, her eyes darting between her guest and the
bag of bits. Hesitantly, she took the pouch of money and swallowed thickly
before setting it aside and turning to the myriad of cocktails and glasses
behind her.
The apron-wearing mare sighed and let her horn glow a soft orange, her magic
embracing no less than ten different bottles and lifting them off the shelves
with ease. She also grabbed a red cocktail shaker from another shelf, prior to
turning around and setting that and the ingredients on the bar. Next, she
grabbed a small wine glass, one that gleamed with a faint rainbow sheen before
unscrewing the shaker's lid open.
Natalie watched as, one after the other, the different brews were opened and
added into the contraption as the unicorn behind the bar eyeballed the
measurements. She also noticed that each bottle had a different-colored liquid,
and some part of her wondered whether or not the resulting concoction would be
some sickly color or smell bad. One of the grey stallions at the far end
scooted closer to Natalie, and when he was within range he nudged her with a
hoof to get her attention.
"Why'd you order the strong shit?" he asked in a low, slurred whisper. "You'll
get drunker than everypony else at this rate."
"That's my plan," Natalie whispered back, using a hoof to gesture to Napkin.
"See that fucker? That fucker bound me like a rocking horse. That fucker
plunged his tiny pecker up my ass. I want to get drunk to wash his face out of
my mind—consider the strongest shit my personal variety of brain bleach."
The stallion's eyes widened. "You kiddin'," he replied.
Natalie shook her head. "Am not, sadly," she retorted. "Ever read the
newspaper?" She groaned when the stallion shook his head, and turned to find
that seven of ten bottles had some of their contents poured in the shaker
during her little chit-chat with the stranger.
When the remaining three of ten bottles had some of their contents added to the
shaker, the mare before her guest reached beneath the bar and pulled out an
eleventh bottle that contained a liquid that sloshed in seven colors, and no
matter how much she shook the damned thing the colors simply would not mix.
"What's that?" Natalie asked, gesturing to the eleventh bottle.
"Liquified Cloudsdale rainbows—premium stuff," the apron-wearing unicorn
replied, opening the bottle and pouring a very small amount, no more than a
tablespoon, into the shaker. She closed the bottles and put them up where she
had found them and asked, "Cold, hot, shaken, stirred?"
"Cold, and shaken, please," Natalie replied, watching as the mare who was
making her drink shuddered at the withers. She heard solid objects clink as her
drink-maker slightly bowed under the bar to fumble for something, and came up
with a small batch of ice cubes, each one large enough to hold a slice of
different fruits within. The frozen fruits were added and the cap was screwed
onto the shaker, before orange-tinted magic lifted it in the air and shook
vigorously.
After a minute of shaking, the canister opened, and a multi-hued liquid with
bits of ice and fruit found itself in the small wine glass. "One… Gleaming
Cornucopia," the apron-wearing mare announced, gently pushing the glass to
Natalie without spilling a drop of the drink.
"Thank you," Natalie purred, a small smile on her face. She lifted up the glass
with a hoof and took a whiff of the drink, humming as a strong fruity smell
assaulted her nostrils full force. She moved the rim to her lips and took a
sip, and as soon as a minute amount graced her tastebuds, a rush of different
flavors exploded in her mouth that was amplified by the excruciatingly bitter
taste of pure alcohol.
She set the glass down, letting the flavors mingle for a few seconds before
swallowing and slowly nodding. "Great merciful Godcat on a bicycle, that is
strong and sweet," she murmured, her smile widening. "This is wonderful!" With
that, she took another sip of her glass, this one drawing out more liquid from
the container, but before she could swallow a set of hooves echoed into the
tavern from behind.
"He fought a mare and lost?" asked a masculine voice that echoed into the
building, and when the owner spoke, the tone nearly caused Natalie to choke on
her drink. She turned around to find none other than Shining Armor himself as
he entered the establishment. "I heard there was a wanted stallion in these
premises. Where is he?" he asked, his face set in a firm glare that made the
entire tavern go still.
"Right here," the stallion holding Napkin answered. "Shocked two of my patrons,
and tried hitting a third, who cast some kind of star-like spell in self-
defense."
"Horseshit!" Napkin cried, and he began wiggling to get free. The leg around
his neck tightened its grip, forcing him to cease again. "I was defending
myself, Captain…" Words died in his throat as Shining came closer, his eyes
widening as he realized that he just attempted to fib to the one stallion that
wouldn't buy it.
"I have several witnesses that can say otherwise," Natalie piped up after
swallowing what was in her mouth, a faint red painting her cheeks. She ignored
the wide-eyed, desperate look that Napkin sent her way, instead taking another
hefty swig out of her glass and swallowing it in one go. "My guess as to how he
got here? Either shock therapy, or illusions."
"I-I don't know illusion magic! I don't know what you're talking about!" Napkin
hissed, the stump of his horn glowing once again. An anvil, no larger than his
head, materialized in the air and landed on the bridge of his muzzle before
catapulting off. The anvil landed just shy of Shining's hooves, and the owner
of said hooves made to touch it—only to find that his limb harmlessly phased
through the object.
Shining shook his head and looked at Napkin with narrowed eyes and a tight
frown. "How many lies is that, now? Twenty?" he asked in a low voice.
"I-I haven't lied!" Napkin shouted defensively, garnering another shake of the
head from the Emperor whose Empire he was trespassing in.
"And that's twenty-one…" Shining mumbled, raising a hoof and letting it connect
with his face.
***** End of Arc II: Chapter XXXIII- Taste the (Fiery) Rainbow *****
The gray stallion who sat next to Natalie watched as Shining personally dragged
a screaming Napkin out of the tavern with his magic. He was barely aware that
said Fantasian had downed her first glass of Gleaming Cornucopia as soon as the
half-horned rapist was out of the building, his cries fading to nothing but
lingering echoes after a minute or so had passed.
He turned to her and his eyes widened as the apron-wearing mare poured a second
dose of the concoction into the wine glass, and the only effect the drink had
on Natalie so far was that it made her cheeks turn slightly redder. With her
natural cream coloring, she looked a little on the orange side, but the color
intensified as she took a sip of more Cornucopia. "How are you able to stand
that stuff?" he asked.
Natalie turned to him and snorted once she swallowed the bit of drink, eyes
going half-lidded with pupils dilating. She studied the stallion who'd asked
for a bit, and he couldn't tell whether he was being checked out or his
question had gotten admission to start registering in the mare's mind. "I have
the liver and stomach for it," she replied after a few seconds, a slight slur
in her words.
The stallion turned to the mare in the apron, missing Natalie raising her glass
to ingest the rest of the drink. "Cider Trough, is it okay if I had a glass of
Cornucopia?" he asked.
Cider Trough sighed, and swept another small wine glass off the shelf with her
magic. She plopped it before him and asked, "Cold, hot, shaken, or stirred? I
ain't pouring into your glass from the red canister—that shaker's all her's."
"Like what she's got, except without strawberries. I'm allergic to
strawberries," the stallion replied. Cider nodded and pried off a blue shaker
from the shelf, and only nine of ten liquor bottles. She threw in the
ingredients, grabbed some liquified rainbows and frozen fruits to add to the
mix, and shook it up and poured his glass. She then gave Natalie her third dose
out of the red canister, and without missing a beat the two guests looked at
each other before raising their glasses.
"Cheers?" Natalie offered, tilting her head slightly.
"Cheers," the stallion replied, and the two clinked glasses before they both
tossed their heads back and downed their drinks in one fluid motion. Natalie
set her glass down first, with the stallion barely able to keep up as his eyes
almost bugged out. "Spicy, s-strong—" he stammered. He choked and then coughed
furiously, trying to talk through his hacking and gagging. Next thing he knew,
he couldn't speak because his tongue began hurting from all of the different
flavors playing a round of musical chairs upon his hapless taste buds.
His eyes widened some more when he saw Natalie staring at him in concern, still
seemingly unaffected by her drink except for the red on her cheeks. "Dude, you
alright?" she asked, blinking dazedly. All she got was a rapid shaking of the
head, in addition to the hapless pony's face turning from green to red and back
to its natural grey.
The stallion slumped and chuckled, but the sound had no mirth. "Whoo… gonna
have to get used to that flavor," he groaned. He got up and bumbled his way
towards a triad of doors that stood between a set of tables at a far wall,
opened the leftmost one, and went into the room beyond before slamming the
obstacle shut behind him.
"'s what the strawberries were for," Cider groaned, watching as the grey
stallion waded away from the bar. "If you hadn't been allergic to them, Silver
Lining, then you wouldn't have had to deal with the spicy part of the drink."
"I didn't know strawberries could negate spicy," Natalie stated, turning to
Cider with a brow slightly raised. "What kind do you use?"
"Crystal strawberries, locally grown," Cider replied, pouring in the fourth
dose of Cornucopia into her guest's glass. "Don't ask me how it works; I ain't
a rocket scientist."
Natalie nodded, making a mental note to consult the nearest pony who sold the
supposed crystal strawberries as she took a small sip of her fourth glass. As
she swallowed, the back of her head went just a little numb, and she giggled
like a filly that didn't understand a joke that was relayed to her by an adult.
The teal stallion who held Napkin before said troublemaker got dragged out
trotted into view from behind the bar, looking at Natalie with a slanted brow.
"Lass, are you okay?" he asked.
"Just… buzzed," Natalie replied, wearing a dopey grin on her face.
"Just four glasses get you buzzed?" Cider asked in disbelief, her eyes
widening. She turned to the teal stallion and pointed at Natalie with a hoof.
"White Grape, you seeing this?"
White Grape turned to Cider and nodded slowly. "Hearing it, too," he replied.
He looked at Natalie and asked, "Lass, are you tasting anything spicy?"
Natalie shook her head. "After I swallow," she answered. "Otherwise, no. The
kick of the spicy stuff, whatever it is, doesn't really bother me, even if it's
consigned to the back of my throat."
"Guess her mane's red for a reason," Cider murmured, watching as her guest
downed the rest of dose number four and sighed in content.
Natalie hummed for a moment, her head swaying a little to the left. "Oh… this
stuff's stronger than I gave it credit for," she stated, a heavy slur in her
words. With cheeks turning a scarlet that rivaled that of her mane, she gave
off a hearty giggle. "Throat's burning, tongue's swimming in sweet… and in a
good way."
Grape and Cider exchanged glances before turning back to their Fantasian
patron. "Lass, you alright?" the former asked, his brow slanting further, until
it threatened to weigh down on his upper eyelids.
"Better… than ever," Natalie replied, languidly waving a hoof dismissively.
"Fifth dose, please."
Cider obliged, filling the emptied wine glass with another dose of prismatic
fruit-laden booze. Once she finished pouring, she set the shaker down with its
lid uncorked. "Help yourself out," she said, and as soon as Natalie nodded, she
turned to Grape. "Got a bad feeling about this 'un," she whispered.
"Lass seems tame," Grape whispered back with a nod. "Dunno why you've got a…
I'mma guess a feeling in the pit of your gut, though."
"She's got that… air about 'er," Cider began, watching as Natalie downed her
fifth dose and helped herself to a sixth. "The kind that speaks volumes, oozes…
grace an' power, like our Emperor Shining does."
"She don't look like much, though," Grape noted, nodding slowly. "Sure, she's
gorgeous and all, but… given what she did to our trouble-making vagrant, I
wouldn't want to mess with her."
"'spose you have a point," Cider agreed, turning to her patron as she downed
her sixth dose. "Lass, you need a refill?"
Natalie used her magic to pick up the shaker, and she tilted it a bit to let
its contents slosh around for a few seconds. "I'm good," she replied as she
filled her glass for a seventh time. Just as she set the shaker down, a flash
of light combined with a cloud of smoke exploded right next to her, and her
eyelids slammed shut while the acrid stench of something burning filled her
nostrils.
She coughed and gagged, and so did Cider and Grape, until the light died and
the smog cleared to reveal that Discord had taken a seat next to the Fantasian
in his pony guise. "So, I heard you were in the process of getting utterly
smashed, Miss Starcovert?" he asked, turning to Natalie as she stopped coughing
enough to open her eyes, raise her glass with her magic and down her seventh
drink.
"Ordered twenty glasses… going on number eight," Natalie croaked, using her
magic to pour herself another dose of Cornucopia. She took a moment to lay her
head down on the bar, eyelids hanging heavy and threatening to snap shut again.
"Twenty?" Discord repeated, looking at Natalie with widening eyes. "And you're
going to have your eighth? How much liquor can you hold, mare?"
Natalie nodded her head and used her magic to pick up her glass, lifting it to
her lips and tilting both that and her head back to down it. "A lot," she
replied upon finishing the concoction and putting her glass on the bar.
"You certainly don't look the type to be able to hold that much," Discord
noted, frowning when Natalie magically grabbed the shaker without also grabbing
her glass again.
"I can down the rest of this canister," Natalie hissed rather matter-of-factly,
eyes narrowing as she turned to Discord. She turned to Cider and let her glare
ease into a red-faced neutral expression. "If that's okay with you."
Cider and Grape exchanged glances, then turned back to their patron. "I
wouldn't advise it, but… nothing's stopping you," Cider sighed with a shrug.
Natalie nodded and brought the shaker's rim to her lips, and then opened her
mouth wide before putting the shaker's mouth inside. She clamped around it and
tilted her head all the way back, dragging the shaker with before downing the
rest of the contents without so much as a drop of sweat forming on her brow in
the process.
When it was emptied a minute later, Natalie put the shaker on the bar and used
her magic to nudge it to Discord. "Check… and—" she paused as a hiccup managed
to worm its way out of her throat, "—and see if there's any left."
Discord did as instructed, lighting up his horn to gaze into the abyss that was
a once-full shaker, and his eyes widened still when he saw that there wasn't
anything left inside. Not one drop of liquid glistened under the light, not one
morsel of frozen fruit gleamed to let him know it was there; the shaker was
effectively emptied. "... nothing's inside," he murmured, setting the container
down. "Nothing at all."
"You're kidding," Cider mumbled, whereupon Discord replied by tilting the
shaker in her direction just enough that she could see it was indeed spotless
within. "Well… I'll be damned by Sombra and turned into an ice cube by
wendigoes," she murmured, her pupils dilating.
Natalie returned to resting her head on the bar again, a dopey grin forming on
her face. "That was some good booze…" she purred, before hiccuping and
subsequently giggling like a little filly.
"Hrm... " Discord hummed, tapping at his chin with a hoof. "Miss Starcovert,
tell me… do you have any friends who happen to drink on occasion?"
"Matt," Natalie replied tersely, keeping her head on the bar. Discord nodded
and vanished in a flare of light for one second, and then re-appeared in a
cloud of smoke the next. Now accompanying him and secured with a hoof wrapped
around his barrel was a swaying Matt, whose eyes spun in their sockets as he
coughed and gagged to get the smog out of his lungs.
It was around this time that Silver Lining had emerged from the room he fled
into, green in the face and stumbling about into tables and chairs as he made
his way back to the bar. "What the hay's goin' on here?" he asked as he managed
to sit next to Natalie, using a hoof to gesture to Matt and Discord for
emphasis.
"Dragged here… at ludicrous speeds… dizzy," Matt answered, still swaying his
head. After a minute, he shook his head to make his bout of dizziness go away,
and his eyes fell onto Natalie thereafter. He took in her rather red face, and
the fact that she had her head resting on the bar without her hooves to prop it
up. "Natz? You don't look so good…"
"'m drunk as a skunk," Natalie replied, turning to Matt with a small and rather
sultry grin on her face.
Matt's eyes widened, and he wiggled out of Discord's grip before getting closer
to Natalie and leaning in so their muzzles were inches apart. When she
chuckled, he recoiled as the strong, bitter scent of alcohol hit his nostrils
like a slap to the face. "How much did you drink?" he asked, frowning.
"Whole shaker's worth," Natalie answered, her grin widening as Matt made a
choking sound.
"It's true. I've seen her down the whole thing," Discord stated, whereupon the
stallion he dragged in turned to Cider and Grape, both of whom nodded slowly
with concerned frowns and slanted brows painting their faces.
Matt groaned and turned back to Natalie. "Any particular reason why you're
drinking?" he asked, eyes going half-lidded as a tight frown formed on his
face.
"Orange-coated bastard who had a saddle put on my back was here, and he was
stirring shit up," Natalie groaned, her smile fading as she spoke. "I have
witnesses." She rose a hoof and gestured all around the room, barely avoiding
hitting Silver by accident as he ducked beneath her flailing limb.
Matt groaned, taking a seat next to his buzzed companion as one of his hooves
hit his face. "Did you kick his ass?" he asked.
"Sent 'im flying, and broke his horn," Natalie confirmed with a sluggish nod.
"He landed exactly the wrong way."
Matt nodded, removing his hoof from his face and letting it drop onto the bar
with a thud that was muffled thanks to his leg fur. His eyes fell on Cider
Trough. "Alright, what exactly did she order?" he asked.
"Gleaming Cornucopia. Strongest, sweetest, fruitiest drink we have available,"
Cider answered, her ears flattening against her head.
"What's it made of?" Matt continued, his brow raising no more than a centimeter
or two.
"Ten different fruit cocktails, Cloudsdale liquid rainbows, and if you want,
fruit frozen in ice cubes," Grape piped up, sighing begrudgingly. "But we
wouldn't advise drinking it."
"Why not?" Matt pressed, his brow rising higher.
Cider and Grape shared glances. "Well… Cloudsdale rainbows are really spicy,
and they make the taste of alcohol pop out on your tongue. That, and there
might be certain fruits you're allergic to, if you order the drink," Grape said
as he broke the gaze with his unicorn colleague.
"Makes the spicy hit you harder if you miss even one fruit that would complete
the Cornucopia. I wish I wasn't allergic to strawberries," Silver piped up,
causing Matt to look at him and tilt his head slightly.
"So… a stiff as hell drink?" Matt inquired, garnering nods from the four ponies
closest to him. He sighed and turned to Cider. "I'd like to try one m'self."
"Good choice," Natalie piped up, once more smiling at her companion. "'s
wonderful." Cider and Grape froze for a few seconds, however, with eyes turned
on Matt that widened as they took in his request. When he summoned a pouch of
bits with a flash of light and scooted it to them with a hoof, Cider
reluctantly took it in her magic with a small, ball-shaped lump visibly
appearing on her throat that wouldn't go down no matter how many times she
tried swallowing it.
Cider riffled through the pouch and frowned, handing it back to Matt. "Fifteen
bits per glass. There's only ten in there," she said, sighing when he groaned
and made it vanish as it had come.
Natalie summoned another bag, this one larger than the one her companion had
returned to him. "I'll pay for 'is glass," she mumbled, forking over the larger
bag without hesitation. This time, it was Grape who took the bag and rummaged
through the bits within, before he turned to Cider and nodded once.
"Give the splotched lad what he asked for," Grape said. Cider nodded and pulled
off a third shaker that sparkled like gold from the shelf, and a small wine
glass before yanking the ingredients from their places and adding them to
container number three. She closed the shaker, shook it vigorously, and
uncorked the cap when Matt set one of his hooves next to the wine glass.
Cider's eyes darted between the rather large hoof itself, and the glass next to
it. Her gaze then trailed up to Matt's face, and he eyed the small container
with nothing short of a barely-noticeable frown and worry flickering in his
irises. "It's too small for you?" she asked.
"Yes. I'd like a larger glass, please—or a tankard, if you have one," Matt
replied in a soft, polite tone. Grape cantered over to the shelves and reached
for the topmost one with a hoof, pulling out a large and sturdy tankard hewn of
wood and metal after fumbling and pawing around for a minute or so. After he
pulled the container off, he inspected it inside and out, constantly turning it
so that not one square inch went unchecked. He nodded in satisfaction and
trotted back on three legs, setting the tankard before his third patron.
Matt lifted his hoof and compared it to the tankard, studying the two entities
side-by-side before his frown turned into a smile. "That'll do. Much
appreciated," he chirped in glee, wrapping his leg around it and pulling it a
little closer to him. Cider took away his too-small wine glass and set it back
on the shelf with her magic prior to pouring his drink and filling the tankard
to the brim. Before he took his first sip, he turned to Discord to find that
the disguised draconequus had looked back at him with his chin resting on his
left pastern.
"Be my guest," Discord stated with a wave of his right hoof. He proceeded to
take a seat next to the Fantasian stallion, watching intently as he rose the
tankard up to meet the waiting mouth that would soon be filled with Gleaming
Cornucopia. Natalie, still smiling, giggled as he let some of the fruit-laden
rainbow fluid into his mouth and went bug-eyed once his tastebuds were
assaulted with stiff, sweet flavor.
Matt sloshed the liquid around for a bit like it was mouthwash, taking the time
to discern each and every individual flavor before nodding and swallowing, his
eyes going half-lidded in content. "Damn, Natz, this is good," he murmured. He
then put the tankard to his lips again and took in another hefty mouthful of
the stuff, swallowing the mixture with relish before setting his tankard down.
He jolted when a burning hot aftertaste assaulted his buds, eyes widening as if
he were about to have his legs torn out of their sockets. "Gah! My mouth's on
fire!" he exclaimed, raising his tankard again and downing the rest of his
drink in an attempt to quell the heat—only to twitch in place as said attempt
ended up amplifying the fiery inferno that danced on his tongue instead.
Natalie watched Matt, giggling uncontrollably as he snagged the gold shaker
and, once again, downed the other half of his drink. Only when the container
was emptied, she decided to quell her laughter and speak up, "Liquid Cloudsdale
rainbows are spicy, Matt."
"I think it went in one ear and out the other when he was informed the first
time," Discord interjected, guffawing when Matt turned to him with a scowl set
into his face.
"It didn't; I just didn't expect the spicy to be an aftertaste," Matt argued,
his face turning a shade of red along the bridge of his muzzle. Then he jerked
his gaze to Natalie, who was still grinning at him like a fool. "What?" he
asked, eyes going half-lidded again.
Natalie responded by raising a hoof and booping him on the nose with it. "The
red on your face compliments your mane and eyes," she chirped, her remark
causing Matt to start spluttering incoherently and Discord to toss his head
back as he continued to laugh.
Once the laughter and blubbering ceased, Silver interjected, "Is he your
coltfriend?" This only caused Matt to start speaking in gibberish dialects all
over again, his face reddening so fast that one hue almost completely overtook
his natural black-and-white coat. Discord, meanwhile, just fell out of his
stool and landed on his back cackling, one hoof over his eyes and his back legs
wildly kicking at the floor with such reckless abandon that he repeatedly
kicked the Fantasian stallion in his rear fetlocks and pasterns.
Natalie patiently waited until the noise from the two-pony ensemble quelled
before addressing Silver, "What's your definition of 'coltfriend?' I'd like to
know."
Silver donned a grin that looked like it belonged on the face of an innocent
lamb: small, barely noticeable, yet had that telltale twitch at the corners
like it wanted to broaden. "Do you share the same bed? Go on dates? Have time
to yourselves?" he elaborated, doing his damnedest to keep that smile as small
as he could possibly manage.
Now, it was Natalie's turn to start mumbling incomprehensible nonsense in an
attempt to speak, with syllables hopelessly tumbling over themselves and each
other as she tried to confirm or deny Silver Lining's suspicions. "I—ah—wh—"
was all he could make out of her ramblings, her pupils and irises shrinking so
much it was as if her eyes had gone pure white. Her mouth continually jittered
in an uneven, ever-faltering wide smile while her face just reddened some more.
"Alright Silver, stop hitting on the lass. I ain't helping you if she pelts you
with a star-shaped spell, just saying," Cider piped up, her remark causing the
stallion in question to turn to her to find that she narrowed her eyes at him.
"If I was hitting on her, I'd have asked her out already," Silver retorted, a
firm frown set in his muzzle.
"She's drunk! She might not see it like that!" Cider argued, waving one of her
front hooves dismissively. "In fact, she might take it as 'I want to screw you
senseless' or something along those lines!" To punctuate her point, she slammed
a front hoof on the bar, causing the emptied containers to shake and the still-
filled shaker to wobble and slosh for a minute before it went still.
The two continued to argue about how drunk Natalie was, and whether or not her
state of inebriation would make her take things out of context for a few
minutes, during which said Fantasian managed to recover from her bout of trying
to articulate a response. "Puh-lease, I'm not that drunk," she interjected,
causing both Cider and Silver to look at her with brows raised.
"You sure?" Cider asked disbelievingly, her brow continuing to rise. "You did
drink an entire shaker's worth of Gleaming Cornucopia…"
"I can hold more liquor than that," Natalie scoffed with a nod, raising a hoof
and waving it again. She turned to Silver and added in a slightly slurred
sarcastic tone of voice, "No, I'm single."
"Really?" Silver inquired, looking at Natalie with widening eyes. "You're
single?" he added, either unaware or uncaring that the tone in which he'd been
replied with was one that implied something else altogether.
A hope gleamed in his eyes and he lifted his hoof to touch her face, only to
drop his limb and let that glimmer fade when Matt snarled like a beast and
wrapped one of his fuzzy legs around Natalie's barrel. "Hooves off. She's not
interested," he hissed in a slight slur. His eyes wasted no time narrowing to
slits as he scanned Silver's features from head to hoof, enabling him to notice
that the stallion in question was only the height of Discord's pony form if he
were on four legs.
Silver took the hint and nodded. "Alright, I'll lay off," he sighed, his
shoulders slumping slightly. "Besides, she's just a few inches shorter than
Empress Cadence; even if I tried, I'd have trouble…" He deliberately left that
remark unfinished upon seeing a gleam in the Fantasian stallion's eyes, one
that could punch new holes in the nearest wall if it were able, and turned back
to Cider Trough.
White Grape, who stood silent during the whole debacle, just rolled his eyes
and shook his head at Silver Lining. "You're a hopeless colt," he murmured.
"At least I'm not drunk," Silver huffed, crossing his forelegs as he stared at
Grape with half-lidded eyes.
"You tried to get drunk, though," Cider scoffed, sighing as Discord hauled
himself up from the floor and wrapped both forelegs around the Fantasian
patrons.
"Well, I do apologize, but I am afraid I must take these two back to the
palace," Discord stated, an amused grin on his face as he retracted his legs
from their forms and reverted to all fours. With that, his horn lit up and
picked up the two drunk ponies in a baby blue aura, and he turned around to
trot out the building with them floating behind him.
"Thanks for the drinks!" Natalie called out just before she and Matt were
dragged out of the establishment, the fast-fleeting sound of Discord's hooves
hitting the crystal pavement outside signaling her and Matt's departure. Said
hooves hitting the pavement also drowned out the fainter noise of flapping
wings, which likewise also became nothing more than hollow resonations that
were entirely tuned out a few seconds later.
"Yeah! The booze was awesome!" Matt shouted, though by the time he cried out,
his utterance was just a short-lived echo that resonated in the tavern for some
seconds.
"Just another day on the job…" Grape mumbled under his breath, turning to Cider
to find her silently nodding. "I'll start mopping the floor from here to the
entrance; manage the bar and serve drinks while I'm on cleaning duty." Without
waiting for his colleague to nod again, he trotted away from her and Silver,
around the bar, and to the doors that stood between a set of tables. Upon
reaching them, he studied them for a few seconds before flinging the middle one
open to reveal an assortment of cleaning utensils.
He reached in with a hoof and pulled out a mop that was stationed in a water
bucket on wheels, dragging said bucket with and hearing liquid slosh about
before shaking his head upon finding dirty water within the container. White
Grape shrugged and stood on his back legs, walking upright whilst using the mop
to maneuver the bucket to the front of the bar.
Once it was stationed where he'd wanted it, he lifted the utensil out of the
grimy gunk that was pure water at some point in the past and plopped its
cotton-floor end onto the floor, sighing as a series of stained grey ribbons
spread out like a filthy flower. Before he could start moping, something caught
his eye. "Hrm?" He bent over to look at the thing that snagged his attention,
one hoof holding the mop's handle as the other reached out to pick the
secondary object up.
White Grape lifted it up to his muzzle where he could examine it better,
finding a peculiar and medium-length feather that was purest white. The downy
barbs and calamus were a very faded off-white hue that bordered on an
excruciatingly pale grey, but against the snowy color the rest of the thing
possessed, he couldn't make it out too well. His head swiveled around, and the
hoof holding the feather rose up as he announced, "Who shed a feather
recently?"
The patrons looked at him, then turned to each other and shrugged. "Is anypony
among you a pegasus?" Grape pressed, and no more than half a dozen hooves shot
up from the various tables, though he frowned when he saw that none of those
hooves were even remotely white. "Did anypony bring a white pegasus here in the
past day? If so, did they flap their wings?" he continued, and the scant few
hooves raised dropped as an assortment of heads shook.
Grape groaned and lowered the hoof holding the feather dejectedly, and he
looked around the floor for a bit before noticing some more white feathers
erratically scattered here and there. But there was something off about
them—not just their white color, which was doubtless strange enough by itself,
but in this case, it was their placement that had him perplexed.
They all lead to the entrance of the establishment in a warbling line. A
single, sporadic trail that he was certain hadn't been there before, if at all.
He asked one more time, his head darting this way and that as he spoke, "Does
anypony know who might have shed these feathers?" All that he got for an answer
was another shaking of his patrons' heads, with each and every customer
frowning at the inquiry.
Which led him back to square one. He turned to Cider, who merely spoke before
he could ask again, "I don't know who shed a feather today. Sorry."
"Don't ask me," Silver added, turning to Grape and waving a hoof dismissively.
"I just trot here."
"Did you notice anything else that was odd, aside from that one lad that
teleported in puffs of smoke?" Grape asked, his brow furrowing at this point.
Silver nodded. "The red-maned lass's cutie mark had feathers paired with a
shooting star… I couldn't tell you the meaning of that mark to save my hide,"
he stated with a shrug. "Maybe that lad who was with her—the one with the blue
horn, not the big one—might have dropped them here?"
***** Start of Arc III: Chapter XXXIV- Blanched Ebony *****
Discord soared through the air with his mismatched wings disguised to look like
grand, feather-clad limbs not unlike those of pegasi, his magic keeping the two
drunk Fantasians within hoof's reach as they lazily flew to the palace's upper
windows. Along the way, they babbled incessantly about this and that, their
conversations managing to extract a few chuckles from him.
"Why's the moon over there?" Natalie asked, looking past the palace to find
that a crescent moon was just beginning its daily ascent into the sky from
behind far-off mountain ranges.
"I think it's about time to go nighty-night," Matt replied, choosing to look at
the streets below. There were many colored splotches out and about, though due
to the rising altitude and thanks to the graces of the night he couldn't
discern half of the colors, much less their placements or what the splotches in
question were doing. "The fuck are those dots doing down there?"
"Likely heading home and closing up shop. It is getting late, after all,"
Discord answered with a chuckle, using his magic to tilt Matt's head up so he
stared forward. They had crossed a bit of distance between themselves and the
castle, with the third floor windows just yards away. In minutes, the two
drunks found themselves in a guest room, having tumbled in through the window
before their carrier dropped them onto the floor and floated next to their
prone forms.
Natalie was the first to get up onto her hooves, her legs wobbling a bit and
her form swaying ever so slightly as she dazedly looked around and took in her
surroundings. "This our room?" she asked upon noticing that there were two
doors present, one beyond the foot of the bed and the other sitting next to a
giant open wardrobe of crystal that had a pony-shaped mannequin stationed
inside.
"No," Discord answered, using a hoof to gesture to the door next to the
wardrobe and he promptly vanished from sight in a puff of smoke before Natalie
could ask whose guest room she and Matt had been dropped off in. Said door next
to the wardrobe opened with the aid of a blue aura, from which two voices
spilled out. They were both high in pitch, but one came with a distinct lady-
like tone to it and the other sounded a little younger.
"I think it looks lovely on you," the lady-like voice complimented.
"This… this reminds me a little of the Valkyrie," the other replied. Natalie's
brow rose, and she shuffled over to the door. Once there, she poked her head
inside to find Rarity and Anna chatting in a bathroom, the latter wearing a
black gown with strange silver markings on its back, and giant gold ribbons
flaring out from between said silver markings. The former currently had her
back faced to the drunkard, and she spent her sweet time eyeing the mare before
her with a critical gaze.
The sable cloth had copper decorations that spanned the whole outfit down to
the trimmings along the edges, swirling elegantly about and forming patterns
not unlike that of dying embers. Anna also wore horseshoes, boasting a
brilliant gold in hue that accompanied beaded bracelets that were set along her
forelegs to further offset the ebony of the main garment. Fitted at the base of
her neck was a necklace hewn of steel beads, with a small cross that had a
silver trim and a charcoal black center.
The whole outfit sparkled, and so did its wearer, as if both were living
crystal—the sheen only enhanced just how stunning the archer looked then.
Natalie blushed at seeing her companion clothed in such an outfit, partly due
to being drunk and partly due to stumbling upon the sight in question. "I
wonder how long she'll wear it for. It just fits her so well, and it's so
fucking beautiful on her…" she thought, a spark of curiosity igniting in her
dazed eyes that intensified the longer she stared.
Anna was spinning in place as she talked, careful to avoid trampling on the end
of her dress with her rear hooves, "And it doesn't draw too much attention to
my rear end." Natalie noticed that her mane was done up in a singular ponytail,
held up by red ribbons and baubles that were drill-like in shape. Though this
left her bangs and forelock and crest to be swept aside and drape along her
cheeks, the red still complimented her mane, and oddly enough so did the drill-
baubles attached to it.
"Erm, yes, your superior's tank was part of my inspiration. I do recall seeing
a cross-like indent on one of its sides, during my very first few hours in
Fantasia," Rarity replied, nodding with a smile on her face. "Of course, I
couldn't just let the dress ride high on your flank; you have… ah, a runner's
build—wouldn't do you any good to run and trip with such an outfit on."
"Eh, yeah, that does make some sense," Anna replied with a nod of her own. She
finished spinning in place, now facing Rarity. "And I guess it also explains
the braided silver ribbons adorning my back, and the gold one close to my
withers?"
"Yes, the silver braids were based on the treads. I simply had nowhere else to
put those ribbons; otherwise, the dress would have simply come out wrong,"
Rarity affirmed, using a hoof to gesture to the trim along the dress. "The
copper trim and swirling pattern was just to add a little color, lest the dress
look more like a funeral gown. The gold was to draw more attention to your
front, instead of your back. How does it feel to wear it?"
"... comfortable," Anna answered, smiling for a few seconds—before her
expression fell upon finally noticing Natalie peeking into the room
unannounced. "Natz? You okay?"
Natalie nodded, before setting hoof into the bathroom and promptly losing her
balance, resulting in a landing that sent her legs sprawling out. "I'm okay,"
she stated in a heavy slur.
"You don't look it. Your face is red and you're on the floor," Anna noted, at
which point Rarity turned around just as Natalie gave a dejected sigh. She made
to stand again, enabling the two whose conversation she dropped in on to notice
her slightly warbling stance. "... are you drunk?"
Natalie nodded. "I have a reason," she mumbled.
"It better be a good reason. Otherwise, Lance will bitch until he goes purple
in the face," Anna grumbled, a small frown adorning her muzzle.
"Remember Orange McShock?" Natalie asked, causing Anna to tense at the inquiry.
When she got a nod from the gown-wearing mare, she elaborated, "He was at the
tavern I got shitfaced at, causing trouble and just being a douchecanoe. He
attacked me, and I retaliated in self-defence."
Rarity frowned. "That's… the only word I can think of to describe it would be
horrid, to say the least. I can't even begin to imagine how it must have felt
to… er, encounter a wanted pony that made headlines in the worst way possible,"
she groaned, ears flattening against her head.
"So," Natalie began, eyes languidly going back and forth between the two mares
before stopping when she decided to change the subject, "what're you two
doing?"
"Playing dress-up," Anna scoffed, rolling her eyes at her drunk companion. She
shrugged and added, "Hell, I might even participate in the Faire dressed up
like this."
"Looks good on you," Natalie noted with a nod. "Though that huge ribbon on your
back makes you look like a present," she mentally added, languidly turning tail
to trot back to Matt. She immediately stumbled over her own forehooves and fell
with a scream, though a green aura caught her before the floor could give her a
painful "hello" right to the face. She heard Rarity chortle behind her, and
turned to look at said unicorn in question.
"Given that you're drunk, let me be blunt: you really shouldn't be trotting
tonight," Rarity stated, raising a hoof and letting it twitch as it strayed no
higher than her barrel. She set it down and trotted into the guest room, making
sure to go around the drunk Fantasian who was floating in place without
complaint. At least, until Anna used her magic to shove her into the room
behind Rarity, being careful enough to avoid letting the two mares collide.
Around this time, Natalie turned to where the window was, and though she
immediately saw that Discord hadn't returned, Matt still was very much present
and he merely opted to lay down on the floor with his legs folded neatly under
his form. The sod sent an amused, though flushed, grin at Natalie as she idly
floated in the air while Anna trotted out of the bathroom to catch up. "Anna?
That you?" he asked, eyes widening when he realized she was trotting around in
a gown.
"Yep," Anna answered, turning to Matt for one second prior to glancing back to
Natalie and then immediately doing a wide-eyed secondary glance to him
thereafter. "Wait, you're here too?" she added upon doing said secondary
glance, her pupils shrinking when she saw the glaringly obvious red that
lingered on his face.
"No, I'm in Canterlot!" Matt replied sarcastically, his grin widening. He then
rose to stand up on legs that didn't wobble as much as those of his currently-
afloat colleague. He trotted over with slightly unsteady steps, stopping a few
feet from the trio and looking Anna from head to hoof. "Wow, that's a nice
outfit. Have you shown it to everybody else yet?"
Anna blushed a bit and shook her head. "Not Lance, but everyone else has seen
me in this dress," she mumbled in reply, her tone between embarrassed and
uneasy.
The answer caused Matt's brow to raise, and given the pink that now tainted the
archer's cheeks, it began to make him wonder why. "Is Lance napping or
something?" he inquired.
Anna, again, shook her head. "You and Natz should see him first," she stated,
turning to glance pointedly at the still-floating mare. "Can you carry her? I
don't want to be near Lance's room when he sees that you two look… ah…"
"Shitfaced?" Matt finished for her, this time garnering a mute nod as a
response. His horn lit up and he took Natalie in his magical grasp, immediately
dispelling Anna's own in the process. "Alright. We'll go see him." With that,
he left the room and bumbled into the hall with his equally-drunk friend in
tow, and upon glancing to the left found that there was just one guard with an
orange coat standing outside an opened door a few paces away.
Flash Sentry beckoned the two with a hoof. "Your… uh, general wishes to speak
to you two," he said with a small frown on his face. Both ponies mutely nodded
and came up to him, silently going around him into another guest room to find a
cloak-wearing Lance sitting on the floor in front of the bed with his eyes
immediately falling onto the two the moment they entered.
Lance blew out a heavy sigh, looking at Matt and Natalie for what felt like a
long while before shaking his head. "I understand," he said simply, taking in
the wavering stance of the stallion and the fact that the mare was still afloat
in a golden aura.
Matt's brows rose, and Natalie looked at her superior with widening eyes.
"Understand… what?" Matt asked, blinking as the pegasus continued to seemingly
study them. Another few minutes of silence passed before he got a reply.
"Why you two got shitfaced. Discord told me all about it a few minutes ago, and
Shining personally dragged a wanted somepony to me before taking him to the
dungeons himself," Lance elaborated with a curt nod. "Just… don't get drunk
again before the Faire. Go on and get some rest—you two need it. And be sure to
take painkillers in the morning."
Matt and Natalie exchanged wide-eyed glances, then they turned to their
general. "That's an order, now get to it!" he barked, and they mutely nodded to
him before exiting the room and heading to their own. Lance watched them as
they left, still sitting in front of the bed without budging an inch. He stood
up after a few additional seconds had passed and trotted to the door to close
it, before turning around and using a hoof to pry off his cloak.
A chill raced down his spine as soon as the cloak fell into a heap upon the
floor, and his wings shuddered as if they were getting goosebumps. Lance turned
to his extra limbs and smiled fondly at them, seeing a set of shivering bald
pink limbs with multiple and elongated finger-like digits instead of steel and
copper laden upon his back. Between the wings, along his midsection where metal
covered him, was another bald pink with very loose bits of orange coat sticking
here and there stubbornly.
"It's been forever since I had feathers…" he murmured to none in particular
upon spotting a very small and budding blood feather, complete with feather
sheath, sticking out of his left wingtip. His smile broadened, even as he
shivered again.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Spike watched as Matt and Natalie flopped on a bed the moment they entered the
guest room he was in, both propelled by a golden aura that all but ensured they
didn't land anywhere else. "You two look like you've crashed and burned," he
noted, only to be met with a scoff from Matt and a dismissive wave of the hoof
from Natalie.
"We're drunk," the latter groaned, her eyes screwing shut.
"You're what? Did you drink tampered-with punch or something?" Spike asked, a
brow raised.
"No," Matt huffed in reply. "Pure booze."
Spike's brow fell, and his eyes went half-lidded as a frown formed on his face.
"Great, drunken Fantasians," he mumbled sarcastically under his breath. His
shoulders slumped when he heard a snore come out of Matt's mouth, and he made
his way out of the room while muttering, "At least they're asleep. I'd rather
them snoozing than doing who knows what else…"
Shutting the door behind him with a claw on his way out, he took in some deep
breaths and, gradually, his frown eased but did not fully recede. "Calm down,
Spike," he chastised himself. "Just be glad they didn't do anything other than
hit the hay…"
He took a few more deep breaths when he heard the sound of a door creaking open
that was immediately followed by hooves on crystal, and he turned his head to
glance at both sides of the hall. Upon turning to the right, he spotted Zecora
emerging from the room directly next to the one he'd left.
"Spike, what is the matter?" Zecora asked, taking in Spike's still-lingering
frown before forming one on her own muzzle. "Did you happen upon some
unpleasant chatter?"
Spike shook his head. "No, Zecora…" He sighed deeply and gestured to the door
behind him with a claw. "Mr. Black-and-White and Miss Creamcoat decided to get
drunk."
"Drunk, from what?" Zecora pressed, her brow raising. "What drove them to get
into that rut?"
Spike shrugged and shook his head again. "I can only guess," he replied.
"They've fallen asleep, though. Let's leave them alone." Zecora nodded and
trotted back in the room she came into the hall from, and the drake followed
her to find Twilight laying on the bed with a book plopped in front of her, in
addition to having a purring NoLegs perched on her head. "Hey, Twilight."
His utterance caused Twilight to look away from her book, and she smiled at
Spike. "Hey," she replied.
"What'cha reading?" Spike asked, running over before jumping on the bed.
Twilight folded the corner of the page she was on with her magic, then grabbed
the book in her forehooves and slammed it shut. She was hovering it over him as
he began bouncing on the mattress in an attempt to see a glimpse of the book's
title. "What is it, what is it?" he demanded.
After a minute of teasing Spike by withholding the book, she plopped it on the
bed and opened it to the page she was on, which had been marked by the folded
corner. He peered over and studied the papers, spotting several illustrations
of pegasus wings that had been plucked and bound with odd protrusions sporting
runes. "Is that…"
Twilight frowned and nodded slowly. "An ancient spell, in one of the spellbooks
supposedly credited to Starswirl that Shining found in the Empire's library,"
she answered. Her horn glowed, and in a flash of violet light a filled piece of
paper appeared that gently floated to the small drake, who carefully grasped it
in his claws. Spike looked at it for a moment, seeing runes and notes, then
turned back to the opened book and paled upon finding that the runes on both
entities were the exact same.
"T-Twilight… the runes in the b-book… they m-match the p-paper's set," Spike
stammered, eyes widened as he looked between the two entities again.
"If I hadn't had that book that was filled with ancient rune translations… I
wouldn't have been able to free Lance's wings with a counterspell. Whoever cast
this spell on him was a knowledgeable pony—not to mention horrible in every
sense of the word," Twilight murmured, sighing heavily. "Who'd be cruel enough
to ground a pegasus in that manner, and why?"
Spike spent a few seconds composing himself with another wave of deep breaths.
Once he had gathered himself, he replied, "I'm going to bet the unicorn who did
it cared about nopony else but themself. Or themselves, if there was more than
one unicorn who did it."
Twilight shrugged, and NoLegs turned to Spike and meowed before hopping off of
her head. "Well, whoever did it, good thing they're still stuck on Fantasia,"
she said, her mouth twitching at the corners.
"Does this mean I need to make another special brew in a few weeks' time, just
for him?" Zecora chimed in, garnering the attention of the three on the bed.
The zebra smiled as she added, "Regardless of whether or not he drinks such a
concoction, his prospects of flight will no longer be slim."
"That's true," Spike agreed with a nod and a small smile.
NoLegs shook his head with a mew, waving his tail in a dismissive manner with a
frown forming on his fuzzy face. Twilight turned to him and asked, "What's
wrong about Lance drinking a potion?" to which the cat replied by making a
series of retching sounds after using his magic to conjure the image of a
translucent bundle of herbs.
"He wouldn't be able to hold it in his stomach, not one bit?" Zecora asked, her
smile fading when NoLegs made the bundle of plants disappear with a nod of his
head. "What about with glasses of water; would liquid keep it in his pit?" This
time, the feline shook his head with a sullen meow leaving his mouth.
"Well, I guess we'll just have to let his feathers grow out as they normally
would," Twilight sighed, turning to Zecora with a slight frown on her face.
"Besides, taking into account the fact that his wings were hexed to begin with,
I wouldn't expect him to just take the potion and down it. All things
considered, I think he'd hate being having what few feathers he may grow back
plucked a second time just to make a brew."
Zecora nodded and smiled again. "At least, his curse has been lifted at long
last. We needn't rush him so fast." With that, she cantered over to the bed and
rose a hoof to tenderly pet NoLegs, who purred at the touch. She looked at
Twilight as she pet the cat, adding in two more bits all the while, "I'm amazed
that this feline is able to use spells and understand us at our level of
collective knowledge. I ponder how this can be; it's as if he were one of the
animals who reside at Fluttershy's cottage."
Twilight shrugged again and made the paper she handed to Spike vanish in a
brief flare of light. "My best guess? He's as smart as us—considering he can
use magic like nopony's business, I think that having such intellect's a quirk
at the very least," she stated, raising her own hoof to rub NoLegs's back.
"After all, knowledge is kinda required to perform even basic levitation."
"But not everypony can make things levitate, Twilight," Spike piped up. "Were
you able to levitate things before you got your cutie mark?"
Twilight flinched and turned to the drake, a shudder running through her for a
few seconds. "I could barely lift a page with levitation…" she mumbled.
"And did you have a lot of books?" Spike continued. When Twilight nodded, he
sent her a fond smile and reached over to hug her neck, laughing like a child
playing a game of tag. "Knowledge isn't the be-all, end-all, though it does
have its benefits. You should know that better than anypony else, Twilight."
"That's my number-one assistant," Twilight chirped, wrapping her free leg
around Spike. "You're right; knowledge isn't everything there is to the
world—ah, worlds, I mean."
"Twilight, do you know any healing spells?" Zecora asked, garnering a slow nod
from Twilight. "I've got a… client with a busted wing, and I promised to see
her become well."
Twilight broke the embrace with Spike and ceased petting NoLegs. "It's
something not even your potions can fix?" she guessed, looking the zebra in the
eye.
"I have yet to attempt, because I do not have a functioning cauldron," Zecora
admitted, frowning. "I may need some assistance, should things go awry with my
promised concoction."
"... and whose wing do you want healed?" Twilight ventured, her brow raising.
"Sarah's bones need mending, her left wing must be in tip-top shape," Zecora
began, her frown deepening. "She wants to partake in jousting this Faire,
which… can give more than a nasty scrape."
Twilight's brow lowered, and she too frowned. "... oh," she replied tersely,
connecting the dots in her head.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
A starry expanse, one teal with multiple splashes of color, went on seemingly
without end. Princess Luna trotted along it like it had solid ground, and to
either side of her spanned a series of separate wooden doors that appeared to
lead to nowhere, all aligned as if she were in some extraordinarily elaborately
decorated hotel's hall. All of the doors had added flairs; some boasted
flowers, some sported various foodstuffs, and others still had clouds to name a
few.
Many doors appeared to be bright, seemingly glowing with light that wasn't
there. Others, meanwhile, had desaturated and splintered, or looked to have a
shadow overhead that blotted out much of what they had on their frames. She
strode on silently, ignoring the whole expanse of various entrances that were
present.
At least, until she came upon a door of rich, burnt oak that had four different
and distinct flairs adorning its form. Small pictures, each abstract and set
against a background color, met her gaze. She could recognize an arrow on one,
a pentagram on another, a triad of feathers on the third, and a manji on the
fourth whose overall meaning made that entire picture's confusing.
In addition to this, heavy chains barred her path, and each line that
overlapped another had extra reinforcements in the form of large black pad-like
locks that went between the links and secured them together. When she rose a
hoof and nudged one of the locks, a coldness greeted her outstretched hoof and
chills immediately ran up her spine. She retracted her limb without hesitation,
causing it to rattle slightly before it went still.
Her horn glowed, and a teal aura surrounded the door. The chains and locks
disintegrated, as if nothing more than lumps of dried mud, and two of the marks
vanished. Immediately after, another blackened door rose next to the first in
an empty spot Luna hadn't noticed, before the first two marks that vanished
appeared on its frame in addition to more chains and locks. "Mayhaps I could
get something out of just two instead of all four," she murmured to herself,
eying the remaining marks on the door she magically prodded at.
"Bladerune, Starcovert, prepare thyselves," Luna murmured before opening the
door and attempting to stride inside when an invisible force just pushed her
out and the obstacle slammed right in her face. More chains sprung up from the
expanse around it, binding it tightly and forming more locks just to keep the
shackles in place. "What the…?" She blinked, her eyes widening as she processed
what had just happened.
So, after a few seconds, her eyes went from wide to narrow and her horn glowed
again. Only this time, the locks and chains did not yield to her whims;
instead, they rattled violently in place, growing louder and louder until her
ears rang. She ceased prodding at the barrier when it got too loud, her magic
dispelling as her concentration wavered. When she did, so too did the locks and
chains cease their cacophony.
Luna staggered back a bit, shaking her head in an attempt to gather herself.
Her ears aching, she turned to the accursed locks and growled when a black
substance started oozing out of the keyholes, dripping quite messily onto the
invisible floor at the bottom of the frame and staining the door in the
process. She turned to the adjacent door with the arrow and manji on its face,
and it also sported locks that seemingly bled from their link scaffoldings.
"... still not ready for my aid, I see," she sighed, her wings drooping
slightly. "I guess the chains are staying, for the time being."
So, she ignored the two doors and glanced around to the other ones that she'd
neglected to check, finding another hoofful that stood out. One was metallic
blue and black, another black and glossy blue, a third pure grey with flecks of
gold that had gems embedded in the door. Another sported a halberd, and there
was a splintering one that was white and red.
Luna prodded at these doors, frowning when more chains and locks sprung up to
barricade them and keep her out. What's more, these new locks also started
seemingly bleeding, staining the doors and invisible floor in further hues of
ugly black. "What manner of dreamscape tampering is this?" she asked aloud, as
if another soul were present. It was then she noticed that, out of all the
doors that possessed these accursed shackles, one stood out like a paw that
boasted a tiny splinter.
The white-and-red door's locks and chains were red with rust, further
accentuated by a thin glossy layer of frost. Luna blinked, then looked at the
other sets of shackles and found that they had a metallic gloss with no rust,
even though they oozed a bizarre substance that they should not have been able
to produce. She turned back to the rusted ones and experimentally prodded at
them with her magic to find that, no matter how much she rattled them, they did
not bleed—not even as the frost coating them melted away.
Luna rose a brow and continued to jostle the rusted manacles, yet the only
thing they produced were a series of dull rattles in response. "Hello…" she
murmured, her magic starting to tug on the chains, the door creaking in protest
as its binds endured the magical fondling. Luna pulled some more, pouring more
strength into her spell, and when she did the chains almost instantly snapped
and clattered to the invisible ground, dragging their locks with. The door
opened on squeaking, rusted hinges, swinging in a gale that wasn't there.
It was as if the obstacle itself was inviting her in. Daring her to enter that
which was beyond. Luna trotted inside without hesitation, though she stopped
briefly when the door slammed shut behind her and the locks and chains simply
reformed to barricade it again from the inside. She turned to look at it, and
sighed. "This is quite odd," she noted, prior to turning around to absorb her
immediate surroundings—or distinct lack thereof.
All around her and that door, a dusty expanse stretched as far as she could
see. For miles and miles around, it was barren loose soil that created little
clouds of dust every time the wind blew. She looked up at the sky, finding a
lilac moon that was large and full, which gave the much darker navy sky and the
land below a distinct purple tint.
Luna's wings flared as she returned her gaze to ground level. "Who would dream
about a place like this?" she asked, some small part of her expecting an
answer, though she received none save for a small dust devil that danced right
past her. Her wings flapped repeatedly, kicking up dirt, and she just became
airborne when something stood out in the far distance.
There was a blue light, one that dimmed constantly, as if it were about to go
out. She still saw it as it flickered, before it then grew vertically upwards.
"A beacon? Here?"
An ethereal, masculine voice echoed all around the desolate place, "Go to the
light, Princess."
Luna frowned, but she forwent complaint and started flying to the odd light in
the distance. Minutes ticked by, then they became passing hours—or it certainly
felt like it, at least. The light did not seem to broaden even slightly, which
would have indicated she'd gotten closer to it under normal circumstances.
"Just how far is it, surely it can't—" she stopped speaking aloud when a noise
emanated from far away. Then another, and then another, carried by winds that
fueled the dust devils and brushed against her ears as she kept flying.
Her eyes widened when the cacophony became clearer with every yard she passed
over, pupils shrinking when the light in the distance faded entirely. It
sounded like a million cicadas calling for mates, only higher-pitched and much
more frequent. She stopped for a minute, still hovering, as yet the distant
symphony continued unimpeded. Her wings beat faster, and she was once again on
the move, going as fast as she could in an attempt to figure out what was going
on and stop it if need be. Hours came and went, yet still the source of the
awful orchestra eluded her.
Another light flashed in the distance, this one much closer, but when it did
things fell absolutely silent save for still-flapping wings. Luna looked
around, though aside from the light and lack of sound, nothing changed—until it
caught her eye. A distinct hole in the ground that was only a few paces away
nabbed her attention, and she flew to it before peering inside.
In the bottom of the hole, there was a still and utterly emaciated long-eared,
black-skinned changeling with spines running along the back of its head and
webbed filaments that grew from the tail. Its horn was broken off and its wings
were nothing more than scattered tatters that littered the scene. It was curled
into a fetal position, with a front hoof outstretched, and it possessed eyes
that had gone black. If not for the light of the moon, she couldn't have been
able to tell what it was. "Hello?" Luna asked, her voice echoing into the hole.
The changeling did not stir.
Her horn glowed and her teal magic grabbed the entity and slowly lifted it up,
but as soon as it rose a few inches above the floor its head came loose and
detached itself from the rest of its body, tenderly landing and rolling away
until its horn stump connected with the wall. Luna gaped and dropped the body,
backing off a bit to process what just transpired. She turned away from the
hole, only to notice another one close by.
She went to it, but found nothing more than the paling head of another long-
eared changeling with spines, this one also without a horn. It had its muzzle
pointing to the sky, seemingly staring vacantly at nothing in particular,
looking more like a skull whose skin didn't rot. A flare of blue caught her
attention from the corner of her eye, and she turned to it and away from the
head in the hole. "Do you not seek answers, Princess?" the ethereal voice
echoed again as the light once more flared miles away.
Luna glanced around in an attempt to find the source of the voice, but alas she
couldn't find it. "That I do," she answered, turning back to the light.
"Then follow the light," the voice replied. Luna complied, and she once again
began flying to the glow that was still out of reach. Once more, the cicada-
like chorus began, this time getting louder as she pressed on. The Princess
passed over more holes, each one littered with different body parts that once
belonged to individual changelings, but she remained focused on the light that
only now seemed to be getting larger.
Then the holes stopped cropping up below her, which gave way to many, many
bodies being left strewn all about here and there, some in piles and others
just scattered after having been torn limb from limb. The amount of bodies
started off small, but as she flew onward, Luna began counting more and more
corpses until there were so many that she could barely see the soil beneath
what could only be described as a massacre.
The light flashed in front of her, and she slowed to a stop as it momentarily
blinded her in blue. She blinked to get the monochrome haze out of her eyes,
finding that she stood at the edge of a small circle of dirt that had two
entities facing off amidst the sea of bodies.
One was a shadowy creature whose features she couldn't make out even in the
moon's light, and the other was a black, emaciated and hornless changeling that
stood defiantly. The lone changeling hissed and flew brazenly towards the
shadow, but the black entity just ghosted out of the way and stretched a limb
to smack its changeling adversary hard enough to completely throw it off the
mark and send it to the ground.
The assault made the changeling ooze green fluid and scream, and it stood up
once more with the substance dribbling down its chin. It glared balefully at
its opponent with blue eyes that had black forming at the corners, flared its
wings and took flight to attack once again, only to end up taking another
assault that sent it careening to and then landing right in front of Luna with
a sickening snap. It groaned pitifully when it attempted to raise a leg before
the limb fell and the changeling went completely still. Its eyes turned black
as night within seconds, like lights shutting off, with fluid still oozing from
its maw.
Luna gaped, finding that this changeling had a bright red carapace and wings,
in addition to a mane and tail comprised of thin hair that were the same color
instead of spines and webbed filaments. "Pitiful drone," the shadow hissed.
"What changeling just flies to her death when all of the others before I have
also fallen?" With that, it vanished before the Princess could look at it a
second time, only to have her attention snagged by the lone drone as a blue
light enveloped her form.
It went into her ears, mouth, and nostrils before fading and pulsing through
her like rippling waves. The pulses grew and grew, until the entire corpse was
covered in what seemed to be pure power. Light erupted from the cadaver, almost
blinding Luna again, and the Princess used her wings to shield her eyes as it
flared constantly. A few minutes passed before the light was fading back into a
dull ripple that stretched upon every inch of the recipient.
Only when the blue glow finally ceased rippling across her body did she haul
herself up on twig-like, shaky legs. The drone immediately paled, her black
skin blanching and blanching until it was hideously white while the red parts
of her darkened to a maroon with a slight grey tint. She steadied herself and
looked up at Luna with a familiar torn grin that stretched from ear to ear and
oozed with green fluid.
Blackened eyes betrayed twin sparks of azure, and a hollow voice came from the
maw of the changeling, "What are you staring at, Princess Luna?" A second
passed before she realized who she'd just addressed, and then the changeling
asked, "Wait, how the fuck did you get here?"
Luna donned a smile and wrapped a wing around Katie. "I have the power to enter
and exit dreams as I please, my little guest wraith," she chirped in reply. Her
smile fell as she added, "Though… this is certainly one of the more horrid
nightmares I have stumbled upon."
***** Chapter XXXV- Phantasma *****
Luna spent a few minutes explaining to Katie about the ability to travel
through the dreamscape, as well as the odd locks and chains on some of the
doors of certain folks' dreams that bled and kept her out. The wraith sat down
on her haunches, listening with ears standing straight as the Princess rambled
for minutes on end. The resulting one-sided conversation ground to a halt when
Luna finished explaining herself, and a tense silence blanketed the still
corpse-riddled landscape that not even the wind and whatever dust devils it
wrought could break.
"Let me get this straight," Katie began, her orbs dimming as she rose a hoof
and gestured to Luna, then herself with it. "You can trot in the dreamscape
freely, and it somewhat correlates to you raising the moon and such? And to add
to that, you want to help me and my own, but General Smartass and his crew
brushed you off, and now you can't get into their dreams? This what I'm
hearing?"
Luna glumly nodded, a sullen frown on her face. "In order, yes, and I can't get
into the dreams of the other Fantasians as well. Yours was the only one I could
access, after I managed to break the shackles that closed the door to…" She
looked around and used a wing to gesture to the mess of bodies that surrounded
them both. "Here," she finished.
"Sounds like everybody else and their mother has a problem, and that's coming
from a someling with a bunch of problems," Katie scoffed, rolling her orbs as
she spoke.
"'Has a problem?' Whatever do you mean by that?" Luna asked, her brow raising.
"Exactly what I just said," Katie replied, one ear and an eye twitching in
sync. "Let me put it into a nutshell: the night I was found by General
Smartass's crew and found myself a hitchhiker, I was playing possum. They
slept, and had nightmares—two separate instances, I heard them babble about
sinning."
"'Sinning?'" Luna pressed, her frown deepening.
"About what, I haven't the foggiest. I heard the soldiers ask their general
what was wrong, as well as his unicorn trinity. Lance wouldn't say anything
about it," Katie stated, shaking her head and dropping her hoof. "And when
another had a dream-gone-awry of her own, he told her to not tell him anything
about it. It's almost like they follow the mantra of 'don't ask, don't tell' as
if it's gospel from a holy book or something. I'm not even sure if they know
what their comrades dream about or not."
Luna took a minute to let the information soak in, and during that time her
mind wasted no second putting two and two together. "They're bottling it up,
whatever it is," she said in a solemn tone.
Katie tsked with a nod. "Bingo."
"Then… do you have a guess as to why the locks on your dream broke?" Luna
inquired, her brow raising.
Katie nodded again. "I think it's time I came clean," she said, raising a hoof
to gesture at the thousands of carcassas that littered the scene. "But I
believe you're… perceptive enough to take a gander at what I'm currently
talking about."
Luna sighed dejectedly, and again her mind quickly whirred. She understood in
seconds. "You were one of many victims to… whatever that shadowy thing was?"
she guessed.
"Yep, and that fucker left me with two parting gifts on my face," Katie
answered, using her raised limb to gesture to her horn's remnants and then to
her split grin. "However," she began, turning her head and letting her eyes
narrow at where the shadow in question once stood before it took its leave. "I
wish I knew what that thing was."
Luna's brow rose higher. "You don't remember whatever it was that severed your
horn?" she questioned.
Katie turned back to Luna and nodded. "Much less what they look like. All I can
remember is something cutting into what was once my cheeks," she stated, taking
a moment to sigh heavily. "Hell, I don't even know why I'm still around—by all
accounts, I shouldn't have been able to leave this… genocide..." She didn't
finish her remark, and gave a faint shudder at the mere thought of what had
transpired.
"And yet, you were able to," Luna finished for her, garnering another nod from
her guest. "Do you remember seeing anything else before you died?"
"Apart from what killed me and feeling my face get hacked open, I remember
seeing a white light," Katie answered, her ears flattening against her head.
"But not much else, before I found myself turned into a wraith."
"Do you intend to… find whoever peformed this atrocity?" Luna sighed, again
using a wing to gesture to the bodies that lay all around.
Katie shook her head. "One, they'd probably kick my ass again if they were
still alive, and two, I don't remember them all that well. Three, they're
likely stuck on Fantasia, if they are still at large. You might as well ask me
to take on a bear alone. And while we're on the subject, I'm not sure if the
perpetrator's still alive or not," she groaned. "For all I know, they could
also be a wraith, doing Godcat knows what else, and I'd be none the wiser
because I'm not there!"
"Well, this is worrying," Luna thought, blowing out a sigh. She extended her
hoof to the small wraith before her, and immediately a pale leg rose and
clasped around it. "Will you help me… address the other Fantasians' problems,
whatever they may be?"
"I can't force them to do so, but that doesn't mean I can't at least try,"
Katie replied, taking a moment to let her wings buzz. "Considering what I heard
of Lance's ramblings in his sleep, it may be a while yet. And from what I've
seen of Lance's no-longer-hexed wings, and a myriad of other things, their
problems might be physical as well as mental."
Luna nodded. "That, I can understand. But how will I know when they're ready to
speak to me about their issues?" she asked.
"Damned if I know. They may tell me, one of these days," Katie replied with a
shrug. "Or they may not."
"True," Luna agreed, nodding once more, this time languidly. "Perhaps they'll
just… spill it?" she asked with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
Katie mutely shrugged again. "I'll let you know when I get something out of one
of them," she said. "Until then, I'll just follow General Smartass and his
crew."
Luna chuckled and began smiling. "Why are you calling the general names?" she
inquired.
"Because he's a smartass," Katie replied with a chortle, her orbs brightening.
"And you mentioned his wings being no longer hexed?" Luna pressed, smile
broadening. "Care to elaborate?"
Katie nodded with a giggle. "He no longer has that cursed metal on his back,
but he's bald from withers to flanks, wings included. Looks like he got waxed,"
she chirped.
Luna nodded, still smiling as her horn began to glow. "That is excellent news
to hear," she stated. "Now, then, would you like to have a trot… somewhere more
pleasing in the dreamscape?"
"Hell, I'll take anything over this massacre," Katie stated, nodding fervently
as she spoke.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Sarah languidly sat up, eyes squinting as a faint light shone in through the
guest room window. Some drool trickled out of the corner of her lip, but she
ignored it and glanced down to find a pillow resting between her claws with a
few small lacerations visible on the outer fabric. She lifted the pillow and
flung it over her head, barely registering a soft thud when it hit the bedframe
and landed on something.
A grumble tore her out of her trance, and she glanced to the side to find
Fenrir sleeping next to her with the discarded pillow covering his eyes. "...
my… my tail is not… a toy," he murmured, his muzzle scrunching just enough that
Sarah could see bared teeth.
Sarah blinked, and she languidly rose a talon to wipe the accumulating drool
that still dribbled from the corner of her mouth. She continued to watch the
slumbering dog mumble incoherently, waiting until his lips covered his teeth
before releasing a heavy sigh. She flinched when he turned so that his back
faced her, which enabled his tail to swing towards her just enough to poke her
with the protrusions that made it club-like.
Fenrir continued grumbling, "... you could… hurt yourself…"
Sarah dazedly rolled her eyes and shook her head, using a claw to brush the
limb away while making sure that it didn't snag on the sheets or any part of
her body. She made to climb out of the bed once that was dealt with, her
movements slow and delicate, though she could not stop her talons from making
tiny dull taps upon impact with the floor. She froze before her hooves could
leave the bed, partly because Fenrir snarled and partly because the minute
sound her claws made hit her ears.
"... you want… to what?" Fenrir growled, following up his reply with a throaty
snore.
"N-nothing," Sarah murmured, garnering another snore as a response. She
carefully slipped her hooves out of the bed, flinching when they made a set of
dull thuds that were barely heard when another snore ripped through the room.
"... really?" Fenrir grumbled, shifting to lay on his back as his roommate
turned to look at him. Immediately, Sarah went green in the face upon seeing a
tent forming at the dog's loins, raising a claw to hold her muzzle as bile rose
in her throat. She turned away and scampered to the door on two hooves and one
claw, still clutching her mouth shut in the hope that she could keep her
stomach's contents down.
Alas, she could only keep her mouth closed for so long. Right as she reached
the door, she lifted her claw from her mouth and wound up vomiting upon the
floor in quick succession. The splattering of the bile and the hippogryph's
retching and heaving as she emptied her stomach reached Fenrir's ears, echoing
just enough to rouse him from his slumber.
"... are you alright?" he murmured as soon as Sarah finished puking.
"N-no," Sarah groaned, backing away from the mess she made without turning
around to meet Fenrir's gaze.
"What seems to be the matter?" Fenrir asked sleepily, sitting up in order to
better look at his roommate in an attempt to figure out what her problem was.
"T-tent," Sarah croaked, and as soon as the reply left her mouth, she began
retching again. Fenrir rose a brow, and lifted a paw to rub his eyes when it
brushed against something under the cloth that made a small jolt run up his
spine.
Fenrir slowly turned his muzzle downward, and his eyes widened as soon as he
saw the tent that stood at his crotch. "I-I-I—" he stammered, his mouth drying
out the longer he stared at the perpetrator that announced itself via lifting
the blanket a few inches up. As he tried and failed to articulate something
even remotely coherent, Sarah stopped gagging and managed to collect herself,
though she still kept her back turned.
"Spit… it out already," Sarah groaned, frowning as Fenrir continued to stutter
instead. She waited for a few moments, mentally preparing a response for
whatever excuse he could conjure from under his tail, unaware that his gaze had
moved from her to the puke that blemished the floor in front of the door. It
wasn't until he spoke a full minute after seeing that puddle did her eyes
widen.
"I... cannot control whatever primitive urges I have that may arise while I
totter about in the realm of dreams. Answer me with sincerest honesty: have you
found yourself able to do likewise, regardless of whether you are awake or in
slumber?" Fenrir asked, crossing his arms and ignoring his concealed erection
for the moment.
Sarah took one glance at the puddle of vomit she'd made and mutely shook her
head, her face returning to its natural beige as she did so. She stiffened
thereafter, ears perked and waiting for Fenrir to make another remark of some
sort, only to be greeted with silence that began settling in—the uneasy sort
that made her mouth dry out. So she decided to break the tense tranquility in a
quivering, raspy voice, "U-um, a-are you going to… uh…"
Fenrir cut her off before she could finish, "I'll let it recede on its own. I'd
advise you to find a bucket and mop before going back to sleep." Sarah nodded
and made her way to the door again, swallowing heavily when the stench of her
bile tickled her nostrils in such a displeasing manner that her face began
going green again. She carefully stepped over it and opened the door before
bumbling out, finding an assortment of unicorn guards that turned to her as
soon as she waltzed out of her room.
A particular one with a yellow coat and a metallic band affixed on the base of
his horn decided to pipe up, "Miss, are you well?"
Sarah shook her head. She glanced at each and every guard before asking, "Any
of you know where the nearest cleaning supplies are at? I… kinda puked on the
floor."
Her utterance caused the guards to exchange glances that betrayed worried
flickers in their eyes and small frowns painting their muzzles. The one with
the band around his horn was the first to turn back to the roused and green-
faced guest before he sighed dejectedly. "I am afraid I don't know where the
nearest cleaning supplies are at. I sincerely apologize for my ignorance," he
said in a solemn tone.
"Likewise," almost all of the other guards chimed in unison. Sarah's eyes
darted this way and that, and she spotted a lone pegasus that shook in place,
his lilac wings twitching erratically.
"And you?" she asked the lilac guard, her pupils briefly dilating as she took
in his shuddering stance.
"Zephyr Bolt knows," the yellow guard with the horn accessory piped up.
Zephyr stopped shaking and began seething on the spot, his head turning to the
pony who dared open his claptrap. "Zi-Zircon! I-I don't know shit!" he snarled.
"Then why were you shaking?" Zircon asked incredulously, his eyes going half-
lidded as he stared at Zephyr.
"I-I wasn't—" Zephyr began, but stopped when another door opened. Into the hall
bumbled Maria, who strode in on two hooves and one claw, with the other claw
rubbing at her eyes. Instantly, he turned to the filly and asked in a soft
tone, "Are you alright?"
"Can't sleep," Maria replied, lowering her claw with a yawn leaving her mouth.
"Had a bad dream."
Sarah tottered over to the foal with the green on her face once more receding
and sighed. "Wanna take a walk with me for a few minutes?" she asked, frowning
when she got a cringe of dusty brown wings as her answer. "I'll make sure
nothing hurts you, alright?"
Maria stood there, wings still shaking as she contemplated this for a few
seconds. "Where are we going?" she asked.
"Just to get a few things," Sarah answered, chuckling when Maria sat down,
lifted a back hoof, and used said back hoof to scratch at the back of her ear.
"You do realize you can scratch your ears with your claws, right?"
Maria dropped her hoof and grinned innocently. "Oops," she murmured.
"It's alright," Sarah chirped with a nod and a roll of her eyes. "Sometimes I
do that, too. Now, wanna come with me?"
"Will it make the bad hippogryphs leave me alone when I sleep?" Maria asked,
her grin faltering.
Sarah blinked and took a moment to glance at Zephyr and then Zircon. Both
nodded to her, with the latter raising a front hoof reassuringly and the former
stretching his wings like he had the urge to leave his post. Then the older
hippogryph turned to the younger and answered, "Yes, it will."
"Okay," Maria chirped, and with that Sarah turned to Zircon and Zephyr before
giving them a nod each. The two guards in question nodded back before they
grouped with the hippogryphs and began tottering down the hall in unison,
shoulder-by-shoulder. The quartet rounded the bend and cantered down a few
moonlit halls in silence, with only the sound of hooves hitting and talons
scratching at the crystal floor permeating throughout the air. It went like
this for a few minutes.
"So, Zircon," Zephyr began, breaking the silence that had settled in, "why'd
you get put back on guard duty? I thought you got in trouble."
Zircon sighed, a tight frown forming on his face as they rounded another bend.
"The Emperor told me I was to fill in for Solid Step," he replied. "Something
got him in a chokehold and knocked him out, or so I heard."
Zephyr's eyes widened. "Wait, something… attacked another member of our ranks?"
he asked disbelievingly.
Zircon nodded. "I don't know the rest; don't press me for any more details," he
stated with a shrug.
Sarah decided to interject, "Whoa whoa, back up. Something is loose, and took
out a guard? This what I'm hearing?"
"Afraid so," Zircon confirmed with another nod. "Emperor Shining's not taking
any chances."
Zephyr took the chance to snicker. "He'd rather have a clumsy pony whose horn's
been in so many places keep watch than a serious threat running loose. Now
that's a treat," he stated with a snort.
"I tripped, alright?!" Zircon began, in an attempt to defend himself.
"Yeah, and you caused one of our other guests to go crazy for a while! I heard
all about it!" Zephyr chided, still snickering.
"Both of you, hush," Sarah cut in again with a snappish tone, rolling her eyes
with a snort. The two guards shot incredulous looks at her, and she met their
gazes with a narrow-eyed glare before she added, "It's in the past. Best to
stop dwelling in it, unless you're going to poke fun at yourselves instead of
each other." To punctuate her point, she turned to them both and bared her
teeth at them, revealing flat molars accompanied by fearsome canines that
glinted in the moonlight and a low snarl to go with it.
Both guards shuddered at the display, but only momentarily. "You heard the
hippogryph," Zircon stated smugly, smirking at Zephyr as if he'd just won an
argument with a vast majority of ponies all at once. The pegasus scoffed, but
he said nothing more, and down a few more halls and to the second floor the
quartet went without uttering another word. It wasn't until the latter stopped
before a door at the eastmost end of one of the halls and opened it to reveal
an assortment of cleaning supplies did anyone pipe up.
This time, it was Maria who spoke and pointed a talon at a broom
simultaneously, "What's that stick thing?"
"A broom. But what I'm looking for is a mop and bucket," Sarah replied, her
brow slanting slightly when Zephyr shot a look at her.
"It's probably dried up by now… unless you'd spend the elbow grease scrubbing
it off the floor?" Zephyr asked with a slight frown on his muzzle.
"While I'm not a kitchen mare, I'd gladly clean up my own vomit if it meant
removing the awful smell," Sarah replied with a nod. Zephyr nodded back and
dove into the closet, trying his damnedest to find a mop and bucket or
something even remotely close to the two objects in the inky darkness, but he
stopped when Maria whimpered after a minute he spent searching.
He craned his neck and found the foal clinging to Sarah's left forelimb, ears
pinned back and a wide-eyed look of terror on her face. Zircon was looking
around, scowling as if he'd just seen something that could bring harm to the
smallest of their current group. Sarah herself did likewise for a few seconds
before lowering her head to nuzzle Maria tenderly. "It's okay," she murmured.
"What's wrong?" Zephyr asked, a brow quirking up.
Zircon turned to his affiliate. "Thought I just saw something ghost around a
bend," he replied.
"'Something?'" Zephyr parroted, his brow going higher.
"B-black, l-looked scary," Maria piped up, shaking in place like she was bald
all over again.
"It won't get you," Sarah said in a reassuring tone of voice, nuzzling the foal
again. "Not while I'm here."
Zephyr shrugged and turned his attention back to the closet's contents and
began rummaging through the stash once again. This time, however, he kept the
act of trying to find a mop and bucket as quiet as possible, his ears folding
back in case any other sort of noise came from behind. Aside from Sarah's well-
intentioned murmurs and Maria's whimpering, in addition to the softened cling-
clang of utensils as he continued to scrounge around and through them, the hall
once more became deathly silent.
The very instant he let his hoof stray towards an object in the corner of the
room, one whose figure was covered by his shadow at that, did he hear Zircon
groan. "Zephyr, let's trade places. I can search the closet; you keep watch,"
he stated.
"But you're wearing a damn magic inhibitor!" Zephyr retorted, turning around to
shoot a glare at Zircon.
"I can take it off for a few minutes. Besides, it's not like I could harm a fly
just by casting a spell or two," Zircon said, turning to shoot Zephyr a small
frown. The pegasus made to argue, but the instant he opened his mouth the
unicorn lifted a hoof and deftly removed the inhibitor on his horn before
letting its tip glow a bright green in color. Zephyr stumbled back a bit and
shut his eyes tightly, momentarily blinded and barely registering the sounds of
objects being lifted in the air.
"Oh, hey, there's a mop and bucket," Sarah piped up. Zephyr opened his eyes
just a sliver, and sighed when he found that his affiliate had indeed gotten
hold of a mop and bucket with a green-tinted magical aura, though the container
in question was empty.
"Eh, looks like you're gonna have to fill it up," Zephyr remarked as Zircon
shoved the objects into Sarah's claws, forcing her to both stand on her hooves
and to shake Maria off of her left forelimb in the process. Then the unicorn
reapplied his inhibitor with a hoof, causing the bright green light he made to
fizzle out like a lit fuse of a dud bomb.
"I don't mind filling it up, really," Sarah stated with a shrug. She lifted a
talon from the handle of the mop and gestured to the other end of the hall the
group was in. "Shall we?"
"Let's," Zephyr replied with a nod, and he eagerly trotted out of the closet.
He used a wing to grip the door handle and caused no less than two of his
primary feathers to suddenly angle sharply downwards as he dragged the obstacle
shut behind him. He released the knob as soon as the door was fully closed with
a click reaching his ears, before he heard a coo and turned to Maria, finding
that she gave him a set of raised brows and wide eyes.
"How'd you do that?" she asked, using one of her claws to gesture to the door
knob in question.
"Now that I think about, I'd also like her to know about that sort of thing.
Seems like a nifty trick to do with just your wing," Sarah piped up, also
turning to the guard who used said limb to close the door behind himself.
Zephyr chuckled and donned a small, though serene, smile. He stretched his
wings as wide as they could go and flexed them a bit, before doing something
odd: he let them bend around the primary feathers, causing them to fold up like
dextrous digits. The wings curled up like balled fists that were enlarged, and
amidst the lilac protrusions, Sarah could faintly see long and finger-like
joints.
The guard in question and held his gaze with the filly, letting his wings fully
unfurl again, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "Equestrian
pegasi have the wing equivalent to claws—we can grab, hold, and even carry
things with our wings. It's an evolutionary… advantage, I guess you could say,"
he answered, his smile widening. When Maria tilted her head, he added, "Think
of having large claws with a lot of feathers on our backs."
Maria turned to Sarah, her eyes widening some more and twinkling with awe. "Can
I grab things with my wings?" she asked.
"Not if you don't have multiple digits in your wings," Zephyr answered, his
smile faltering a little bit. He turned to Sarah and decided to venture
further, "Say, can hippogryphs do what I did to the door? I don't think
Fantasian gryphs and pegasi could do that, no offense."
Sarah smirked and let go of the bucket, only to spread her good wing to catch
it before it could land on the floor. The handle was snagged on a feather-clad
joint, causing some feathers to bend and reveal bare skin that marked said
joint. She tilted her wing at a 45-degree angle and let the bucket slide
further along by the handle, causing it to pull some feathers out in the
process. In seconds, it stopped upon reaching an exposed fork in the limb
signifying the presence of at least one more finger-like joint. "None taken,"
she chirped.
Zephyr took a few seconds to let the sight sink in. "I stand corrected," he
stated, taking a few more seconds to chuckle heartily.
Sarah gave a faint wince, more at having some feathers pulled out by a bucket
than the chuckling the guard had made. "Say, does the general have multiple
wing-digits himself?" Zircon asked, turning to Zephyr with a grin on his own
face.
"I saw his wings! He had four… uh, um…" Maria began, jumping up and down and
flapping her own wings eagerly, humming as she struggled to mentally piece
together an appropriate way to describe the wing-joints.
"He does have the wing-digits?" Zircon asked, turning to the filly who then
eagerly nodded and ceased jumping.
"So does she," Sarah piped up, her now-freed claw forming into a fist with one
talon pointing at Maria for emphasis. She then turned to said filly and added,
"And not yet, as far as lifting things with your wings are concerned." Maria
sighed, but she didn't argue, and off the four went once again.
They retraced their steps and made it to the third floor without incident.
Though as they rounded their first bend of said floor, they paused upon hearing
a fifth set of hooves echoing as soon as they stopped. Sarah glanced around
once the fifth set of sounds faded seconds later, frowning. "Is that another
guard?" she asked.
"Maybe," Zircon replied with a shrug. He made to speak further when the sounds
began anew, this time louder and faster, as if their owner were galloping. For
a minute or two, that was all they heard—until a dark silhouette darted past
them from behind and right to the other side of the hall they stood in with one
fluid, almost spectral motion. It vanished around another corner as soon as it
had reached it, twisting as if it were a corkscrew that gained sentience in the
process.
The only sound it made was a set of hooves hitting the floor, with some black
fabric draped over its form that obscured most of its features as it came and
went. Maria shrank and sidled closer to Sarah as soon as she caught sight of
the fleeting form. "Wh-what was that?" she asked with wide eyes.
Zircon and Zephyr stiffened for a bit, before they scooted a little closer to
the hippogryphs accompanying them. "I don't know what that is," Zephyr replied,
his eyes narrowing as he let his gaze wander every inch of the path the form
had taken.
Zircon frowned. "Stay close. It may he hostile, whatever it is," he warned.
Sarah nodded, and clutched the mop's handle tightly with one claw and a scowl
set into her face. "Can I bash it, if it tries picking a fight with us?" she
asked in a low hiss.
Zephyr shook his head, turning to her thereafter. "You'd be risking greater
injury that way. Let me and Zircon handle it, should it try anything
suspicious," he warned, now frowning himself.
Maria made to wrap her claws around Sarah's rear hoof, but froze before she
could do so. "Is it… bad?" she asked in a trembling voice. The three adults
turned to her, and saw her shaking once again. They opened their mouths, only
to close them soundlessly as they realized they didn't have a definitive answer
to give to the foal, much less evidence to back up whatever they could have
said in that moment.
The three felt chills run up their spines when a hollow laugh, distant and low,
rang out through the hall. Their ears fell back when they felt that someone—or
something—began watching them, and they looked around to detect the source of
the laughter, only to find nothing but faint moonlight shining through whatever
windows it could and sparse shadows that had little to hide. Claws clenched
tighter around the mop handle, a magic inhibitor was removed with a hoof, and a
pair of lilac wings flared wide as they waited for any sign of life that had
ill intentions.
Yet none came in the silence that had followed.
***** Chapter XXXVI, Part I- 'Ghreziilki' *****
The four tensed, every fiber of their bodies going rigid as another hollow
laugh echoed into the hall they'd still stood at the end of. Yet the source of
the laughter, whatever it was, did not do anything else to let them know it was
there; as if its owner were mocking them. Then, silence fell again, and the
guards and hippogryphs exchanged worried glances amongst themselves. After a
minute of tense tranquility passed, Zephyr spoke up, "Uh… should we head back
to the guest rooms?"
"I don't think we should do that, not with—" Zircon stopped when another laugh
rang out, and he waited patiently for it to end before continuing, "—whatever's
making that incessant cackling running loose."
"So… we find that thing before I go back and clean my own vomit?" Sarah
groaned, taking a moment to let her shoulders slump.
"We don't know what it can do," Zephyr stated, turning to Zircon and shaking
his head. "Or if it'll attack."
"True, but it could still be a threat," Zircon replied, turning to his
affiliate with a firm frown on his face. "And we have a little filly with us,
for crying out loud! What if it takes us out, and we can't stop it from…" His
voice lowered to a whisper as he finished, "performing unspeakable horrors,
like what Sombra did to us?"
Zephyr stayed silent for what felt like a long while, letting Zircon's point
sink in. He heard Maria whimper, and used one of his spread wings to gently
caress her head reassuringly, sighing when she stopped making noise. Once the
foal had stifled her soft mewls, the four flinched as they heard an echoing
thud, punctuated by a distinct clang of metal.
"He has a point, as much as I hate saying it," Sarah said, her eyes narrowing.
"A vomit puddle's one thing. Something that can and may hurt a foal's another."
Maria then sidled closer to Zephyr before climbing onto his back, using his
outstretched wings as leverage. She tried not to hurt him, though he still
winced before she got herself settled just behind the withers with her claws
hanging onto his armor for dear life. "Sorry if I hurt you," she murmured.
"It's quite alright," Zephyr sighed, closing his wings slowly to avoid
startling the filly into catapulting off of his back. "I can't control the fact
that you have talons. Just don't poke me too much, okay?" he asked, turning to
look at her and smiling as she nodded.
"Everypony set?" Zircon asked, turning to and then subsequently garnering nods
from the other three. He nodded back and turned to the hall, using a hoof to
gesture to the other end thereof. "Then let's stop dallying." With that, they
made their way to the end of the corridor, all heads swiveling around in an
attempt to detect movement the entire time.
They reached it without incident and turned down a corner at the left to begin
going down another hall, though upon doing so spotted a blue-coated unicorn
guard who was already lying on the floor a few paces away. "You alright?"
Zephyr called out, his voice slightly wavering. His eyes widened when he didn't
get an answer from the guard who was laying down. He turned to the others and
got curt nods accompanying worried frowns.
They wasted no time coming up to the hapless sod, and then froze as soon as
they saw the unfortunate pony, his face scrunched in pain and raspy breaths
leaving a mouth that was slightly ajar. Bruises formed along his neck,
blemishing his natural azure in purplish-black splotches that indicated
something tried to strangle him, and in addition to that there was a peculiar
metallic band around the base of his horn.
"Aquamarine! Are you okay?" Zephyr asked again, his pupils dilating as the blue
unicorn shifted a bit.
Aquamarine forced his eyes open just a sliver, and he languidly turned his head
to Zephyr. "Sh-shadow…" he rasped, his response so quiet it was nigh-
unintelligible. "It… c-cut of my m-magic…"
"Shit…" Sarah grumbled under her breath, before she knelt down to look
Aquamarine in the eye, being careful to avoid accidentally hitting him with the
mop. "Think you can make it?" she asked, garnering a weak nod as a response.
Zircon's horn glowed, and his green magic embraced his fellow guard.
Delicately, he slowly positioned the sod and then moved him to let him rest on
his back, his legs briefly buckling when the stallion's weight was situated to
where his falling off wouldn't be an immediate issue. "Just let me know if you
need anything," he said, feeling Aquamarine nod against his neck.
"We'll have to get him to the guest rooms. He's gonna need to take it
easy—sorry colt sounds like he has a frog in his throat," Zephyr groaned,
turning to Sarah as she rose to stand once more.
"If whatever got him is strong enough to bruise him… and somehow bypass his
neck armor in the process—" Sarah's ears began twitching, and she glanced
around for a few seconds before her gaze fell on Aquamarine, "—then we'd best
be very careful."
"Let's stay together." Zephyr, Maria, and Sarah turned to Zircon and raised
incredulous brows. The unicorn in question turned to meet the triad of gazes
and gave a small frown in return. "Our mysterious… specter may be working
alone. It'll be more likely to leave us be than if we split up."
"But what if there's more than one of the bastards, and the one that pranced
right past us just so happened to be one of a potential many?" Sarah retorted,
her eyes narrowing. Zephyr and Zircon both froze at her utterance, sweat
starting to bead on their faces and trailing down as it sank in. Another laugh
bounced along the halls, reaching their ears and breaking them out of their
trance, and hesitantly the group pressed forward with shaky steps.
A few minutes of silence passed, only filled by hooves hitting crystal and the
occasional grunt from the guards. Thanks to the sluggish movements, the group
had only reached the middle of the hall, and they paused when Aquamarine gave a
particularly pained and shallow gasp. "Aqua, how are you holding up?" Zircon
asked.
"F-fine," Aquamarine managed. He coughed for a few seconds, but started taking
deep breaths afterwards. "Just… drained." The response made Zircon's brow
raise, though he said nothing in response, and once again the group ceased
stalling and moved towards the end of the hall. They still kept a vigil on the
place even as they got to the end of the corridor, only to find it marked by
another bend going right.
Sarah's ears twitched, and she decided to take point by striding through the
bend. Zircon and Zephyr trotted near-silently behind her, though the occasional
louder-than-expected thudding of their hooves as they briefly stumbled and
caught themselves caused her ears to swivel back. She paused in the middle of
the bend, and she outstretched her free claw to one side, which caused the
guards behind her to halt just mere inches away from her. "Shhh."
Zircon and Zephyr stiffened, exchanging glances as Sarah lowered her claw
slowly. Silence settled in, though only for a few seconds before a strangled
cry broke it. "Get off of me!" a stallion's voice exclaimed, though the plea
had only faintly echoed, accompanied by many dull thuds and the all-too-
distinct clangs of metal.
Zephyr's eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets as he heard the racket. "Flash
Sentry!" he yelled, his wings spreading wide. "We gotta help him!" Before Sarah
and Zircon could protest, the pegasus flapped his wings and bolted off down the
rest of the bend, unwittingly dragging a startled Maria with him.
"Fuck!" Sarah exclaimed, her legs moving and propelling her onwards. She raced
after Zephyr on her two hooves, dropping the bucket and clutching the mop in
both claws like she intended to rush in and beat somepony into a pulp with it.
Zircon took a few seconds to let a hoof connect with his face before he used
his magic to pick up the discarded bucket and Aquamarine.
"Getting… sick," Aquamarine complained, his face turning green as Zircon turned
to him.
"At least we have a bucket. Do your best to hold it in until we come to a
stop," Zircon warned, garnering a weak nod from his wounded affiliate. Then, he
too took off with said affiliate and the bucket in magical tow, bounding off
after Sarah and Zephyr in a frenzied gallop. Upon finishing the bend himself,
he could see Sarah darting ahead of him, as balanced as a kangaroo and as swift
as a jackrabbit.
Past the upright gryph in question, however, he saw no sign of Zephyr or Maria,
though he did hear the latter shrieking. The filly's cries became faint, and
Zircon doubled his efforts as a result, yet in doing so had only managed to
catch up to Sarah. "How do you run so fast on two legs?!" Zircon asked as they
rounded another bend. Up ahead, Zephyr galloped on frantically before he turned
down another hall, vanishing as fast as the two who followed him caught sight
of his tail.
"You can blame my mom for passing that onto me," Sarah replied immediately, her
claws clutching the mop tighter as she and Zircon continued their mad dash down
the next hall in an attempt to keep up with the guard and foal up ahead. Their
steps faltered, and they nearly tripped over their own hooves when they heard
something screech, but caught themselves and pushed on when they heard Maria
scream immediately after the screech registered in their minds.
They picked up the pace, desperate to stop whatever trouble was ahead before it
could get any worse. The two—three, counting the still-levitating
Aquamarine—reached the corner Zephyr ran past only moments ago to find him
standing in another hall just ahead with Maria still on his back.
What was past Zephyr and the foal, however, caught their attention—there was a
cloaked entity that had forced itself onto the back and had their hooves
wrapped around the neck of one Flash Sentry, whose wings flapped madly. Orange
feathers dislodged from the flailing limbs, and the shadow struggled to
maintain its hold as the pegasus ascended and rammed his own backside into the
ceiling, disorienting his attacker just enough that their hooves released his
neck.
"Get the buck off of me!" Flash yelled, though his cry was breathless and
strangled. He bucked his rear legs and angled himself at the same time, the
sheer momentum of the movement causing his aggressive passenger to catapult off
and land on the floor with a hard thud and sickening snap. The airborne guard
huffed and wheezed, his eyes widening when his assailant just got right back up
onto its hooves like nothing had happened.
But one front hoof slipped out from under its garbs, and he and the new
arrivals could see that it was wrapped in ragged cloth that obscured its color.
In addition to that, the limb was horribly twisted, dangling about at an
unnatural angle. "This isn't over," it hissed in a hollow voice. "I'll get you
all—every last guard, your so-called Emperor, and anypony else that gets in my
way." Its hidden head turned to Sarah, and she could've sworn she saw a pair of
eyes glaring at her under its cowl. "Mark. My. Words."
Before Flash and Zephyr could act, the figure turned to the nearest window and
galloped to it on three legs prior to jumping out of it. "Wait!" Flash cried,
darting to the window in an attempt to grab the entity before it could start
its leap of faith, but he was just a second too late. The creature fell down,
and Sarah and the other guards rushed to the window in time to see it finish
its descent in an unusual way.
Some magical glow that looked purplish-black against the crystal street and in
the moon's light embraced it before it could crash, halting its momentum like a
spinning top being grabbed by a hoof. It then let itself down gently and
immediately raced away down a few alleys thereafter, once again vanishing from
sight.
"What a rotten load of horseapples!" Flash growled with narrowed eyes, stomping
a back hoof and letting his wings slam shut in frustration. He felt a hoof on
his armored withers, and turned to see Zephyr and Maria looking back at him.
"Take it easy. This is our home turf," Zephyr said coolly, donning a small
smile. "That shadow won't be able to avoid us for long, not when the entire
Empire's mapped out like a damn snowflake." He turned to Maria and added, "And
sorry about that bumpy ride, kid. Guard instincts kicked in."
Maria nodded back, but she kept her gaze on Flash. "You okay?" she asked in a
small voice.
Flash rose a hoof and rubbed his neck, wincing as he prodded at forming
bruises. "I'm not doing so well…" he replied. "I'm definitely gonna take a nap
tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I didn't sign up to get strangled by a cloaked
stranger on my back."
Zircon let Aquamarine rest on his back again, using his magic to fork the
bucket over to Sarah. "Should we get Emperor Armor, or what?" he asked, causing
everypony else to look at him with incredulous brows raised.
Then they turned to Aquamarine when he spoke up, "Get… the Emperor." A pause,
one brief and filled with confused grunts from both the other guards and the
hippogryphs met his ears. Aquamarine huffed, "He'll know what… to do."
Zephyr and Flash exchanged glances, then turned back to Aquamarine. "Can you
and Zircon return the guests to their rooms while we get the Emperor?" Flash
asked.
Aquamarine languidly nodded. "Fhræm," he replied.
"What did he say?" Sarah asked, a brow quirked.
"He said yes," Flash translated. He turned to Maria and added, "Oh, and get off
Zephyr's back. You need to go back to your room." The foal clambered off
without complaint, and she rushed back to Sarah thereafter. Then, both pegasi
spread their wings and jumped out the window, the sounds of flapping limbs
heralding their departure.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
In an expanse of a mostly-empty street that was heavily blanketed by silence
stood Shining Armor and a dozen guards that had only their helmets on arranged
in a single file line, all armed with bows hewn of blue crystal and nothing
but. They carried quivers filled with similarly-built arrows, and a good
fifteen or so yards from them stood flat stone targets that were upright thanks
to sturdy crystal stands. Each one sported three white lines painted on their
faces, dividing them into six even parts.
The Emperor stood before the targets, eyeing all of the assembled ponies
present with a cold gaze that kept them glued to their spots. Sandwiched
between two burly earth pony guards was Anna, armed with her stone-and-crystal
bow and quiver full of similar arrows. She was wearing the dress that Rarity
had sewn for her, her mane tied back thanks to the red ribbon and drill-
baubles. She fidgeted for a moment, trying to suppress a frown, but found
herself unable to do so with the tranquility that lingered.
So she took the opportunity to look at each guard's exposed cutie mark, frown
deepening when she found a distinct lack of any that had either a bow, and
arrow, or both in the mix. Three had shields, four had pikes, one had a pair of
horseshoes, and the last four boasted swords on their hips. A niggling feeling
began to sink in, only to amplify when she turned to face of one of the guards
to find him looking back at her. Immediately, she turned right back to the
targets, as if pretending she didn't just witness something indecent.
The two burly guards, meanwhile, let their gazes dart back and forth from their
Emperor, to the stone targets, then to Anna and back again. One of them, with a
steel grey coat and a sword cutie mark, decided to pipe up. "Emperor, why is
one of our Fantasian guests standing among us?" he asked with a slight frown.
"She and I are doing a joint project—I decided to add a new event to this
year's Faire, but to do that, I would require help and some testing
beforehoof," Shining answered without fail, giving the grey guard no more than
a brief look before he turned to Anna and nodded to her. "That's where our
guest comes in. I needed somepony in the field of archery to help me set up
targets and such."
The other burly guard, this one sporting an olive green coat and the horseshoes
cutie mark, went and inserted his two bits. "How's it gonna spice up the
Faire?" he questioned.
Shining donned a smirk with a sly cast to it. "Well, a couple of weeks before
the barrier broke, a few of the citizens told me they wanted to practice their
archery skills. Almost all of them had cutie marks related to the activity," he
began in a calm, rather convincing tone of voice. "And I've been at a loss at
how to satisfy that small bunch—"
The olive green guard had the temerity to cut Shining off, "So, this is for
them, then?"
Shining paused, and he gave a small chuckle. "You could say that, and then
some. However, the bows you carry are enchanted—how, I'm not certain. Which is
why I have you all assembled tonight, to see what the enchantments are and what
they can do. If I deem them safe enough, then we can carry on with this
experimental event I have in mind," he replied. This caused the guards to
exchange glances with one another, with almost none of them paying heed to
Anna's presence.
After a few seconds passed, the grey guard used a hoof to point at Anna. "Is
she gonna be a test subject or something?" he asked.
"More to simulate an average citizen around these parts," Shining replied with
an amused snort. "That, and to pose a bit of a challenge for you lot, since
I've selected you bunch because you lack archery-related cutie marks."
"Doesn't mean we still can't be good at archery," the olive green guard huffed.
"You do have a point, Peridot," Shining agreed with a nod, still grinning like
a conniving bastard. "So, who's up first? Any volunteers?" None of the guards
answered with words or gestures, and Shining opened his mouth to repeat his
inquiry when he saw a tan-beige hoof marked by a golden horseshoe rise up
between Peridot and the steel-grey guard.
At this, he laughed as the hoof dropped and Anna trotted no more than three
paces ahead of the row, her horn already glowing and her magic gripping her
bow. "Oh goody," Peridot grumbled, his brow furrowing as Anna pulled out an
arrow from her quiver and poised her bow in front of her.
As the guest loaded the drawstring and pulled it taut, the steel grey guard
nudged Peridot with a hoof. "Look at the arrow," he hissed with a firm frown.
"Why should I do that, Tempered Stone?" Peridot groaned, his eyes nonetheless
falling on the arrow itself. The color of the crystal fletching and head
changed to a fierce red, briefly pulsing before it was launched. When the
projectile firmly embedded itself into the dead center of a target just seconds
later, red crystals erupted from the arrow and spread onto the entire face of
the target. They stayed like that prior to turning black and then dissipating
into vermillion flames, which left the slab charred black.
The entire platoon jumped back in surprise, and Peridot and Stone scooted
closer to their fellows and away from Anna. "Th-th… she knows crystal magic!"
one of them yelled.
"Dark crystal magic!" Peridot cried, his eyes bugging out of their sockets.
It was around this time that Anna turned her head to the guards and let a hoof
connect to her face, but she didn't bother to close her eyes as they
momentarily turned crimson in color. This ended up making the guards freak out
more, to the point they drew their bows and loaded arrows into the drawstrings.
All of the loaded projectiles fell in her direction before Shining could have a
chance to object to the notion. "Sombra's influence has reached her!" Stone
exclaimed.
"Enough!" Shining barked in a voice loud enough to echo in the streets, forcing
the guards to lower their weapons with his magic. "There is no way Sombra's
influence has reached her! The Crystal Heart destroyed him, if I recall
correctly! Last I checked, not even his magic could so much as crack the
barrier between the worlds! All of you, calm down at once!"
Reluctantly, the guards shuffled back into a single file line, with Stone and
Peridot leaving a space for Anna to settle in between them whenever she felt
like it. Shining nodded to them, still juggling their weapons in his magic,
firmly frowning at them in disapproval. He turned to Anna as she slowly slid
her hoof along the bridge of her muzzle, and he saw her red irises just seconds
before they reverted back to their green hue.
"What… explains the red eyes?" he asked in a much softer voice, which caused
her to turn to him for a few seconds.
Anna immediately turned away, forelegs crossing together for a few seconds or
so. "I'm… hexed," she murmured in a tone so low that Shining strained his ears
to even hear her speak.
"Beg your pardon?" Shining asked, still keeping his voice low.
"I'm hexed," Anna repeated, this time loud enough for everypony else in the
immediate vicinity to hear her. She still kept her gaze elsewhere, as if the
mere act of meeting anypony's gaze at this point had potential to send them
into another panicked frenzy.
Shining trotted up to her and lifted a hoof to let it rest on her withers. "Do
you want to talk about it?" he asked.
Anna shook her head. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you how I got hexed,"
she mumbled in reply, a gait of shame in her tone. "Besides, I'm getting the
feeling that I am currently surrounded by idiots," she added, removing an arrow
from her quiver using her magic and gesturing to the guards present with it.
Shining nodded and waited for her to put her projectile back into its container
before he tenderly patted her on the shoulder and then dropped his hoof. With
that done, he wasted no time turning to once more scowl at his assembled
guards.
"Her bow is enchanted. Her curse, whatever it is, may or may not have anything
to do with her weaponry. Do not aim another arrow in her direction again. Am I
understood?" he barked. When his troops nodded, he relinquished his magical
hold on their bows and watched intently as they put their arrows back into
their quivers. "Good." He turned to Anna and nodded to her once more.
"Continue, please."
He trotted out of her way, and Anna sighed begrudgingly before loading another
arrow into her drawstring. This time, the fletching and point changed to blue,
and she fired without further hesitation. The second arrow landed smack-dab
next to the first, and a thin layer of frost immediately accumulated and
covered a fraction of the scorch marks the earlier flames left behind.
After that, she unloaded a third whose crystals turned yellow even before she
plucked it out of her quiver, and when it connected solidly with the target
golden sparks erupted all around it for a full second only to die another
second later. Then she loaded three more and fired them all at once, each one
landing on the target at the same time before she finally trotted to stand
between Stone and Peridot. She paused to give them both glares, making them
stiffen in response.
A full minute passed before Shining spoke up again. "Private Peridot, you're
up," he barked. Peridot frantically nodded and trotted three steps ahead,
putting the bow vertically in front of him and craning his neck to grasp the
non-business end of an arrow with his teeth. Greenish-blue mana pulsed from his
hooves and resonated through the street at first, before small crystal
formations popped up with tealish power and gripped the bottom of the bow,
keeping it upright.
"Good, for earth pony standards," Stone called out, chuckling when Peridot
grumbled with the arrow still in his mouth. He watched as his affiliate loaded
the projectile into the drawstring and pulled it taut, taking no more than a
step back to ensure that he could actually fire the damned thing safely. The
bow bent almost to breaking point, its string straining to hold itself. Both
entities briefly glowed a bright blue, right until the very moment the
projectile was released.
It whistled through the air and thunked on another target that was unmolested
until then, and ice formed rapidly on a decent chunk of the stone surface.
"Huh." Shining trotted to the target and inspected it thoroughly. "Frost
arrows…" He thought this over for a minute. "Alright." He turned his attention
back to the guards. "Let's have another few test rounds, just to be certain."
"Throhilte-chrischalkhit fhezhiit khomæcht," Stone grumbled as Peridot fell
back into the line, leaving his bow where it was. Anna heard what he uttered
and turned to him with a brow raised.
"What'd you say?" Anna asked, tilting her head when Stone turned to look at
her. "I don't understand ancient alicorn."
"I didn't speak in ancient alicorn," Stone growled, unaware that Shining turned
to look at him. "I spoke in my native tongue—it's Diamæntian, for your
information."
"What did I hear?" Shining snapped, galloping over and skidding to a halt. The
action grabbed Stone's attention, and he went wide-eyed as his Emperor glared
at him.
Sweat began dotting Stone's brow. "Uh… nothing, Your Highness," he replied in a
wavering voice.
Anna glanced between Shining and Stone, as if unaware of the fact that the pony
next to her began oozing liquid bullets. "Can somepony fill me in here,
please?" she asked.
Shining turned to her and sighed. "I could've sworn somepony called you a
'dark-crystal-making bitch' in a native tongue just now," he replied.
"I-it was Peridot!" Stone exclaimed, lifting a hoof and pointing it at his
affiliate. Shining turned to said pony, who frantically shook his head and
pointed back at Stone as if silently saying, 'Nu-uh, he did it!' with the
gesture alone.
"Nyætch nogh!" Stone yelled when Shining turned back to him with another glare.
"Mhæ vherzi whuugh thofiigh, khamæ vriik khafriiveo dhimivræ hractæ!" Shining
yelled back, watching as Stone's ears pinned back and his brow slanted, bullets
of sweat now dripping down his face. "Ghreziilki?!" When the guard nodded,
Shining's glare softened, but only a bit. It was then that he looked to Anna
for a moment.
"I told him he'd undergo disciplinary action if I heard another peep out of
him, and asked if he understood," Shining stated, garnering a wide-eyed look
from Anna. "You don't understand Diamæntian?" he asked, getting a nod as his
answer. "I see. Remind me to have a translator on hoof whenever I start going
off in ancient tongue." He then turned to the palace, and could've sworn he saw
something launching itself from a window, but it was too far away for him to
properly discern what it was, let alone where it landed.
Then he found two more somethings launching from that same window, and his brow
rose as they weaved around the palace in the air for a moment before homing in
on the gathering. As they approached, he realized that they were two pegasus
guards who were heading directly for him, one lilac and the other orange. His
eyes widened when he saw that one of them sported fresh bruises on his neck as
they got closer.
"What now?" Shining grumbled as the two pegasi swooped over in a smooth circle
and landed in front of the targets. He turned to them and saw harried looks
painting both faces.
"I-it's urgent, sir," Zephyr began with a shaky voice. "A-Aquamarine has been
incapacitated, and Flash Sentry was a-attacked."
***** Chapter XXXVI, Part II- 'Fhræm Zhik' *****
Shining's face morphed, first from blinking confusion and then to narrow-eyed
anger, as Flash and Zephyr briefed him and the other guards on what had
happened. When the two pegasi finished, their Emperor's face softened, though
only slightly as he began to grit his teeth. "I see," he muttered through said
clenched teeth. "Go to the guest rooms, both of you." Flash and Zephyr nodded
and flared their wings, wasting no time in flapping them and taking off to the
castle as soon as they were airborne.
Anna sat on her haunches, growling and throwing her front hooves into the air a
few seconds after Zephyr and Flash had departed. "Lovely," she hissed with
narrowed eyes as she turned back to Shining, her eyes once more glinting red.
"Somepony's cruisin' for a bruisin', and of the worst sort!"
Shining nodded with a snort, one which held no amusement. "Whoever this shadow
is, they're messing with the wrong ponies," he agreed, turning to the assembled
bunch before clearing his throat. "Guards! We shall withhold practice for
tomorrow morning! Get back to your posts, and take your bows with you."
"What about her?" Peridot asked, using a hoof to gesture to Anna.
"I'll escort her to the guest rooms myself," Shining replied. He waited for the
guards to trot away, though he could've sworn he heard them mumbling as their
backs turned to him. He didn't ask what they were going on about even after
they went out of sight minutes later, though he came to the conclusion that
they threw crass remarks in an ancient tongue. He turned back to the stone
targets.
Anna rose to stand again, although this time she went upright. She used her
magic to make her bow and quiver vanish in brief explosions of light, taking a
moment to look around before she turned to the palace itself. "You think we
should do anything with the targets?" she asked.
Shining sighed and used his magic to pry the arrows off of the targets,
likewise making them vanish in light. "Leave them out," he replied, watching as
the frost that had accumulated melted away in seconds. This ended up causing
some of the white lines to streak along the stone frames unto which they'd been
scrawled, save for the burnt one. He then turned to and trotted towards Anna,
making sure to go just close enough without stepping on the hem of her gown.
"Are you alright?"
"Just… irked is all," Anna replied, still maintaining her upright stance. She
watched as Shining trotted around her and started heading to the palace, and
she followed him after first reverting to all fours. They went in silence,
though they stopped before they could pass the Crystal Heart, which still spun
and changed colors of its own accord. "Can we please make that stop changing
colors? It's been bugging me."
Shining glanced at Anna and promptly rolled his eyes at her. "Cadence is
working on it. If we touch it before she finds a solution, I doubt the end
result would be… favorable," he groaned.
Anna's left eye twitched. "And what's the probability of a favorable end result
if we tamper with it now?" she asked, a spark of curiosity alight in her eyes.
"Put it like this: as likely as the holes in Katie's legs mending themselves,
not to mention her muzzle and her horn growing back on top of that," Shining
replied with a frown.
"And since she can't feed anyway…" Anna trailed off, mentally connecting the
dots as she turned to and then stared at Shining.
"Yep. Bad juju," Shining tersely finished for her in a cynical tone, one
accompanied with a curt nod. He turned to the nearest leg of the palace and
trotted to it, casting a magenta light with his horn as he went. Anna followed
suit, though she didn't let her horn glow, and a few minutes of silence passed
as they trotted up the stairs. Neither uttered so much as one syllable as they
found the third door that lead to the the corresponding floor, let alone as
they made their way to the guest rooms at a sluggish pace.
Around a full half-hour passed before the familiar hall lined with many doors
came into sight, adorned with a few guards at their posts, in addition to Flash
and Zephyr standing between two doors. Both pegasi stood to either side of—and
they also had a front hoof resting on the withers of—a green-faced Aquamarine
who had a bucket in front of him.
"Are you well?" Shining asked, trotting up to Aquamarine to inspect him a
little better, his head lowering and rising as he scanned each and every
feature the blue stallion held. His brow furrowed at the color of his visage,
in addition to a magic inhibitor at the base of his horn and hoof-sized bruises
dotting his neck.
"N-no sir," Aquamarine replied in a raspy voice, turning to Shining with half-
lidded and bloodshot eyes. "H-had a rough night."
Shining nodded in understanding, and glanced at Flash and then Zephyr. "You
three are on break tomorrow. Unless you are threatened by whatever tried to do
you in again, of course," he stated.
Zephyr's eyes widened. "Me? As well?" His voice was an octave higher as the
words came out of his mouth. "B-but sir, I-I wasn't—"
Shining cut him off with a wave of his hoof before, "You're just with these
two, in case the assailant decides to show up again. Better to have a pony
fighting fit than two wounded, even if the wounds in question are minor
inflictions. I'm playing it safe."
Zephyr blinked and then nodded with an accompanying, "Ooooooh." He followed up
with a salute via a wing. "Yes sir."
Shining nodded. "Now that is what I like to hear," he chirped with a small
smile. He turned to Aquamarine and let his smile fall before he added in
another two bits, "You don't look so well. I think you should head off to hit
the hay."
He flinched when the sod's cheeks bulged like twin pufferfish, and he flung a
hoof to his mouth, jostling the bucket in front of him with the motion and
almost tipping it over in the process. Anna tipped it back with her magic until
its bottom rested flat against the floor, gagging alongside Shining when liquid
sloshed within and a foul aroma—one heavily acidic that was sour and vaguely
smelled of wheat straw—hit their noses as a result.
"I agree with your Emperor. You need a nap," Anna stated bluntly, her face
turning a mild shade of verdant the longer the acrid stench tickled her nose.
She backed away a bit, hoping to get away from the smell, but stopped upon
accidentally stepping on the hem of her own garment with a back hoof. So she
then turned around, flung open a random door with her magic, and trotted in all
the while raising a front hoof to cover her nose.
The archer almost immediately trotted right back out, slamming the door behind
her with her magic and making the guards who were closest to it jump back a
bit. With a hoof still over her nose and pupils beginning to dilate, she sighed
and trotted over to the door on the right using three legs. Shining turned to
her, a brow raised high. "Is something wrong?" he asked.
"Accidentally trotted in on Matt and Natz," Anna murmured in reply, her ears
falling back against her head. "They're so deep asleep that I doubt the door
woke them." Unfortunately for her, hooves hit the floor behind the door before
it opened up with a golden aura aiding it, causing Shining to turn to it to
find a scowling Matt standing in the frame. His eyes were bloodshot, his mane
and fur were tangled messes, and one corner of his lip was twitching
sporadically.
"Next time you or anypony else does that, I'm sticking a pot on your head
before I bang it with the sturdiest wooden spoon I can find," Matt hissed, his
statement causing Anna to first bristle and then stiffen. With that, he snorted
and trotted into his room, gently closing the door behind him with his magic,
leaving the guards to glance amongst themselves before they all turned to Anna.
For but a minute, silence took hold, only to be broken the very next minute
when another door that was next to Zephyr creaked open and Katie bumbled into
the hall with orbs constantly dimming. "Who ticked off Godcat this time?" she
asked as a hoof rose to her mouth and she opened it, which led to a wide yawn
leaving her lips. As soon as she spoke, all hooves flew to point at Anna rather
accusingly. Katie then turned to the archer and uttered just one word, "How?"
"It was an… accident. I'll apologize for it tomorrow," Anna replied, her legs
shifting for a few seconds.
"Uh-huh," Katie hummed sarcastically, slowly nodding and with both brows
raised.
Zephyr piped up after rolling his eyes, "I'll believe that was an accident the
moment your general's other two highest-ranking subordinates decide to take his
helm for themselves." The others turned to him, with half of the faces on
sporting raised brows and the other half wide-eyed as if he'd just snorted
crack. "What? She slammed the door—I was just stating the obvious."
"Just don't egg them on further, please," Shining stated calmly, his nose
twitching as the still-acrid aroma lingered about. He turned to Aquamarine and
added, "And please dispose of what's in that bucket. I don't want to smell it
any longer, and I think your fellow guards may feel the same."
Aquamarine languidly nodded, using a hoof to pick up the bucket without
spilling its contents. "Fhræm zhik," he replied.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Matt threw himself on the bed, wide awake and grumbling about how he hated
every second of the fact. Natalie lay next to him, turning to look at him with
her mane and coat as much of a mess as his, and her eyes even more bloodshot.
"Want me to conjure some pain pills?" Natalie groaned, her voice scratchy and
strained.
Matt shook his head, lifting a foreleg to wrap it around his bedmate and pull
her a little closer to him. He nuzzled her behind the ear, feeling her ear
twitch and flick in response. "Unless the pain pills can make me sleepy too,"
he murmured, garnering a sigh.
"Let's just take them now, and see if we get sleepy twenty minutes after,"
Natalie stated, her shoulders twitching as her horn began to glow. A few
seconds passed, and the azure light dimmed before fizzing out, whereafter she
rose a hoof to her head and rubbed her temples with eyes slamming shut. "Fuck.
My head hurts so much I can't concentrate worth shit."
"Great, we're stuck with the headaches," Matt thought, a firm frown forming on
his muzzle. He snorted in resignation, inadvertently causing Natalie's ear to
flick and brush up against his mouth again.
Natalie threw her head onto the pillow, groaning in defeat. "You think the
headache'll go away if we wait?" she asked, a hint of desperation in her voice.
"Maybe," Matt replied with a shrug, pulling away and reclaiming his side of the
bed. A good thirty minutes passed, and the two tossed and turned as they tried
to go back to sleep, yet no matter how much they wiggled about in the bed they
didn't tire themselves out. He sat up and crawled off the bed after another
fifteen minutes spent hopelessly flailing about had passed. "I'm going to wash
my face."
"Let me know when you're done, so I can have a turn," Natalie murmured as Matt
trotted to a door at the side of the room. He opened it and entered the
bathroom beyond, heading right for the sink and turning the knobs with his
magic. Waiting until it had a warm, steady flow of water, he grappled some of
it with more magic and flung it onto his face. It stung a bit, but then faded
into a coolness that came only because the water began to immediately evaporate
in the relatively lukewarm air.
Yet this only made his head hurt worse. The cooling liquid wasn't enough to
quell the rush of blood to his cranium. At this, his brow furrowed, and he
doused himself face-first in more liquid. He turned off the sink and trotted
back to bed, grumbling about how he was going to wail on somepony if the pain
didn't go away.
"I take it you're done?" Natalie asked, her utterance halting the threatening
murmurs her roommate was making.
"Yeah," Matt answered with a nod. He flopped onto the bed with a grunt. "My
head is still killing me. See if you have better luck with the sink." Natalie
got out of the bed herself, and went to the sink in the bathroom to wash her
face. It did nothing for her either, other than briefly sting before rapidly
cooling. After that, she returned to bed, and for another few minutes the two
Fantasians laid still, though they remained wide awake.
Sleep, it seemed, was going to be a tricky thing to attain tonight. The mere
notion may as well have been damned on this eve.
"Any other ideas?" Matt asked, his tail whipping just once and sending long
blond locks everywhere for a moment.
"A trot around the room, or down the hall sound good?" Natalie replied, her
tail lifting a little, only to drop back down seconds later.
"Whatever works," Matt murmured with a languid nod, and with that both climbed
out of the bed and jogged around the room shoulder-by-shoulder. A good ten laps
around the room later, they were still going at it, yet neither panted for
breath or broke a sweat. Another ten laps after that, and they flopped on the
bed, brows furrowed and chests heaving.
Yet still they could not fall asleep, even after they had caught their breath.
Natalie crawled off the bed and trotted to the window, taking a few minutes to
look at the sky. She turned to Matt when a golden flash erupted and faded in
the corner of her eye, finding that Discord had teleported into the room
unannounced. "Yeeees?" she asked, watching as he strode over to a small table
at the side.
Discord made a small pile of books appear on the room's table with a snap of
his talons. "Fluttershy told me to get you two to go to sleep. She didn't like
hearing you pound your hooves on the floor," he said, prior to vanishing in
another light.
Matt clambered out of the bed and made for the books, his steps silent and his
curiosity piqued. "The hell?" he mumbled upon reaching the table, using a hoof
to scoop up one of the books. He set it back down after examining the title.
"Okay, it's in ancient alicorn." The utterance caused Natalie to canter over to
him and examine a book herself. She picked it up with both front hooves after
sitting on her haunches and she leafed through it, only to sigh and put it down
well before she reached the tenth page.
"No; it's not ancient alicorn. It looks like it's in Diamæntian," Natalie
stated, causing Matt to look at her with widening eyes.
"You understand that gobbledygook?" he asked disbelievingly.
"Not really." Natalie shrugged, turning to meet Matt's gaze with a level look.
"I only said it looks the part, not that I can read it."
"Oooooh." Matt nodded in understanding, mentally bucking himself square in the
barrel. He let a hoof stray to his face, but then dropped it before the two
entities could connect. "I guess the booze and hangover are getting to me."
"And a lack of sleep," Natalie scoffed, turning to the bed and trotting over to
it. She flopped on the mattress for the third time that night, and Matt gave
the books one last glance before following suit. "You think we should get
something to drink?"
Matt shook his head and waved a hoof dismissively. "If we got Discord to do
that for us, he'd probably have the drinks make us both breath fire," he
huffed. "He just gave us books we can't read, for Godcat's sake."
Natalie opened her mouth to argue, but she closed it upon considering Matt's
remark. So the two, yet again, lay in silence. Their brains constantly racked
for ideas that they could enact just so they could get some more sleep and get
rid of their headaches in the process. Though only after an hour and a half of
doing nothing but contemplate, each and every idea was eventually struck down.
Matt groaned and flung his front hooves into the air. Out of desperation and
without thinking first, he uttered in a harsh whisper, "I want to sleep so bad,
but my head's killing me! What will it take for me to go to sleep already? I
may as well fuck the damned pillows—I'll eat my braids if that doesn't make me
sleepy!"
Natalie turned to Matt, a brow raised. "I don't think the pillows can please
you that good," she stated matter-of-factly. "You might have Cornucopia dick."
Matt deflated, dropping his front hooves. "Yeah, a pillow doesn't sound too
good…" he murmured, eyes narrowing. "Wouldn't want to get bedmane."
"You already have bedmane, dumbass." Matt scoffed at his companion's utterance
and reached a hoof to stroke his mane, only to snarl when he found a lumpy
tangle about the length of a bundle of feathers. "Should we swap sides?"
Natalie suggested, eyes going half-lided like she was getting bored.
"No; at this rate, it'd just keep us awake longer," Matt replied in a firm
tone. He buried his face into the pillow and released a series of muffled
curses into the fabric, swearing this and that and mumbling so much more
nonsense that Natalie could've sworn she heard him say he'd get Anna and Lance
drunk just to see what would happen. She made to comment on his grumblings, but
he lifted his face from the pillow and turned to her with an irritated look
that made her hesitate. "What? You gonna suggest something else?"
Natalie pursed her lips together, brow furrowing just slightly as she stared
into her companion's eyes. The two stared at each other, both sets of eyes
unblinking, ears twitching as if waiting for the other to back down or make a
move. Yet neither shifted in the slightest, save for their ears. "Truth or
dare," Natalie began in a calm voice, her eyelids twitching as they strained to
stay open.
"Truth," Matt replied tersely, blinking just once as a small grin crossed his
muzzle.
Natalie donned a wild smirk. "What's Sarah's harp made out of?" she asked, and
the inquiry caused her companion to immediately balk.
"Uh… um… tarnished steel?" Matt guessed, his response only eliciting a shake of
the head from Natalie, whose smirk grew. "Do you know what it's made of?"
"Nope," Natalie replied nonchalantly. "I do not."
Matt lifted a front hoof and pointed it right at her face. "Then the question
was invalid! Now you have to do a dare!" he snarled.
Natalie's smirk widened a little more. "Says who?" she retorted, lifting her
own hoof to bat Matt's away. She saw a gleam in his eyes and sighed. "Fine.
Dare me, blond fucker," she taunted.
Matt put a hoof to his chin and rubbed it for a bit, humming lowly as his mind
began whirring. There were so many possible dares that a bucket list wouldn't
be able to contain them all, and some small part of him wanted her to do
something ridiculous for shits and giggles. Another part of him wanted her to
be safe and not laughed at her own expense. After a few seconds he settled on
something simple, and lifted his hoof to gesture to the pile of books that
Discord had left behind. "Try to read one of those things," he said.
Natalie crawled out of the bed and cantered over to the books, scooping one up
with her hooves once she was within reach. She leafed through the pages before
settling on one somewhere in the middle of the book, though the parchments
glowed as she began to read. Then, the papers dissolved and reformed into a
sort of swirling miniature vortex, with the insides of the leather cover
glowing bright purple.
Next thing she knew, white assailed her vision, and a creamy substance
splattered all around her cranium. In addition to that, something round and
metallic landed on her face, complete with a sound like a knife managing to
slice through aluminum. She slammed the book closed, causing the paper to
return to its prior shape and its form to stop glowing, before putting it down
and lifting a hoof to wipe at her eyes. With her vision cleared, she turned to
her hoof to stare at it for a second or two, before hesitantly sticking out her
tongue to lick at the substance that had accumulated.
"Remind me to convince Fluttershy to make Discord drink laxative one of these
days," Natalie hissed, lifting her other hoof to grapple whatever else got on
her head. She grasped it and cast it aside, finding it to be an aluminum pie
tin with a puncture in its bottom that vanished before it could land. She
wasted no time turning around and then trotting to Matt on three legs. When she
reached him, she thrust her substance-covered hoof in his face. "Oh, and lick
that and tell me what it tastes like."
"Is it edible?" Matt asked, garnering a slow nod from Natalie as his answer.
She waved her hoof for a bit, until he stuck his tongue out and did as he was
instructed, immediately getting a salty and meaty flavor on his taste buds with
a hint of smokiness to it. "It's…" He clicked his tongue against the roof of
his mouth, trying to pinpoint what the taste was. He stuck his tongue out and
licked more of the substance off his roommate's hoof, and then his eyes lit up
in realization. "Bacon flavored…"
"If this is Discord's idea of a prank on us, then the joke's on him," Natalie
commented, shifting to sit on her haunches. She flinched when Matt jammed her
drenched hoof into his mouth, blinking when he released it a few seconds later
and it came out merely saliva-covered as a result.
"Mhm," Matt chirped before licking his lips. "Say, are you going to wash that
off?" he asked, using a hoof to gesture to the mess still dripping from
Natalie's head. She nodded, but let him swipe some excess off of her cheek
before she stood up and tottered off to the bathroom to clean the rest up. When
she returned with a wet-but-clean head a minute later, he'd licked his hoof
clean, and turned to her with a small and pleased grin.
"Take it you're happy?" she asked, her inquiry resulting in a nod from her
companion.
Matt chuckled and shifted his legs, more to stretch them and make sure they
didn't go numb than to get cozy. He let his head fall onto the pillow, and
though his hangover still lingered, it dulled to faint throbs as he ignored it.
"Has your headache gone away? Mine hasn't, but at least I have had bacon-
flavored pie," he stated, still grinning.
"Yeah. My headache hasn't gone away too, but I also liked the pie. It was…
quite funny, now that I dwell on it," Natalie replied, letting a smile form on
her visage. A giggle wormed its way out of her mouth as she added, "Truth be
told, I helped myself to another sample."
"You feel tired, though?" Matt pressed, his smile fading. When Natalie shook
her head, he sighed glumly. "Wanna continue that truth-or-dare game, or no?"
"I'd like to continue it." Natalie used a hoof to gesture to the pile of books.
"But let's steer clear of that pile of leatherbound parchment. I don't know
what else it can do."
"Yeah, sounds like a plan," Matt agreed, waiting until the mare clambered onto
the bed next to him before he spoke again. "So, truth or dare?"
"Dare me, Speckles," Natalie replied with a snort.
Now, it was Matt's turn to don a wild grin. "Aside from the books, is it all
out?" he asked. When Natalie nodded, his response was to wrap a hoof around her
neck and pull her in close. "I dare you to get Lance and Anna extra
Cornucopias."
Natalie squirmed a bit, barely suppressing another giggle. "I don't think
they'll drink any," she retorted. "I think they'd breath fire."
"Hrm…" Matt's smile broadened. "Then you dare me."
Natalie smirked, and she closed her eyes before turning away to think on the
next dare for a minute. She appeared calm and serene, but she only held that
look for a few seconds before her eyes snapped wide open with a feral gleam.
She turned back to Matt and leaned in so her cheek rested against his neck.
"You know…the truth-and-dare game's already getting boring. And it's been
forever since we only had time to ourselves," she remarked, feeling her
roommate tense slightly. Her eyes closed again, and she added, "Then again,
it's been awhile since I tried bashing you with my staff." She sighed through
her nostrils. "Rainbow Dash may've been right; we're wrangling a bed in the
Valkyrie the next time we have to sleep in it."
Matt managed to stifle a laugh. "Lance would bitch, though," he replied.
"The tank has those chests; we could just lock the blankets and pillows safely
and they wouldn't fly all over the place," Natalie retorted with a giggle.
"Unless the lieutenants and sergeants remove them before we come back to
Fantasia, though I doubt that will happen," Matt argued, chuckling again. Then
he registered the 'time to ourselves' bit a little late and his eyes
immediately widened. He turned to her and began speaking, "A-are you saying—"
"Maybe we could… I dunno, spend a little time together?" Natalie suggested in a
sweet voice, shifting to nestle her head between her front legs.
"I dunno, you were—" Matt began again, only for Natalie to raise a hoof up and
jam it between his teeth to silence him.
"If you're speaking about Half-horn Midgetcock, let me be blunt: he has to live
with the consequences of his actions; I don't, as callous as that sounds,"
Natalie hissed, her smile fading for a moment. She pulled her hoof from his
mouth and continued, "Besides, he's already shot himself in the hooves earlier
today; his compatriots will very likely follow suit, so their shenanigans—if
any are being performed—will cease soon enough."
Matt considered her argument, and he leaned in so that his muzzle was behind
her ear again. "Fair point," he agreed in a whisper, causing the ear to twitch
as he spoke. "Are you sure, though?"
"Mhm." Natalie's hind legs shifted a bit, folding so that her hooves rested
next to her belly. Her tail twitched again, but only a little, and her
companion barely caught the slight shift in the corner of his eye. "You up for
it, or not?" she asked, turning to look him in the eye again. She watched
intently as Matt's face shifted, first from partially-lidded consideration to a
tiny twitch of the corner of his mouth, before he finally donned a small grin.
"Fine. If this can knock our lights out, then I'm all for it." Matt lifted his
hoof, only to shift it and let it settle on her side a second later. He pressed
gently on her stomach, then slid his leg around her before standing up on three
legs, dragging her rear end into the air. "Slow, or quick?" he questioned when
his roommate betrayed a shudder.
"Mmm, slow. We might need to hold our mouths shut," Natalie replied, a small
but sultry grin forming on her face. She tensed when the half-Clydesdale
shifted abruptly, and her front legs pressed against the mattress in response.
"Whoa, easy there," she chided. "I don't want a bruise, thank you."
"Alright, alright," Matt piped up, garnering a nod from the mare. She closed
her eyes, barely missing the grin that framed his muzzle, but she did not miss
the tell-tale shifting of weight on the bed as he pulled her under him. She
opened her eyes when the hoof holding her parted from her underside, and opened
her mouth to comment when it prodded her a little behind the left cutie mark.
She shivered momentarily. "D-don't keep me waiting," she whined impatiently,
though there was an undertone of nervousness in her voice. She felt him shift a
bit, biting her lip as he lowered his front quarters to let his chest rest on
her withers, with one leg wrapping around her barrel and the other folding next
to hers for support.
Both of them heard a creak, caught a flash of gold in the corners of their
eyes, and they immediately jumped. Their oculars nearly bugged out and their
pupils shrank, all before they scrambled off the bed as soon as the bathroom
door swung open. They stared, stiff as boards, at the perpetrator who had the
gall to interrupt them by standing in the doorway unannounced—none other than
Discord.
"I do hate to ruin your fun," Discord sneered, wearing a wide and toothy grin
on his face. He gestured to Matt with a talon and asked, "Have you looked
between your rear legs yet?" He snapped the digits of his paw and added,
"Because I think that would be wise."
Matt swallowed a lump and lifted a front hoof, craning his neck to peer at his
inner thighs. Materializing around his loins was a cylinder of metal, one that
clamped around his sheath and tightened. He yelped in pain and looked to his
hips, finding more bands of steel forming from the cylinder and around his
flanks in the shape of a belt. Then he turned to Discord, trying to articulate
a response, only to speak in gibberish dialects again because his jaws jittered
beyond control.
"I'm afraid I cannot have you two… doing anything intimate with my friend next
door and a curious foal a few rooms down. I hope you understand—it'll come off
tomorrow, don't you worry your pretty little head about it," Discord chirped,
closing the door with a stifled laugh.
Matt and Natalie exchanged glances, then slowly turned to the pile of books and
back to Discord. "Can we ask Fluttershy to talk to him tomorrow?" she asked in
a low voice as soon as she and her roommate exchanged another look.
"At this rate, I don't think she would," Matt replied, a sullen frown forming
on his muzzle. Then the bathroom door opened again, and they turned their
attention to it to find that Discord decided to reemerge in his pony guise.
"Oh, by the way, have you seen Twilight and Spike and Zecora earlier today?"
Discord asked, lifting a hoof and examining it like a watch had been attached
to it.
"No," Matt answered with a shake of his head.
"We fell asleep," Natalie added with a shrug.
"Oh, great," Discord stated in a sarcastic tone, turning to the two Fantasians
with a hint of a frown. "Head out into the hall, both of you."
Matt looked at his new accessory and tried to pry it off with a hoof, only to
stop with a whimper when the whole thing tightened threateningly. He turned
back to Discord. "You expect me to trot around with this thing on?" he
protested.
Discord yawned into his hoof, then looked at the hapless stallion with his eyes
half-lidded. "Would you rather trot out swinging?" he asked in a monotone
voice, using the hoof he yawned into to make a pendulum motion. Matt shook his
head. "Didn't think so. Now trot out, the both of you." The two Fantasians
exchanged glances, before they hesitantly obliged and immediately found
themselves face to face with Shining and Anna as soon as they were in the hall.
Anna took a moment to eye the steel garment girding Matt's hips, and she
frowned—whether in pity or anger, neither of the two were certain.
"Cockblocked, I take it?" she asked flatly, causing the pony wearing said
garment to turn to her.
"Don't ask," Matt hissed, his eyes narrowing for a bit. He turned to Shining,
and the expression eased. "What're you staring at?"
Shining said nothing, instead turning around and heading towards Flash Sentry
that now stood alone. He turned to a slightly open door that said guard stood
next to, and motioned with a hoof for the Fantasian trio to catch up. The three
complied, and found that Katie had trotted to them from the other side. The
group entered the room after Shining opened the door and went in first, finding
that it was empty.
"What's wrong?" Natalie asked, raising a brow as she scanned the room.
"I don't see anything problematic," Katie added with a buzz of her wings.
Shining mutely trotted to a table that stood next to the bed, and he picked
something up with his magic before handing it to his guests. "Read that,
please," he stated.
Anna summoned a light from her horn, shining it on the object to reveal that it
was a simple sheet of paper with something scrawled on it. She and the others
craned their necks to it, though Katie had to stand on her rear legs and rest
her front hooves on Natalie's barrel to support herself and see the thing up
close and personal. Matt read it out loud, his pupils shrinking as he relayed
what was on the parchment.
"Do not panic if me and Spike are not in our room. I couldn't sleep, and
neither could he—too many things were on our minds. We took Zecora with us to
the library to try and find something. We'll be back at sunrise.
-Twilight Sparkle
P.S. NoLegs decided to come with us for some reason. I think he couldn't sleep,
either.
***** Chapter XXXVII- Cocytus *****
The sound of hooves hitting crystal reverberated ceaselessly in the moonlit
library, with a faint halo shining in from the glass overhang above. The silver
light refracted upon the various surfaces of crystal, making the area seemingly
glow in the faintest of rainbows. Languidly trotting right into the moon's
illuminating gaze were Twilight and Zecora, with the former sporting Spike on
her back and an armored, dagger-carrying NoLegs on her head.
The four paused at one edge of the light, slowly swiveling their heads around
when they heard the faintest sound of shuffling hooves. NoLegs sniffed the air
a few times, and with a face morphing into a scrunched scowl that revealed
bared teeth and ears pinning back, he let off a low growl. The resulting noise
was quiet enough to not echo around the expansive shelves that lined either
side of him and the others, but it was loud enough to garner a glance from
Spike.
Zecora, likewise, immediately looked at the cat that seemed to be on the verge
of a hissyfit. "What is wrong? Are these halls too long?" she asked in a
whisper, garnering an immediate shake of the head from the feline.
The sound of shuffling hooves reverberated around them once more, and this time
the growling cat bristled, the fur on his tail puffing out as if he were scared
out of his mind. "I think we might have another visitor in these rows of
books…" Spike murmured, garnering a wide-eyed look from Zecora. He turned to
meet her gaze and used a claw to gesture to NoLegs as he added, "And I think
our Fantasian feline here has smelled them out and decided he doesn't like
them, whoever they are."
NoLegs stopped growling, and for a full minute the library fell absolutely
silent. His ears slowly lifted until they were standing straight, only to
swivel erratically in tandem with his whiskers twitching. His head snapped to
the left and then to the right, before his body fluffed out some more as he
hissed in that direction. Spike turned to where the cat had hissed, eyes
narrowing as he barely caught sight of a fleeting darkened form that tiptoed
around a corner of a shelf. "Twilight, you think NoLegs might be onto
something?" he asked, worry flickering in his irises.
"I'm going to assume he smelled a pony that didn't bathe in a while… or
something," Twilight replied, her voice breaking when the words 'didn't bathe'
left her mouth.
The utterance prompted Spike to lift a claw and let it connect with his
forehead. "I would have smelled it by now if that were the case, and you would
have too," he grumbled indignantly, dragging his claw down his face and letting
it slide off of his chin. Once it was off of his face, he wasted no time
turning to NoLegs, who turned back and mewed with a nod of agreement.
"I believe he's being wary." Zecora rose a hoof and gently poked NoLegs on the
tail with it, causing him to look at her. "Do you use your blade to parry?" she
asked, garnering a hesitant nod accompanied by a mouth that shifted like the
cat wasn't sure whether he wanted to smile or not. He jumped off of Twilight's
head as a magenta light started shining from her horn, and he landed right
behind Spike in that single bound.
"Let's just see if we can find a book on Starswirl's travels, and if we come up
short, we could try again tomorrow," Twilight murmured, her shoulders slumping
for a bit before straightening out. "We shouldn't stay long, though." Her form
tensed a bit as she turned to Zecora, and she saw said mare nod in agreement,
as well as Spike and NoLegs from the corner of her eye.
Spike felt his makeshift mount tense, and moved his claws to let them rest on
her withers as she and Zecora began trotting shoulder-by-shoulder and out of
the moonlight. He smiled when NoLegs scooted closer to him and rubbed his cheek
on his back, careful to avoid letting his little helmet scratch at the scales.
Spike returned the gesture in kind, raising one claw up and over his shoulder
simply to rub at the back of the cat's ear. His smile widened when he heard a
soft purr that came as soon as the digits started gently scratching the
feline's head.
The group trotted on, passing by tiny slivers of more moonlight as they went,
with only constantly-shifting shadows and the soft clip-clop of their hooves to
accompany them on their way. At seemingly random intervals they paused, with
Twilight shining her light on the rows of books that surrounded her and her
group, reading aloud the various titles for just a minute. No more, no less
than a minute.
"'Ancient Aqueducts: Basic Construction,' 'How to Make Crystal Strawberry
Sorbet and Other Recipes…'" A brief pause, during which Twilight gave an
exasperated sigh before starting anew. "'Biographies of the Empire's Royalty,'
'Variants of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,' 'Types of Aquatic and Cavern-
Dwelling Creatures…'" Twilight snarled and turned away from the books, taking a
moment to lift a hoof and let it connect with her face in quick succession.
"No dice?" Spike guessed, garnering a nod and the sound of a hoof hitting the
crystal floor as his answer.
"No, Spike, I won a trillion bit lottery in Las Pegasus," Twilight snorted,
with heavy amounts sarcasm dripping from her tone as she briefly turned to
shoot a look with a tight frown and narrowed eyes at the drake. He smiled at
her in return, causing Twilight to sigh again.
With that, she turned to the shelves again and continued scanning the titles
dotting the book spines. Her visage morphed into a fierce scowl as she started
lifting books from the shelves with her magic, opening the damned things, and
reading a few pages before closing them and setting them where they were
plucked from. After repeating the process a few times, she groaned and then
tottered one entire bookshelf over and started plucking books all over again.
This dragged on for a good hour and an additional ten or so minutes. Twilight
fell into a thorough, if simple, pattern during that time: pluck books, analyze
books, return books, go one case over and try again. Rinse and repeat. Though
each time she did this, she yielded no results, unless her utterances as she
scanned the books counted as such.
"'How to Make Crystal Silk,' 'Arcane Spells for Beginning Mages,' 'Weather
Control…'" Twilight rambled on, unaware that Spike and NoLegs had turned to
each other and that the latter used his magic to conjure up a set of cards.
"Yeah, I get you, NoLegs. Twi's gotta be thorough—I should know," Spike sighed
with a frown, garnering a mew from the cat as he began to shuffle the cards.
"Is it alright if I joined your little game? It could be a while; Twilight's
anxiety, I cannot blame," Zecora interjected, cantering over. She watched as
Spike and NoLegs hopped off of Twilight's back and sat down, and she followed
suit as the cat simply shrugged and reshuffled the deck prior to distributing
some cards.
After another thirty minutes passed by that the three spent playing a few
rounds of go fish whilst keeping up with Twilight as she cleared and
subsequently put the shelves back together, Zecora sighed in exasperation and
lowered her set of cards. "Would you mind if I tried helping Twilight? I want
to help her out of her self-afflicted blight," she murmured. Upon getting nods
from the cat and drake, she set her cards down and stood up, waiting for the
two to pick up her hooffull and shuffle them into the deck.
That done, Zecora then trotted to the opposite set of shelves of the most
recent case that Twilight was busy tearing apart and began to scan the rows she
could easily access. She hummed, a brow quirking up when a book on a shelf
above her had a peculiar title that caught her eye. She reared up on her back
legs with a front hoof resting on another shelf to get a better look at it.
"Twilight, come here, I think I found what we're looking for. Maybe this is
what we need, though we may yet find more," she beckoned, causing the unicorn
in question to turn to her and trot over after setting the most recent book she
picked up away.
Twilight watched as Zecora used her non-supporting hoof to gesture to a
particular, leather-bound book whose cover seemed worn and had a few holes in
places along the spine, which unfortunately made the title illegible. Her magic
plucked it out with ease, and she brought it to her face before turning it so
she could see the title on the front cover.
The title was beset in what looked like runes, though somepony was generous
enough to leave a subtitle that she could easily read. "Early Fantasian and
Mythonian Relations, by Clover… is this genuine, a book written by a fraudulent
translator, or a copy leftover?" she asked, turning to her companion with a
brow raised. One of her front hooves flew to her mouth and her eyes widened
when she realized she'd just rhymed, causing Zecora to chuckle.
"I see that my habits are rubbing off on you. I'd put the hoof down, before you
go blue," Zecora quipped, dropping to all fours before raising a hoof to pry
Twilight's own away from her muzzle.
Twilight grinned, though the expression faltered slightly. She opened the book
and scanned a random page, sighing when she found that the scrawlings within
may as well have been ancient hieroglyphs transcribed to parchment. She flipped
a page, only to find more or less the same, and all subsequent ones after that
sported similar texts she couldn't read. The book closed, though it remained
floating in the air next to her.
"We're gonna have to take this one back to the palace," she murmured, her grin
fading. "At least then, we can determine if it's the real deal or a hack
written by somepony else who happened to be named Clover."
NoLegs meowed, garnering immediate looks from the mares and Spike. He made the
cards vanish in a flash of magic, and his ears swivelled again. "What is it
this time?" Zecora asked, trotting around Twilight just to get to the cat. Her
ears twitched when she heard the sound of shuffling hooves again, although now
they were very faint and accompanied by another, very dull noise—one she
could've sworn that sounded like a bell jingling. "Is that… a chime?" she
whispered, still straining to hear the noise as the library became as still and
silent as a grave.
"I think that was a chime. We should head to the palace now…" Twilight groaned,
and with that she handed the floating book to Spike, dispelling her levitation
spell when she craned her neck to see that he had grabbed it with a claw. She
flinched as he jumped up onto her back with the aid of the armored cat, who
used his magic to do the job.
"Through the front door of the library, or to the stairs leading to the
castle?" Spike asked, worry flashing in his eyes again. Twilight frowned, her
mouth twitching at the corners as she contemplated for a few seconds, and she
stared at Spike as NoLegs proceeded to join him on her back.
"Front door…" Twilight answered after a bit of hesitation. She began trotting
down the rows of bookshelves again, with Zecora falling in step behind her.
They went languidly, and with each passing second and hoofbeat, NoLegs sniffed
the air and let his whiskers twitch, keeping his eyes and ears peeled for
anything that could have made the sound of shuffling hoofsteps.
Yet even he detected nothing of the sort, so he relaxed after his makeshift
mount and her zebra friend rounded a few bends, ascended some flights of
stairs, and moved to trot shoulder-by-shoulder again. Minutes passed, filled
with nothing but hoofbeats and the company of the Mythonians who'd come here
with him as they further explored the expansive library. He relaxed some more,
with a small grin forming on his face, as he continued to detect nothing out of
the ordinary.
His state of calm gave way to soft purring, and his fluffed-out coat was slowly
shifting to hug his body, as well as his tail starting to curl up at his hips.
Spike heard the cat purring again, and glanced over his shoulder to look at
him, smiling upon seeing a content look in place of a scowl on the furry face.
"You doing okay?" he asked, garnering a nod and a mrrow as his reply. "Good."
"Twilight, where are we going?" Zecora inquired as they rounded another bend
that led to a small hallway devoid of bookshelves, turning to her companion
with both brows raised. "And just how long can you keep your horn glowing?"
"In order, out the front door, which should be down this hall. And I can keep
my horn glowing for a good while, provided I don't cast any other spells on top
of that," Twilight answered, picking up her pace. "But I can't keep it glowing
for long—we have to move, quick."
Zecora likewise sped up to keep her friend in her sights, and before long they
found a small lobby with chairs and a desk hewn of glimmering mahogany. To one
side, and directly opposite of the desk, stood a set of double doors that
gleamed a soft purple. These doors had a small silver bell stationed on their
frame that rung whenever somepony left or entered.
Spike noticed that one of the purple doors was ajar. "Did somepony come through
here already?" he asked, gesturing to the doors for emphasis.
"That would explain why we heard a chime earlier," Twilight mused, her gaze
turning to the small bell before it fell onto the slightly-parted door. "Though
I don't know who could have left through it before us."
"So, somepony left before we did, and produced the chime? Who else could have
been through here, at this time?" Zecora murmured, her eyes also turning to the
damned bell.
"Dunno, Zecora. But we have to be careful—if NoLegs was sent on edge earlier,
then I have reason to think that our perpetrator was up to no good," Twilight
pointed out with a friendly grin as she turned to her friend and rose a hoof to
pat her on the withers.
"But we haven't seen the perpetrator, and we don't know if they did anything in
the last few hours," Spike argued with a snort, garnering a look from Twilight
in the process. "Hay, we don't even know who they are, and what they can or are
willing to do—it's like the other Fantasians all over again."
"Touché," Twilight conceded with a nod. She then set her hoof down from
Zecora's withers as she grasped the doors with her magic and flung them wide
open, prior to turning to them and then galloping out into the street beyond.
Zecora followed suit, and both found that they had to first trot down a small
flight of stairs that were white, with gryphon statues sitting at either side
of the flight upon stone rails. The lavender magic grasped the doors again and
shut them gently as the four went out.
The two mares glanced down both sides of the road they had found themselves in,
and so did Spike and NoLegs. None of them noticed anything odd; the streets
were empty with the exception of a green-coated guard that stood a few
buildings closer to the palace and themselves, and a serene silence had
blanketed the area.
The lot exchanged glances with each other and trotted to the lone guard at a
sluggish pace. As they got closer, they noticed that all he had on him was a
helmet, a quiver full of arrows, and a blue bow. "Excuse me, sir?" Twilight
asked as she stopped in front of him, though her utterance sounded more like a
statement. "Where is your armor?"
"At the blacksmith's," Peridot replied with a huff. He glanced down and sighed
upon seeing Twilight. "Want me to escort you back to the palace?" he inquired.
"Before you do, what's with the bow?" Spike asked, pointing at the weapon in
question.
Peridot stiffened a bit, but then relaxed. "None of your concern, Great and
Honorable Spike," he replied.
Spike and Twilight shared a glance, both sets of brows raising. Then they
turned to Zecora and NoLegs, both of whom shrugged with their brows likewise
going high. After that, they turned back to Peridot. "You sure of that?" Spike
inquired, a slight frown forming on his face.
"Positive," Peridot replied with a curt nod. He watched as the group trotted on
towards the palace without asking him anything else, and for a few good minutes
he contemplated whether or not to accompany them on their way.
He was unaware of a cloaked form watching him from a nearby alley, waiting
until the quartet managed to get to the Crystal Heart before it started making
its move right towards him.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Two pegasi flew high over Equestria, their eyes trained on the ground below.
One of them had a small closed horse buggy with a door on one side and a small
window on the other attached to him by a harness, filled with sealed boxes that
gave off various sweet scents. Both ponies had scarves around their necks whose
tails billowed about as they flew. In addition to that, they also sported
safety goggles that currently didn't cover their eyes but rather rested high on
their foreheads.
The two stared at a set of tracks going northbound, and followed said tracks as
best as they could. Green and amber irises shined in the moon's light, in
addition to very pale blue and yellowish-orange feathers as they dislodged and
fell from the wings of the airborne ponies.
"Soarin, are you sure we're going in the right direction?" a feminine,
scratchy, and agitated voice asked. The pegasus in question let his eyes avert
to his companion, a yellow-orange mare with a mane as scarlet as fire. He
nodded curtly.
"Yes, Spitfire. Rainbow told me last night that she and her friends were
heading to the Crystal Empire," Soarin replied, his eyes averting back to the
tracks below.
"Why?" Spitfire questioned, eyes narrowing slightly. "This had better be good."
"She and the other Bearers of Harmony were tasked to keep an eye on the
Fantasian guests," Soarin replied, a small frown forming on his face. "And the
Empire is where they're at."
Spitfire allowed herself to frown. "Safety precaution, I assume?" she inquired.
"Just about right," Soarin said with a nod. "I've seen… four of the Fantasians
myself."
"What are they like?" Spitfire asked, a brow raising high as she briefly
glanced at Soarin again.
"They help each other out, but prefer to keep to themselves, from what I've
seen of them. One of them… has a whole list of reasons to do just that," Soarin
explained, taking a few seconds to swallow heavily. "It's… her case is
complicated, Spitfire. Complicated."
"If it's complicated, then just tell me what the list of issues is in a
nutshell," Spitfire snapped, her frown deepening.
"She's a wraith who starved," Soarin replied without fail. "All skin and
bones."
Spitfire halted mid-air, hovering in one spot as the remark reached her ears.
Soarin saw this in the corner of his eye and turned around, before he circled
her once and stopped to stare at her unblinkingly. "Starved… a wraith?"
Spitfire repeated, her eyes widening like the stallion just finished bashing
her to within an inch of her life with his wagon.
Soarin nodded once, though he did so slowly. "One of the other Fantasians put a
spell on her to hide it… I just… I can't get the image out of my mind once I
start dwelling on it," he murmured, ears pinning back.
Spitfire closed her eyes and sighed. "And what of the other three?" she asked,
softly.
"All unicorns, two mares and a stallion. They could self-levitate, and had… odd
cutie marks. Though I guess Fantasian marks would be different from Mythonian
ones anyway," Soarin sighed with a shrug.
Spitfire opened her eyes and flew effortlessly around Soarin and his buggy,
briefly glancing behind her to find that he turned around and went after her to
keep up. "Tell you what, when we meet the Fantasians proper, we'll talk about
them then?" she asked.
"Sounds like a plan," Soarin chirped, donning a small smile at the suggestion.
The two flew on for a few more minutes that then spanned to a half-hour in
silence, getting ever closer to the faintly gleaming city in the distance that
was the Crystal Empire. "Soarin," Spitfire began, taking a few seconds to let a
front hoof stray to her scarf. She adjusted it and spoke when she saw the
stallion look at her in the corner of her eye, "I've been meaning to ask:
what's with the wagon?"
"I promised Rainbow I'd deliver the Fantasians some pies. Better now than
never," Soarin replied with a shrug. "That, and I have a bag of bits with the
baked goods, in case the pies suffer some casualties. Besides, who wouldn't
want pies?"
Spitfire took a second to consider Soarin's point. "Apart from maybe the
starving wraith you told me about, I can't argue there," she agreed with a nod.
"But you only ran into four of them without taking the time to meet with the
rest of the bunch. They might not like pies, and I'm going to bet one hates
pies as much as you adore them."
"Another reason I'm bringing a cart full of pies," Soarin countered with a
grin, "is so I can rectify that issue."
"Just don't give Rainbow a pie. She skipped out on her training the entirety of
last week, and I'd like to have some words with her about that," Spitfire said,
eyes narrowing a little more. "And if she doesn't come up with a good excuse as
to why she skipped out, the next time she shows up at the training grounds, I'm
gonna stick her on the Dizzitron at maximum speed."
"Duly noted," Soarin chirped, his smile widening. With that, the two kept
flying, though this time they descended a bit to better see the tracks below to
make sure they were headed in the right direction. The wagon jostled at the
change of altitude, and the stallion to whom it was attached slowed a little to
let it stabilize in the air. He let his front hooves stray to the harness that
kept the wagon on him, and sighed when he found that they were tightly bound to
his middle and secure.
A chill wind blew right in his and Spitfire's faces as they pushed onward, and
though they shivered in response, they still flew in defiance of the nipping
cold. It took a good hour or so before the Empire could be seen up close from
their aerial vantage point, and at this time of night the moon was at its apex.
Its silver light was shining straight unto their target, with the palace that
sat dead center serving as the beacon in the overall snowflake-like shape that
comprised the streets below.
"You ready?" Spitfire asked, lifting a front hoof to her goggles before pulling
them down over her eyes. Her inquiry immediately caused Soarin to double-check
the wagon and the harness he had on his being.
As soon as he was certain the wagon and its contents were safe and secure, he
turned to Spitfire and nodded. He likewise lifted a hoof and pulled his goggles
down, though he also made sure to check that the strap was tight enough.
"Affirmative, Captain," he replied with a fierce grin. The grin dropped when a
pained cry reached their ears from far below, but it was just faint enough to
sound more like a bird than anything. Nonetheless, he looked around for the
source, as did Spitfire.
"I dunno what that was, and I don't think we'd be able to find the source by
dallying. That's of course assuming if we manage to find it," she admitted with
a shrug once the cry had died down. She turned to look at Soarin again, and
this time he turned back to make eye contact with her. "Still ready?" He mutely
nodded again. "Good."
With that, Spitfire angled her body so that her muzzle faced straight down
before folding her wings shut and performing a steep dive. Soarin followed
after her, doing the same maneuver, albeit a bit slower since he also had to
contend with a loaded wagon.
The two fell at least several miles down, wings closed and letting gravity do
the work for them in two minutes that felt as though they stretched to an
eternity. Soarin's heart pounded in his chest, the wind howled relentlessly in
his ears, and even with the protection of his goggles he found himself letting
his eyes squint as the structures came closer and closer. The wagon rattled
incessantly behind him, as if threatening to break at the very seams, and he
felt its contents shifting about as he continued to plummet.
Once he and Spitfire were fifteen yards from the nearest street, they angled
themselves at a sharp 90 degrees, aiming themselves at the palace before U-
turning and circling in the air for a minute in order to decelerate. Once they
slowed down, they descended to the end of a random street and landed safely on
their hooves, both with grins on their faces and a loud thud from the buggy.
The stallion turned to the wagon and dislodged the harness from his body before
cantering around to peek inside the small window.
He sighed dejectedly upon seeing the whole interior caked in crusts, smashed
fruits, opened and abused cardboard containers, and liquids that intermingled
so much he couldn't tell what they had originally belonged to. Amidst this, he
spotted a medium-sized leather satchel that was closed, though it was soaked in
gunge.
Soarin pushed the window inward with a hoof, frown deepening when it creaked
and rose up, before crawling in as much as the opening would allow. He flailed
a hoof about once he managed to squeeze himself in up to the wingjoints, trying
to reach for the satchel. He let off an "Aha!" when he managed to grab a
leather strap, only to groan as it managed to slide off of his limb thanks to
the goo that coated it.
He heard hooves coming around to the opposite side of the buggy, before the
door opened to reveal Spitfire sending him a look with half-lidded eyes and a
tight frown with a hoof outstretched. "There's a door, you know," she scoffed,
sighing when Soarin grinned sheepishly before she dove into the mess with one
leg and managed to successfully yoink out the satchel.
She slammed the door shut and waited for the stallion to get out of the window
and fly around the buggy before she turned to him and waved the satchel like
she was going to make off with it, noting the distinct sound of a series of
small metal objects clinking as the pie-covered bag moved. "This your bag of
bits?" she asked.
"Yeah, that's it," Soarin replied with a frown. "Probably gonna have to clean
it up, though." Spitfire nodded to him and tossed it up into the air, aiming it
towards him. She smiled when he caught it with his teeth without letting it hit
the pavement first.
"Don't drop that," she warned. When Soarin nodded to her, she took a moment to
look around the street and frowned when she realized it was empty. She simply
shrugged it off as everypony in the area having fallen asleep already, and
turned back to her companion before pointing at the buggy with a wing. "What
should we do with this? This is sorta your mess."
Soarin took a minute to slide the satchel around his body and secure it before
answering, "Maybe we could have it cleaned out? It is kinda late."
Spitfire rolled her eyes. "In any case, that'll have to wait until tomorrow.
Just drag the buggy somewhere, and make sure it doesn't run over anypony who
happens to be out and about," she ordered. Soarin nodded and flew to the
harness, grabbing it in his front hooves before adjusting himself a bit so the
buggy wouldn't go off-kilter. Spitfire trotted onwards to the palace at a brisk
pace that bordered on galloping, and her companion followed her with the buggy
in tow.
A good few minutes passed before she stopped, seeing a group of ponies up
ahead. Two of them were standing over one that had fallen, and one of them
seemed to sport odd protrusions from its back. "What the…" Spitfire lifted a
hoof to move the goggles out of her eyes, blinking to get a better view of
whatever had happened up ahead, only to find that she could see just the
silhouettes and nothing more. "Soarin, stay close. We may have trouble."
"Trouble? Here?" Soarin asked, eyes widening. "But doesn't Prince Shining's
guard unit keep trouble from happening around these parts?"
"I haven't visited the Empire without first being on weather duty until
tonight. I'm not certain," Spitfire huffed, her brow furrowing. With that they
were on the move again, though this time they went slowly. As they crept closer
and closer to the scene, she could make out two purple forms, a black-and-grey
striped form, another green form with what seemed to be a quiver that had been
emptied, and something else that sported a reflective, polished surface.
When, a minute later, did they come close enough to fully inspect whatever
damage had been done, their eyes widened and they gaped. A guard with only his
helmet lay on the street with fresh wounds oozing blood that dotted his cutie
mark and legs, his form quivering with pain.
Arrows were scattered around the scene, and to one side a bow lay in at least
four different fragments. Some blood droplets were in places up to a foot away
from the pony, and a smaller one formed in a puddle from his back legs. Some
parts of his body were caked in a thin layer of frost, though it was already
melting. All in all, trouble did indeed happen in the area, and Spitfire and
Soarin waltzed right into its aftermath.
The unfortunate pony made to scream as a purple aura yanked out an arrow that
had been firmly wedged point-first into his shoulder, but a bubble of purple
surrounded his head to keep the sound from echoing into the street. A white
aura sealed the now-open wound shut and forced the accumulated frost there to
melt, though not without causing the stallion to flail his legs in agony.
Then the two pegasi looked to what had made that purple aura, finding Zecora
standing right next to the source. "Twilight Sparkle?" Spitfire asked, her
pupils shrinking. "Wh… what happened here?"
 
Twilight shot a brief glance at Spitfire, her eyes already wide as saucers. "S-
s-somepony attacked this g-g-guard and attempted to fatally wound him. H-h-he
needs help, and I'm tr-trying to stop him from b-bleeding out," she replied in
a panicked tone.
Spitfire turned back to the sorry bastard, and relaxed as Twilight used a spell
to manually stitch the last wound she could see closed. Then the magic grabbed
him and carefully flipped him to to let him rest on his other side, making
Soarin flinch as the act revealed that one particular arrow managed to stab the
guard's sheath very close to the base whilst hugging his stomach. On top of
that, there was a layer of frost that coated the area to his middle and inner
thighs. Both pegasi promptly turned away.
"Sweet Celestia, I feel sorry for him," Soarin murmured with his ears pinning
back and his rear legs cringing in sympathy.
"I don't blame you, not one bit," Spitfire agreed, her voice briefly cracking.
"So, uh, how'd this happen?" Soarin asked, his eye averting just in time to see
the offending arrow get smoothly yanked out of the sheath, causing the guard to
haplessly fling his legs every which-way in amplified agony before magic seized
them and kept the limbs still.
"I don't know; I heard a scream earlier and found him like this," Twilight
replied, focusing more mana into closing the unfortunately-placed wound and
melting the frost. When that was done a few seconds later, she scanned Peridot
for any more arrows, frost patches and wounds she might have missed, though
luckily a quick search yielded nothing more of the sort. She turned to look at
his face and mouthed, "Are you okay now?"
Peridot frantically nodded, mouthing back "I want to go home" in teary-eyed
reply. Twilight made the bubble around his head disappear, and she watched
carefully as he slowly stood up, his legs constantly threatening to buckle with
every inch that he hauled himself up off the ground. A lavender aura picked up
the scattered, non-bloodied arrows and placed them back in their quiver as soon
as he was on his unsteady hooves.
He turned to Twilight with a tear or two running down his face, to find her
holding the crystal bow that had gotten into four different pieces—five,
counting the drawstring. Then Peridot turned to Spitfire. "Uh, m-m-m-ma'am? Wh-
what… is your b-business h-here?" he asked, his legs shaking and his voice
cracking so much it sounded like he was on the verge of bawling his eyes out.
"I… came to see Rainbow Dash. I… I heard she was here," Spitfire replied after
swallowing heavily. Her ears pinned back, and her wings shivered.
"Sh-she's at the p-palace," Twilight interjected, garnering the attention of
the two pegasi. She turned around and lifted Peridot in her magic and began
trotting back to the palace with Zecora falling in step behind her and the
guard floating at her side.
"Do you need an herbal brew for the pain?" Zecora asked with worry flickering
in her eyes and ears folded back, watching as Peridot frantically nodded again.
"I understand; from your agony, you've nothing to gain."
The two pegasi both fell in step behind Zecora. Since he was flying, the buggy-
dragging stallion could see Spike and NoLegs on Twilight's back, with the
former holding a book in one of his claws. "Twilight, why is there an armored
cat with a dagger on your back?" Soarin asked with a brow raised.
"Long story," Twilight replied with a dejected sigh, craning her neck briefly
to glance at Soarin.
"I can vouch for that," Spike agreed with a dismissive wave of his claw. NoLegs
meowed, looking at Peridot with ears pinned back and wide eyes.
***** Chapter XXXVIII- Out of Stock *****
Early morning came without further incident, with the exception of Fluttershy
having a little chit-chat with Discord in a guest room. At first, it was just
friendly "good morning" banter between the two that lasted well until the very
early afternoon, until something slipped out of Discord's lips and flipped the
entire conversation right on its head.
"I made sure they didn't do anything remotely loud," Discord stated with a
small smile on his face.
"Made sure who didn't do what?" Fluttershy asked, raising a brow ever so
slightly.
"I was trying to make sure they wouldn't wake everypony else up," Discord
murmured, eyes half-lidded as his mismatched arms crossed over his chest.
"Who? And what?" Fluttershy repeated in a slightly sterner tone of voice, a
hint of a frown gracing her muzzle.
"Oh, for the love of—" Discord's arms fell and he groaned. "Put it like this,
two of our Fantasian guests would have gotten intimate had I not directly
intervened. And besides, the little chastity belt I put on Splotches should
have dissipated by now."
"Chastity belt?" Fluttershy repeated, her mind briefly halting when those two
words left the draconequus's mouth.
"Yes," Discord affirmed with a nod. "They'd have woken you and everypony else
up otherwise."
"How do you know that?" Fluttershy asked, her eyes narrowing in seconds as her
tone took on an icy edge to it.
"I… uh… peeked in on them, and they were getting ready to…"
Fluttershy put two and two together as Discord trailed off, his pupils
shrinking as sweat began to bead on his brow. "Breed?" she finished for him,
her voice low and almost too quiet for him to hear.
"Yes, that," Discord replied with a hesitant nod.
"That doesn't give you the right to stop them—besides, you didn't let them do
it, so neither of us know if they'd have woken anypony else up. What if I did
the same to you? Would you have liked it?" Fluttershy snapped, her inquiry
causing the draconequus to stiffen as her gaze went to his face. "I thought
so."
Discord's shoulders sagged a bit. "I'll make it up to them, later today," he
sighed.
"Good." Fluttershy stretched her wings for a few seconds, wincing as she felt
and heard a bone or two pop into place, only to close them thereafter. "And if
I hear that you didn't…"
Discord held up his paw and talon and waved them like Fluttershy was two
seconds from mugging him. "I'll be good, I'll be good, I Pinkie Promise!" he
exclaimed, balling his paw into a fist before conjuring a stick with a cupcake
at its end and using that to poke himself in the eye. The cupcake exploded into
a shower of rainbow confetti as soon as it made contact with his eye, and the
stick then vanished in a puff of green smog.
"Alright." Fluttershy's face softened, and a smile broke out on her muzzle.
Discord made for the door at a leisurely pace, but he froze when his talon went
out to reach for the knob as she spoke again. "And next time, just… redirect
the sound elsewhere, or soundproof the room or something less… cruel than a
chastity belt."
Discord's talon changed course and rose up to his goatee, and he lightly tugged
it in thought before a lightbulb poofed into existence over his head and lit up
with a click that came from said goatee instead of the bulb itself. "Mmm, yes,
I can certainly manage that," he promised, reaching up with his paw to tap at
the bulb, though he paused when he heard a scratchy voice shout in the hall.
The bulb shattered into fragments that then became candy wrappers with enough
sound to drown out the yelling. The wrappers then crinkled up of their own
accord and drifted down as he grappled the knob with his paw in short order and
flung open the door before he made his way out. He stumbled right into a heated
bickering in the hall, one between Rainbow Dash and Spitfire that was spectated
by a handful of guards, all of whom seemed unaware of his exiting into the
hall.
"That's not your only reason for coming here?" Spitfire growled, eyes narrowed.
"You're telling me that the Fantasians being here and that the Elements of
Harmony are just two of a few reasons?"
Rainbow nodded, her face hardening. "Yes ma'am. A lot has happened—"
Spitfire cut her off in a firm, reprimanding tone, "Just cut to the chase,
Dash."
"Rarity needed to make a delivery, Fluttershy wanted to check on a little
Fantasian filly, the Crystal Heart's been acting funny, a few guards got wailed
on last night, and Twilight wanted to check on Spike and she just had to check
the library while she was at it," Rainbow replied in one seating. She wasted no
time taking a few seconds to inhale deeply as soon as the tail-end of the
ramble tumbled out of her mouth.
Spitfire blinked once, and after that she lifted a brow. "Is that all?" she
asked.
Rainbow shook her head. "What if I told you one of our Fantasian guests is a
general?" she retorted, her visage softening just a smidgen.
Spitfire's brow rose higher. "Are you exaggerating again?" she asked in a
bored, if slightly miffed, tone.
Again, Dash shook her head. "No, ma'am. I wouldn't blow something like this way
out of proportion; that's something either Pinkie Pie or Discord would do," she
replied.
Discord took that as an opportunity to clear his throat. "Dearest Rainbow, do
you yet realize I'm standing right here?" he teased, waiting until both pegasi
turned to him before he flashed them a toothy grin. He rose his talon before
snapping the thin digits, and a flash of light enveloped him for less than a
second, causing Spitfire and Dash to wince and shut their eyes.
When they opened their oculars again, the two mares saw that Discord now rested
on a long couch, his lengthy tail half-dangling from one arm of the piece of
furniture and his paw holding up his cheek. Dash rolled her eyes at the
display, while Spitfire just blew out air from her nostrils. "Thanks for
informing us of your presence," Spitfire stated with an air of sarcasm to her
voice, right before she turned back to Dash yet again. "And find me this
'general' fellow, if you please."
"I'd like to inform you now, Captain Spitfire, that the general… is a very
quirky lad," Discord chimed in, his grin widening when she turned to him again.
"Everypony's quirky to one degree or another. I know that as well as anypony
else does," Spitfire retorted, a tiny frown creasing her brow. With that, she
turned to Dash once more and watched her as she tottered a few doors down the
hall and veered to the left before opening one and peering inside.
"Hey, you got a visitor," Dash called into the room.
"Send 'em in," the room's occupant replied with an audible huff. Spitfire
didn't need a second invitation; she trotted over before Dash could so much as
turn to look her in the eye and nod, though she paused when her fellow pegasus
decided to linger in the doorway for a few seconds. When said pegasus scrambled
out of the door, Spitfire trotted into the room and instantly met with a pair
of crimson eyes whose uniform-wearing owner sat at the foot of the bed.
Spitfire found herself scanning Lance up and down, her wings twitching ever so
slightly as she immediately realized that he was doing the same to her. Her
eyes narrowed, and his did likewise. She caught a slight rustling under his
coat that came from his side, and her wings twitched again. It was as if she
found herself staring at a fraternal twin that came from another dimension.
She cocked her head a little to the left; Lance tilted his to his right, and at
this she smirked. "You really are a quirky stallion," she chirped.
"I've met quirkier mares," Lance quipped with a small smile forming on his
face. "So, what business do you have with me?"
Spitfire's smirk fell. "Rainbow Dash told me that you were one of the reasons
she skipped training," she said.
"Training?" Lance's brow rose. "Of what sort?"
Spitfire's eyes widened. "She didn't tell you?"
Lance shook his head. "Wasn't anything I thought I should've concerned myself
with."
Spitfire sighed, a frown of exasperation forming on her face. One of her front
hooves lifted up and connected with her forehead in short order before going
along the bridge of her muzzle. "For the love of—" The hoof dropped, and she
trotted over until she reared up to rest her forehooves on the foot of the bed
and lean in until her muzzle was just inches from Lance's own. "And why not?"
she hissed.
Lance's eyes narrowed some more, forming the thinnest of crimson slits. "Want
me to give you the entire bucket list, or the whole situation in a nutshell?"
he retorted, his voice cold and sharp.
Spitfire's nose wrinkled, and her lips pulled into a tight frown. She started
contemplating, but heard the sound of buzzing wings that stopped and then gave
way to hooves hitting the floor. This was followed by said hooves coming into
the room and shuffling every so often, but she did not turn away from the
Fantasian stallion until the noises ceased entirely and a thin hoof poked her
square in the cutie mark.
She gazed towards her flank to find a pale face with blue orbs staring at her
and instantly reeled back, barely managing to avoid smacking Lance with a
flailing hoof as she returned to the floor on all fours. Katie scoffed, with a
hoof of her own raised at eye level and staying there. Her orbs shifted as she
glanced from one pegasus, to the second, then back again. "The fuck is going
on?" she asked.
Spitfire's jaw dropped open, and it stayed that way for several seconds on end
as she stared at the foal-sized wraith, who was also scanned from head to hoof.
When Katie spun her still-raised hoof in a few circles, Spitfire swallowed
heavily and composed herself before answering, "I think I'll need to reprimand
Dash a little more."
"Then you go do that," Lance scoffed, glancing at Spitfire as the remark came
from his mouth, with an additional and dismissive wave of his hoof. Then, he
turned to look at Katie. "You need something, other than 'what the fuck is
going on?'" he asked.
Katie turned to meet his gaze, and she assumed a straight face with slightly
dimming orbs. "Uh, yeah… but it's not me that needs something," she replied.
Lance's visage eased. "Then who does?" he pressed.
Katie's hoof moved to gesture to the door, and silence fell for a moment. Lance
strained his ears, and he could've sworn he heard several hoofsteps echoing
into the room at once—how many, where they originated from, and who they
belonged to, he wasn't certain of. "An entire hoofful of ponies do," she
replied, her voice just loud enough to drown the noise out for no more than a
few seconds before it resumed once more.
"Who?" Lance repeated, face hardening once again.
"See for yourself," Katie replied, her wings starting to buzz. With that, she
became airborne after a few seconds and flew out of the room before Lance could
say anything else, and this was promptly followed by the sound of a door
opening and then closing immediately after.
Lance growled, though he said nothing for a good minute. He climbed off the bed
and turned to Spitfire. "Want to continue this conversation at a later date?"
he asked.
Spitfire nodded. "Remind me to tell that changeling to keep her hooves to
herself, if you bring her with you whenever you're available. When you're done
with… whatever it is you're doing, meet me up at Cloudsdale," she answered.
"My wings are bald. Gonna be hard to get there by myself," Lance sighed,
sitting on his haunches before raising a front hoof and lifting the side of his
coat just enough that Spitfire could see the tip of his wing jutting out from
under his shirt and vest. "So the wraith that just left may or may not come
with."
"Duly noted," Spitfire said with a sharp, single nod of her head. "I'll speak
further with Rainbow Dash in the meantime." With that, Lance stood up with a
nod in return and trotted out of the room. Looking both ways, he found that
Cadence and Shining were just at the bend, chatting with Amethyst Maresbury as
they juggled a levitating book amongst themselves and tottered about in
circles.
"Hrm, yes, that could be the cause of it…" Cadence paused, spotting Lance and
motioning for him to come over with one of her wings. She turned to Shining
with a frown on her face, "Are you sure that's it, though?"
"At this rate, I'm positive," Shining replied with a nod. "Somepony informed me
last night that she'd been hexed. How or why, she refused to say."
"Who did what to who, and for how many cookies?" Lance asked as he reached
them, eyeing Shining with a curious brow raised. He then turned to the book, a
small leatherbound thing that was a glossy blue in color with a gold font so
faded that he found the title hard to discern even up close.
"We found something, with Amethyst's help, that may pique your interest,"
Shining replied, using his magic to hold the book before him and flip it to a
seemingly random page. He then forked it over to Amethyst, who scanned the
pages just once before nodding.
"Mmmyes, I do believe that's the right page," she chirped, whereupon the book
was then handed to Lance with pages wide open.
Lance found a few illustrations about the Crystal Heart, painted in various
colors that ranged from its usual blue to a shade of dark purple. "What the?"
he asked.
"Go on, read it," Shining implored.
Lance nodded and sighed before doing just that, "'The Crystal Heart might
change color if ponies bearing hexes are in the Empire or its rulers' immediate
vicinity, and though some scholars speculate that it was crafted with this
specific enchantment in mind, they haven't been able to determine why…'"
He gulped and went on, "'The color the Heart changes to depends on who is hexed
in accordance with the hue of the cursed's mane, and how severe the hexes in
question are. Bright colors indicate strong hexes, and dull colors indicate
weaker hexes…'"
Shining nodded when Lance turned to him. "Could you come with us for a few
minutes?" he asked, turning around as if intent to start trotting down the hall
already. His guest nodded, and the four tottered off down a hall and then down
a few more for several minutes. Upon reaching a set of spiraling stairs going
down, the lot paused.
Amethyst turned to Lance and sent him a small, though gentle smile upon seeing
a tight frown on his muzzle. "You look troubled, young colt," she noted.
"I am," Lance replied tersely, his wings shuddering under his uniform. A frown
creased his brow as he licked his lips before he carefully added, "It's a long
story."
Amethyst nodded as Shining and Cadence made to descend the stairs. She
followed, and so did Lance. "Oh, you could always tell me what's wrong," she
stated, still gently smiling.
"I'd... not to sound callous, but I'd much rather save you a potential heart
attack," Lance replied in an uneasy voice, swallowing heavily.
Amethyst nodded again and paused for just long enough to shoot him a glance
over her shoulder. "It's quite alright, dear. It couldn't be much worse than
having to endure King Sombra's reign… You're a fortunate lad, in regards to not
being around when that dreadful rule was established."
"What rule?" Lance asked, eyelids slanting.
"That of Sombra's, my dear," Amethyst replied, a hint of sadness in her voice.
The two trotted on, and caught up to Shining and Cadence as they made their way
to the ground floor and strode out. As soon as they managed to reach them,
Lance realized he'd been led directly to the overhang that upheld the castle
itself, and immediately his gaze turned to the ever-twirling Crystal Heart that
still changed colors.
Only now, though, it never went back to red. Instead, it was its usual teal for
a time before it changed to a faint yellow and then to a very bright green to
then promptly start cycling back once more. Shining then turned to Lance and
gestured to the Heart with a hoof and a grin on his face. "You have my sister
to thank for that," he chirped. "We sorta-kinda fixed the Heart a bit, and now
that we know what makes it act like that, we can hopefully mend it some more
now."
Lance nodded, though he kept his mouth shut. Amethyst piped up in his stead,
"Oh, Emperor Armor, do you need the books still?"
Shining nodded and took a few minutes to break away from the group and trot
around the Heart. "One of them helped my sister remove Lance's hex," he
replied, tottering back over to lift a hoof and pat the pegasus on his withers
with it. "We may need the rune-translations at the very least."
Amethyst's smile broadened as Shining turned to her. "Then you can have the
runology book for as long as you see fit, if it helps our guests out," she
cooed. "But, you'll still have to return the other tomes at some point."
"Thank you very much," Shining stated. Then, he turned to Cadence. "What say
you that we have the Crystal Faire… a day early?"
Cadence donned a vexed look as she turned to the Heart and then to the streets
outside. "... maybe they haven't set up the booths and such for the Faire yet?"
she retorted, frowning as she turned to look at Shining.
"Perhaps. But we could still ask the populace to set up early, just in case,"
Shining replied with a slow nod of his head.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Twilight spent most of the day in her room, sitting at the table with NoLegs
and Spike at her side. Before her were two open books, one being the runology
book and the other that was supposedly written by a pony named Clover. Between
said books, she wrote down notes on a piece of paper that sat atop a stack half
as long as her neck, flipping the pages as needed only to then jot some more
notes down.
She was halfway into both tomes when Spike piped up, "Anything yet, Twi?"
Twilight shook her head. "Just bantering," she answered. "Long and groveling
bantering."
"About what?" Spike pressed, frowning.
Twilight's brow furrowed at the inquiry. "About Clover's day-to-day life before
they met Starswirl. Nothing major," was the answer. NoLegs gave an inquisitive
meow, and at this Twilight stopped jotting down the notes and handed what she
had so far to the cat who used his magic to shuffle through them. In seconds,
said notes were returned to her, and she immediately resumed scribbling
thereafter.
Several minutes later, when she reached approximately three-quarters of the
entirety of both books, she slammed them shut with her forehooves and stood up
abruptly with an aggravated sigh leaving her mouth. "How could a pony ramble on
and on, conscribe it into paper format, and call it a book?!" she cried,
glaring at the tomes as if they had the audacity to insult her brother.
"Maybe this Clover pony was a foal, or a teen who wrote down their experiences…
and then another, not-as-good author found their records and mangled them, or
something," Spike replied with a shrug. "I have no idea, honestly."
"Remind me to find that pony, if they're still alive, and to give them an eight
hour long lecture if such a mangling of a maybe-ancient document really did
happen," Twilight snorted, a firm frown on her face as she turned to Spike.
Spike nodded. "Will do," he replied. Twilight's horn glowed and picked both him
and the cat up before bringing them over and putting them on her backside.
"Where are we going?" he asked as soon as he was parked on violet withers.
"For a walk," Twilight tersely replied after taking a minute or two to compose
herself. She immediately trotted to the door, flung it open, and went out into
the hall from her room with the drake and cat perched snugly on her back.
She paused, though only long enough to make sure that her magic closed the door
behind her before trotting on for a bit. But when she immediately saw Discord
laying on a couch in front of a door snoozing soundly thereafter, she halted
well before she could pass by a door or two. Her brow rose, and she turned to
the two passengers on her back only to receive shrugs in return.
"Why's he on a couch?" Spike asked, a brow raised.
Twilight rolled her eyes. "It's probably Discord being Discord again," she
replied before turning back and trotting up to Discord. When she reached him,
she lifted a hoof to poke him, but stopped when NoLegs meowed and the
draconequus cracked an eye open in response.
"Yes, my dearest Twilight Sparkle?" Discord chirped, smiling as his other eye
cracked open. He sat up and made the couch disappear with a snap of his talons,
though he remained floating in the air as if still laying on it.
"Well… I've been meaning to ask something, and I wish I had asked this sooner,
but it slipped my mind," Twilight began, before taking a deep breath. When
Discord motioned with his paw to continue, she obliged, "Could you take me to
the other libraries in Equestria, barring my own and that of Canterlot's?"
Discord's brow rose. "And why would I need to do that, pray tell?" he asked.
"Well, I've been helping our Fantasian guests… or trying to, at any rate, help
them find books on Starswirl the Bearded. Ever since I've learned that he went
to Fantasia, it just… made me ask questions I couldn't answer," Twilight
replied with a sullen sigh. "Shining's trying to help too, but so far, he has
almost nothing."
"Her mane and tail became fire last week. She was that frustrated," Spike piped
up, garnering a meow from NoLegs thereafter.
"That, and I… I feel it may take too long if the Fantasians scoured all of the
libraries by themselves," Twilight added, a slight frown on her face. "Put it
like this: I don't want them getting so frustrated and… last time that
happened, some ponies got killed. I saw it with my own eyes."
"The Fantasians killed some ponies?" Discord repeated, his brow raising higher.
"Yeah, on their planet. And the ponies were wraiths, but still," Twilight
answered with a nod. "I don't want a repeat of that mess."
Discord nodded in understanding. "Alright, if you want to spare some lives from
potential death, I'll bite. Though just this once, Twilight. Now then, where
to, again?" he asked, lifting his talon with digits prepared to snap.
"Every library, except in Canterlot's and Golden Oaks. I got a letter from
Celestia that told me the Fantasians went up and down its library, and I helped
them clean out mine to get nothing in the way of information," Twilight
replied. She then turned to Spike and NoLegs, both of whom nodded.
"And books on Starswirl the Bearded—just those?" Discord's digits pressed
tightly against each other.
"Yep," Spike answered before Twilight could open her mouth again.
"Alrighty," Discord chirped, and with a snap of his claws a flash of light
enveloped him, Twilight, Spike, and NoLegs and whisked them out of the Crystal
Empire. In a little under a minute, the four found themselves in a different
place, lined with books filling spruce shelves filling a large room with a
beige ceiling and a soft, carpeted floor.
Discord then conjured a map with another snap of his fingers and looked at it
carefully before showing it to the other three, his paw going up and coming to
rest on a city in the northeastern ocean that was, according to the parchment,
very close to land. "We're in Manehattan, fellas." He then snapped his paw, and
all of the books that the three could see turned into bits of spruce.
Twilight looked at the shelves and the books that just became wood, then
shifted her gaze back to Discord. "Um, are the books transforming temporary,
or…"
"The effect will wear off when we leave," Discord replied with a grin. He
rolled up the map and scooped Twilight and Spike and NoLegs up with his tail.
"Now then, let us search for books on Starswirl!" he declared, and with that he
sped down to the end of the row they were in with the trio in tow, but he
didn't go fast enough to make their vision blur. All they could see from that
row were books-turned-spruce; none of the once-leatherbound stacks of parchment
appeared to be different from the others.
So they went on to the next row, and the row after that. "Nothing there… no
book on Starswirl here…" And so forth, until they effectively scanned every
single row, at which point Twilight sighed in frustration. "Nothing's here…"
She turned to Discord. "Now I'm starting to see what you did."
Discord nodded and snapped his paw's digits, and the act caused magic to
envelop the books before it reverted them back to what they were. Then he
snapped again, causing him and the trio he juggled to vanish and subsequently
reappear in another large room, this one with oak shelves that were curved so
much they gave the impression of half-domes. The ceiling was painted in a snowy
white color, while the floor was tiled with a decorative flower pattern.
He snapped his talon's digits, and magic embraced all of the books before
turning them into book-sized gummy bears. With the three still wrapped in his
tail, he yet again flew up and down the rows of shelves, although this time he
conjured a floating boat with some oars to maneuver himself between the shelves
via rowing.
"Nope… nada… nothing there…" Spike groaned when a few minutes passed with no
books in sight. The gummy bears faced outward, and some looked at him with
fawning giggles leaving their chewy mouths. NoLegs, meanwhile, eyed the bears
with a drooling mouth and a gleam in his eyes.
Discord stopped rowing and noticed the cat drooling. "I take it you have a
sweet tooth?" he asked, garnering a nod from the feline. "I'll get you a few
sweets when we're done, I promise." He began rowing again, and up and down
several candy-filled rows they went. Several more minutes passed before they
left without a book in tow and found themselves in yet another room that was
even larger than the last two put together, albeit one lined with shelves no
higher than Spike's head that framed a grey floor and hardwood ceiling.
Spike looked at the shelves with a brow raised. He turned to Discord and
gestured to the shelves. "Um, what library is this?" he asked.
Discord grinned and then flew around the room for a few minutes, before
stopping when he realized every single shelf wouldn't help them as they were
now. "Don't know, but we're still searching," he chirped, and he snapped his
paw-fingers to enable his magic to do its work. It enveloped the shelves and
stacked them one atop the other, until a single row that reached the ceiling
has formed. Then, he sped up and down this one row, turning the books that
Twilight hadn't requested into boxes of matchsticks.
Alas, because he made all of the shelves stack on one another, nothing turned
up. So he returned them as they were and turned the boxes of matches into books
before letting his magic whisk him and Spike, Twilight, and NoLegs elsewhere.
Upon finding themselves in another large room where all of the furniture except
the books was made of oak, he pulled out the map again and showed it to
Twilight. Another city that was further out in the ocean glowed on the
parchment.
"We're in Trottingham now?" Twilight asked upon seeing the glowing landmark.
Discord nodded. "Hopefully, this town's libraries could yield something," he
answered with a grin. He looked around and slumped a bit. "Hrm… bland…" Then
his digits snapped again, and the floor promptly turned to ice while red rose
bushes grew out of the tops of the shelves. "Much better," he cooed, and with
that he began skating along the rows, making sure that his tail didn't go too
sharply to the left or the right. The books turned into little busts of
Discord, and yet again nothing turned up.
A good three hours passed as Discord hopped from one library—and town—to the
next all over Equestria with NoLegs, Spike, and Twilight in tow, before they
returned to the Empire's guest room hall empty-handed. When they returned,
Twilight waited until Discord set her down before trotting a few steps from
Spike and NoLegs and throwing herself on the floor with an aggravated groan
leaving her lips. This was coupled with her front hooves coming up to smack
herself in the temples repeatedly.
"Twilight, do you need a punching bag or something?" Spike asked with a sigh.
Twilight only answered with another groan and a series of smacks aimed at her
head.
"Okay then," Spike murmured, and with that he turned to NoLegs, who shrugged
with a meow. The two looked at Discord who also shrugged.
"Not my fault the other libraries in Equestria weren't stocked," he stated
matter-of-factly. He then conjured a paper cone laden with a big swath of
cotton candy on top, and he handed it to NoLegs, who took it in his magic with
a purr and another gleam in his eyes. While the cat began scarfing the treat,
Spike waddled over to Twilight and used a claw to pat her on the withers
gently.
When Twilight stopped hitting herself in the face and growling like a wild
animal, she turned to Spike and sent him a fond smile. "I… think I've vented it
all out now," she sighed, a few bruises forming along her temples and forehead.
Her horn glowed, and white mana embraced her head, making the bruises vanish in
seconds. When the glow died, one of the guest room doors opened and Natalie
trotted out of it with unsteady hooves and a trussed-up mane.
"What was with… the groaning I heard earlier?" Natalie asked, eyeing Twilight
with a vexed expression on her face.
Twilight stood up and rolled her eyes. "Oh, nothing," she replied in a
sarcastic tone. "I just had Discord save us a lot of hassle."
Natalie's brow rose. "Do what?" she pressed.
"Discord took me and Twilight and NoLegs to all of the other libraries in
Equestria. As far as books on Starswirl go, there was nothing," Spike answered
with a frown on his face. "Nothing. At. All."
Natalie's legs threatened to buckle, wobbling as if a tornado was about to suck
her up when that bit of intel reached her ears. "N-nothing?" she repeated, eyes
widening.
"Nothing," Discord piped up. He gestured to NoLegs with his tail when Natalie
turned to look at him. "Your feline friend is a witness." Then Natalie's gaze
trailed to NoLegs, who meowed through a wad of candy floss with a nod of his
head.
Twilight noticed Natalie's shaky legs, and then her unkempt mane. "Are you
alright?" she asked.
Natalie turned to Twilight and nodded frantically, a faltering smile framing
her muzzle in an instant. "Y-yeah," she answered, a faint blush blossoming onto
her cheeks. Then she started to backpedal into the room she came out of, slowly
and with shuffling hooves at first. Her horn glowed and embraced the knob as
she passed it on her way back in. "J-just woke up is all. I-I'm going back to
bed." With that, the door closed, and Spike and Twilight glanced at each other
with puzzled brows raised.
Spike turned to NoLegs, who was still gnawing on the cotton candy. "Is she
usually like that when she wakes up?" he asked, using a claw to gesture to the
door Natalie just retreated behind. NoLegs shook his head before taking another
bite out of his treat.
Twilight then sighed, and she also turned to NoLegs. "Say, can you help us find
Lance, please?" she asked, garnering a nod and another meow that came from a
candy-filled mouth. At that, she smiled, but only for a few seconds.
"Well, I must get going now," Discord chirped, lifting his talon to snap his
digits again. "Just send me a telepathic message if you need my assistance."
With that, he snapped and vanished in a flare of light.
Twilight's smile fell immediately after Discord vanished to parts unknown,
because when he did she realized just how Lance might react to the news that no
other libraries in Equestria contained any books on Starswirl the Bearded. At
this her pupils shrank and her ears fell back against her head. She silently
prayed to Faust that he would understand. She shuddered as NoLegs turned around
and bounded off with his treat in tow, and she and Spike both reluctantly
followed him.
"Spike, is it just me, or did we jump libraries with Discord's help for
nothing?" Twilight asked, shooting another brief glance at Spike.
Spike looked at her with a frown. "Not just you…" he replied tersely, with a
sullen shake of his head. As they went, a door opened just a sliver behind
them, and an azure eye gazed out of it, silently watching as the three rounded
the bend.
***** Chapter XXXIX- Fleeting Blur *****
The door that creaked open just a little closed, and the pony behind it
backpedaled as if she were facing down the business end of a loaded gunblade.
For a few seconds, Natalie shook as if on the verge of hyperventilating, but
she calmed down a bit when she took in the possibility that Discord may have
lied.
The possibility thereof was likely; after all, this was the same creature that
gave a book the ability to obscure her vision with a literal pie to the face,
complete with her horn puncturing the aluminum base for good measure.
Her eyes widened nonetheless, and she also took in the possibility that he was
telling the truth—and if NoLegs was indeed a witness, then…
She shook her head and turned to the bed to find a snoring Matt still snoozing
away the day, blissfully unaware of the possible predicament that had a good
chance to boil over any second now. She cantered over and climbed on the bed to
perch next to him, her front hooves flying to his withers as soon as she was
seated.
"Matt, Matt," Natalie implored in a frantic tone, sporting pinprick pupils and
keeping her forehooves on her bedmate's withers. She started to shake him
vigorously, yet all she managed to make him do was mumble incoherently. Her
response was to merely keep shaking him with her hooves, persisting even as his
sleep-murmurs took a turn for the strange.
"No… don't bunch my tail into a bun…" Matt murmured, his face tightening a
little. "Ginger doesn't… go there…"
"For crying out loud," Natalie grumbled indignantly, her eyes narrowing as she
continued to shake Matt in the hope that she could rouse him. "Wake up," she
pleaded.
"Stop…" Matt murmured, a back leg twitching uncontrollably. "I didn't… take the
cupcake…"
Natalie stopped for just long enough to lift a hoof, let it connect with the
bridge of her muzzle, and release a long groan of annoyance in that order. Her
horn lit up, and a blue aura grappled Matt by the muzzle and held it shut. She
jumped off of the bed and sat down, and it wasn't long—in fact, it was only a
few seconds—before he flailed his hooves everywhere. As soon as he started his
kicking throes, she relinquished her magical hold, watching intently as his
front hooves flew to his muzzle.
Matt opened his eyes and hastily glanced around the room before his gaze fell
upon Natalie. He lowered his hooves and sighed. "Can you not make me think I'm
drowning?" he asked.
"I would, if it wasn't urgent," Natalie replied snappishly, eyes narrowing some
more.
At that utterance, Matt let a brow stray up until it met with the hairline of
his forelock as his roommate's statement sank in. "How urgent?" he queried.
"Enough to make Lance snap kind of urgent," Natalie replied, donning a frown.
"Oh, joy," Matt scoffed in a sarcastic tone, his ears folding back at the mere
implications of his companion's remark. "What is it?" When Natalie explained to
him what Twilight and Discord had relayed to her, his pupils shrank as soon as
she finished a few seconds later. "N-no way," he breathed, his mouth drying
out.
"NoLegs went with them, or so I was told. If we asked him to send us a
telepathic message or something to verify it, then we'd likely be in deep shit
if it is true," Natalie hissed with a slow nod of her head. She stood up.
"Let's find Lance. He couldn't have trotted far."
Matt nodded and rose from the bed before he hopped off and landed on the floor,
and he took a second or two to ensure that he wouldn't fall on his face before
galloping over to the door and flinging it open with his magic. Both he and
Natalie rushed out of the room, though the latter took point and started
galloping down the end of the hall that was marked with the bend. Her companion
followed her closely, trying to assume a calm face, albeit one that twitched
constantly with barely-restrained horror.
They rounded the bend and rushed down a hall, only to skid to a halt with front
legs trampling about as they slowed to a full stop just at a corner before they
could run over a bluish-purple pegasus guard who was stationed there. Said
guard turned to them with flared wings and wide eyes, only to relax as he saw
that it was simply two of the castle's guests. "Do you two need something?" he
asked, a brow raising in tandem with his wings closing.
Matt and Natalie exchanged glances, then turned to the guard. The latter spoke
up, "Have you seen Twilight Sparkle, Spike, and a small, legless blue cat?"
The guard nodded, and spread a wing to gesture to his left. "They went around
that corner," he replied, before closing the limb and taking in their haggard
appearances. "Are you two well?"
"Just galloped for a bit. We'll be fine," Matt replied, a back leg twitching in
place.
"Y-yeah," Natalie added with a nod of her head, barely able to keep her front
legs from trembling. "W-we'll be on our way." With that, they darted off once
more, rounding the corner the guard directed them to in another frenzied
gallop. The guard watched them as they vanished from sight, merely rolling his
eyes as if he just watched an anvil land squarely on his Emperor's head for the
upteempth time.
He shook his head as the sounds of two pairs of galloping hooves faded a bit
and muttered under his breath, "Quirkiest bunch of visitors, I swear… they run
like foals that are late to a birthday party." Then, he closed his eyes and
mulled about, letting his mind swim from thought to thought in tandem with his
breathing.
He jolted minutes later when a third pair of hooves rushed past and the
resulting sound hit his ears, and his eyes snapped open as he saw a dark figure
with something akin to a long garb flowing smoothly behind their form dart
around the same corner that Matt and Natalie ran around. He instinctively
spread his wings once the specter vanished and began flapping madly.
In a few seconds after that, he started flying in the direction that they took
off towards before darting down some halls, following the sound of hooves
hitting crystal and the dark form as it fled. "Stop!" he yelled, yet this
caused the entity to simply gallop faster.
Nonetheless, he kept it in his sights, focusing more on the tail-end of the
cloth-like object and less on the thing wearing it. He inched closer and closer
to it in his pursuit, front hooves outstretched like mechanical cranes.
Right as he caught up to it, he snagged the cloth with his hooves and caused
the thing to snap right into a halt. It turned to him, revealing a head
concealed by a hood, and legs covered upon every square inch by what looked to
be leather ribbons. It had one hoof raised, bent at a twisted angle, and it
merely hissed at him—he flinched upon hearing it, as the noise was akin to a
steaming kettle.
Then the shadow let a sickly orange glow embrace the long fabric, and a ripping
sound filled the hall as the cloth started to tear at a seam close to its tail-
end. The guard realized too late that he could smell rotting flesh as the
blinding orange light grew from under the hood and promptly seized his vision
when he made to let go of the cloth and lunge at the figure itself. The
monochrome light wasted no time disorienting him and forcing him to land and
close his wings, and the sod stumbled about as he heard the sound of retreating
hooves and cloth tearing.
"You fool! You will regret trying to grapple with me!" the creature hissed as
the sound of hooves faded while the light still assailed the guard's eyes.
When he managed to regain his vision a minute later, he scowled upon finding
that the form had ditched him, and left a long thin sheet of worn and rust-
colored cotton in its wake. His wings spread and he scooped up the cloth, and
once more he flew onwards and darted up and down another series of corridors.
He could not find the accursed being, but in its stead he heard two sets of
hooves instead of one echoing down another hall some minutes later. He barely
caught sight of a long blond tail as it vanished down another corner as soon as
the two sets of hooves on crystal reached his ears. He rounded it accordingly,
and found the two Fantasian guests galloping ahead. He shouted, "Wait!"
The two skid to a halt and turned to him. "What now?" Natalie asked, whirling
around to face the guard.
"Something rushed past me once you two left," the guard replied, a small frown
on his face.
Matt and Natalie shared a glance, then turned to the guard with brows raised.
"What?" the former asked.
"A dark figure. I couldn't get a good look at it, but it had a hood and a
terribly-twisted front hoof. It smelled like garbage, too, and it ran like a
yellow-bellied hen," the guard replied. "Could you two let me know if you see
such a thing? And inform Shining Armor that Private Tanzanite saw a dark form
running down a hall?" he asked, flying down to hand Natalie the fabric of red.
"It also had this on it; it was all I managed to get from it."
Natalie nodded. "Can do," she replied with a small frown on her face as she
took the cloth and made it vanish in a flare of blue light. With that, she and
Matt took off running once more.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Lance rounded a bend, followed closely by Shining and Cadence, though Amethyst
Maresbury wasn't with them. As they trotted down a hall, they were talking up a
storm. "So now that we know why the Heart changes colors, tell me…" Shining
paused, eliciting a shiver of concealed, bald wings as he spoke. After a few
seconds, he finished, "how bad is Anna's curse?"
That managed to make Lance halt for just a second, and he turned to Shining
with a brow raised. "How the—"
"She told me last night," Shining cut him off, a slight frown on his face.
"Now, how bad is it?"
Lance began trotting again, though he didn't reply. Shining trotted faster to
go shoulder-by-shoulder with him, and upon looking at the general's face
thereafter he found a tight frown accompanied by a slanted brow and pinprick
pupils. Silence seemed to firmly clutch the Fantasian stallion, and it felt as
though something forced him to stare straight ahead with his face frozen in
what Shining assumed was discomfort.
"Personal?" Shining pressed in a soft tone.
Lance mutely shook his head. "Did something happen?" Shining asked, and watched
as the pegasus nodded that time. "How bad was it?"
"Almost… almost..." Lance replied in a low tone before he stopped and gulped
heavily, and only now did the Emperor notice a tinge of red forming just under
his eyes. His wings shuddered under his garment again, forming wrinkles in the
black fabric as a result. "You do not want to know the specifics."
Shining nodded and turned to face ahead as the three rounded another bend and
started going down a lengthy hall that was connected to many more halls, the
corners of which were all marked by crystal columns. He heard Cadence pick up
her pace, but it wasn't until he felt her brush up against him with a wingtip
did he turn to her as she came up alongside him. "That's worrying," she
whispered, frowning herself.
Shining nodded again, and he opened his mouth to reply when Lance piped up, "I
can hear you two; you're both in earshot, you know." Shining closed his mouth
and sighed through his nose in resignation, and he turned to Cadence to briefly
nod before he jerked his attention straight ahead as he heard a fourth set of
hooves hitting crystal that was accompanied by the meow of a cat. The three
slowed as the fourth set became louder, and stopped entirely when Twilight
Sparkle bumbled into view with NoLegs and Spike on her back.
NoLegs turned to the three first and meowed, instantly causing Twilight and
Spike to turn to Lance, Shining, and Cadence. Shining smiled at his sister, but
the grin soon fell when she shuffled a back hoof like somepony was trying to
tug on it. Spike frowned, and clasped his claws together before he started to
twiddle his thumbs. "Is something wrong?" Cadence asked, garnering three nods
in response.
"Yeah…" Twilight craned her neck to look at NoLegs. "Are you able to perform
telepathy?" she asked, garnering a nod and a meow in reply. The cat's tail
glowed, and he waved the limb about for a few seconds before a blue aura sprang
to life and wrapped itself around the heads of Shining, Cadence, and Lance.
The three donned vexed looks at first, as their minds filled with visions of
bookshelves that were warped by magic, and then reverted at various points.
Then they frowned, when the books themselves turned into various objects
ranging from oil treatments to lava lamps. When the field of azure released
their heads and the visions died down, Lance staggered a little towards Shining
before stopping himself and gathering his composure. "The fuck was that?" he
asked, turning pointedly towards NoLegs.
Twilight answered for the feline, "I had Discord take me, your cat, and Spike
to all of the other libraries in Equestria to save time and trouble."
"And?" Lance pressed, turning to Twilight with eyes narrowing just a little.
"They…" Twilight paused to swallow a lump in her throat, mentally bracing
herself for the possible worst that she had no hope of avoiding at this point.
"The other libraries had nothing." Silence fell immediately after, and it
lasted for a few tense minutes. Twilight and Lance stared at each other, one
with sparks of fear dancing across her amethyst irises and the other with very
faint vestiges of anger crackling about in crimson voids that seemed to be
turning redder by the minute.
Finally, though, somepony broke the silence. Lance sighed deeply and closed his
eyes, his brow furrowing for a few seconds as he spoke, "So… you're telling me…
that, had me and my crew gone to the other libraries, we'd get frustrated as
fuck?"
"That's basically it," Spike answered for Twilight, frowning slightly. "You
would've just wasted your time."
Lance opened his eyes and let his expression ease as he turned to the small
drake and nodded once. "Well, at least you had NoLegs back up that claim," he
said simply.
Twilight and Spike's eyes immediately widened. "Wait, wait," the former spoke,
her pupils shrinking. "You're not… angry?" she asked.
"I'll be honest: I'm angry alright. But, what good would it do if I exploded
here and now? I can't control the libraries of this country—going off would be
counterproductive," Lance replied coolly, blowing out another sigh through his
nostrils. "Besides, if NoLegs went with you and saw what you saw… I have little
reason to doubt your words."
Twilight and Spike exchanged glances, then turned back to the general with
wide-eyed flabbergasted expressions that made them seem like fish out of water.
"Why… are you inclined to… to believe the cat?" Twilight asked in a skeptical
tone.
Lance turned to her and frowned, though only slightly. "Ask yourself this: why
does he have access to armor and a sword?" he retorted. "Go ahead, take your
time. I'll wait."
Shining and Cadence exchanged glances, then they turned to Lance with brows
raised. "The cat has a sword and armor?" the latter asked.
NoLegs meowed, and his own magic embraced him as he waved his tail about again.
Materializing in flashes of light, his armor and sword appeared and both
floated next to him before he put on the former and strapped the latter over
his shoulder, causing Cadence to look at him with a jaw that dropped open. "Who
would, in their right mind, arm a cat?" she asked, turning to Twilight as if
she could provide an answer for the phenomenon she just witnessed.
"... somepony who won't take any chances?" Twilight guessed, a hint of
disbelief in her voice as she looked back at Cadence. "Either that, or… or
somepony drafted the cat for some inane reason…" Her eyes widened at the mere
thought of a legless feline being drafted, and slowly, she turned her gaze back
to Lance. Her front legs twitched and almost buckled when he slowly nodded.
"Why would you…"
"To cut a long story short, he proved himself," Lance replied, noting that
Twilight looked as if he had the temerity to slap her right across the face.
"It's… very complicated."
"The cat is part of your army…" Shining murmured, and he closed his eyes for a
few seconds, standing there and just letting that bit of information soak in.
"Sometimes I want to know what goes through that head of yours, Boltwing."
"You wouldn't want to know," Lance replied with a huff.
"Have you thought about drafting diamond dogs? You already have a gryphon and a
changeling working under you," Shining stated seriously, turning to Lance with
a hardened face. When Lance shook his head, a brow rose. "And why not?"
"That in itself is a long story. I'd probably have to drag you around Fantasia
before giving it to you in a nutshell," Lance replied, the corner of his mouth
twitching.
Shining donned a smile, one which sent shivers up Twilight and Spike's spines.
"Then so be it," he replied. "I've let you into my territory, after all; you
should let me into yours sometime. It's only fair."
Lance blew out another sigh. "Before I do that, though, I still have some
business over here to take care of," he replied. He turned to meet Shining's
gaze and donned a wry smile. "Is that alright with you?"
"Be my guest," Shining replied with a nod. "Just don—" he couldn't finish as he
heard two more sets of galloping hooves rapidly approaching, and he barely
turned around as a harried-looking Matt and Natalie rounded a corner homing in
towards him.
He was wrapped in a blue aura and lifted into the air, turning to Cadence to
find her horn glowing as she started madly flapping her wings to take to the
air. Lance merely side-stepped out of the way, and Twilight did likewise as the
two new arrivals skid to a halt and promptly crashed into two separate crystal
columns barrel-first.
"Watch where you two are going!" Lance barked, an eye twitching as the two
unicorns peeled themselves from the columns with sluggish nods of their heads.
"Great googly moogly, what got you two worked up?" he asked.
"T-Twilight… told us… about the libraries," Natalie croaked as she fell onto
her haunches for a few seconds. She stood up and turned to Lance on wobbly
legs, her breathing ragged and her face turning a little blue.
"I was just informed myself," Lance replied with another huff.
The remark caused Matt to whirl around to stare at his superior with wide eyes.
"Y-y-you were…" he stammered, but a curt nod from the pegasus managed to
silence him.
"There's honestly nothing I can do about it. At most, I could raise hell at
Celestia herself, but that would probably end badly," Lance stated, watching as
the two slumped their shoulders. He gestured to NoLegs with a hoof. "It's a
good thing NoLegs actually helped Twilight out, even if they yielded nothing."
"How so?" Matt asked, a brow raised.
"The cat and Twilight and Spike saved us a lot of hassle," Lance replied, a
small smile forming on his face.
"And a lot of potential riots," Shining added with a wave of his hoof.
Twilight and Spike shared another glance, and both gulped in unison.
"Oh, and Shining?" Natalie asked, causing the stallion in question to look at
her. When he nodded and motioned with a hoof to continue, she summoned up the
sheet of cotton with a flash of magic and stated, "A guard named Tanzanite saw
a dark figure running through the halls, one with a badly-hurt front hoof that
reeked of rubbish. And apparently, it was running around with a bedsheet."
"A dark… figure…with a bedsheet. And a hurt front hoof..." Shining frowned
immediately. "You sure of that?"
"Ask Private Tanzanite, not us. We were just told to relay it to you," Matt
replied with a nod.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Night came without further incident, though now the halls seemed to be filled
with tension. Private Tanzanite and Private Zircon were stationed along the
guest rooms—just them, in addition to Flash Sentry, Zephyr Bolt, and
Aquamarine. They had spears in their front hooves, and additional backup in the
form of bows and quivers full of arrows strapped to their middles, with each
weapon faintly gleaming as they shifted from time to time.
With them were Katie, Fenrir, Spike, NoLegs, and an undisguised Armin, with all
sans Fenrir and Spike armed in case some hostile entity decided it was a good
idea to pick a fight with one of them. Everyone had scowls set into their
faces, and their ears constantly strained to scour out even the faintest of
sounds.
Silence held firm, though the guards constantly eyed Armin and some strange,
copper-colored, cannon-like object that he had strapped to his side. It was a
strange contraption that sported tarnished gold gears and a clock face, with
one of the clock hands warped, enlarged, and elongated. Said warped clock hand
pointed outward, settled beside a gaping hole that served as the thing's
muzzle.
None of the guards asked, though Flash's twitching mouth acting in tandem with
his eyes darting to the strange contraption every few seconds indicated that he
at least wanted to. Armin's horn briefly glowed and his and the other guards'
heads were wrapped in sickly green for just a second as his voice echoed into
their minds.
"It's a massive gun, built from scraps back home. It's what me and my fellow
soldiers call the Accelerator," Armin telepathically said. He added, "My
general would usually carry it himself, but his wings have compromised him. So
it's in my hole-riddled hooves for the time being."
The assembled guards nodded, and took a few seconds to look down both ends of
the hall. Only darkness greeted them, and it came with still more silence. Yet
they stood vigil, always watching for any sign of life that could come from
either end, hostile and otherwise.
Katie's ears twitched near-constantly, and her orbs dimmed at random intervals,
as though she struggled with keeping them bright for longer than a few seconds.
Even she could not hear anything coming or going, no matter how much her ears
shifted about like satellite dishes. Spike repeatedly balled his claws into
fists, his nose twitching with the occasional plume of smoke leaving his
nostrils. His tail swished behind him like a club that was being tested for
weight and efficiency.
NoLegs betrayed minimal movement, though the tip of his tail constantly hovered
close to the hilt of his blade, just barely twitching as though he longed to
stab something. Fenrir lay next to him, his body flush against the floor, his
eyes almost fully closed and his forepaws sitting next to his head. The dog
seemed to be asleep, but every once in a while he cracked an eye open and
scanned the hall with it, like a duck keeping watch.
When a full hour passed and nothing dared to break the peace and quiet, Spike
spoke up, "I'm starting to think we're on watch for nothing."
Tanzanite turned to Spike, a brow immediately raising as high as it could go.
"Why do you think that?" he asked.
Spike turned to Tanzanite and snorted, which caused a few sparks of emerald
flames and smoke pillars to climb out of his nostrils. "We're out here waiting
for something… yet whatever it is, it hasn't shown up," he replied.
"Perhaps this unseen adversary of ours is lulling us into a state of false
complacency," Fenrir piped up, the fur along his back briefly bristling as he
spoke.
Armin turned to Fenrir. "So, something along the lines of the 'waiting for us
to drop our guard and then striking' kinda deal?" he asked.
Fenrir nodded. "And for a few of the other guards scattered here and there,
thus far they've succeeded. If our little obsidian-garbed mongrel wishes to
seek further trouble with us this night, then that is simply where their buck
stops," he replied, his brow furrowing.
"Because we're armed and there's, like, ten of us in this hall?" Katie guessed,
turning to Fenrir with a brow raised.
"Precisely. Even if you and NoLegs were overwhelmed, the perpetrator of the
attacks on the guards thus far would still very likely be subdued," Fenrir
answered, his eye averting briefly to Katie as he spoke. "But that is if the
entity who preys on guards when they have their backsides turned decides to
meddle in our affairs."
"And a big if at that, if they have more than half a brain," Armin scoffed, his
wing muscles shifting in a way that they buzzed, but the wings themselves
didn't flap once. "Which would be likely, considering the few skirmishes
happened in the last few days ended in their favor."
"I'm willing to bet it's our Wise Guy," Katie interjected. When Armin and
Fenrir turned to her with brows raised, she rolled her orbs and added, "But
then again, Wise Guy and Guard Fondler might be two separate beings."
"Guard Fondler?" Flash inquired, his wings ruffling a bit as he parroted the
words.
Katie turned to him with a nod. "The pony or whatever that knocked some of your
fellow guardsponies out," she elaborated. Then she turned to Armin. "You able
to pick up any traces of magic?" she asked.
Armin flinched, his wings snapping upright as he turned back to his fellow
changeling. "Y-yes?" he stammered.
"You think our Wise Guy might be a unicorn?" Katie continued, and made to speak
further when she heard one of the guards clearing his throat. Both she and
Armin turned to Zircon, who stared back at the latter.
"I saw our cloaked assailant use magic to stop themselves from becoming a
bloodstain on the street after taking a leap of faith," Zircon stated, his eyes
narrowing at the thought.
Flash turned to him and frowned. "At least that was one less mess for us to
clean up," he pointed out.
Tanzanite spoke up, "And the bastard left me with a bedsheet and temporary
blindness. They used an illumination spell that made my vision go orange."
Flash turned to his fellow pegasus. "Yeesh, that sounds bad. Were you close to
nabbing 'em?" he asked.
"Oh, so close. My hooves were inches from its body," Tanzanite replied with a
nod and a snort.
Flash sighed, and then he directed his attention to Armin, noticing his ears
falling back. "If they're using magic, and you can sense it…" he trailed off,
frowning for a bit. "Then… maybe we could stop their rampage this week, but I'd
like it to cease before the Crystal Faire."
Armin blinked, and then he frowned. "Suppose that I get their magic signature
befuddled with another pony's signature," he retorted, his brow slanting. "Or
that they might be disguising their signature with some sort of anti-tracking
spell."
Flash's frown deepened. "So, it's… unreliable at best, then?" he guessed.
Armin glumly nodded. "Most I can recognize, magic signature-wise, would be my
superior's unicorn trinity and your Emperor's traces."
He fidgeted for a bit before continuing, "And I require love to power my
spells. Thing is, I haven't eaten so much as a tablespoon's worth with what
little magic I have left. My best shot would be, should we find our little
Guard Fondler or Wise Guy—if they're different entities and your Emperor and my
general actually allow it—to drain some from them."
The guards exchanged glances amongst themselves, prior to casting wary gazes on
Armin. Zephyr piped up, "And they'd likely deny you permission to do so?"
"Yes. Which leaves tracking out of the question," Armin replied with a nod.
"Besides, they'd probably taste bad."
"But the Crystal Empire's full of love right now, thanks to the recent
Crystalling," Zircon stated, his ears falling back.
"Even changelings have their reservations. If I have to feed, I'll ask first.
Besides, I'm not becoming skin and bones yet," Armin retorted.
"How weak is your magic right now?" Tanzanite ventured, a brow raised.
"Yeah. If it's as bad as you say it is, then maybe you should feed more often,"
Spike piped up, waving a claw as if to dismiss the thought that Armin's magic
had gone sour.
Armin sighed and turned to Spike. "My general tends to be fussy about who I
feed on. That, and I'm in your adoptive uncle's kingdom. It ain't that simple,"
he replied, and proceeded to let his horn glow, summoning forth a brilliant
light of sickly emerald from its tip.
He maintained it for some seconds, but as they passed, his eyes closed, his
brow furrowed and sweat started to bead on his forehead. When a full half-
minute passed, his legs buckled as his mana fizzled out in a hissing series of
sparks, and the glow died with.
"That bad?" Katie asked, garnering a shaky nod from Armin.
"O-okay," Armin managed, his voice a little raspy. "I-I may have
underestimated… needed love intake." He took a few breaths and straightened his
posture thereafter.
"It happens," Katie replied, her orbs brightening when Armin looked at her with
a frown on his face. "I underestimated needed intake too, once. That's a
mistake I won't repeat."
NoLegs meowed, and turned down towards the bend, only to hiss in that
direction. Everyone whipped their heads around and froze for a few seconds as
they saw a dark figure standing there, facing them in a rigid posture. Then it
ghosted to the other end of the hall so fast and so suddenly that all they saw
was a shadowy blur, and they turned their heads as it passed in an attempt to
get a better glimpse at the damned thing. As it fled, it left an acrid aroma in
its wake, though it was faint.
"Was that the figure?" Katie asked, being the first to turn to the other end of
the hall as the thing vanished out of sight. She started pounding a hoof upon
the floor, producing an echoing clang that resonated as a result.
"Very likely it," Flash replied, spreading his wings. "If we don't dally, we
may find out who they are soon enough."
"I smelled necrosis, barely masked by several different ponies' scents as it
moved past us," Fenrir snarled, rising up to stand on all fours. His head
turned to where the thing had gone. "I could have sworn I smelled pegasus on
its body."
"Is it alright for me to use my fire breath on them?" Spike asked, a firm frown
settling onto his face.
"If they touch you and we can't block 'em fast enough, then go for it," Zephyr
answered with a nod. "Bastard's cloaked anyway; I doubt your fire breath could
harm them that much."
"Ooooh, I want to repay that cloaked bastard for trying to strangle me!"
Aquamarine seethed, eyes narrowing to thin slits as he scraped a hoof against
the floor several times, akin to a bull getting ready to charge. He glanced at
the others just once as NoLegs grasped their spears in his magic and made them
vanish, and took a few seconds to lift Spike from the floor to settle him on
his back with his magic. "Let's get 'im before 'e attacks again! Zhæmf fhelsch
khag avuut mortælik!"
The other guards whinnied in unison and parroted, "Zhæmf fhelsch khag avuut
mortælik!"
The Fantasians, however, didn't need to be told twice—and all of them snarled
at once. In seconds, they prepared with a few deep breaths and shifted into
pouncing positions before they all took off running after the possibly-cloaked
form.
***** Chapter XL- Hail of Umber *****
The group of ten slowed down to a brisk trot, eyes scanning every nook and
cranny of the hall they had found themselves in, though they froze when an
echoing laugh bounced down the hall tauntingly. Katie made unnatural hisses,
ones that sounded something like a mix between a steaming kettle about to
explode and the mating call of a cicada, in response to the laugh. The group
stilled entirely as the sound reverberated down the hall towards what they
guessed was the source of the laugh.
Silence fell upon the hall, and all sets of ears fell flat against their
owners' heads. Fenrir took the opportunity to sniff the air, and his brow
furrowed as a faint stench accentuated by a highlight of cloth and several more
of feathers tickled his nostrils. A tight frown graced his muzzle, the corners
twitching slightly as he sniffed again.
The guards turned to Fenrir, and Zephyr piped up, "Got anything?"
"A faint, acrid stench… had it been stronger, and without notes of other
aromas, I would have curled my snout upward," Fenrir replied, taking a few
steps ahead of the group. He stopped and turned around, turning towards Katie.
"How good is your hearing?" he asked.
Katie's ears stood up immediately, and her orbs shrank. "Uh… I can hear a
stampede miles away in a winter wonderland, if the entire perimeter is dead
silent otherwise. Why?" she answered, her withers twitching as if something
poked at them constantly.
"I ask because we're going to need to utilise most, if not all, of our senses
and wits if we are to corner and subdue our specter," Fenrir replied, an ear
twitching. "Can you hear cloth rustling, or something galloping?"
Silence fell, and Katie's orbs dimmed as her ears began swivelling again. Then,
she heard something, though it was very faint—the muffled sound of hooves
softly landing against crystal. She strained her sense of hearing, tuning out
all else as another sound graced her ears—a clip-clop of hooves so faint it was
as if a phantom had come and gone right under her snout.
Slowly, she turned her head a little to the left and rose a hoof to point at a
corner marked with a crystal column. "It's coming from there," she whispered.
Her eyes narrowed. "Can't see much further than that column, though."
Flash immediately turned to Katie, a brow raised. "Your eyesight's poor?" he
asked.
Katie glumly nodded. "I can hardly see shit in this darkness," she affirmed.
Fenrir responded by slinking back to the group and scooping Katie up with a
paw, cradling her to his chest with his arm like she was a newborn. "Let's not
dally any longer than necessary," he said, turning around and looking towards
the same column Katie had eyeballed. "From there, correct?"
Katie nodded, but not before pressing her head up to his chest so he could feel
her do so. "That's the one," she chirped. With that, Fenrir dropped to all
threes, making sure not to drop her as he crept towards the corner. The others
followed with soft hoofsteps, stopping behind the dog when he poked his head to
look into the hall the column marked.
Fenrir lifted his free paw and repeatedly curled two digits for a few seconds.
"Devoid of life, specters and otherwise," he whispered. He sniffed the air, and
frowned when the scent of clothes, feathers, and rot intensified just a little.
He took a few steps just to get around the column, slowly and cautiously should
the specter still be in the hall.
Then Armin came up behind him and around him before pausing to scan a lengthy
hall that led to a set of stairs winding up. "Nothing," he said. "It's empty."
"Nothing?" Zephyr piped up.
"Nothing," Armin tersely repeated with a slow nod of his head. He turned to
Katie. "Did they go up or down?"
Katie's ears twitched, and after some seconds she tilted her head until her
muzzle pointed straight up. "That a-way," she answered. With that, Armin
stepped in front of Fenrir and cantered over to the stairs, with the others
following in step behind him. As he went, NoLegs caught up to him and jumped to
land squarely on his head, letting off a soft mew as he settled between the
changeling's ears.
Armin merely shrugged and rolled his eyes as the cat claimed his head as a
perch and reached the stairs, pausing to glance over his shoulder to confirm
that the others weren't far off from his position. When they caught up to him
after a few seconds, everyone nodded to him in unison, and he turned around and
took the first few steps up before they even moved.
Slowly, silently, Armin moved up the stairs, his ears twitching partly because
of NoLegs brushing up against them and partly because the guards made minute
clip-clops as they followed him and Fenrir. Minutes passed by before they found
themselves standing on the next floor, and they paused to scan the new hallway.
Armin's brow furrowed as he immediately saw there was nothing to find, save
scant traces of moonlight illuminating two crystal columns that faintly
shimmered ahead.
Silence lingered, but only for a couple of seconds before the sound of a door
opening and closing filled the soundless void. Katie instantly jerked her
muzzle squarely to the right, eyes narrowing just as Armin turned to her. She
silently lifted a hoof and carefully pointed it in front of her, and to a
mistaken soul it would have looked as though she simply stretched it as far as
it could go.
But Armin knew what it really meant. He turned around and tiptoed to the end of
the hall before looking both ways, finding nothing on the left, only to then
discover a door just barely hidden to his right. He motioned with a hoof for
the others to catch up, and his wing muscles went rigid as a peculiar glow
embraced an almost-invisible doorknob. When it flung the door attached to said
knob wide open with a loud slam that briefly rang in his ears, he held out a
hoof again—this time, to signal for the group to halt.
Fenrir lifted a paw and just barely grazed it against Armin's back leg to let
him know he was there. He accidentally shoved him forward when the door slammed
shut again and flinched as a result, forcing Armin into the hall and almost
causing him to fall over his own front hooves in the process. The hapless drone
nearly landed on his face, but a blue aura pulled him upright and kept him
still until he got himself steadied.
Then NoLegs gave an almost-silent mew, instantly garnering a cross-eyed look
from his makeshift perch. "I'm fine, thank you," Armin replied in a whisper
with a smile. At once, the glow that suddenly grabbed him vanished as it had
come, though not fast enough for him to avoid seeing that said glow came from
the cat's tail. Then he turned his attention back to the door and watched as an
aura grabbed it and swung it open once again—like it dared him to approach it.
Fenrir poked his head around the corner, resting most of his weight on his free
paw so he could tilt just enough for Katie to do likewise. "That may be a
trap," Armin warned, briefly turning to the two and slowly nodding to them.
"I volunteer to see whether or not it is," Katie stated. Her remark caused
Fenrir to look at her with widened eyes. She looked up to meet the alarmed
expression and calmly added, "I can probably take it if it is a trap. Worst
that could happen is being whacked with the door if it isn't one."
Fenrir gave her remark some thought, and his lips pulled into so tight a frown
Katie could've easily sworn she saw a fang or two jut out slightly. "Have you
considered that we most likely do not have a medic with us presently?" he
asked.
Katie nodded. "I have," she tersely answered, her response punctuated by the
door closing of its own volition again.
Fenrir's frown deepened a smidgen. He wordlessly knelt down and let Katie
clamber out of his grasp, and both he and Armin followed her with their eyes as
she trotted over to the door. She carefully moved just out of reach in case it
suddenly swung open again, though for a few tense minutes it remained shut.
For those tense minutes, Katie stared at the door. "Open sesame, I fucking dare
you," she hissed as if expecting the door to do just that.
The door in question failed to comply. At this, Katie's eyes narrowed.
"It's probably some sleeping unicorn opening and closing it with his magic and
not even realizing it," Armin piped up, garnering the attention of the wraith
who glared at said door. "Let it alone; it's probably nothing." As soon as he
said that, the door swung open again and a hail of blue arrows darted out of
the room it closed off from the hall. Fenrir and Armin's eyes went wide as
arrows stuck themselves in the floor, the wall, the door, and Katie's front
legs and barrel.
It was only thanks to her small size that she was able to avoid most of the
sudden onslaught. But the few arrows that had managed to impale her started
glowing before frost coated them and some patches of her body. Yet Katie didn't
flinch in the slightest; she just stood there staring at the door without
paying any heed to the arrows that managed to perforate her form.
Then she took a step forward, her orbs burning like balls of azure flame. "You
can come out now. I won't bite," she beckoned without a hint of pain in her
tone, and contemptuous emphasis on bite.
"Make me! I'll have you pinned faster than you can flutter a wing!" a hollow
voice called from within the room the hail of arrows shot out from.
Katie took another step forward, her movements slowing just a bit as frost
started forming webs on the fringes of their growing patches. "Do it, coward,"
she shot back icily. Her remark caused the guards to dart around Fenrir and
into the hall, just in time to see another hail of arrows emerge from behind
the door and pelt everything past it once more.
Most of the arrows merely nicked Katie, but one caused her to stumble back all
the way to the wall opposite of the door. She jerked her head up at the same
time as this one arrow landed squarely upon the stump of her horn. Yet she
still stood even as her rump connected with the wall, her muzzle only pointing
upwards for a few seconds before she leveled her gaze to the room with the
opened door.
Frost formed on her face, all the way along her forelock line and along her
split grin to the snout, even going so far as to cover her eyes like some sort
of transparent mask that made her orbs take on an almost demonic look.
"H-how… how are you…" the voice that came from within the room managed.
"I thought you'd have me pinned by now. Pity that it seems you've run out of
ammunition," Katie taunted, taking a third step towards the door that caused
small bits of frost to break away and fall to the floor. The others took that
as their cue to flank her, and when they did seconds later, they looked into
the room to find the barely-visible source of the rain of arrows.
A shaking cloaked figure with a twisted front hoof, an empty quiver strapped
around their middle, and a bow floating next to them in a shaking magical grip
stood in a dark room. Only now, though, it trembled to the point that its hood
slipped off just enough to reveal a glowing horn whose color the group couldn't
make out. In addition to that, it had golden orbs poised right at them,
narrowed but likewise also trembling. A rattling sound like a thousand bottles
clinking together filled the air, but whether it came from the bow or the
quiver the group didn't know.
"Y-you…" the figure spluttered before it threw the bow at the group and fled
deeper into the room for a few seconds. Then it shot out before the guards and
Fantasians could react, darting past them like a bullet prior to going down to
the end of the hall and vanishing around a bend.
Katie turned to the bend for a second, and then to Fenrir. "See? I told you I
could take it," she chirped.
Zircon's horn glowed, and he embraced the arrow-riddled wraith in his magic.
"Hold still for a few," he warned. "Gotta get the arrows out of you."
"Make it quick. We got an attacker to catch," Katie replied with a nod of her
head.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The group trudged through the halls of the palace at a sluggish pace after
Katie's arrows were removed and her layers of unwarranted frost peeled off. The
bunch moved slowly, though only to keep an eye and ear out for any more
surprise assaults.
Katie took to resting on Zephyr's backside, occasionally tapping his withers
with her snout before lifting a hoof to direct the group towards a sound if she
managed to hear one. Fenrir would also help if he caught a wayward scent or
two, further beckoning the others onwards. Armin also spotted fleeting dark
forms quicker than the rest of them, and chipped in with his two bits whenever
his eyes failed to deceive him.
Yet after an hour of slow but thorough searching, no sign of their unwelcome
guest turned up. "It's like the bastard's leading us into another trap," Katie
hissed, eyes narrowing as she scanned the hall the group wound up in. It was
one marked by many crystal columns; a sort of convergence point for many other
halls that lead to various locations.
Spike turned to her, a brow raised. "Are you gonna walk into it again?" he
asked, his query causing her to turn to him.
For a few seconds, Katie remained silent. Her brow furrowed, forming thin but
visible wrinkles. "What would you do if you had a hunch that danger was nearby,
and you were a wraith?" she retorted at last.
Spike frowned. "Still wouldn't just walk into the trap. Even if I were a
wraith," he replied, punctuating his response with a snort that caused smoke to
eject from his nostrils.
"I see," Katie sighed, her expression easing a bit.
"Unless I manage to set the arrows on fire before they leave the quiver. That's
about the only time you'll probably see me walking into a trap," Spike added,
his frown morphing into a small grin.
"If such a thing happens, I'll develop an appetite," Katie scoffed, her ears
twitching as she spoke. She stiffened when a very faint sound of something that
sounded like the floor was cracking echoed, and for a few seconds it lingered.
At first, she simply ignored it with a shrug when it faded, thinking it to just
be her imagination. Then she jerked her head to the left, towards a hall that
Zephyr just trotted past. She poked him with her muzzle and directed him to it
with a hoof when she heard it again. "I heard something," she whispered.
"You sure of that?" Zephyr asked, craning his neck so she could see him
frowning.
"Positive it came from there," Katie answered with a nod.
"But it could have come—" Zephyr began, but stopped when another object that
produced metallic clangs hit something from the same hall Katie gestured
towards—this time, the noise was loud enough to cause everyone to turn to the
hall in question. He instantly turned to it and trotted up to it, poking his
head around the corner and blinking as darkness greeted him. He turned to
Zircon. "Hey, can you shine a light here? Our little changeling heard
something!"
"I heard it too," Zircon replied, trotting over and letting his horn glow with
a soft light that took on a round shape. He reached the hall and cast the glow
down the hall like an impromptu flashlight, revealing nothing more than two
overturned buckets at the midpoint, stationed well before a slightly-ajar door
some distance behind. His brow rose when he saw that the buckets had objects
pouring out of them, clumped up together like crude rubix cubes.
He exchanged looks with Zephyr. "Just some buckets," he reported.
"Well, let's see if our garbed rat left anything else behind," Zephyr sighed.
He turned to the others and gestured them over with a wing before he and Zircon
made to start trotting down the hall with the buckets without waiting for the
rest of the group to catch up. When they reached the dual buckets a little
under a minute later, Zephyr knelt before the objects to get a better look at
them.
He found that they had straps tied around them, in addition to an emptied
quiver. The objects that spilled from the buckets were ring-like accoutrements,
all engraved with symbols barely highlighted by Zircon's light. Slowly, he
picked one up with a hoof. "By Celestia… the rat had a gazillion magic
inhibitors on them?" he asked with widening eyes.
Zircon's eyes also widened. "So that's what the bastard did…" His eyes then
narrowed as he turned to the others as they came into view. "He must've had a
spell to hide it…"
"Hide what? What're you babbling about?" Armin asked, a brow raised high.
Zircon shined the light on the buckets, quiver, and motherload of magic
inhibitors. He picked up an inhibitor in his magic and made it vanish in a
flare of orange light. "The garbed pony may have access to illusion magic. They
hid buckets and inhibitors on them," he answered upon turning back to Armin.
"And it flashed orange… not my usual green. Damn things are enchanted."
Fenrir's brow furrowed when the words 'access to illusion magic' reached his
ears. "That would certainly provide an explanation, regarding how this figure
has thus far evaded apprehension," he piped up. "And considering my first
encounter with such arcane tomfoolery on my first morning in Canterlot…"
"Bad, I take it?" Zephyr interjected, turning to Fenrir with a brow quirked. He
felt Katie nod against his neck, and briefly turned to glance at her to see her
eyes were narrowed.
"Worse," Fenrir replied tersely, his eyes narrowing to slits. He took a second
to sniff the air, immediately finding a smell of rot that lingered about. He
turned to the buckets and quiver before approaching them, kneeling down, and
scooping up the strap with his paw to then bring it to his snout and see
whether or not that was the source of the stink.
Upon sniffing it and getting a scent so strong it managed to assail itself on
his tongue, he dropped it and reeled back, causing the buckets tied with it to
clatter noisily against the myriad of magic inhibitors already littering the
floor. He stood up, his nose scrunched so much it looked like it was trying to
upturn itself. He growled lowly, an eye twitching as the sound left his mouth.
"What is it?" Spike warily asked, his brow slanting as Fenrir rapidly shook his
head.
"I refuse to sniff that particular band a second time," Fenrir growled, using a
paw to gesture to the damned thing like it insulted his mother. He turned to
Spike and added, "I could taste the scent on my tongue. It is as if somepony
flayed a bear, added onions to the carcass, then let it rot for a few days
prior to submerging it in acrid swampwater. It is that atrocious."
Spike flinched, his tail twitching as he imagined the taste that Fenrir
described. "That sounds nasty. And I've eaten things that everypony in
Ponyville called 'baked bads' before," he groaned. When Fenrir rose a brow, he
elaborated, "Uh, Applejack didn't get enough sleep one time and botched a
recipe. Lots of ponies got sick, but I was able to eat the botched goods like
it was nothing."
Fenrir nodded and made to speak further when NoLegs meowed, jumped off of
Armin's head, and scurried over to the pile of inhibitors. He sniffed them for
a bit before grappling them in his magic, hissing when they started glowing and
pulsing a soft orange in color as he lifted the whole mound up. The cat then
snarled at something that was beneath the pile, which likewise also pulsed with
mana seemingly of its own volition.
Zircon shined his light on the object and gawked, finding a small crystal
formation just jutting out of the floor like a thumbtack. "What's this doing
here?" he asked, gently nudging the formation with a hoof as everyone turned to
him to see what he was going on about.
Aquamarine snorted upon seeing the crystals, in addition to the pulses of mana
they gave out. "I think one of our earth pony fellows had an accident," he
stated.
"Under a pile of inhibitors, buckets, a quiver, and a smelly strip of leather?"
Katie scoffed, eyes narrowing as she stared at the formation. "That, I'd hardly
call an accident."
Aquamarine's horn glowed, and he trotted closer to the formation before
kneeling down and letting a soft blue aura embrace it. His brow furrowed after
his magic embraced the crystals for a full minute, watching as the orange mana
then turned to simple hues of gold and red before he dispelled it and stood up
straight. "That's… odd," he said tersely.
"What're we dealing with?" Zephyr asked, turning to Aquamarine with a brow
raised.
Aquamarine's eyes narrowed. "It's… it's a mix. It's not just earth pony magic,"
he answered.
"Then what is it?" Katie demanded, turning to look at Aquamarine. The others
did likewise, and with brows raised high—it was as though he spewed
gobbledygook.
Aquamarine turned to the wraith, took a few seconds to lift a hoof and hit the
bridge of his muzzle with it, and then groaned in exasperation. "Put it like
this: innate magic has specific colors. Usually, innate and pure earth magic is
gold, unicorn is red, and pegasus is blue. The crystals glow orange, like
copper or the mane of one of your acquaintances. This batch is a mix. Do you
see what I am getting at now?" he asked.
Katie's orbs widened and her ears fell back for a second. "Oooooooh." She
nodded frantically. "I see." Her ears sprang up again. "And you said… usually,
I believe?"
Aquamarine nodded back. "That's how it usually goes around here, and by 'here,'
I mean the whole of Equestria plus the Empire. Sometimes innate pure magic
sports different colors, but not often," he answered. "It might not go like
that in Fantasia, though."
Katie sighed. "Let's go back to finding Wise Guy." The others turned to her,
and she waved a hoof before adding, "But if he can make crystals grow out of
the ground, then maybe we should… I dunno, fly or self-levitate or—" Words died
in her throat as the entire hall itself, floor and all, suddenly pulsed with
blue mana for a few seconds, during which time it briefly turned a sickly
orange before fading away.
"The fuck was that?" Armin asked, looking around once the mana pulse had gone
away.
Zephyr scowled. "Somepony must be trying to mess with the mana that's flowing
throughout the castle. Let's get a move on, before something worse happens!" he
barked, punctuating his order with a stomp of his hoof. He turned to the door
and raced to it, with the others falling into a stampede behind him.
He saw Aquamarine's aura grab the door before he reached it and flung it open
in one smooth movement, enabling him to start going up a set of stairs winding
further up along a great teal column that rivaled the other columns in sheer
size. Instead of another floor, though, the stairs kept on spiraling up and up
without pause. Zephyr flared his wings and flapped to boost his speed, causing
Katie to wrap her hooves around his barrel and activate their enchantments with
a swell of pulsing blue mana.
The mana swell started making ice grow along her front legs and, before too
long, effectively froze her shoes to his armor. "Say, why does the palace have
mana in its walls?" she asked as he more or less carted her on.
"The Crystal Heart and everypony in the Empire provides it. Think of it as a
subset of ancient unicorn and earth pony magics," Zephyr replied, slowing a bit
without fully stopping his mad dash. After he ascended a few steps, and craned
his neck to find that the others were catching up to him, he added, "And some
pegasus magic too."
"Long story, I take it?" Katie asked, a brow raised.
"Yes," Zephyr replied, turning back ahead as he continued to gallop and flap
his wings without actually flying. He frowned. "Damn, I think we may be going
up to the highest point of the castle."
"Huh? Is there, like, a flat top or something? Last I saw was a pointy tower,"
Katie questioned, spreading her wings and then buzzing them to provide an
additional boost to her makeshift mount's speed.
"That 'pointy tower' is the flat top—it's just that, really. It's just too high
up for non-flying-pegasi to see it properly," Zephyr hissed, brow furrowing.
Then the inside of the palace started glowing again, a bright orange that
pulsed from above before fading.
Katie nodded against his neck and buzzed her wings harder, pumping as much
strength into the beats as her emaciated body would allow. As a result, the two
managed to outgallop the others, gaining distance with each and every step.
It took minutes to reach the top, and when they did, they found themselves in
an observatory-type construct with slender columns forming thin windows that a
foolish soul would be able to trot out of with relative ease, all capped off by
a circular ceiling. Out through these windows, Zephyr and Katie could see the
entirety of the Empire, right down to distant tilling fields and far-off
mountain ranges.
But mana flared around them through the roof, columns, and floor, and
orange—hideously orange gemstones burst forth between the columns like it was
growing from the empty space the windows didn't take up. The crystals of
apricot grew and grew, slowly closing off the windows until it sealed them
entirely once the rest of the group caught up.
And in the center of this room, standing on a decorative circle in the floor
that had a star motif centered within, was the cloaked figure they chased the
entire time, its back turned to both them and the stairs. Magic, orange-tinted
like the gemstones blocking off the windows, grappled at its body and undid the
cloth wrappings it had concealing its features.
What looked like orange-tinted growths of glass sprang up behind the group and
sealed off the stairs near-instantly, blocking off their entrance and leaving
them trapped with their target. The light of the moon barely shined through the
new, ugly additions to the tower, further casting a sickly umber light
throughout the now-dismal room. One by one, cloth garments fell to the floor in
heaps, releasing a strong stench of rot into the closed space.
Once it was naked, an orange light came from in front of it before it slowly
turned around, first revealing a mangled front hoof that showed bone and tissue
which flailed like a pendulum as it moved with the rest of its owner. Fenrir
snarled, and Armin and Katie hissed in unison as they saw a skeletal-thin,
brown unicorn stallion with multitudes of lacerations that exposed muscle.
He had a distinct tear on his right cheek that stretched up to his ear, showing
his gums and teeth on that side of his face, in addition to a black mane and a
half-buried gemstone cutie mark. On top of that, seemingly grafted to his
forehead under his horn, a twinge of black crystal jutted outward like the
beginnings of a secondary horn. A familiar voice, but one distorted and hollow,
came from this cut-up pony.
"It seems you fell for my trap. Pity that Windwood isn't with you presently,"
the unicorn hissed, eyes narrowing balefully as their orbs zeroed in on the
group. He cast a wicked grin and added, "But I should consider myself lucky.
The weakest of guards and Fantasians alike, standing before me… heh, I think
finishing you all off will be a cakewalk."
"Who's he?" Spike asked, turning to Katie and gesturing to the stallion for
emphasis.
Katie turned to meet the drake's gaze. "Stooge number two of Shitty Hotel
Service. Chocolate… something. Shitstain sounds appropriate," she cursed. She
deactivated her enchantments and pried herself off of Zephyr's armor and back
once the layer of frost melted away, taking into the air with a mad buzzing of
her wings and hovering over the group. She crossed her forelegs and turned to
Chocolate, whose horn still glowed in a bright orange.
"You think an arrow to the head will take me down? Listen here, bitch, you got
another thing coming," she scoffed, breaking the cross to wave a horseshoe-
laden hoof dismissively.
Chocolate's smile took on a sly cast and his orbs turned blood crimson for but
a moment, and he slowly turned to Katie with a bemused brow raised. "Really
now, Rubywing? Really?" he jabbed sarcastically, as if she could do no more
than poke at him with a flimsy twig. "I believe you have it backwards. I can
manipulate crystals and make them grow. I have you all trapped."
Zircon warily eyed the bit of crystal under Chocolate's horn, his pupils
dilating as his orbs turned a twinge of red again. "Have… you been touched by
Sombra?" he asked sincerely.
Chocolate chuckled, shaking his head as he turned to address Zircon. "I refuse
to confirm that absurd inquiry—let alone deny it. Why should I humor you?" he
scoffed, his tone icy in spite of his grin. "But I'll tell you this: my mana
was once green—an impure green."
Katie's eye twitched. "So… death has changed your mana color?" she queried
warily.
Chocolate glanced at Katie and snorted. "I'd suggest you'd zip it, Rubywing,"
he scoffed.
"Whatever the case may be, I care not for miniscule details. As it stands,
you've evaded law enforcement for far too long," Fenrir snarled, one paw
twitching as if he were resisting the urge to ball it into a fist. His lips
pulled back when Chocolate threw his head back to laugh, the sound echoing all
around in the closed-off space.
Only to cease altogether when Spike spoke up. "You realize you're messing with
the wrong ponies and Fantasians, right?" he asked.
Chocolate turned to him, and his smile only grew. "I am trifling with a ragtag
gaggle of weaklings, and nothing more," he replied in an amused, if malicious,
tone.
Armin responded by standing up on his back legs and using his front hooves to
detach the Accelerator from his side. Then he shifted a bit to holster the
massive gun properly, making sure to point the muzzle right at Chocolate. "I'm
afraid I have to agree with Spike. You don't seem to get just what you've
waltzed into," he hissed, baring his fangs in contempt.
Fenrir cracked his knuckles and popped his neck. "Us, a 'ragtag gaggle of
weaklings?' We're anything but," he stated before he made the first move,
lunging at Chocolate with a downward strike. His adversary deftly jumped out of
the way, aided by magic that wrapped around him at the exact moment the paw
would have otherwise solidly connected with his face.
His smile broadened as Fenrir instead hit the floor, but it fell when he saw a
few cracks forming a few inches outwards of the fist that made the impact. "So
be it," he hissed, his horn glowing brighter as he spoke.
***** Chapter XLI- Crumbling *****
Some of Chocolate's mana darted from his horn and all around the room. It went
bouncing from apricot crystal to apricot crystal like a demented pinball before
it smacked Katie between the wings and sent her tumbling out of the air. She
screamed as she crashed into Armin, sending him careening as well—Accelerator
and all—and both sprawled onto the floor. They shook their heads and made to
move, before orange gems sprang up from the floor and snagged them by their
hooves, keeping them pinned on the spot.
"Now that's just playing dirty," Aquamarine chastised, a tight frown forming on
his face as NoLegs conjured the spears in flashes of light and handed them to
him and his fellow guards. His frown softened as he took the spear with his
aura as soon as his horn began glowing, and it faded into a small, almost
invisible pursing of the lips as the other guardsponies eagerly took their
spears in hooves and magic.
"Says the guard who evidently started trusting changelings!" Chocolate shot
back, sidestepping away from Fenrir before another downward strike courtesy of
a clenched fist could land on him. His horn still glowed brightly, and began
crackling as if in warning.
Fenrir saw the sparks dancing around the coiled spire and dropped to all fours,
his fur bristling all across his back like he was a porcupine. "Just what
arcane sorcery have you been partaking in?" he asked. The protrusions of his
tail began jutting out like spikes on a mace, only further accentuated by
bushy, bristling fur that trembled at the roots.
Chocolate smiled wryly, as if the bristling canine went and made an utter fool
of himself. His gathered magic flared again, now akin to a ball of flame that
didn't scorch him or give off any heat. "Just performing my special
talent—something you cannot grasp, mutt," he shot before letting loose the
energy from his horn, watching with glee as it hit Fenrir in the chest as he
attempted to dodge it a moment too late.
Fenrir yelped as the attack sent him staggering back, pain flaring from his
chest that burned like the strike of a lightning bolt. His muscles stiffened
momentarily, and as he landed on all fours in an attempt to stop himself from
crashing into the floor, gems sprung up with another flare of orange mana that
seized his paws and grew all the way to his hips and shoulders. He realized
he'd been snagged seconds later, and pulled with all of his might in an attempt
to disentangle himself from the gemstones.
Chocolate let off a chuckle before sending another bolt to strike at his
trapped quarry again, orbs brightening in glee as that managed to hit him in
the nose and get another series of yelps of pain that were mixed with a frantic
whimpering. "I just love the sound of dog whimpering in the night," he chortled
before turning to the guards, Spike, and NoLegs. He grinned as the cat hissed
and waved his sword threateningly with his tail. "And what are you gonna do to
me, you little furbag?" he taunted.
NoLegs responded by letting magic flare around his tail, and with a yowl and
the tip of his sword moving to point at Chocolate like an accusing finger, he
vanished in an explosion of blue light. Chocolate's orbs widened, and his smile
fell in that instant. "Wh-what?" he sputtered, as though Celestia herself
slapped him across his rotting face with a hoof. His eyes fell onto Armin and
Katie, before the Accelerator also vanished in a similar flare of illumination.
Armin turned to Chocolate and donned a smile that still kept his fangs bared.
"You done fucked up," he chirped in an amused tone.
"Silence, bug!" Chocolate snapped, turning to Armin and casting him a narrow-
eyed glare. Despite the warning look, Armin kept his grin—and in seconds, the
reason why he kept it appeared in a flash of light before Chocolate, hovering
in the air and pointing the Accelerator right at his face. The muzzle of the
gun glowed a bright purple, and NoLegs hissed as his tail glowed in a similar
color.
Next thing the decaying unicorn knew, violet completely took over his vision as
jolt after jolt of electricity ran rampant through him, inside and out without
pause nor a modicum of mercy. He screamed as another shot of lightning sent him
scrambling ass-first into one of the crystal columns and then sprawling out
upon the floor. Yet even his landing did not deter the pain that the attack
still kept hammering into him.
It felt like minutes—or even hours—passed when he was struck, yet in reality it
lasted for but a few seconds. When it was over, he languidly shook his head to
clear the purple haze out of his sight, though he barely heard another hiss
come from the cat. Chocolate tried to move his dangling hoof, gritting his
teeth as he found that moving the leg attached to said dangling hoof felt
stiffer than a plank of wood.
"You… little bastard!" he hissed through clenched teeth, his orbs zeroing in on
his small attacker and his borrowed, oversized weapon. NoLegs threateningly
cocked the Accelerator in his direction again, and this time the weapon's
muzzle glowed with a fiery red aura that gave off a sweltering heat which
quickly circulated around the room. His orbs widened, and a flash of horror
paired with realization swept over him.
As if on autopilot, his horn glowed again before it sent another volley at
NoLegs. The cat simply vanished from sight in a flare of light after firing a
blast of flame from the Accelerator, and when he vanished he took the weapon
with him. The volley of flame connected with the magical onslaught, though that
didn't entirely stop it in its tracks as it exploded on impact. This wound up
leaving a weakened, smouldering magical attack that lazily careened over Armin
and Katie before it hit a column behind them and caused another swell of
crystals to erupt from the site of impact.
The latter turned to it, her neck cracking and revealing some small Adam's-
apple-like object protruding from her throat that tightly stretched the
already-taut skin as her head turned all the way back to zero in on the new
addition to the battleground. Her eyes narrowed as the new crystals burst into
flame and disintegrated, adding another dose of sweltering heat in the room,
albeit one that came and then quickly went.
Chocolate watched her, and so did the guards and Spike. All of them raised
brows at the display. "How'd you… do that?" Zephyr asked, his eyes wide as
saucers.
Katie turned to him, neck once more cracking. "There's a sort of… special joint
in my neck somewhere. Lets me turn my head without my skin tearing or my neck
breaking," she answered, prior to turning her head the rest of the way as her
gaze fell onto Chocolate. "You jealous?" she taunted, a bit of mockery in her
tone.
Chocolate scowled, his eyes narrowing. "Hardly," he scoffed, all previous
traces of his amusement gone like a puff of wind. His horn lit up again, and he
languidly pushed himself on his three functioning hooves as he added, "Because
I will tear that pretty little head off and use it—"
"As a cocksleeve?" Katie finished for him, a hint of amusement in her voice.
"Sorry, your twig's too small for even my liking. You couldn't even please a
filly with it."
Chocolate let off a furious, almost bestial howl at that utterance, and his
magic flew from his horn and zeroed in on the hapless changeling. Zircon
stepped in and conjured a shield, and though the onslaught broke clean through
his barrier and hit him right in the barrel, he stood firm and the attack
fizzled out before it could go any further. "You mean to tell me you've seen
his fifth leg?" Zircon asked, shooting Katie a quick glance.
Katie nodded in confirmation. "Yep, and when I did, it had claw marks deep
enough to tear it into even thirds," she added, her tone still holding its
slight amusement.
Zircon shuddered at that rather disturbing mental image, but shrugged it off
and turned to Chocolate. "Cease and desist, and remove the gemstones and come
quietly," he warned, only to receive a glare paired with a death rictus in
return.
"I'd much rather go down, with my muzzle pointing high," Chocolate hissed, his
right cheek tearing just a little as he strained its muscles. "And you can go
blow your superiors."
Zircon shrugged and turned to the other guards. "I tried," he sighed in
resignation before Zephyr spread his wings and positioned his spear in his
forelegs, shifting to stand upright.
"At least it'll be easier for us," Zephyr chirped, a slight grin on his face as
his wings began flapping and lifting him off the ground. He took to the air,
his grin widening as the group's decaying adversary continued to scowl and
grimace.
"How so? I just took out two changelings and a bloody dog able to look Celestia
in the eye," Chocolate retorted, his still-intact corner of the lip twitching
in tandem with an eye. He warily added, "And I could take you five guards out
just the same…" He took a cursory glance around the room before finishing, "And
that damned cat, if it decides to show its face again."
Zephyr shrugged, his smirk taking on a bit of a wicked cast. "Maybe," he began
coolly, shifting his spear to point its gleaming tip at his adversary. "But you
haven't focused on us yet," he pointed out, using a back hoof to gesture to the
other guards as they readied their spears. Flash flapped his wings and took to
the air, spear also poised to strike.
"And a couple of nights ago, you went and attacked me," Flash added, eyes
narrowing as a spark of anger danced across his irises. He watched as Chocolate
flinched for the barest of seconds, and he decided to speak up on it. "What's
the matter, tough colt? A guard too much for ya? I thought you could take us
out—you have us trapped! Why're you chickening out now?" he taunted.
Chocolate's horn flared once more, and one of his back legs shook slightly. He
fired a magic blast at Zircon that sent him flying backwards, though he did not
smile even as he landed against a wall and then solidly fell to the floor after
that. Then, he heard another series of bones popping and cracking, and his orbs
fell onto Katie as her head rotated once more to look at one of the orange
crystal formations behind her.
His orbs followed where he assumed her to be looking, and immediately his jaw
dropped as mana pulsed in warbling, thin lines. It was orange at first, before
a blinding teal that came in bands as thick as his hipbones took over, all the
while a formation cracked and disintegrated slowly.
Spike, still perched on Aquamarine's back, turned to look at the phenomenon as
a hole began to widen in the crystals that let a chilly breeze waft into the
room. "What's happening?" he asked, prompting those who hadn't turned yet to do
so in that moment. Zircon shifted and then stood up and also turned, before a
small grin crept on his face as he turned back to Chocolate.
Fenrir let himself smile a bit, his eyes turning from the breaking formation to
the crystals that had his paws pinned. He heard a series of hissing laughs, and
glanced at Katie and Armin, both of whom were also catching on as the former
turned her head the rest of the way to look at Chocolate again. "It seems
somepony's arcane tamperings are starting to weaken," he growled in an amused
tone.
Chocolate responded by sending another bolt of magic at Fenrir, aiming for the
nose again, though this time his quarry simply ducked low enough for it to
merely graze his left ear. "My spell's not faltering!" he retorted, to no avail
as another column of ugly umber began breaking away into nothingness. He sent
another bolt at Flash and Zephyr, and both pegasi danced out of the way to let
the attack hit yet another column that began breaking as soon as it was struck.
"Then why are your blockades starting to shrink, like Godcat decided to make
them into cosmic bricks?" Katie rebuked with a snort, earning herself another
blast of magic that she barely deflected by simply pointing the stump of her
horn at the oncoming attack and letting loose some irregularly-flashing blue
mana from it. She reeled when it collided with her stump as well as her brief
sparks of magic, and her head snapped back as if her neck was broken, yet
nothing more had happened other than the opposing mana blasts fizzling out
above her head.
Chocolate's orbs widened again. "It… it should have… it should have knocked
your head clean off your withers!" he cried as Katie lowered her head and
leveled her gaze at him. His ears fell back as orange mana pulsed across her
body, before it turned as blue as her eyes and subsequently dissipated.
Then something very strange, and peculiar, happened to Katie once the glow died
from her form. Tanzanite turned to her and blinked, seeing her chest move for a
second before her stomach gained no more than an inch in diameter. Then it grew
another inch, as if a water hose had just started filling her up. He turned to
Aquamarine and Spike, seeing them also turning to glance at Katie as she began
to convulse on the spot, her movements turning more and more violent as the
crystals of apricot continued to break.
Mana pulsed back to her horn's remnants now, at first blue before turning
orange and then growing in intensity. Chocolate's orbs became so wide that the
black of his eyes was completely overtaken, and a little color drained from his
face as a big ball started forming and sparking to life with the aid of a
protrusion that didn't look all that functional. The orb grew and grew, until
it was as large as a vase. "What… what is…" he spluttered again, only stopping
his blubbering as the orb catapulted from the horn stump and homed right in on
him.
He awkwardly fumbled out of the way, barely avoiding snapping his bad hoof the
rest of the way off before falling flat on his stomach as a deafening crack
rang through the air. Everyone reeled from the sharp noise, and Zephyr and
Flash both landed with spears clattering to the floor and hooves racing to
cover their ears as the blast smashed clean through artificial gemstones before
dissipating with them. Katie let off a wail of pain, one sounding like claws on
a chalkboard, as mana pulsed across her again. Before long, her horn stump was
sending out another, smaller orb of apricot that then rapidly sailed right
towards Chocolate.
Again, Chocolate scrambled away, his good hooves flailing like they were
suddenly thrust upon ice. The second onslaught barely grazed him clean across
the back of the neck as he ducked out of the way, causing another umber
formation to crumble into nothingness and taking away a good chunk of mane in
one go. A third burst of mana came from Katie's horn and made her cry out
again, though it was no bigger than a bullet and it flickered sporadically and
fizzed out before it could even reach him.
For several minutes, only the sound of breaking gemstones and a few pained
groans from Katie filled the tense air. Half of those present were still
reeling from the since-then-faded deafening cracks alone, trying their best to
make the ringing in their ears cease to no avail. The other half went wide-eyed
and slack-jawed, dumbfounded beyond compare. Chocolate was the most shaken of
all, the revelation that he'd unwittingly started a chain reaction bouncing in
his skull without truly sinking in.
Finally, though, someone spoke as the crystals covering the stairs and keeping
Fenrir, Armin, and Katie all pinned started to break away and fade into
nothingness. "What in Tartarus just happened?" Spike asked, sporting pinprick
pupils and eyes so wide a gryphon could easily compare them to a balled talon.
Through the haze of lingering pain and vestiges of fleeting orange mana that
danced around her in spots, Katie spoke with pained hisses, "His mana… entered
my body through… what was left of my horn. And my mana… rejected it. Sent it
back to him…" Half-dazedly, she turned to Chocolate and let her eyes narrow
slightly. "Fucker… is paying my hospital bill…"
"Me? Pay your bill?" Chocolate mused aloud, a brow raising as he spoke in a
tone laced with layers of disbelief and a note of sarcasm. "And how are the
doctors going to patch you up, hrrm? Simple stitches won't be enough for that
hackjob you call a face!"
Katie dryly laughed as the crystals finished disintegrating altogether, and she
felt Armin shift beneath her. She climbed onto his back with no resistance, but
decided to play it safe and move no more than necessary to keep herself steady
as he rose to stand on shaky hooves. "Says the unicorn… who himself also has a
tearing face," she retorted, her tone less pained.
Chocolate's eye began twitching. "Excuse you?" he hissed.
"Feel the right side of... your face, or find a damned mirror," Katie shot back
with a giggle.
Chocolate's eye continued to twitch, and his horn started glowing once more in
vibrant orange. Unfortunately for him, whatever spell he made to channel was
disrupted as Fenrir barreled towards him like the caboose of a runaway freight
train, one fist raised and then coming down on his head. The attack came so
fast he simply couldn't react to it; in fact, all he could do was turn to
Fenrir right before the fist in question met with his cranium.
Chocolate yelped and was sent careening, his own mana jolting him once the fist
connected with his face and sent him clean into a column, and in such a way his
horn landed first and subsequently broke off upon impact. After that, his orbs
dimmed to blackness and he crumpled to the floor, all the while his broken horn
went rolling out of a window before it dropped to the streets below. Once he
was still, the mana faded from his body until it was a muted sizzle, and a
silence fell—but it didn't last for long.
Katie's wings buzzed as soon as the undead stallion sprawled onto the floor,
and her orbs twinkled as the bad hoof landed in a way that ensured it stood
up—in fact, besides the remnants of horn that stubbornly clung to his head, it
was the only thing of Chocolate that remained standing. She slowly pried
herself off of Armin's back, letting her wings take care of the rest as she
ascended languidly into the air. Her orbs were darting this way and that as she
ascended, surveying the scene for a few seconds before stopping.
She turned to Zephyr and Flash as they let their forehooves drop from their
ears. "You two okay?" she questioned.
"Got a headache, but I'll live," Flash replied with a nod. He turned to
Chocolate as Fenrir approached him, grappled his rear hooves and then lifted
him by both of his back legs like he was a turkey. "I take it he's been dealt
with?"
"His horn is… no longer functional, to put it mildly," Fenrir replied with a
nod. He shot a look at Chocolate and added, "I'd personally apply a modified
inhibitor on what's left, if only to err on the side of caution."
"And maybe saw the broken hoof the rest of the way off," Armin chimed in,
immediately finding himself getting looks from the guards and Spike for that
comment alone. He turned to them and frowned. "What? It's only gonna hinder
him, and you could just stick a peg on what's left."
"Wouldn't do him much good. Bastard's a Celestia-damned, Luna-forsaken wraith,"
Tanzanite pointed out, spreading a wing and using that to gesture to Chocolate
for emphasis. "No matter what we do, he'll just keep on rotting until he's a
pile of bones."
Armin pursed his lips together, chewing on the lower one thoughtfully. Then he
shot a glance at Katie, before his eyes fell onto Chocolate and back to the
guards. "Then… how do you explain her?" he asked, lifting a holey hoof and
using that to gesture to Katie.
The guards turned to look at her, all sets of eyes glinting. She gestured to
Chocolate with an armored hoof and chirped, "Watch him for a minute."
The lot exchanged glances, then Zircon piped up, "Why?"
Katie's hoof dropped, her shoulders slumped, and she groaned in annoyance.
"Really?" she queried, watching as the guards turned to her and gave a series
of hesitant nods. She shook her head and flew to Chocolate, legs dangling like
lead weights as she went. When she reached him, she lifted a hoof and tapped at
his horn stump with her clawed armament, grimacing as it crackled with traces
of orange mana in response. "Anypony home?"
Chocolate continued to dangle like dead poultry, at least for a few minutes
before the sizzling mana fizzed out entirely. Then, his good leg twitched,
followed by an ear. Fenrir eyed him with a suspicious gaze as orange mana
pulsed across his body, much like it had done Katie earlier. The pulses were
steady and rhythmic, like the beating of a heart that washed over him at
seemingly-set intervals.
The exposed muscles started forming black scab-like things as the mana darted
across them, which caused Fenrir's brow to furrow as bits of fur also begun
falling out of Chocolate's form in stringy clumps. Katie watched with an
impassive gaze, her nose wrinkling as the spontaneous shedding revealed
sickeningly pale skin in patches.
"What's happening to him?" Flash asked, picking up his spear with a hoof before
approaching the three. His eyes warily stayed on Chocolate, and he frowned as
he came closer.
Katie didn't answer until Chocolate's coat had gone completely some minutes
later, complete with black blemishes that were once opened wounds. "He's…
cursed," she said tersely.
That caused Flash to halt before he could even get halfway there. "Cursed?" he
parroted, his eyes widening.
Spike hopped off of Aquamarine's back and rushed over, pausing to exhale fire
on the heap of used clothes and turning those to ashes before resuming and
subsequently stopping once he found himself in front of Fenrir's back paws. He
turned to Chocolate and gaped. "He's… he's like the other wraiths I first saw
in Fantasia…"
Katie turned to Spike and glumly nodded. Then she flew around, before pausing
to stare at the undead stallion's hips. Her glare eased up upon seeing he still
had his cutie mark. She turned to the guards. "You see where tissue and sinew
and such was exposed?" she queried, gesturing to a black mass on his side for
emphasis.
"Plain as day," Zephyr piped up, picking up his spear and likewise trotting
forwards. He passed Flash and homed straight in on Chocolate, a brow raised as
Katie's gaze fell on him. "Why do you ask?"
"His innate mana's the cause," Katie replied, her orbs shrinking to pinpricks
as she made the utterance.
"His… innate mana?" Zircon queried, garnering a hesitant nod from the still-
airborne changeling.
"Ask yourself this: how was he able to make crystals grow out of thin air?
Furthermore…" A chilly wind blew into the opened observatory, and it caused
everyone to shudder. Blue mana pulsed across the horseshoes, and then up
Katie's legs before thin frost formed in its wake. "... how am I able to use my
hooves to form ice?"
The guards exchanged glances again, and before long all five sets of eyes
widened to the size of saucers. They turned to Katie and made several attempts
to speak, but not a sound left their mouths no matter how much their gums
flapped.
"And I do believe one of you said something about innate magics, right?
Specific colors of such?" Katie pressed, eyes narrowing slightly.
Aquamarine's pupils shrank. "... p-p-pegasus... " he stuttered as a revelation
sank in. "You… you have… p-p-pegasus magic… and your h-hooves are a medium
through wh-which..."
Katie nodded slowly. "Hence why my mana rejected his when his magic hit me,"
she replied. She went on, "And since our Wise Guy here grew what looks to be
crystals, I have reason to believe he is cursed."
"You're still alive and kicking when you shouldn't be, and you grew ice on your
hooves," Spike interjected with a frown, walking around Chocolate to look at
Katie as he spoke. "Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?"
"Difference between him and I is that I willed it. It happened to him, and he's
still out cold," Katie snorted, crossing her forelegs.
"Aaaand what's that got to do with him possibly being cursed?" Spike shot back,
crossing his arms across his chest.
Katie's forelegs dropped again. "Watch," she stated, and without any further
warning she positioned herself before Chocolate's exposed barrel and jammed her
claws into it. A sickening squelch and some black blood escaped the still-out-
cold stallion's form as Katie started to fervently slash about with reckless
abandon. The attack started dislodging rib bones and tearing the heart and
lungs into ribbons.
"Why are you stabbing him?" Spike asked.
Katie paused, brow furrowing. "He did what I'm doing to him to a mare named
Silk Fabric. You could say he's getting some more… overdue punishment," she
answered. "That, and he's out cold—fucker won't feel a thing until his brain
turns back on."
"He cut a mare up?" Aquamarine asked, gulping loudly as his pupils shrank.
"Yes. And skinned her bare. Not one hair was left on her, and maggots were
eating her innards… yet she was still alive," Katie answered with a nod, eyes
narrowing until her orbs were slits. "Your Emperor saw the aftermath. You can
ask him about it."
Then she began anew, this time going for the stomach and likewise shredding it,
and she made extra-sure to hack his gonads into pieces as she kept at it.
Afterwards, she started on the inner thighs, but didn't get much work done
before more black crystals formed in the resulting cavities and filled them in
like one would do to a pothole using cement.
She pulled back, with black blood staining her legs and barrel. She turned to
Fenrir. "Try and tear his head off for me," she instructed coolly.
Fenrir turned to Katie, an incredulous brow raised. "And why would I decapitate
him?" he asked.
"Just try it," Katie replied with a nod and nothing more. "We can claim Armin
stabbed him with the gun or something."
Fenrir groaned and turned to the guards, who yet again exchanged glances.
Finally, they turned to him and nodded, eliciting another groan as he grappled
Chocolate by the remnants of his mane and started to pull on the sod like he
was a doll.
Mana pulsed as flesh began tearing, and black crystals formed before Fenrir
could get much further than that, cementing both halves together like
spontaneous superglue. He frowned. "So that's what you were getting at…" he
murmured, letting go of Chocolate's head before turning to Katie again. "You
were trying to inform us that this bastard is immortal?"
"In a way, yes," Katie replied with another nod. "So long as he has innate mana
that's going haywire, he'll stay immortal, as well."
"And how do you know this?" Tanzanite queried. His wings spread reflexively
when mana pulsed all across Katie's form, starting from her horn stump and
ending at the few locks left of her tail hair.
"Because I myself am also cursed," she answered, eyes narrowing.
A groan left Chocolate, though now it was raspy and dry. His good leg twitched,
followed by the bad one, before his head started swaying as if he were
delirious. Katie flew to him and prodded at him with a shoe, making sure not to
stab him or poke at black crystals this time. "Anypony home?" she tried again.
"Go… suck a donkey's cock," Chocolate hissed in a barely-audible but snappish
tone. He started feebly flailing his bad leg at Katie in an attempt to swat her
away, though he only succeeded in hitting a smacking leg and breaking away some
frost.
"I'll take that as a 'no.' And I'd have little luck finding a donkey that
desperate," Katie scoffed, rolling her orbs before backing off to give the sod
a bit of space. She turned to the guards again. "So, what do we do now?"
For several tense minutes, nopony answered, though their eyes flickered in a
way that Katie got the impression that they were likely turning over some ideas
in their heads. When the silence persisted, Armin decided to throw in his two
bits, "I say just toss him in the dungeons with Napkin Dickbags and let him
sort out the rest."
All eyes fell onto Armin in that moment. "That… might be the best course of
action. But who should inform Emperor Shining of his… condition?" Zephyr
retorted, frowning and with ears folding back.
Katie waved a forehoof dismissively. "Tell Shining we found him like this,
black crystals and all," she replied, before dropping the hoof and turning to
the stairs as multiple sets of hoofsteps started echoing from below.
A loud meow pierced the air, echoing into the observatory. "How're you gonna
explain the blood on your hooves and chest, though? I doubt Emperor Shining
would be stupid enough to think that you didn't use our Wise Guy as a
scratching post. And you didn't clean the blood off of your body… or the floor,
for that matter, as of yet," Zephyr pointed out, his frown deepening.
Katie's orbs shrank to pinpricks. "Oh, shit," she murmured in a horrified tone
as the hoofsteps became louder.
***** Chapter XLII- Sliding South *****
Shining trotted up the seemingly-endless staircase, with a platoon of more
unicorn guards behind him, as well as Twilight and her friends and the rest of
the Fantasians sandwiched between him and said platoon. Atop his head, guiding
him on with the Accelerator pointed at an upwards slant was NoLegs, who
bristled and hissed every couple of minutes as they went up. The air was thick
and tense, silencing everything except hooves and claws hitting crystal and the
frequent hisses—until somepony decided to speak up.
"What the hell got NoLegs worked up?" Lance groggily asked, eyes squinted and
bloodshot. He trotted sluggishly, and without any garments draped upon his
form, leaving his shuddering bare wings to freely droop at his sides like balls
and shackles were anchored to them. "Why'd he have to wake us up this late?"
Matt, who trotted at Lance's side—with one eye on his superior and the other on
Shining—shrugged his shoulders. "Must've been important enough to warrant it,"
he replied with a small frown.
Maria tottered behind Lance, her head tilted slightly and her eyes also
bloodshot. "Can I go back to bed?" she asked, yawning between every word.
Anna turned to her and shook her head. "Not until we see what NoLegs woke us up
for. Though if you're that tired, I suppose we'll let you sleep in," she
answered. Maria turned to her and silently nodded, temporarily lifting a talon
to cover her mouth as she yawned again and simultaneously continued to amble
forward on two hooves and the other talon.
"At least he didn't have a megaphone…" Twilight piped up from behind the four,
huffing rather indignantly. A thought clicked in her head, and she asked, "That
reminds me… where's Spike?"
NoLegs meowed loudly, and the sound echoed both in front of and behind the
still-trotting group. Fluttershy translated, "He's with Fenrir, the
changelings, and some guards just ahead."
Twilight breathed a sigh of relief, but part of it caught in her throat when
she processed the second half of Fluttershy's translation. She turned to her
and asked with widening eyes, "Wait, why's he with the guards? Why's he on top
of the tower, for that matter?"
Fluttershy could only frown and turn to NoLegs for an answer. Her brow slanted
when the cat failed to meow. "Perhaps…" Her ears folded back and her head
drooped as a twinge of fear sparked in her mind, and her voice fell as she
finished, "something happened?"
Twilight's pupils shrank instantly, and she gaped at Fluttershy. "To Spike?"
she queried, her voice trembling as the words left her mouth.
"It's… likely, I'm afraid," Fluttershy replied, her ears twitching slightly.
"But the 'something' might not have happened to him at all. We don't know yet."
Twilight deflated slightly and nodded apprehensively. "Y-you're right," she
agreed in a shaky voice. "But what if…" She turned ahead and didn't finish that
remark, and an awful lot of macabre mental scenarios whirled about in her head
for a few seconds before she shook her cranium to cast them out. Her chest
puffed as another thought hit her. "Spike's tough. I bet he could take on
whatever it was NoLegs wanted us to see."
"There's also that, but I'd still like to hope he didn't get hurt," Fluttershy
replied, a soft smile gracing her features.
Rainbow Dash lazily hovered in the air, wings flapping madly and all four legs
twitching as she and the others moved along the stairs. Her brow furrowed and
her teeth started to grind, adding another sound to the already-tense air and
causing goosebumps to jumpstart along her spine. Then she threw her forelegs
into the air, nearly scraping the sloped structure that kept the staircase in
place as she asked in an exasperated tone, "Can we just get there already?! I'm
tired of going slow to see what the fuss is about!"
Right as she said that, a faint orange glow pulsed through the stairs, causing
Shining and the rest of the group to pause and turn to it right as it faded.
Another pulse shortly followed, one as thick as Lance's wing-fingers. Then
another, though it warbled and was paper-thin. Yet another pulse came, one
bright teal and as large as an entire pony.
Shining's brow furrowed, until the large teal pulse came and caused him to
squint his eyes. "Has somepony tried tampering with the mana?" he asked aloud,
slowly craning his neck to the group behind him as he spoke. He got a series of
shrugs in return, as well as a few solemn shakes of several heads. His eyes
averted to gaze up at NoLegs, who turned back to him and nodded with a mew.
Twilight turned to Dash for a second and spotted the smooth slant holding the
stairs going up, and then spun around to look at each and every face present
before stopping at Shining and NoLegs.
"Brace yourselves, everypony," she warned, her horn starting to glow. Her aura
seized the guards, herself, Shining, the cat on Shining's head, the still-
floating Accelerator, and the assembled Fantasians. "We're going on a slide."
Before any of them could protest, violet light burst from everywhere, blinding
them as they felt themselves turn upside-down. Their collective asses and the
weapon dropped before they all slid sharply downwards—which was really up the
bottom of the stairs thanks to the gravity shift—at an accelerating speed.
As soon as the light faded from their eyes and the weight of the situation hit
them, most of the bunch started screaming in unison, and Fluttershy and Dash
even reflexively spread their wings. Some of the more unfortunate of the lot
started spinning as they slid onwards, but a handful managed a grin
nevertheless.
Anna, who was smirking like a fool, threw her forehooves into the air like she
was on a rollercoaster. "Wheeeee!" she cried, garnering an incredulous, wide-
eyed look from Sarah.
"What brand of crazy did you take to enjoy sudden gravity alteration?!" Sarah
exclaimed in exasperation, receiving an innocent, almost childish look from her
sister in kind.
"The fun kind!" Pinkie answered as she spun behind Sarah, managing a dopey grin
on her face so large it was as if her muzzle was molded that way.
Maria flapped her wings and tried to anchor herself to the smooth surface with
claw and hoof to no avail. Then she lifted her talons when they started to
ache. "Make it stop! The wind's hitting me!" she cried.
"Just grin and bear it!" Lance barked, spinning on his stomach with his legs
splayed. Each time he managed to look at Maria, his face seemed to get greener
and greener with each cycle. "It's not like the bad hippogryphs! Besides,
you're not twirling like I am—right now, I have it worse than you do!"
"This is so unseemly! I never thought I'd have to ascend a flight of stairs
quite like this!" Rarity cried. She was doing her best to both stand on
unsteady hooves without falling on her face, and keep herself from sliding into
anyone else. That in itself made her look like a foal trying to figure out how
to properly operate rollerblades for the first time.
Her mane and tail billowed behind her and started fraying at the ends, as if
she'd been fired out of a circus cannon, and the latter hit some of the
unfortunate guards behind her right in their faces. "Get that tail out of my
face!" a guard cried, using a hoof to bat away the tail to no avail.
"I can't help it!" Rarity shot back, keeping her eyes fixated on the half of
the group that was in front of her.
NoLegs tried his best to cling to Shining's tail with his teeth, but with each
second he slid inch by inch, quickly getting further and further from the base
to the very ends. Dash saw him slipping away and flung up her forehooves right
as the acceleration forced him to let go and sent him flying backwards. She
caught him and brought him to her barrel before he could have the chance to
slip out of her grasp and fly off again, taking a second to look at him to
affirm that he was alright.
"You okay, buddy?" she asked, garnering a frantic nod from the cat in response.
She smiled at him before turning to stare ahead. Dash could've sworn the air
turned ice-cold for a second, but with the air beating at her like a reverse
vacuum thanks to accelerating upside-down, it was hard to tell if it was just
because of said accelerating or because of something else altogether.
Her wings, still spread, stiffened for a good half-minute before flapping. She
turned to Fluttershy and nodded, her smile widening as Fluttershy turned to
her, nodded back, and flapped her wings. She made sure to repeat the process
with Alexander, who gave a salute before letting his wings start flapping as
well.
The three beat their wings steadily, and before long the trio started catching
sight of flashing lavender sparks that danced all around them and the others in
fleeting crackles. Twilight's horn started glowing as, finally, she caught
sight of moonlight coming from an approaching alcove above. Her aura seized
everyone as the slide ended and sent them careening upwards, and before anyone
could connect with another surface the aura turned them downside-up and held
them and herself in the air.
Then she looked down after gathering her bearings and found Fenrir holding a
bemoaning Chocolate by his back hooves, staring up at her with widened eyes. He
wasn't alone; a handful of armed guards, Armin, Spike, and Katie were also
present, likewise looking up with expressions betraying various levels of wide-
eyed surprise.
Spike, though, maintained a straight face. "You guys okay?" he asked, wincing
as some of the extra guards belched. His eyes fell to the floor as Lance hurled
onto it, frowning as a clear mess splattered upon the scene and added another
smell to the observatory-turned-small-battlefield. "I'll take that as a no."
Matt surveyed the scene below with a critical eye, his brow furrowing when he
saw the ashes that remained of the clothes heap, the blood splattered around
the room and on Katie's legs and barrel, and the clumps of brown hair in the
span of a few seconds. Then he turned to Chocolate and gestured to him with a
hoof. "Fenrir, could you explain that, please?" he asked.
Fenrir glanced at Chocolate, then looked back at Matt with a frown on his
muzzle. "Quite simply, that happens to be our cloaked figure, a refugee from
the law, and Wise Guy compacted into one form. He is afflicted by halted
necrosis, a broken hoof, and a most peculiar case of what I can best describe
as 'parasitic crystals'," he replied.
Shining glared at Chocolate, one eye already twitching. "And why's he… ghastly
white?" he queried in a tight voice.
"His coat fell out. It's over there," Katie replied, using a hoof to gesture to
the fur clumps for emphasis.
"You look like you've been digging for bad spuds," Zecora noted, focusing more
on the bloodied hoof gesturing to the pile of brown hair than said pile of hair
itself. "Is that…" She gave a shudder and swallowed heavily before finishing,
"is that blood?"
Shining's brows rose. "What happened?" he asked tersely, eyes falling on Katie.
The armed guards glanced at Katie in unison, and they all saw her flinch. Flash
turned to his Emperor and spoke up, "She told us he cut a mare up, so… uh… she
did to him what he did to that mare."
Shining lifted a hoof and rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a few seconds,
before he dropped it and slowly nodded to himself. "Considering he's one of the
worst ponies I met during my lifetime…" He turned to Chocolate and scowled,
seizing all muscles in his mouth before his teeth could start grinding when
Silk Fabric briefly came to the forefront of his thoughts. He shuddered, but
composed himself and finally finished, "I'll let it slide. Just this once."
Twilight jerked her head to her brother and her eyes immediately grew to the
size of saucers. "Is it… necessary to keep him like that?" she asked in a
cracking voice.
Shining turned to her and glumly nodded. "In this case, as callous and cruel as
that sounds, it is," he replied in a forlorn, softer tone of voice. He gestured
to the armed guards with a hoof and added, "Sombra's curse kept them isolated
for a good chunk of time."
Lance lifted his head and looked at Shining with a green visage, one brow
raised and the other bearing down to the point the lids beneath it threatened
to snap shut. "Translation?" he weakly asked.
"Until the curse wore off and the Crystal Heart was restored, we were isolated.
The whole Empire was basically in its own bubble. Think of it sorta like being
frozen in time," Zephyr replied, causing Lance to turn to him with drooping
ears. "We're… still getting used to a lot of things."
Lance mulled all of that mumbo-jumbo over for a few seconds before he lazily
nodded. "We're all in that boat right now, minus the curse bit for a lot of
us," he groaned.
Zecora piped up again, "Shining Armor, what are you going to do to the stallion
whose coat fell out? Do you plan to inflict something, perhaps another bout?"
Shining turned to her and shook his head. "Not unless throwing him in the
dungeons count as such," he replied as Twilight's horn began to sizzle and
spark, which in turn caused the mana holding everyone in the air to weaken and
dim. "Hooves and claws splayed," he added, spreading his limbs in an X-
formation as the mana warbled some more. Everyone, sans Dash, Alexander and
Fluttershy, immediately followed suit as it finally gave way before it
vanished.
Amusingly, and against the laws of physics, the bunch stayed in the air
suspended like that for a few seconds longer. Dash, Alexander, and Fluttershy
started flapping their wings before the rest of their companions promptly fell
to the floor. They landed squarely on their bellies, with a few pained groans
leaving some mouths afterwards.
"I wonder how much the hospital bill is gonna cost," Katie stated as Lance
threw up on the floor again, her ears pinned sharply back.
"I wonder if the General's going to need cold medicine tomorrow, since his
wings are shuddering," Alexander noted, frowning when Lance shook his head with
a weak and exhausted groan.
"Daddy, my claws hurt," Maria complained, flexing her talons and wincing every
time a few joints moved too much.
"Maybe we shouldn't partake in the Faire tomorrow," Spike piped up, garnering
looks from everyone else with the exception of the still-groaning Chocolate.
"What? I'd rather avoid more hassle," he added as Shining raised an incredulous
brow.
"I'll have Cadence watch over the festivities tomorrow," Shining stated with a
nod. He stood up and looked to Flash and his assortment of guards. "You guys
watch the new target practice game tomorrow, alright? Consider it your day
off." Then he turned to the extra guards he brought with him once Flash and his
group nodded in understanding, who also made to stand at attention. "And you
guys, take Wise Guy to the dungeons. Coat clumps included."
"Why the coat clumps, sir?" one guard asked, a brow raised.
"If anything, to dispose of them. Just make sure they don't fly everywhere,"
Shining replied. "And cap his horn while you're at it."
The extra guards nodded in assent, and one tottered off to collect the clumps
in his magic before waltzing past everyone and going down the stairs, while the
others tottered to Fenrir and pried Chocolate from his grasp with little
resistance. Upon summoning a magic inhibitor and capping the sadsack's broken
horn with it, they promptly turned around and made to go with him in a two-aura
tow after their colleague when Anna stood up.
"Hold up." The two guards carting Chocolate turned to Anna with brows raised.
She turned to Shining. "Can I kick him before they take him?" she asked.
Shining turned to her and shook his head. "Nah. He's probably gonna be kicked
when they take him to his cell, or by Orange Colt if they become cellmates," he
replied. He motioned for the guards with a hoof to continue, and they nodded
before going to the stairs and descending the flight.
"Fair enough," Anna conceded with a nod.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The next day came and went after that, as did the Crystal Faire itself. As the
sun set and vanished behind the southern side of Equestria, the Friendship
Express wheeled in to the station before halting entirely. At first, it seemed
barren—aside from the yellow pony with the hat and scarf that came out to
inspect the scene, and a unicorn mare in a glass booth that had tickets at the
ready, the station was empty. Then he heard the sound of hoofsteps echoing from
one side en masse, and he turned to the road to find a small crowd trotting
towards the station.
The yellow stallion sat on his haunches and waited, and his eyes widened when
he saw Shining Armor leading the crowd, and closely behind him were his sister
and her friends, as well as their Fantasian acquaintances. They all sparkled,
up until they managed to get to the station some ten minutes later—oddly,
Natalie still glimmered. In addition to that, Shining's horn was aglow. The
yellow stallion looked at him, before turning a little to the left to find that
he had a small satchel in his magical grasp. "Come to board, I take it?" he
asked.
Shining nodded, and trotted over to the pony who sat in the ticket booth.
"Nineteen tickets to Ponyville, please," he stated, using his magic to hand the
bag over.
The ticket-pony nodded. "That'll be…" A pause, punctuated by her seizing the
bag in her magic before opening it and counting the bits within. "Huh, that's a
good 190 bits." She nodded in approval and gave Shining nineteen tickets from
the roll, and watched as he distributed them to the others he had with him
before they all boarded the train.
The Friendship Express stayed motionless until everyone quickly huddled into a
cab lined with seats. When no more train-goers came, it disembarked after its
guests were already well-situated. An hour passed as the train went south,
blowing its whistle and going at a smooth and steady pace.
Fenrir sat between a pair of seats, and to either side of him sat Rarity and
Natalie, the latter having the former's attention as her entire form still
sparkled. This was despite the fact that the crystalline sheen had since gone
away from everyone else that was afflicted as soon as the train left the
Empire's perimeter.
"So, darling," Rarity began, eyeing Natalie with a spark of curiosity ablaze in
her irises. "Why are you still… gleaming? I don't mean to sound rude or
offensive; I'm just legitimately perplexed is all, especially considering
you've kept your sparkle for this long."
Natalie, who had a bowl of equally-gleaming strawberries sitting within hoof's
reach, flinched at the inquiry as if she'd been slapped anyway. Her sheen
dimmed a bit, though not entirely, and she relaxed and reached out to pluck a
strawberry before popping it in her mouth. She chewed it to mush and answered
as soon as she swallowed, her voice subdued as she spoke, "I'm… a crystal pony.
There. Happy now?"
Rarity beamed for a bit, before her expression fell upon noticing Natalie's
ears folding back and her brow slanting. "Are… are you ashamed of being a
crystal pony?" she asked tentatively. When she received a nod as an answer, her
lips pulled into a tight frown. "And why is that? Who… who hurt you enough to
make you ashamed of such a trivial thing?" she queried.
Natalie turned away, looking at the bowl of strawberries as her sheen receded
to the point her mane, tail and coat seemed dull. "I'd rather not talk about
it," she murmured. "It's… I don't think you'd understand, unless you've…" A
pause, one punctuated by a hoof picking up another strawberry and delivering
that to the waiting mouth.
A short chewing and swallow later, Natalie finished, "Unless you'd like the
entire mess transcribed in a telepathic message or something. It's far from
pleasant."
Rarity nodded, softly sighing when Natalie's sheen recovered a bit, only to
then falter and revert its owner to her usual bright colors without the extra
twinkle. She decided to change the subject, and cleared her throat to get
Natalie's attention before speaking again, "So what, exactly, does your cutie
mark mean?"
Natalie turned to Rarity with a brow raised and her sheen returning full force.
"Long story short, I've a knack for teaching others how to fly. Though I
usually reserve it for… unsavory folks and necessary self-defense," she
answered. "Anything else?"
"Nothing, really," Rarity answered with a shake of her head.
"Suuure," Natalie replied with a slow nod, her tone soft but skeptical. She
proceeded to plop another strawberry into her mouth, and chewed that up before
turning to look out of the window that was next to her seat.
She watched as a snowy landscape passed by, adorned by a fresh layer of snow
thanks to a fleeting flurry that was heading north. The area was white with a
grey sky that darkened with each minute that passed, sharply contrasting the
warm and bubbly interior of the Friendship Express.
Natalie turned away, only to find Fenrir staring at her with a brow raised.
"Are you well?" he asked.
Natalie shrugged. "If I were to describe my current mood, it would be along the
lines of 'meh,'" she answered.
Fenrir blinked with eyes that widened a little bit. "I see," he replied
tersely, before he turned his attention to the bowl of strawberries. "May I
have one?" he queried.
Natalie nodded. "Sure. They taste a little like whipped cream, though," she
answered with another shrug.
Fenrir reached for the bowl and plucked one with a careful paw before tossing
that into his mouth, finding that it did indeed taste of whipped cream. He
chewed it for a bit and nodded before standing up and leaning against the bit
of wall under the lamp to keep himself from getting in between Natalie and
Rarity. He wasted no time glancing at Shining as he chatted fervently with
Lance, Rainbow Dash, and Maria, and the bunch sat straight across from him.
"So, what is the current plan?" he queried once he swallowed the strawberry,
immediately garnering the attention of the four he stared at.
"Daddy wants to go to the sparkly rainbow clouds," Maria replied with a grin.
Lance rolled his eyes. "Cloudsdale," he corrected with a huff.
"Home of the Wonderbolts," Rainbow chirped in excitement, front hooves raised
to accompany a giddy grin on her face.
Shining grinned and chuckled. "Same thing," he chimed. "Regardless, it seems
you'd like to do something as soon as you get back to Ponyville. What do you
have in mind?"
Fenrir thought for a bit, brow furrowing slightly as he answered, "I'd like to
become acquaintances with my Mythonian brethren."
"Fellow diamond dogs?" Rarity piped up, her frown deepening when Fenrir nodded.
"I… personally, sort of… kiiiinda wouldn't advise it."
Fenrir turned to her, a brow raised. "Why not?" he queried in a skeptical tone.
"To put it mildly, they're brutes. Brutes of the barbaric sort," Rarity replied
with a huff. She waved a hoof dismissively and added, "They abducted me one
time to make me find gemstones. Even tried making me dig for all it was worth."
Fenrir's eyes widened, and he shifted as if he were about to spring back to all
fours. "They what?" he asked, his tone between a snarl of contempt and a yelp
of genuine surprise.
Rarity donned a grin. "Oh yes, they abducted me and dragged me into a series of
mining caverns. But they made the mistake of calling me a mule—they've left me
alone since, and even let me leave their mine unharmed," she stated.
Fenrir leaned back and nodded. "And what if they decided to trifle with you
again?"
Rarity's grin widened a little. "Oh, I doubt that they will. But if they
theoretically did, and you and Spike were present, I think we could scare them
off," she replied, eyes closing as her chin lifted high.
Fenrir snorted and turned back to Shining, Maria, Dash and Lance, noticing that
they had turned to each other and started chatting yet again. He shot a glance
to the seats behind Shining to find himself staring at Zecora and Anna, noting
that they too were babbling with Katie sitting between them. Katie was chiming
in with her two bits every few minutes, occasionally giggling or hissing. He
listened to said babbling, tuning out all else just to focus on those three in
particular.
"Poison joke? You can make potions with the stuff?" Anna asked, eyes widening.
"Yes, in regards to potions and poison joke, I can," Zecora replied with a nod.
"Though with a special herbal cure, the effects last less than a day's span."
Katie turned to Zecora, wings buzzing momentarily. "That's pretty nifty. Can I
try some poison joke?" she asked in a bizarrely sincere tone of voice.
Zecora giggled and shook her head as she turned to Katie. "On you, I doubt the
potion would work in a way that's sufficient. For all we know, it would likely
be inefficient," she answered, grinning.
"I volunteer anyway. It sounds like fun," Katie argued, lifting a front hoof
and waving it in exasperation more than anything else.
Fenrir turned to Rarity as she cleared her throat, and raised a brow at her as
soon as he made eye contact. "Yes?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing," Rarity replied with a grin. She turned to Natalie and spoke,
"So… we may stay a while in Ponyville, again."
"And?" Natalie piped up.
"I think I should tell you that, regardless of how long we stay in Ponyville,
you should be very wary of the Cutie Mark Crusaders and their antics," Rarity
stated, her grin fading.
Natalie sighed. "Well… Applejack's little sis asked Katie if she wanted to
join, and…"
Rarity gasped, went wide-eyed, and quickly cut her off with a query, "Did she
accept!?"
Natalie shook her head. "No. She didn't," she answered.
Rarity deflated and then relaxed. "Excellent. Last thing I need my little
Sweetie Belle to do is proclaim 'Cutie Mark Crusaders…'" She fell silent and
put a hoof to her chin, tapping as if lost in thought.
Natalie raised a brow. "'Wraith Slayers?'" she guessed when Rarity remained
silent for a minute or so.
Rarity dropped her hoof and nodded apprehensively. "Something along those
lines. I honestly dread the mere thought of it," she answered with a shudder
that affected even her mane and tail, to the point some bits of hair began
fraying out of place. "No offense, but there's already a hoofful of wraith
slayers in Mythos, and I'd rather my sister not lose her innocence partaking in
such a thing."
"None taken, and I can see your point," Natalie said with a nod and a sigh.
"On that note, I wonder how Sweetie and the other two Crusaders are doing. I
hope they haven't destroyed anything in my absence," Rarity sighed, taking a
second to shake her head dejectedly. "I promised them I could help them make
dresses if they made good grades… last week."
"Good grades? In what?" Natalie asked with widening eyes.
"Schoolwork," Rarity answered, a brow quirking as Natalie's pupils shrank.
"What is the matter?"
"Sc-school? O-oh, damn… I envy your sister," Natalie replied, swallowing
heavily.
"Whatever do you mean?" Rarity queried, her brow raising higher.
"I… never got to go to school as a filly. Long story in itself," Natalie
answered, lifting a hoof and waving it dismissively, almost knocking over the
bowl of strawberries in the process.
Rarity gaped, her own eyes going wide as saucers. "You… never went to school?"
she asked. "Why, dear, you're grown enough you can get into one now, surely."
Natalie shook her head again, and she donned a small grin. "Nah, technically
got myself a job as a lieutenant-general. Besides, I learn new things anyway,
regardless of whether I'm behind a desk or travelling and bickering with
Lance," she replied. "And I get paid pretty well—enough that I could get myself
an education whenever I feel like it."
Rarity blinked and put her hoof to her chin again, tapping once more. "Well… I
suppose you do have a point, in all fairness," she conceded. "Still wouldn't do
you any good to be jealous of Sweetie Belle, though. Being envious of a foal
is… just poor in taste, though if you really didn't get to go to school as a
filly, then I can somewhat understand your case."
"True, true," Natalie agreed with a nod.
Fenrir tuned out the two mares as they continued to bicker about jobs, and
turned to look behind Rarity to find Fluttershy and Sarah having their own
little chit-chat on the same seat. "Lemme get this straight," Sarah began,
lifting a talon before balling it into a fist with one claw jutting upwards,
"your cottage is an animal village?"
Fluttershy nodded. "Oh, yes. I have squirrels, beavers, birdies, butterflies...
I even have a mouse family, with the leader of it bound in a wheelchair," she
replied.
"A mouse… in a wheelchair…" Sarah blinked, pupils dilating and lips curling
into a frown as she struggled to process that mental image. "Can I see the
mouse in the wheelchair sometime?"
"Only if you don't spook him. He might get afraid of you because of your
claws," Fluttershy replied with a frown. "Though I might get Angel to convince
him that you're not a big scary bird about to eat him."
Sarah unclenched her talon and waved it dismissively. "Mice on the dinner plate
is something I've never done," she scoffed. "Too small, for one thing.
Secondly, I'd rather have fish."
"You might have to wrestle Harry for the fish. With your wing still broken, I
doubt anything good would come out of it," Fluttershy pointed out. "But
wrestling with Harry wouldn't be likely."
"Why's that?" Sarah inquired, a small frown creasing her brow.
"He'd rather sit through a tea party than fight, usually," Fluttershy replied,
donning a small grin.
Sarah's expression eased, and she too donned a smirk. "A tea party… I'd like to
have one m'self. Maybe I could drag Fenrir into it," she chirped before
covering her mouth with a claw to giggle into it like an excited filly.
"As long as you don't stick a frilly pink bow on him. I think he'd do well at a
tea party, without hurting his pride," Fluttershy replied, her grin widening a
little.
"Oh, I wouldn't stick a bow on him. I'd save that sort of thing for my sister,
or Maria," Sarah chortled through her claw, still giggling into it. "If I could
drag either to the tea party, that is."
"There wouldn't be any need to drag them. I could just hand out invitations,"
Fluttershy stated matter-of-factly, nodding her head as she spoke. "It would be
their choice to come."
"'spose you do have a point there," Sarah agreed, flexing her good wing for a
second before closing it. "Though, would it be just us at the party?"
"No; I could invite one of the other girls, or my animal friends," Fluttershy
replied, still maintaining her grin. "Pinkie Pie would probably come, though
she might bring the Cake twins with."
As if summoned straight from the gates of hell, Pinkie bounced over, crawled
under the seat from behind, and then lifted the entire cushion from under
Fluttershy and Sarah. She effortlessly held it all—cushion, friend and
foreigner alike—with her front hooves, though she managed to garner an alarmed
squawk from Sarah in the process.
"Did somepony say 'tea party?!'" Pinkie exclaimed with a wide grin, garnering a
chortle from Fluttershy.
Fenrir snickered to himself and turned to Applejack, who chatted with Armin and
Alexander as they sat behind Lance and Maria. Tuning out all else but those
three, he listened as they chittered about like high-school teenagers
exchanging the latest bits of gossip. "So, you're a lieutenant," Applejack
began, looking at Armin who nodded. She turned to Alexander and finished, "And
you're a colonel?"
"One of the few colonels, yes. NoLegs is also a colonel," Alexander replied
with a nod.
Applejack let off a whistle. "Boy howdy, sounds like a hassle. And mighty
strange to have a cat as a colonel… but then again, your general employed
y'all, so I guess I don't really know him all that well," she sighed.
"Sorta is and sorta isn't. Just depends where you're at and what you're doing,
really," Armin piped up with a shrug. "That, and we'll probably have to wear
our uniforms and badges when we get home. Compared to us, you have it easy."
Applejack huffed, brow furrowing slightly. "I can use an Element of Harmony, so
long as the other girls are with me. I doubt I have it easier than you," she
scoffed.
Alexander nodded slowly, but whether in skepticism or agreement, Fenrir
couldn't tell. "Eh, could be worse," he chirped with a small grin.
Fenrir then directed his attention to Twilight, Matt, NoLegs, and Spike, all of
whom sat at the southernmost end of the cab. "So, you can read and perform
complex spells," Twilight began, watching Matt intently as he gave her a nod.
"Who taught you how to decipher runes and manipulate both earth pony magic and
unicorn magic simultaneously?"
"Had my parents to thank for the second one, but the first… I was largely self-
taught. Got some additional help from NoLegs, once he started getting into it,"
Matt answered, donning a serene and seemingly fond smile. "And when I met Natz,
I helped her out and she helped me on the magic front."
"And… who taught her before she met you?" Spike asked, a brow raised.
Matt's smile immediately fell. "Nopony did." Then his grin came back a second
later. "But we got our cutie marks helping each other out. Win-win, if you ask
me."
"I see," Twilight murmured, nodding thoughtfully. "Anything else?"
"Well… I helped Natz learn how to decipher runes and make complex spells. I
also helped her read basic language so she could make her own spells and turn
some paper sheets into a grimoire or something," Matt replied with a shrug.
"And we helped Anna do the same, once she joined."
Twilight's brow rose. "And?" she pressed, lifting a hoof and spinning it in
lazy circles, urging him to continue.
"Well, me and Natz left our grimoires at home, but Anna brought hers with her.
We could show you ours sometime, since you showed us your impressive book
collection," Matt chirped.
"Sounds like a fair trade to make. It would certainly make revisiting Fantasia…
a little more bearable," Twilight agreed with an apprehensive nod and a
hesitant smile blooming on her face.
"Grimoires, hrrm? Interesting..." Fenrir mumbled under his breath, just low
enough that Natalie and Rarity couldn't hear him amidst their own bickering. He
continued to listen to Matt's conversation with Spike and Twilight, his snout
twitching without sniffing the air.
"Is there any catch in particular?" Spike piped up, a skeptical frown on his
face.
Matt turned to him and shook his head. "No, aside from not heckling anybody
else in the army that you might run into. You leave them alone, they'll leave
you alone," he replied, his smile fading a little. He turned to Twilight, his
grin faltering a little more when he saw that she was still staring at him.
"What?" he asked.
"Been meaning to ask… since you and yours eat meat, I've been thinking: is
there any meat you won't eat?" Twilight asked, her hesitant smile turning into
a concerned frown.
"Rotten meat, rotten meat that belongs to a corpse who walks and talks, and
meat belonging to creatures with capacity for speech and magic. Why?" Matt
asked, his smile fading entirely. He saw a spark in her eyes and flinched as
her brow slanted. "... it's what went down at Frostbite, isn't it?" he guessed
in a subdued tone.
Twilight slowly nodded. "I don't want another fiasco like Frostbite to happen
again," she answered in a hushed voice.
"Here, here," Spike agreed with a nod, his frown deepening.
***** Chapter XLIII- La-La Land *****
That night, everyone filed into a single bunk-bed cab, jostling for positions
to lay down and go to la-la land. Some kept one bed, and others shared theirs.
Twilight Sparkle wisely waited until everyone else had curled up to fall
asleep, and she let her gaze sweep over the top bunks first to confirm that
nobody was going to wake up. She wasted no time carefully leaning over after
that and peering down to glance at the bottom bunks and their occupants.
The only other occupant of the cab that was awake was Katie, who stared up at
her from the bunk directly beneath. "You got earmuffs?" Katie whispered.
"Earmuffs?" Twilight whispered back, a brow raised.
Katie nodded. "My hearing's more sensitive than everybody else's. Makes
sleeping nigh-impossible—" A loud snore from Matt ripped through the cab,
cutting her off. When it died, she finished, "—when certain ponies snore like
bears."
Twilight nodded in understanding, and her horn glowed before her aura seized
Katie by the head. A flash of light embraced the red-maned cranium before it
faded seconds later, allowing a small pair of fuzzy earmuffs to materialize on
top of the ears of said cranium. Katie nodded back and lifted a hoof to feel
for the muffs, adjusting them a little so they rested comfortably on her long
ears. She mouthed "Thank you," before curling up under the covers and letting
her orbs black out entirely.
Twilight smiled and mouthed "You're welcome," before retracting back to her
bunk and pulling the covers over her head with a hoof. Her horn glowed, and her
magic grabbed a piece of the covers before lifting them just enough that they
formed a small tent above her, without exposing her hooves to the outside.
Then, another flash of light flared before her eyes, and she squinted said eyes
as two books materialized before her when the illumination died down.
A faint glow started shimmering from her horn once more, though now it was just
enough to illuminate both of the tomes. She arranged them with her hooves so
they were side-by-side, before she looked to the one on the left and smiled
fondly at it. "'Early Fantasian and Mythonian Relations...' I'm so glad Shining
convinced Amethyst to let me take you with…" she murmured, almost as if the
book was a living creature in of itself. She briefly glanced at the other,
'Translating Ancient Runes and You,' and her smile grew.
She lifted a hoof to 'Early Fantasian and Mythonian Relations,' but paused when
another snore reached her ears. This one was accompanied by a neigh that
strangely devolved into a sound like a bird squawking before it ceased
altogether with a snort. Her hoof then flew to the book and opened it before
flipping a good chunk of the pages within to the other side, leaving roughly
three-fourth's of the entire tome shifted aside and the last fourth laid bare
before her.
Twilight opened the other book after, and silently conjured a scroll of
parchment, an inkwell, and a quill before she began glancing from one book, to
the other, and back again. She lifted her other hoof and gently nudged them
further apart before conjuring a clipboard between them and setting the piece
of parchment atop it. Readying the quill with a quick dab of ink, she started
jotting after a minute, glancing back and forth between the books as needed.
She paused before she could complete one sentence on the paper when she heard
someone with a feminine voice mutter "I didn't sin," which then gave way to a
rustling of blankets. Twilight's brow rose, though she shrugged it off and
hastily completed said sentence on the paper before carefully poking her head
out of the covers to glance around. She found Rarity on the top bunk right
across from hers, tossing about in her sleep with the mannerisms of a fish
flailing upon a sandy shore.
Twilight frowned as Rarity continued to struggle in her slumber, watching as
her friend's ears pinned back against her head and her legs moved as though she
were galloping. Her horn glowed a little brighter, and a violet wisp of magic
started glimmering over Rarity's form. It descended until it touched her
withers, whereupon it then grabbed her and shook vigorously. Rarity gasped and
her eyes snapped open, and she made to scream before a purple bubble surrounded
her head and kept the sound from escaping into the rest of the cab.
Rarity inhaled and exhaled as though she were hyperventilating, her front
hooves surging upwards in an attempt to prod at her head only to meet with the
bubble surrounding it. Her pupils shrank, and she started pounding the dome
before another aura seized the rest of her body and kept it still. "Rarity,
calm down. You're awake, and I don't think I'd want to hear you screaming right
now," she heard Twilight's exasperated voice echo into her head.
Then the field of magic, bubble and all, faded from existence without another
sound. Rarity's breathing slowed, but it was still labored, and one of her eyes
was twitching. Slowly, she turned to Twilight with a look that could only be
described as crazed. Twilight's frown deepened considerably when she saw the
haggard mane that frayed at the ends, the jittering jaw that produced nothing
more than shallow breaths and chattering teeth, and the wide eyes and shrunken
pupils that seemed disturbingly vacant.
"It's alright. It was just a dream," Twilight stated in a soothing voice, her
brow slanting when Rarity kept her deranged expression without so much as a
shifting of an ear, aside from her twitching eye. "Rarity…?" she hesitantly
ventured, eyes flickering with worry.
Rarity's breathing continued to slow, her face seemingly locked in terror.
Then, slowly, her ears rose up and her jaw's jittering lost momentum until her
mouth simply shut like a trapdoor under lock and key. Her pupils widened, yet
still her gaze was distant.
"Rarity?" Twilight repeated, her ears folding back against her head as her
friend simply continued to stare right at her. Only the slight shifts of the
cab and metallic bumps as the wheels spun upon the tracks answered her inquiry.
After a few seconds that felt as though they stretched for a few hours,
Rarity's mouth opened. "Y-yes, Twilight?" she stammered in a low, shaky voice.
"I-I'm alright."
Twilight's brow rose. "I dunno. You certainly don't sound alright," she replied
with a skeptical shake of her head.
Rarity closed her eyes and donned a frown. "It… was a terrible nightmare, but
nothing more than that," she stated matter-of-factly.
Twilight nodded, though only when Rarity opened her eyes to look at her with a
gaze that wasn't vacant nor disturbed. "I see your point," she admitted with a
small, sheepish grin forming on her muzzle.
Rarity sighed and made to lay back down, her head connecting with the pillow in
a muffled pomf. "I'll try to get back to sleep," she muttered into the pillow.
Twilight nodded again. "G'night Rarity," she murmured with her grin fading a
little.
With that, she retreated under her covers before she heard Rarity mutter a
"Good night" back at her. Twilight waited for a few minutes, biding her time
until she was all but certain that Rarity had gone back to sleep before she
resumed her bout of reading two books simultaneously and taking notes every few
seconds. She went on like this for some thirty minutes, during which she made
some more pieces of paper materialize when the current one was filled from top
to bottom. Eventually, those thirty minutes that she spent too engrossed in her
little writing reverie had come to an abrupt end.
Both tomes were, quite simply, turned until all that remained were their very
last pages. Despite this, Twilight smiled, and still she scanned the two down
to the very last word and rune translation. She closed both books silently and
with her magic, before making said books, in addition to the inkwell, the
clipboard and the quill vanish into thin air with brief flare-ups. Her
attention turned to the only thing left; the paper stack itself. The paper
stack reached no higher than a neat centimeter or two, and she picked them up
in her magic before leafing through the parchments like they were part of an
unfinished novel.
Twilight's smile only widened. "I'll read you tomorrow," she cooed as she made
the small stack vanish in a flare of light, before finally letting her head
descend until it found itself resting sideways on its pillow. She moved a hoof
to throw the blankets off of her head, inhaling deeply thereafter to fill her
lungs with as much fresh air as she could get. Warmth cradled her, trapped upon
her form thanks to the blankets, and soon she closed her eyes and drifted to
sleep.
Around ten minutes later, she found herself wishing she hadn't. Her eyes
blearily opened, and darkness greeted her with the chorus of chirping crickets
and croaking frogs that filled her ears. As Twilight came to, and as her vision
subsequently cleared a bit, she started making out vague and erratic shapes
both large and small, some compact and others tall and imposing. She made to
stand, ears pinning back as wet and thick squelching sounds echoed all around
the area, further accentuated by the feeling of something sticking along the
side of her body and running down to her hooves.
Twilight hesitated as a cold breeze wafted past and caused her to shudder, eyes
still scanning the darkened shapes as the symphony of frogs and crickets
continued unimpeded. Her ears twitched prior to swiveling, but all she could
catch was croaking, chirping ambience; a soundtrack produced by serenading
creatures looking for one of their own. A soundtrack that went on for quite
some time.
An indeterminate expanse of time had passed, yet Twilight did not move from her
position—not even an inch. She did not crane her neck to look at the rest of
her surroundings. For that expanse of time, she remained in that one spot,
seemingly glued to the spot whilst listening to the soothing croaks and chirps
until it became a little bit too much for her to bear.
A leg shifted, and something flashed in the corner of her eye in that very
moment. Then she heard something scampering away, producing the distinct sounds
of crunching leaves and snapping twigs in its wake. Twilight's head snapped to
the left and her horn flared with a magenta light that instantly illuminated
her surroundings, revealing a dense and thickly-shrubbed woodland. The area
also had a sodden and muddy expanse of ground going in an uneven circle for a
good two miles around, one upon which she currently stood.
Twilight whirled around, though doing so caused her front hooves to slip out
from under her form, giving way to falling face-first into the mud. Some of it
managed to get into her mouth and nostrils, and her eyes went wide as grit,
salt, and a bunch of other minerals assailed her senses and sent her into a
spluttering coughing-and-nose-blowing frenzy. When she regained her composure
some minutes later, she stood up again with a snort that irritated her nostrils
with an itching sensation.
"Lovely," Twilight hissed to herself, brow furrowing slightly as the itch in
her nose receded. She shook her head, and turned to where she could've sworn
the crunching of leaves and twigs had come from. Slowly, she lifted a front
hoof and turned to inspect it, as well as the damp, slip-like mud that clung to
it.
She caught just the faintest thread of red on her hoof, a small and warbling
line that blended in well enough with the mud that she had to look closer just
to see it. Her magic seized it and tried to separate the red from the brown,
but alas it was for naught—the two simply mixed further still as she
telekinetically fumbled with it. Her eyes narrowed, and she released the mud
before throwing her hoof down—making it immediately slide out from under her
form once again and sending her to the ground for the second time.
Though, that time she made sure to cover her nostrils with her magic and to
keep her trap shut as soon as her hoof had slipped. She stood up after lying
still for a minute, shaking her head free of excess and unwanted brown gunge
before trotting to where she heard the noise that was unlike the still-ongoing
mass serenade echoing around her. Her aura seized the bushes and shoved them
aside, revealing a glistening trail of very definitively fresh prints that were
accentuated by crumpled leaves and some snapped twigs.
Twilight leaned in close to the trail, bending her front knees and craning her
neck so her muzzle was just inches from the first print of the path. Her brow
furrowed again when she saw that it was a circular indent with protrusions
spreading out to form a crude sun-like shape. She raised a hoof before putting
it into the print, blinking upon seeing that the print was larger than her hoof
by about an inch. Oddly, it was no more than a millimeter deep.
"The ground is muddy. But this print isn't deep…" Twilight paused, pursing her
lips before standing up and removing her hoof from the print. "Maybe the owner
isn't that heavy." She sighed before shaking her head to rid herself of the
trail of thought, turning to glance ahead. The trail zig-zagged slightly, but
it never really veered too sharply to the left or right. She started trotting
onwards, trying her best to avoid snapping twigs under her hooves as she went.
For a few minutes after that, she carried on following the trail, still paying
little heed to the hidden frogs and crickets that continued singing. Twilight
pondered what the trail of prints meant—and shuddered as she considered that
following said trail could end up going south if the owner was anything but
friendly. At this rate, with no other signs of said owner being present, she
wasn't all that sure of the possibility herself.
But as she kept the trail in her sights, the chorus of frogs and crickets began
to grow quiet. At first, it was only one or two croaks or chirps ceasing
altogether, but in a forest alive with ambience such a number was
insignificant. Twilight's ears started swiveling as the number of animals
stopping their serenade doubled, then quadrupled, and a tight frown formed on
her lips as more and more members of the unseen choir fell silent.
In under a minute, the only sound to reach her ears was the squelching of mud
beneath her hooves. She looked upward, only to find a canopy so dense that she
couldn't see the sky past the leaves, let alone the inhabitants thereof. "What…
happened?" Twilight wondered aloud, and in that moment—as if to answer—the
entire forest shook with a mixture between a pained outcry and a bestial roar.
The ground jostled beneath her, the canopy rustled as though caught in a storm,
and the trees themselves trembled to the point it looked as if they were going
to uproot themselves and fall over.
Twilight fell over yet again, her light dimming as she faceplanted for the
third time. She waited until the roar died down along with its earth-shaking
intensity before she stood up again. Noticing that her surroundings had
darkened, she shifted her attention to her horn with a cross-eyed stare—prior
to averting her gaze back forward when the light not only brightened
instantaneously, but turned scarlet in the process.
"Ooookay… my light is now red, I'm stuck in a forest, and I think a monster
just woke up somewhere nearby," Twilight scoffed, brow furrowing. She promptly
turned back around and started going back the way she came. "Nope, I am not
sticking around for this." Then she stopped and scrunched her eyes shut a few
seconds later, before re-opening them to find herself back in bed. She lifted
her head and glanced around and softly smiled upon seeing the snoozing forms of
her brother, friends, Spike, and the Fantasians.
She yawned and waited until a good half-hour passed before closing her eyes and
falling asleep yet again, lulled into rest by the silence of the cab and the
occasional bump of the wheels as they rolled upon the tracks.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Katie trotted along sluggishly in the barren dustbowl that was her dreamscape,
often looking up and using the great big lilac moon as a sort of sky-bound
compass. The devils of sand, summoned by passing winds that stayed for the span
of a few seconds, danced past her ambling form as she went. No corpses littered
the area, and a tinge of reddish-pink began forming upon the side of the
horizon opposite of the slowly-setting moon. She didn't care to keep time, nor
track of how often she looked up at the celestial body presently in the sky.
Upon looking up at the moon for the upteempth time, she found herself colliding
chin-and-barrel-first into a solid object that she could've sworn wasn't there
before. Katie lingered upon the object for a few seconds before peeling herself
off of it, staggering back to find that a door had appeared from nowhere. When
she took the time to inspect it, she found that it sported a dark blue color
with a black splotch adorning the top. In the middle of said splotch sat a
white crescent moon. On top of that, it sparkled in several different colors,
as though chiseled from pure dark opal.
The door opened of its own accord, revealing a bright and glittering starscape
beyond. Katie's wing muscles twitched, and for but a moment her legs kept
still. "Are you coming?" a soft, regal voice asked in a friendly tone.
Katie's ears stood up, and her legs spurred into action, which left her half-
dragging and half-trotting onward. "Coming," she chirped in reply. Once she
trotted through the doorframe, the door shut behind her with a gentle creak,
and she glanced around to find Luna standing next to her with a bit of a smirk
on her muzzle. "I see you're enjoying yourself," she noted.
Luna's smirk widened a teensy bit. "I trotted through Celestia's dreamscape
before coming here. She loves cake so much it's honestly become amusing as of
late," she replied.
Katie nodded, though her stomach started aching as if longing to be filled. So
she looked around until she spotted a nearby door that was predominately white
and purple. She lifted a hoof to gesture to it, and decided to change the
subject, "So… whose dream is that?"
Luna's smirk fell, and was almost immediately replaced with a small frown as
she turned to the door. "That of a dear friend of mine," she answered in a
tight voice. Her horn flared to life, and her magic seized the purple-and-ivory
door by the knob. "Her dreams have taken a disturbing turn as of late—I dare
say, on par with what I've seen of you and yours," she added, averting her eyes
to Katie as her magic forced the door open with ease.
Katie's ears stood straight up, and she nodded to Luna with eyes narrowing
slightly. "Has she told you or Celestia anything about her nightmares?" she
asked sincerely.
Luna's frown deepened, and she shook her head as she began trotting to the now-
open door. Katie followed after her in a brisk trot. "Can't say she has. If
anything, she withheld much of it, but I've seen enough to warrant an
investigation of sorts," she replied.
Katie's wings buzzed, though they didn't buzz enough to lift her into the air.
"Have you seen what her dreams are about? I'd like to know what we're going to
trot into here," she stated.
Luna sighed, and paused to turn to her guest with so tight a frown her lips
started quivering just to maintain it. "Have you been to a house of mirrors
before?"
Katie stopped, turned to Luna, and shook her head.
Luna's ears fell back. "Have you seen a mirror, then?" At Katie's immediate
nod, she went on, "My friend's dream consists almost entirely of mirrors. And…
a thing that's more or less herself mixed with a hippogryph chases her."
"Who?" Katie asked, a brow raised.
"Rarity."
Katie took two seconds to process Luna's one-word utterance, and when it
clicked she lifted a hoof and hit the bridge of her muzzle with it, groaning
when the two entities made contact. She slid it down the bridge before dropping
it, and made eye contact with Luna. "Well, that simplifies things," she scoffed
in a sarcastic tone.
Luna's brow rose. "How so?" she asked tersely.
"I know what we're dealing with. Even better, I've witnessed what's very likely
the damned catalyst thereof," Katie chirped in a pleased tone. She sighed and
let her ears fold back before taking a few minutes to inform Luna about what
she meant. She left no detail out, no matter how insignificant it was, of what
exactly went down at Frostbite.
As soon as she finished, Luna lifted a front hoof and sharply reeled back, her
face pale and her eyes widening like Katie lifted a boulder and struck her with
it. "R-Rarity… m-murdered…" she stammered, pupils dilating when Katie slowly
nodded, never once taking her orbs away from Luna as she did so.
"Otherwise, Maria wouldn't be here, and Spike would have very likely been
physically wounded at the very least," Katie stated in a sharp, cold, and
matter-of-fact tone. She turned to the door and scowled at it. "No use keeping
it bottled from you and Celestia of all ponies, considering she had every
reason in the book to do so. And also adding to the fact that her friends were
there to witness it as well."
Luna's hoof fell, and she shook her head before regaining her composure. "You
say that as if I were going to banish her," she noted, her tone flat.
"You've banished ponies before, right?" Katie retorted, garnering a warbling
smile and a dry laugh from Luna.
"Yes, but not in a millennium. I myself was banished," Luna replied, her
already-uneasy grin faltering some more as she spoke. She turned to the door
and her eyes narrowed upon seeing blood starting to seep from the frame, slowly
trickling like drying molasses and staining the two-color wood in a hideous
third of red. "I think we've dallied long enough."
Katie's wings buzzed again, and this time she let them lift her into the air.
"Right." With that, the two stormed to the door before going through the frame,
grimacing slightly as it slammed shut behind them with the force of a
thunderous crash. They found themselves in an expansive, almost ridiculously
wide hallway consisting of nothing but mirrors that somehow failed to catch
their reflections.
Katie whirled around in an attempt to figure out which way to go, and her brow
furrowed when she saw that the door not only vanished, but gave way to a hall
exactly the same as the one she'd just turned her back too. "By Godcat's eight
teats, you weren't kidding," she murmured, turning to glance at Luna. "This is
maddening already, and I haven't been here for more than three seconds."
"And that is saying much," Luna replied with a nod, glancing ahead with ears
twitching as she heard the tell-tale sound of galloping hooves hitting
reflective glass. Katie turned as well, her ears already up and swiveling
about. Immediately, her brow was furrowed when the noise began echoing from
everywhere all at once. "Have you acquired a definite direction yet?"
Katie shook her head. "It's bouncing in this corner and that nook—" Her
forelegs formed a cross as they pointed past each other to the left and right.
"—and I can't tell where it's coming from. It's like this hall is screwing with
my sense of hearing." She turned to a wall and parted her forelegs before
shaking one of them at it in futility. "I hate ludicrously large halls."
Luna's wings snapped open, only to drop at her sides like lead weights. So too
did her head drop, though it only sank to her shoulders before lifting up again
with a heavy sigh leaving her mouth. "It's going to be a long night, isn't it?"
she murmured under her breath.
"Feels like it already," Katie snorted, spinning around in mid-air to attempt
to figure out where the clip-clopping was coming from. She lifted a hoof to rub
her temples with enough force to bruise the chitin, trying to tune out the
echoes to no avail. After a few minutes, she screamed and threw both front
hooves into the air. "Godcat-damnit, stop echoing already!" she cried, only to
wince as her own shout reverberated and came right back to her, drowning out
the clip-clopping in the process.
Once the echoes she produced by screeching in frustration died down, the hall
fell into tense silence. It didn't last long before a feminine voice called out
from the end of the corridor Luna faced, and it only echoed just enough to grab
Katie's attention as well. "Wh-who's there?" the voice beckoned in a slightly-
panicked tone.
"Huh. Guess we know where to go now," Katie chirped. Luna rose a hoof and
opened her mouth to protest, but could not get one word out before her guest
darted off like a dragonfly chasing a mosquito. She vanished down the hall in
seconds, leaving Luna alone for a bit.
Luna spread a wing, folded it forward, and slapped her face with it like a
large hand. "Please don't do anything rash," she murmured.
She parted face and wing before spreading both wings proper and flapping them,
and within seconds she was airborne and speeding after Katie with grace and
expertise. She caught up in no time at all—because Katie didn't go too far and
had, in fact, stopped altogether with a hoof shielding her eyes. Standing
before the two was a harried-looking Rarity, her mane frazzled and her front
hooves stained in blood. Her horn gave off a bright red light, one strong
enough to force Luna to look away.
"Turn the light off, I think I just became blind!" Katie pleaded, her voice
cracking as she spoke.
"I-um," Rarity began, eyes darting between Katie and Luna before noticing the
raised limb and the turned-away muzzle. Then she looked up at her horn and
grimaced before cutting off the flow of mana to it, which caused the light to
sizzle for a bit before flickering out altogether. "H-how'd you—"
"With me accompanying her, in case you were wondering," Luna piped up before
turning back to Rarity. Her horn glowed, and her aura seized herself, Katie,
and Rarity all at once. "You and I have much to discuss, Rarity." With that, a
flare of bright light exploded around them, and when it died they found
themselves in the starscape with spots blotting their vision. The three shook
their heads to rid themselves of the accursed spots blighting their sight
before exchanging quick glances.
Luna took the opportunity to speak up again, turning to Rarity as she did so,
"I have caught wind of… a murder by your hooves in Fantasia, if I am not
mistaken."
Rarity would have paled if her coat wasn't already white. Her ears pinned back
and her pupils dilated. "Wh-where did you h-hear such a thing?" she asked in a
quivering voice.
"From my mockery of a Cheshire smile," Katie piped up, immediately garnering a
look from Rarity in addition to a frantic whimper. At this, her brow eased, and
she giggled. "I was told you didn't tell Luna, so I did the telling for you—you
made the burden you're currently bearing. I'm just gonna sit back and watch." A
lawn chair with a pillow set into the seat materialized out of nowhere, and
Katie moved to park her bony rump onto it. She waved a forehoof once she had
gotten comfortable. "Have fun."
Rarity gaped and slowly turned back to Luna, evidently expecting some form of
punishment. Luna turned to stare at her squarely in the eye, and for a moment,
silence lingered. "No, I will not banish you or do anything else of the sort. I
was also informed as to the reason behind it, as it were. I would appreciate it
if you told me about this the next instance you do something that drastic,"
Luna stated in a level, though miffed, tone of voice.
 
"B-b-bu—" Rarity stammered before her speech started devolving into a gibberish
dialect, her eyes widening to the size of saucers. "I-I-I—"
"Yes, I've heard. Turned a hippogryph's head into tomato paste with your bare
hooves, according to our current third party," Luna finished for Rarity,
punctuating her response with a slow nod of her head and a short snort. "You
were in foreign soil when it happened, that gryph wasn't among the diplomats,
and Spike was in danger. Pray tell, what do you suppose would happen if Spike
had perished that day and Celestia caught wind of it?"
Rarity's mouth shut in an instant, almost mechanically at that. Silence held
once more.
Luna lifted a hoof and spun it in a circle, urging Rarity to answer. She
suppressed a snicker by putting her raised hoof to her mouth and simultaneously
rolled her eyes when Katie impatiently shouted, "Get on with it already!"
"... war?" Rarity guessed, her voice so quiet it could have been drowned out by
a pin dropping a mile away.
Luna dropped her hoof and assumed a straight face, nodding slowly. "Something
along those lines, were she to get angry enough in that hypothetical scenario,"
she replied. "You've… done the best thing in that situation, as far as I am
concerned."
Rarity's jaw dropped open, and stayed that way for several seconds that felt as
though many days had come and gone. Then, her gums started wildly flapping.
"Th-the best th-thing? As… as far as I am concerned, I have done the worst
possible thing anypony's ever done in the history of Mythos!"
Luna groaned and her horn flared to life, and she let her aura gently grab
Rarity by the muzzle to hold it shut. "Your little rampage doesn't come
anywhere close to what I would have done, if I were still Nightmare Moon and
allowed to bring night eternal," she retorted in a cold voice. Then her magic
released Rarity's muzzle, enabling the lower jaw to drop yet again. "You only
committed one atrocity, and because it was the most generous thing to do at
that, ironic as it sounds. I'd have committed thousands, out of pure
selfishness."
"I've heard about the whole thing during my stay in Canterlot. She's got a
point," Katie piped up, garnering a look and another roll of the eyes from Luna
in the process. She turned to meet the gaze and casually added, "You just
admitted it; any other argument you may have is invalid."
"In all fairness, that I did," Luna agreed with a snicker and a grin. She
turned to Rarity, still smirking as she asked, "So… would you like to vent your
frustrations here and now?"
Rarity's chest puffed as she sharply inhaled. "All of them? Can I vent all of
them?" she queried.
Luna nodded. "I'm all ears."
Rarity nodded, and she began venting after exhaling deeply. "Well, I'm afraid
my sister might want a wraith-slaying cutie mark, to begin with…"
***** Chapter XLIV- At Dawn's Asscrack *****
The sun hadn't even had the chance to rise an inch into the sky as the
Friendship Express pulled and then stopped in a station situated near a
familiar small town with straw roofs, its whistle blowing with a chilling echo
as soon as its wheels stopped turning. Everyone who didn't operate the train
was still slumbering soundly in their borrowed beds, even as the multi-cab
locomotive remained in the station for some hours well after it had stopped.
The yellow-coated stallion, wide awake despite the late hour, sat in the
caboose watching through an open window as the moon set and the stars shifted
ever so slightly after it. With him was another who sat behind a series of
levers and buttons, a fellow earth pony stallion sporting a grey-blue coat and
a black mane.
"How much longer until sunrise, Gear Shift?" the grey-blue stallion queried as
he turned to his companion.
Gear Shift turned around with a small smile. "Another hour or so, All Aboard,"
he chirped. "The moon's just set."
All Aboard nodded. He waited for a good hour, sitting idly by and watching the
sky shift from his seat. Neither exchanged words during that hour, let alone so
much as glance at one another—both seemed utterly fixated on the sky itself.
When it started to tint he stood up, his gaze fixing itself on Gear Shift. He
cleared his throat to get Gear's attention and only spoke as soon as his fellow
stallion turned to him. "I will check the passenger cabs. I shan't be gone
long."
With that, he turned to the end of the caboose opposite the levers and buttons
to find a door before trotting to it, opening it, and finding a small bridge
leading a cab over. He trotted upon the bridge, grabbing the doorknob with his
tail like it was a prehensile wing glued to his posterior. He wasted no time
closing the door behind himself as he went before uncurling his tail, turning
his attention to what was ahead of him only to then find a sort of connector
cab that doubled as a boarding dock.
The connector-slash-dock in question boasted a light brown color, not unlike
that of polished oak wood, with two closed wooden gates at either side which
hung low. The roof arched high and left a sizeable gap between the gates and
itself, providing a view of the outside station and surrounding land. The sky
was already turning from navy to grey at this point, as if thick with clouds.
All Aboard took a few seconds to simply admire it before trotting down to the
door at the other side. He opened the door again, trotted on another small
bridge, closed said door behind him with his tail, and sighed as he found
himself in the cab with multiple seats.
All Aboard snorted as he trotted to the end, and as he passed he began looking
at every seat, frowning upon seeing indents on the cushions that still
lingered. He also noted that all but one of the windows' blinds were pulled
down, and the one that remained free of its blind shined with just a sliver of
creeping light. He jumped to the next cab without pause, finding a long
hallway-like cab after that which boasted doors aplenty on either side. None
were open, and marked with various signs such as 'stallion's room,' 'storage,'
and 'kitchen' to name a few.
He ignored these doors and simply went to the next cab, finding himself in the
one sporting the bunk-beds after jumping from the door-laden one. He took a few
seconds to admire the pink bedframes that had a dip in the middle, the wooden
ladders that led to the top ones, the curtains lining all the beds that oddly
remained open. Then he turned to all the guests all sleeping within, sighing
when he found that they slept without stirring or snoring. His hoof shifted a
bit on the polished wood floor, leaving nary a mark in its wake.
He nodded to himself, beginning to contemplate how to rouse the train-goers
from their slumber in a manner that would keep hostility to a bare minimum. One
small part of him wanted to shout for all it was worth, but he shook his head
to rid himself of the thought as soon as he saw Shining Armor sleeping in a bed
not too far away.
"I do not want to earn the ire of the Captain," he muttered with a shudder. He
turned to one of the beds further down, frowning as he saw a brown talon dangle
off the side that twitched as it caught his eye. "When did a gryphon get
onboard?"
With shuffling steps that made minimal noise, he inched his way closer to the
dangling limb to investigate how it had gotten there and to whom it belonged.
He froze when it retracted into the bed, but he relaxed when it produced a soft
scratching sound that came and went in the span of a good two seconds. "No, I
don't do manicures," a feminine voice grumbled.
All Aboard crept close enough to see the occupant, her claw on her chest and
her good wing spread at half-mast. Sarah's ears twitched at his arrival, though
thankfully her eyes remained closed and her breathing stayed calm. She
scratched her chest, ruffling a random patch of feathers out of place. "Don't…
wear horseshoes either… stooop," she groaned in protest, her face tightening a
bit as she spoke.
All Aboard shuffled away from Sarah as she continued to protest against wearing
shoes, heading two bunks over to find Spike sleeping in a bed, curled up like a
cat as he dozed. Next to him, flat on his back, slept a purring NoLegs who
softly meowed every few seconds. The stallion watching the two smiled, and he
lifted a hoof and gently patted Spike on the head only to pull back when the
touch caused him to turn the other way. "Aw, shucks Twi," Spike grumbled with a
chuckle.
NoLegs's tail started to shift slightly, the tip just barely turning to the
wall before snapping to point at Spike like an accusatory finger that gained a
mind of its own. Then, slowly, he turned onto his stomach and arched his back
to shift his pelvis under the rest of himself, before lifting his head and
standing up with eyes drowsily blinking open.
He swiveled his head with a sleepy mew, stopping after three or four half-
glance-arounds to settle his gaze on All Aboard. A brief glow flashed from the
tail and around Aboard's head before he heard a voice echo in his mind, "Why
are you staring at me? Did I make a mess in the bed?"
All Aboard immediately gaped, though he shook his head. "S-sorry. T-the train's
arrived at the station an hour and a few minutes ago, but nopony disembarked
yet," he replied in a stammering whisper. "D-did you just…"
NoLegs nodded and yawned widely, his chest puffing out slightly before
deflating as he sleepily licked his lips. He mewed softly and cricked his neck
a bit before sticking his tongue out and licking Spike on the tip of his nose
with it. This only caused him to shudder and mutter something about Twilight
and Rarity in response, and so the cat sighed and gave the drake another lick
on the snout.
Spike responded that time by lifting a claw and attempting to swat NoLegs away
with it, yet he received a third and final lick on the snout when even that
failed to sway the cat in the slightest. Slowly, Spike's eyes cracked open as
unintelligible murmurs crawled out of his throat with a smacking of dry lips.
His eyes, still fogged with drowsiness, settled on NoLegs. "Need something?" he
groaned.
NoLegs nodded and used his tail to gesture beyond the bed. Spike snorted and
turned to the other side, and it took him a few seconds to realize that All
Aboard was staring at him before he sat bolt upright with widening eyes. "Um…
this is awkward…" He lifted a claw and nervously rubbed the back of his head
with it, staring at the stallion with the corner of his lip twitching. "Hello?"
he tried.
"A-apologies. It's just… that the Express is in Ponyville's station, yet nopony
else aside from my co-conductor has noticed it," All Aboard replied, frowning
as he spoke.
Spike's pupils shrank to thin slits. "Wait, we're already in Ponyville?" he
asked, garnering a hesitant nod from Aboard. He jumped off the bed and landed
smoothly on his feet, taking a few seconds to stretch his arms before running
past two beds, then turning to scale up a ladder to find himself staring at a
sleeping Twilight. He paused to ensure that he was steadied on the ladder, and
nodded in satisfaction as he flexed his toes to find that the wood holding him
was sturdy. That done, he stood on his tiptoes and reached over with a claw
outstretched, all but one digit curled tightly into his palm.
As soon as he started tapping at her withers, Twilight's face tightened. "Not
now… I'm reading a book," she mumbled. Spike responded by straightening his
claw and jabbing Twilight's shoulder with it, hard enough to actually hurt her
but not hard enough to gouge the flesh and draw blood. This caused the shoulder
to tense considerably, yet still this did not rouse Twilight. So he poked her
again, only this time between the upper lip and nostrils. He did it a little
more gently that time.
When all that got him was a puff of air from briefly-flared nostrils, he
groaned and shifted a bit before reaching out with both claws to grab her by
the face. He made sure to cover her nostrils, and…
Next thing Spike knew, one second he stood on the ladder and the next he
stomach-up was on the floor after being sent there with a hoof to the chest.
Twilight thrashed wildly, the blanket flying out of the bunk to land in a heap
next to him before she flung herself out of the dip of her bedframe, remained
in the air for a few seconds as if using self-levitation, and then gravity
happened in that order. In the resulting crash, she ended up missing both said
heap and Spike by about an inch each.
The resulting thud, in turn, jolted both Katie and Rarity wide awake with
startled gasps and tails standing on end like wooden planks. The two turned to
the now-as-roused Twilight as she made to stand on her hooves, glancing about
with wide eyes like somepony just tried to murder her bare-hoofed.
Spike also made to stand, rubbing at the back of his head with a groan of both
pain and annoyance. "You could've just woken up without tossing me off the
ladder, Twi…" he grumbled.
That utterance caused the awakened trio to turn to him gaping, with Rarity and
Katie poking their heads out of their bunks beforehand. Katie retracted her
head and pulled the covers over herself before All Aboard could turn to survey
the scene, though he did turn just in time to see Twilight's ears pin back as
she stared at Spike.
"I… tossed you off of a ladder?" Twilight queried, her voice low enough to be
mistaken for a genuine whisper.
"It's okay; nothing more than a dull ache. I was trying to wake you up so that
I could tell you that the train docked," Spike replied nonchalantly, taking a
few paces forward and hugging Twilight by one of her forelegs. "Besides, I kind
of deserved to get tossed off the ladder."
Twilight reluctantly returned the hug, but as soon as her free leg wrapped
around Spike she heard All Aboard clear his throat. The two, plus Rarity,
turned to him and gave him expectant looks. "Before you three wake up anypony
else on this train with your antics, I feel the need to inquire…" He turned to
the bunk Spike was on, lifted a front leg, and snatched NoLegs from the bed
before pulling him out into the open in one go. "Who does this cat belong to,
and why can it use magic?"
NoLegs bristled at being called an 'it,' but kept his reservations to himself
as he heard someone else shuffling to awareness from nearby. He smiled as Matt
poked his head out from the bed directly opposite of the one he and Spike
shared, looking at All Aboard with a half-lidded expression. "The cat travels
with me, and I don't know why he can use magic," he stated sleepily.
All Aboard took a few seconds to look at and then study Matt, seemingly staring
at him like he had taken part in an absurd bank heist. Matt stared back, though
he faltered a bit when NoLegs wriggled out of All Aboard's leg and bounced over
to him like he took possession of an invisible pogo stick. "And why does he
travel with you… without the aid of a pet carrier?" All Aboard queried in a
tight but sincere voice.
"NoLegs doesn't need a pet carrier," Matt replied, his ears twitching slightly.
He slipped a leg out of the bed and let the hoof land on the floor, and then
another, until he crawled out on all fours and stood up straight. All Aboard
found himself taking a step back upon seeing that the pony before him was
easily a head taller, even though said pony did not display even the slightest
hint of ire.
Twilight disentangled herself from her embrace with Spike and trotted forward
before stepping between the two stallions. She turned to All Aboard and, after
taking a few seconds to confirm that the train had indeed stopped when she
found no further bumps or rattles indicating otherwise, smiled sweetly at him.
"Well, since the train has stopped… could you open the doors of the boarding
dock for us, please? We'll be out in a few minutes," she cooed in a sincerely
sweet voice.
All Aboard took one glance at Matt before turning back to Twilight and nodding.
"Very well then," he replied with a bit of hesitation. He turned to the
northern end of the cab and trotted to it, only pausing once and for just long
enough to let Spike step out of the way before going on his way. As soon as he
opened the door, trotted through, and closed it behind him with his tail, Matt
allowed himself to turn to the ceiling and scowl at it for a few seconds.
He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, and only when his scowl eased into
a neutral look did he glance back down. He turned to Twilight and sighed, and
the puff of air caused her to turn to him with a brow raised and her smile to
melt from her muzzle. "I take it the whole 'pet carrier' thing is getting to
you?" she guessed.
Matt slowly nodded, frowning just a teensy bit. "NoLegs would probably teleport
out and then shred the damned thing if we ever got him one. He'd rather stretch
his tail and neck and do things without having to be babied constantly,
y'know?"
Twilight pursed her lips before nodding in understanding. She made to speak,
but Spike walked up to Matt and beat her to it, "I get you. I'd hate being
crammed into a pet carrier too."
Matt turned to Spike and smiled at him. "You'd burn it if you were crammed into
one?" he queried.
Spike snorted. "Are you kidding? I'd probably just burn down the door of the
carrier and crawl out if I was ever stuffed into one," he replied with a grin
forming on his face. Then he glanced around, noticing that nobody else had
stirred—at least, until Katie got out from under her blankets and crawled out
of her bed. She cantered over with a buzz of her wings, tilting her head
slightly as she glanced up at Matt.
"So, what do we do? Who gets to wake everyone else up and who gets to go out to
check and see if it's the asscrack of dawn yet?" Katie asked in a flat tone,
her nose wrinkling a bit as she spoke. That garnered the attention of Rarity,
who clambered out of bed and made a beeline for the group.
"Considering the circumstances, I for one have no doubt that the one to check
whether or not the sun has risen should be Twilight," Rarity stated rather
matter-of-factly, her eyes already settled on her friend well before she
stopped just an inch behind Katie.
Twilight nodded and turned to Matt. "Could you wake up everyone else with
NoLegs in the meantime, please?" she asked.
Matt nodded back. He looked up cross-eyed as NoLegs teleported onto his head in
a burst of blue light. "Can do," he answered with a grin. NoLegs mewed with a
purr, before he teleported from his makeshift perch to the bed housing Pinkie
Pie. Twilight turned to Rarity, Spike, and Katie before nodding to them, and
they parted to let her trot between them towards the door All Aboard had went
through earlier.
They followed after her with hasty steps, catching up to her as she opened the
door and started walking on the bridge leading to the next cab. The door closed
behind them as they went on their merry way, and already they could hear Pinkie
exclaim in as shrill a voice as possible, "The train's stopped in Ponyville?!"
Katie winced at the sheer intensity of the outburst, as if the source was
yelling directly into her ear canal. "Didn't think that your rose-tinted
bubblegum-mare could get that high a pitch," she whined.
Spike turned to Katie and shrugged. "That's Pinkie for you," he replied
nonchalantly.
Katie groaned and let her head drop to her barrel, her ears pinned back and her
orbs dimming as if she were gripped in dread. Still, she did not complain any
further as she trudged along the cab of doors with her present company, though
she did turn to the southernmost door with slanted brows when she heard a
series of low grumbles come from the other side. Eventually, the grumbles died
down after they reached the northernmost door and proceeded to jump to the cab
lined with seats.
Her ears perked to attention and her orbs lit up as she heard the sound of
hooves trotting a short distance, then stopping altogether. She lifted her head
and turned to Twilight, who was not sitting on a seat but nonetheless peering
out of a window with her face more or less pressed against the pane. "The sun
hasn't risen yet…" Twilight grumbled.
"But?" Spike pressed, a small frown on his face.
"The skyline is already turning pinkish in hue," Twilight answered, pulling
away from the window and using a hoof to gesture Spike over. He rushed over and
climbed onto the seat, walking up to the window with no small amount of haste.
When he peered out, he saw that there was a definite tinge of pink in the
horizon, further accentuated by budding golden rays that already started to
paint the mountains and forests beyond with streaks of vibrant yellow.
Spike smiled and turned to Twilight. "Think the others are up yet?" he asked
with a bit of amusement in his tone.
Twilight bit her lower lip and let an ear twitch, straining to listen for the
tell-tale sounds of hooves and claws hitting wood in addition to murmuring
voices. When she caught just the slightest noise that sounded like shuffling
hooves which indicated someone was approaching, she nodded. "Well, we don't
know yet…"
Katie's wings buzzed, and the two turned to her as she produced the sound which
drowned out the faint shuffling. "It might be another passenger that's not with
us," she stated matter-of-factly.
Twilight shook her head. "Nopony else got on board before we left the Crystal
Empire," she retorted.
"But they may have come from elsewhere and weren't dropped off at their desired
destination yet," Rarity piped up, shaking her head as she spoke. "Perhaps we
have some ponies going to Canterlot or Appleloosa, for instance, and they might
not have been dropped off over the course of the last few hours."
Twilight nodded in assent, and opened her mouth to speak before the shuffling
of hooves got louder and louder until she could discern its direction. Her
mouth shut and she turned to the southernmost door, and not a second too soon;
it flew open right as her eyes locked onto it, revealing a yawning Sarah that
stood up on her back legs.
Sarah blinked and lifted a claw to rub at her eyes, smacking her lips and
swishing her tail before stumbling forward with hesitant hooves. Her good wing
stayed shut and her tail lifted like a flag, though that seemed to steady her
stance a bit. "Morning," she greeted.
"Morning," Twilight replied with an accompanying nod. "Is everyone else awake?"
Sarah donned a smile smile. She did not speak; instead, the sound of many
hooves and claws hitting wood from the door-filled cab answered for her. She
stepped aside, making sure not to trip over a seat, and watched as Shining
Armor trotted through the door with Lance following him. Both stallions wore
smiles and their eyes gleamed, with not one swollen vein in their sclera
indicating the slightest twinge of bloodshot.
"So, what's the plan?" Lance asked with a small grin, looking at everyone
already assembled as he and Shining trotted forward to let the others into the
seat-cab.
Fenrir snorted as he came through the door after everyone else had gone through
and spread out to take seats. He took a few seconds to look from Sarah, to
Twilight, and then to Rarity and Spike. He garnered a set of three shrugging
shoulders and a spark of uncertainty in blue irises, so he turned to Lance with
a hint of a smirk on his face. "I propose that we set forth to Ponyville first,
then find a place to rendezvous where it is most convenient at," he said.
Lance turned to Fenrir with a brow raised. "Sounds reasonable. But we'll need
to head back to Fantasia in a few days, lest the rest of my army back home
starts thinking I've been captured," he stated, his smile fading.
Fenrir's grin only widened. "Three days at the most, since you seem to be very
impatient," he replied. "One for carrying out whatever else it is we need to
do, another to spend on the train, and the last on the airship—no more, no
less."
Lance's smile returned, and he exchanged a glance with Shining to garner a nod.
"Can we all work with that?" he asked everyone else, garnering nods from his
troops, Sarah, and Katie. Maria tilted her head a bit before she too nodded.
"I don't see why not. I'd like to see what Fantasia has to offer me and my
lot," Zecora piped up, likewise nodding in assent.
Twilight and Spike flinched, quickly seeing that they were outnumbered already.
The former's ears pinned back and the latter's jaw dropped as Rainbow crossed
her forelegs and inserted her two bits, "I'm not going back to Fantasia until I
can get Spitfire's advice on ectoplasms." Then Rainbow smiled, making the two
shiver a bit as she added, "But I'm pretty sure she'll give it to me once I
make up for my lack of training last week."
Lance turned to Rainbow, his brow still raised. "How do you intend to make up
for a week's worth of training?" he queried sincerely.
Rainbow turned to him, her own smile widening. "You've seen how fast I fly,
right?" she retorted. When Lance nodded with his smile fading again, she
chirped, "I can easily give Spitfire one hundred laps if she asked me to."
"To make up for a week's worth of screwing around? I'd reckon she'd give you
three hundred," Lance snorted, the corner of his mouth twitching.
Pinkie Pie interjected, turning to Fenrir as she did so, "So, where do we want
to meet up at?"
Everyone turned to her in that moment, some lips pursing together and a few
brows raising as their owners stared at her. "That's a darn good question,"
Applejack replied, firmly frowning and shaking her head.
"Maybe Golden Oaks would be a good place to meet up?" Fluttershy suggested, a
small frown on her face. She shrunk a bit when everyone then turned their
unified gaze on her, but she merely nodded in a manner that seemed to be done
as though done subconsciously. "If that's alright with everyone else," she
added.
Then, Katie nodded as well. "But if we're staying overnight in the basement
again, we're getting sleeping bags. The bookshelf wasn't as cozy as it looked,"
she piped up.
"Sounds good to me," Matt agreed with a nod of his own, his horn starting to
glow as his gaze zeroed in on Katie. "Gonna cover you with an illusion before
we disembark though."
Katie turned back to Matt and her eyes narrowed a bit. "Give it to me, Panda
Colt," she replied with no small amount of amusement in her tone. A golden glow
embraced her before yellow temporarily blinded her vision, and when it died
everyone found that she had re-assumed her filly guise.
"What's a panda?" Maria queried, garnering a chuckle from Matt as he turned to
her.
"A big fuzzy animal. It's actually a type of bear," Twilight answered before
Matt could open his claptrap.
Maria turned to Twilight and nodded, her wings flapping for a few seconds
before folding at her sides. Then she turned to Lance. "Daddy, how are we gonna
get to Cloudsdale?" she pressed, and instantly his torn ears folded back
against his head.
But before Lance could so much as even start to tremble, Pinkie spoke up again,
"Oh, I have a friend named Cherry Berry who owns a hot-air balloon! That should
help you two get to Cloudsdale in no time at all."
Lance turned to Pinkie and sighed with eyes that widened slightly. "A hot-air
balloon?" he repeated, a little bit of disbelief in his voice.
"Yepperoni," Pinkie replied with a grin and a nod vigorous enough to make her
mane wobble like it was glued to a bobblehead. "Of course, you gotta pay Cherry
bits to use it, but it's not expensive."
Lance blinked. "I take it she uses the bits to repair the balloon if and when
it gets damaged?" he pressed.
Pinkie nodded again, more vigorously that time. "You bet," she chirped.
Maria jumped up into the air, wings flapping but not doing anything to hold her
aloft. "We can fly, daddy?! We can fly?!" she squealed with wide eyes and a
grin to match.
Lance sighed and hesitantly nodded. "Yes, we can," he grumbled. He gave her a
stern glare that stopped her cold, well before she could jump back up as soon
as she landed. "But you're not jumping out of the balloon until we land…
wherever Spitfire's at in Cloudsdale. You're still grounded for three days, and
last thing we all need is you plummeting down to meet with the ground in an
unpleasant manner. Got it?"
"Yes, daddy," Maria murmured, her wings drooping a bit.
Lance slumped his shoulders and let his face ease. "Alright then." He turned to
Twilight. "Does Golden Oaks sound like a good rendezvous point to you?" he
asked.
Twilight nodded, and turned to Shining to find him grinning at her. "I don't
see why not," Shining piped up. He started trotting to the northernmost side of
the cab, and everyone filed into a single-file line behind him to avoid
crashing into the seats as they followed him in step.
***** Chapter XLV- 'Are You Certain?' *****
The group disembarked and wasted no time heading to Golden Oaks, though silence
hung heavily amongst them even as the sun poked over the horizon and started
its daily climb upwards. Armin took the time to make sure his pegasus guise
wouldn't falter in the slightest, checking his false feathers and mane and tail
to ensure they could not start falling out anytime soon. Katie opted to
piggyback on Anna, her gaze fixed on the rising sun and the vibrant oranges,
reds, and pinks it brought with.
Anna trotted up to Lance, who lead the group on with Shining. She turned to him
with a grin when Maria rushed up from behind, jumped up, and landed squarely on
his back in a manner that made his legs buckle for a few seconds and caused him
to stop for a bit. When he fixed his posture and resumed trotting to catch up
to Shining, he turned to Anna as she kept pace with him. "Yes?" he queried.
"You need any bits for the balloon?" Anna replied with the grin still on her
face.
Lance pursed his lips for a few seconds, and he sighed. "Might as well give me
my saddlebags while you're at it. Just take out the bullets first; last thing I
need is the locals asking me why I'm toting ammunition around," he answered.
"But you might need those and your gunblade," Anna pointed out, her grin
fading. "You'll never know exactly when. Better to have them and not need them,
than to need them and not have them."
Lance's brow furrowed slightly, and the corner of his mouth began twitching.
"True enough." Then he sighed. "Let's discuss it further when we get to the
library."
Anna nodded. "Sounds good," she chirped.
"Daddy, are there any other fillies I can play with?" Maria queried in a
sincere tone, which garnered a sigh from Katie, who at last turned away from
the still-climbing sun and towards her.
"Given what you've been through, and the way you talk and think, I'd have to
say 'no' on the grounds you're not exactly a kid by mind anymore," Katie
scoffed, a very firm frown on her illusioned face.
Lance nodded in assent. "Gonna have to agree there, Maria. I'd wager there
aren't many foals in these parts who know half the things you do," he stated.
"But—" Maria began, only to stop when Anna gave a groan.
"They're both right, sadly. I don't want you teaching any fillies and colts
your age where certain body parts go or how to hack said certain body parts. Or
how to molest a pony, Godcat forbid. As harsh as this is gonna sound, you
playing with the local foals is not happening," Anna said in a firm tone, her
brow furrowing at the mere thought of the entire idea. She rolled her eyes and
added, "That, and I'd rather not have to listen to said other foals' parents
bitch and moan until our ears go to oblivion."
Then, Shining of all ponies backed the two up with his two bits, "Yeah, Maria…
foals who know what you do tend to be…" He turned to her, silent for a few
seconds as he swallowed heavily before carefully finishing, "a little bit of an
oddball around these parts. If anything, you might attract bad foals who'll
demean just about anypony… or gryph, in your case, that doesn't fit in with the
norm."
Maria turned to Shining and deflated slightly. "Bad foals?" she asked.
Shining nodded. "Yes. I've heard stories about a few making fun of others for
lacking cutie marks, or something inane like that," he replied. He smiled at
Maria and added, "Don't look or feel bad; your surrogates are just looking out
for you."
Maria nodded and her wings flexed a bit. "Okay," she chirped with a budding
smile on her face.
Shining turned to Lance and his smile grew enough to start rivaling that of
Katie's again. "At least you don't have it as bad," he chirped.
Lance turned to regard Shining with a brow raised high. "What're you on about?"
he asked, causing Shining to snort and chuckle.
"Well, whenever you decide to give your filly the talk, for instance, it'll be
a lot easier on you because of the way she thinks and the things she already
knows about. You've been spared a lot of awkwardness on your part," Shining
chirped in reply, his smile widening just a little bit more as he spoke.
Lance flinched at that with shrinking pupils, his ears immediately folding to
rest on the back of his head. "You're saying that like she's already hit
puberty!" he exclaimed.
"Mentally, she already has in a way," Katie piped up from Anna's back, donning
a very snide grin when Lance turned back to her slack-jawed. "Meaning, no
matter how you slice it, you two are effectively fucked."
For a few seconds, Lance's jaws remained parted as he stared at the disguised
wraith like she'd stolen a cigar from him, lit it without the aid of a lighter,
and took a puff of smoke before his very eyes. Then his mouth started moving,
but no words would come out of his throat.
He kept looking at Katie with his jaw soundlessly moving for another few
minutes before he gave a groan of irritation, snorted, and turned away when he
realized he could not make a single rebuttal against her argument. His mouth
snapped shut after that, forming a small but tight frown that made it look as
though he were annoyed. The frown did ease as he trotted on, and his ears began
twitching as he heard those behind him and Shining and Anna start a round of
small talk.
Before he could listen to and process the small talk, though, Maria shifted a
bit to rest her stomach on his back. "Daddy, what's that?" she asked.
Lance craned his neck slightly to look at her with lips curled back to reveal
unmoving molars and canines. "What's what?" he retorted in a forced calm tone,
through clenched teeth at that. She rose a talon and gestured to the building
with the small bell-tower atop its frame, and he took one look at it before
shrugging his shoulders in mute reply.
Anna also turned to the building in question, having seen Maria gesture to it.
"It looks… like a barnhouse," she answered. The bell atop it started to ring,
though as the group came into sight of Sugarcube Corner, the clanging started
to grow faint.
Pinkie bolted up to Shining from behind, then raced ahead before skidding to a
halt in front of Sugarcube Corner. This caused the rest of the group to stop
trotting, with all sets of eyes falling onto her with brows raised. "Could you
stay here for a few minutes? I gotta check on something right quick," Pinkie
stated with a small smile on her face.
Lance and Shining exchanged glances, then turned to Pinkie and gave her mute
shrugs in return. Anna spoke up, "Nobody's stopping you. Go ahead."
Pinkie's smile widened. "Okie-dokie-lokie! I'll be back in a jiffy!" she
chirped before rushing to the establishment with a bounce in her step. Though
as she opened the door and bounded in like she owned the place, her mane and
tail deflated slightly and her smile faded. She closed it behind her with her
tail and stiffened for a few seconds, but took a deep breath through her
nostrils to relax herself.
Her heart sunk a little when she didn't see anypony behind the counter, though
her ears perked when she did hear a tell-tale clanging of pots and pans. She
trotted up to the counter before going around it, heading directly for the
source of the clanging. Finding that the door leading to the kitchen was ajar,
she lifted a hoof to push it further open before trotting in to find Carrot and
Cup Cake hard at work. The former was managing the taffy machine to make a
heaping glob of rainbow-colored candies, while the latter had been hovering
near the counter with a steaming pie before her.
Between them, playing with a mound of blocks, were Pumpkin and Pound, who
instantly turned to the new arrival and called out "Pinkie Pie!" in unison.
Their utterance caused Cup and Carrot to turn away from what they were doing,
and both smiled at Pinkie when they saw her standing near the door.
Cup Cake trotted away from the pie and hugged Pinkie as soon as she was within
hoof's reach. "Oh, goodness! We weren't expecting you to be back so soon," she
chirped.
Pinkie returned the hug, and her mane and tail inflated a bit as she did so.
"Oh, things were hectic at the Crystal Empire. It was fun, but also terrible at
the same time," she replied, breaking the embrace with a content sigh.
Carrot's smile fell, he raised a brow, and cleared his throat to garner the
attention of the two mares. "Terrible and fun, you say? Well… what happened?"
he queried with a frown forming on his face.
"Well, a bad pony who escaped from Canterlot's dungeon somehow got to the
Empire and tried harassing Shining's guards and the Fantasians. He made Shining
reaaaally mad two nights ago. Good thing he was jailed again, or things
would've been awful," Pinkie replied, her muzzle also forming a frown to match
that of Carrot's. "But the Crystal Faire yesterday was very fun. I even took
part in a new game that Shining made. I didn't even know archery could be
fantastic!" she added, her smile coming back full force once she finished.
Carrot's frown turned upside-down in that moment. "That's good to hear." He
turned to Pumpkin and Pound, watching them as they stood up, toddled away from
their blocks, and went all the way over to Pinkie before giggling. "It seems
the twins missed you," he noted.
Pinkie turned to the babies and smiled at them, before returning her attention
to Carrot. "Say, can I take the babies with me to Fluttershy's place? I promise
I'll keep them safe, and you two are already awfully busy this morning," she
said.
Carrot's smile faded again, and he bit his lip and raised a hoof to rub his
chin. He hummed for a bit before his hoof dropped and he nodded. "As long as
you remember to change, feed, bathe, and play with them, I don't see why not,"
he replied. "Just bring them back and put them to sleep when you're done."
Pinkie beamed again. "Yes sir! I'll be sure to take good care of them," she
chirped. Her utterance caused the babies to giggle and burble in glee, and they
started hopping around her legs eagerly.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The group mulled about in the front of Sugarcube Corner for some fifteen
minutes, chatting amongst themselves when the door to the establishment opened
and dual giggles reached all ears present. They hushed and turned to the
building, some smiling and others with brows raising as Pinkie bounced out with
a backpack laden on her withers and two foal-carriers on her midsection that
Pumpkin and Pound occupied.
Lance trotted towards Pinkie as soon as she rejoined the group, both brows
raised and eyes going wide. "What're the foals for?" he asked. "They yours?"
Pinkie shook her head and grinned at him. "Nope, but I do foalsit them every
now and again. I just figured I wanted to spend time with both of them and my
friends," she chirped. Lance nodded and turned to Pound, who spread his little
wings and giggled at him like he woke up wearing clown make-up. Pinkie turned
to Pound and grinned at him. "Seems he likes you," she cooed. The group turned
away from Sugarcube Corner and headed down a road going south.
They continued on their way to Golden Oaks before stopping at a fork in the
road, though Natalie picked up her pace to catch up with Pinkie, with Matt
falling in step behind her.
Natalie leaned in to nuzzle Pumpkin once she was close enough, smiling when the
filly booped her on the nose in response. "Were you a good little filly?" she
cooed, her smile widening when Pumpkin giggled at her query.
Pinkie rolled her eyes. "She and her brother were probably good foals while I
was gone," she answered for Pumpkin, garnering another set of giggles from the
filly in question. "Their parents are really good when it comes to caring for
foals. I bet Lance could take lessons from Mr. Cake." That utterance caused
Lance to seize up with a choked gasp leaving his mouth, which in turn made
Pinkie turn to him and snort once she saw that he was already turning blue in
the face.
"But Lance has a growing filly with a foul mouth," Matt stated with a grin. "I
don't think Mr. Cake could help him on that front."
Pinkie pursed her lips as she turned to Matt, and her brow slanted slightly.
After giving his remark some thought, she nodded glumly. "Eh, you do have a
point there," she agreed.
Lance took in a shallow breath, but chose to keep his mouth closed as the group
turned to the left on the fork and kept on going. The others chattered on
around him, but their latest bits of gossip simply went in one torn ear and
straight out the other with speeds rivaling that of freshly-fired bullets. So
he simply kept his gaze fixed forward, noticing that despite the rising sun,
nopony else came out of their houses yet.
As the collective herd rounded a lengthy bend with the library finally coming
into sight, however, they came upon a large gathering of particularly vocal
ponies who were already out and about. Shining trotted a little closer with
Lance in tow, watching intently as the other ponies' bickering meshed together
into an incomprehensible mess as they cut ahead before they veered to the right
at another fork further down the road. Among this mass was a peculiar mare
sporting a pale brown coat that bordered on beige, and a silvery mane and tail.
She broke into a gallop to take the lead of the second group.
"Now, now, everypony. We'll be civilised when we get to the town hall," the
almost-beige mare implored in a calm but no-nonsense tone that demanded some
modicum of respect. Her voice was what ground the first group to a halt, a mere
trot's distance from the library at that. They watched still, and Shining
caught a glimpse of yellow and red running to and fro between sets of stamping
hooves, followed by a blur of red and orange.
"But what if we need the Bearers of Harmony, Mayor Ivory Scroll?" a stallion
called out from the crowd ahead. "I heard we had visiting Fantasians that've
been in Equestria for a while."
"Let's save such a thing for the town meeting today," Ivory Scroll replied, her
voice rising slightly to silence the resulting murmurs that swept through the
rest of the crowd with the stallion's utterance. Once things fell into
tranquility, she broke it with a firm statement, "I'm sure we'll figure
something out. And if the Bearers show up, things might just go swimmingly for
us all." The crowd started fading into the distance, before turning a corner
and vanishing from sight.
Twilight trotted up to Shining and exchanged glances with him. "The town's
already assembled to head to the hall? That's not something that usually
happens around here," she bemoaned, a frown forming on her face.
Shining's face hardened. "It seems the library will have to wait for a few
minutes, at the least," he replied before turning to face Lance, who still
stared at where the crowd had gone. He lifted a hoof and poked him on the
withers with it, garnering an incredulous look. "Would you and yours mind
staying in the library for a few?" he asked.
Lance nodded with wide eyes, dilated pupils, ears folded back, and muzzle
slightly scrunched. Finally, after his mouth opened again and his gums flapped
for a few minutes on end, he found his voice. "We'll… uh, be in the basement,"
he stated in a very uneasy voice. Then he trotted towards the library with a
hurried pace, causing Matt and Natalie to exchange looks before turning to
Pinkie Pie. Pinkie looked at them before directing her attention to Shining.
Shining turned to stare her in the eye before spinning around to stare at
Fluttershy, Rainbow, Rarity, Applejack, Spike, and Zecora. "Can you guys keep
the Fantasians out of trouble? Me and Twilight are gonna head to the town hall
for a bit, and we shouldn't be gone long," he stated. As soon as he got a
series of nods after the mares and dragon he addressed exchanged glances, he
and his sister turned to the fork up ahead and broke out into a unified gallop.
They spared just one glance over their shoulders to confirm that the others
stayed behind, and both smiled as the group began heading to the library after
Lance. Then they turned to stare ahead again and reached the fork in under a
minute, veering sharply to the right as if avoiding a wall they couldn't simply
jump over in a single bound.
The still-bickering crowd was up ahead by a few miles that took some six
minutes to cross, already congregating with yet more ponies around a large
building that jutted up like a thumbtack amidst a few houses and establishments
that were dwarfed in comparison. It had a large, manicured patch of grass
spanning a few yards all to itself, only offsetted by a nearby river and
bridges arching over said river.
This building looked as though the construction team got inspired by a
carefully-crafted and layered wedding cake; it had several sets of steps
leading onto a porched alcove of sorts. It came with pink windows and sturdy,
painted-mauve oak doors framing the base of the building. It had a first floor
atop that, constructed much like the base albeit with a balcony and fence to
keep the foolhardy from tumbling to the ground and pillars starting from the
ground floor that held it up.
It was capped off with a sloped, angled roof leading to two more balconies, one
with more windows and pillars to hold up an arching roof and the other serving
as a sort of crow's nest if one so desired to use it for that purpose. On the
porch of sorts, standing behind a polished podium crafted of wood and between
two of those pillars was Ivory Scroll. She looked over the forming crowd with
critical eyes as blue and cold as ice, waiting until the mass of ponies stopped
accruing more members than she could hope to count before clearing her throat
just once.
Any sort of noise the crowd made in that moment, even as Twilight and Shining
stepped in behind them without notice from their fellow attendees, died as soon
as that sound crawled from her throat.
She turned her piercing, chilling gaze onto Twilight and Shining before nodding
to them once. "Would you two like to step up to the podium?" she queried in a
friendly, though miffed, tone of voice that had the rest of the crowd turning
to them on the spot.
Shining and Twilight exchanged glances, then turned to Ivory and nodded in
unison. The crowd parted to let them through, and they began to languidly walk
to the podium shoulder-by-shoulder.
"Is it true there are Fantasians in Equestria?" a stallion called from their
right.
"Are they evil and cruel?" a mare yodeled from the left.
"Why would they bring changelings with them? Doesn't that seem fishy?" a third
asked from the right, his query causing a wave of murmurs to sweep through the
crowd like a tide. "Would that mean they're all changelings?"
"Do they take candy from foals?" a filly on the left asked.
"Now, now," Ivory Scroll chided in a raised voice as she tapped her hoof on the
podium like a gavel, her no-nonsense tone combined with the thumping hushing
the murmurs almost immediately. "No need to bedraggle Twilight and her brother
with a laundry list of questions. As it stands, I myself have enough unanswered
as is." That caused Twilight and Shining to pick up their pace, though the two
shuddered nonetheless.
The two exchanged another look as they came closer to the podium, and at this
rate they were a mere trot's distance from it now. They swallowed nervously
before nodding to each other and quickening their pace again, crossing the
distance in a matter of seconds. Twilight saw a magenta glow in her sight for a
few milliseconds before she heard Shining's voice echo into her head, "Might as
well get this over with." Giving a silent nod of assent, she turned to Ivory
Scroll as she and her brother trotted around the podium and directly to her.
Amethyst eyes locked with ice-cold ones, and for but a few seconds the lock
held tight, taking precedence over all else in that moment. Then Ivory blinked
and asked, "Are any of the claims the good citizens of Ponyville keep going on
about, in any way, shape, or form true?"
Twilight turned to look at the crowd for a second or two before averting back
to Ivory. "Yes and no," she replied, a slight frown forming on her face.
Then another pony broke through the crowd, causing the three near the podium to
turn to the source as she forced herself onto the cleared path with a wordless
cry. "I've met some of the Fantasians, and they're really nice folk!" Apple
Bloom exclaimed. All eyes fell onto her as she added, "They helped my sister
buck trees a few days ago."
"You don't know that for certain!" cried the stallion who made the assumption
about all of the Fantasians being changelings. He stood up on his back legs,
revealing a horn, a pale yellow coat and a blue mane as he added, "They might
be waiting to strike!"
"I beg to differ," another voice cut through the crowd as, from behind Apple
Bloom, Big Mac trotted onto the clear divide the crowd didn't bother to re-
fill. He flanked his sister before addressing the unicorn who was upright,
"Comet Tail, did you not get a wink of sleep last night? It sure sounds like
it."
Comet Tail's ears folded back, and he flinched as though struck across the face
by a flyswatter. "How do you know that?" he retorted in a faltering voice.
"I met them in the flesh. As my sister said, they are good folk," Big Mac
replied in an even voice, his expression straight and steadfast. "Maybe I could
take you to meet them, if they show up again."
Silence held the crowd, and yet again Shining and Twilight exchanged looks.
Then they turned to Comet Tail as he sighed and sunk back into the crowd on all
fours. After that, Big Mac and Apple Bloom retreated into the mass of ponies as
well, although they stuck together in doing so.
Then the gap between the crowd closed as everypony within shuffled about,
before they stilled and sat on their haunches. Twilight saw Ivory shift away
from the podium in her peripheral gaze before shuffling over to take both said
podium and the entirety of the crowd's immediate attention. "It's true that
there are some Fantasians in Equestria," she announced, yet again causing the
crowd to murmur with her utterance. "But," she began, silencing all on the
spot, "the only reason they're in Equestria is to discuss potential relations
with Celestia in the future."
"Then what explains this!?" Comet Tail shouted, his horn glowing with a silver
aura. In a flash of light, a stack of newspapers materialized before hovering
next to him. He threw it rather unceremoniously over half of the crowd, and it
would have hit Twilight's face has she not lit her horn and grabbed it with her
aura at the last second.
She brought it close and scanned it, seeing a familiar article with three
pictures to one side. She made it vanish in a puff of pink smoke before turning
to Comet. "About that… one of the Fantasians runs an army with changelings and
gryphons. As for the hotel… I'm not even gonna delve into that," Twilight
replied with a huff.
"Are they trying to invade?!" Comet yelled, his eyes narrowing as he abruptly
stood on his back legs again.
Twilight groaned. "Here we go. The madness has officially begun," she muttered
under her breath with a roll of her eyes. "No. I will repeat myself only once,
because evidently you weren't paying attention," she stated firmly, shaking her
head as she spoke. "They only want to establish relations with
Equestria—nothing more, nothing less."
Comet Tail's face tightened to the point he looked as though glowering. "How do
you know that?" he queried.
Twilight snorted, eyes narrowing slightly. "Try asking a different question.
You're just exhausting that one," she replied in an icy tone.
Comet Tail's lips pulled back and he started grinding his teeth, but a glare
from Shining and Ivory stopped him from speaking right as he opened his mouth
to pipe up again. His mouth clacked shut and he slowly sat back down. His
pupils dilated when he saw Shining's horn glow, before a flash of magic
exploded next to him to reveal a bowl of popcorn at the ready. His teeth ground
harder when Shining offered the bowl to Ivory Scroll, who accepted the treat
and popped some into her mouth.
He tuned out what Twilight had to say about the Fantasians after that, not
bothering to absorb details about trade relations and how all of that mumbo-
jumbo was going to work out.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
After the crowd had been quelled and dispersed an hour later that morning,
Twilight breathed a sigh of relief and let her shoulders slump. She turned to
Ivory and Shining, both of whom looked at her with grins on their muzzles and
an empty bowl sitting between them. "I must say, Twilight, your arguments were
very sound. Why, it's almost like you met with the Fantasians," Ivory noted,
causing both Twilight and Shining to flinch at the remark.
Twilight lifted a hoof and rubbed the back of her head nervously, an awkward
and warbling grin spreading on her face as a dry chuckle left her mouth.
"Weeeeeell…" Her ears twitched, and her grin widened and faltered as Ivory gave
her an expectant look. "Would you like to come to the library with me, Ivory?
I… have something I'd like to show you."
Ivory raised a bemused brow. "Something?" she queried sincerely, her own grin
likewise broadening.
Twilight dropped her hoof and hesitantly nodded. "Yeah. But can you promise to
keep it just between us? I don't want the townsponies to lose their marbles
again," she replied.
Ivory's other brow rose to join its mate. "Like the stampeding rabbits ordeal?"
she asked.
"Sort of, but worse if word got out," Twilight stated in an uneven voice, her
mouth twitching a little to the right as she spoke.
Ivory bit her lower lip as her brows lowered, before she turned to Shining to
find him looking back with an expression that betrayed slanted brows, a
faltering smile rivaling that of Twilight's, and shrunk pupils—a mix between
amusement and pleading. Only then did she relent and nod. "Alright, I'll bite.
But it better be good," she said in a flat tone.
The three then trotted off of the alcove, though Shining took a few seconds to
make the empty bowl vanish in a flare of light before he joined the two mares
as they gained a trot's distance from him. "So, would either of you tell me
what I'm gonna get into here?" Ivory piped up as Shining rejoined them. The
siblings looked at her, still bearing nervous grins that warbled so much it
seemed as if they threatened to fall off their muzzles at any second.
"Well… it's kinda a surprise. You'll know when we get there," Twilight answered
before turning to glance forward. She left it at that. Ivory, thankfully, took
the hint and nodded, sporting a small grin on her face that lasted for all of
fifteen minutes that it took to get back to Golden Oaks. As soon as they
reached the building, Twilight trotted to the door and opened it before poking
her head inside, finding that everything was as it should be: books in alcoves,
horse head bust before the table. There was nary a thing out of place.
But as she came inside, motioning with a hoof for Ivory and Shining to follow
suit, she heard voices so muffled it was difficult to make out whatever words
they spoke. As soon as her brother and her newest guest flanked her, her horn
lit up and she lifted the table behind the bust with a flare of magic,
revealing the winding stairs going down. This also caused the voices she heard
to get louder, though whether or not they were shouting she couldn't tell.
"Twilight? Do you have ponies in your basement again?" Ivory asked in a sincere
voice, her smile fading at last.
Twilight nodded. "Just follow me," she stated simply. She made for the stairs,
but not before setting the table to one side so it wouldn't hamper her in any
way. Taking the first few steps thereafter, her ears perked as the voices
became clearer.
"Y'all got any queens?" one asked, which Twilight immediately recognized as
Applejack's.
"Not again," a masculine voice grumbled indignantly. After some seconds, the
owner added, "Any four's?" Another few seconds. "Aaaand my hoof is emptied."
Followed promptly by a loud thump.
"It seems they're keeping themselves busy, whoever they are," Ivory noted with
an amused snort.
Twilight mutely nodded as they went down a winding staircase that did not span
any longer than a standard set leading to another floor. This gave way to a
small hall with gnarled tree roots poking out overhead, which ended in a small
green door that remained closed for the moment. As they came closer, Shining
flared his horn and grappled the doorknob in his magic, hastening his trot so
that he could go shoulder-to-shoulder with Twilight. There was a brief pause
when they reached the door about a minute later, and they kept still for a few
seconds.
The two turned to Ivory Scroll in unison as the door was flung open, their
forms obscuring what was beyond. For a few more seconds, the voices that
chattered hushed, and silence cradled the basement before being abruptly broken
as Pinkie asked, "Anypony got any seven's?"
Twilight felt an increasing tightness in her chest the longer she kept her back
to the door, watching Ivory with as straight a face as she could muster. Then
she heard Matt pipe up, "What next, a concussion? Pinkie, you've just won how
many games now?" This was followed by another wave of bickering from many
voices.
Ivory cleared her throat and turned to Twilight. "We have some new ponies in
town?" she guessed, a brow raising yet again before dipping back low.
Twilight nodded for the upteempth time. "Not just any ponies, though," she
replied before she turned around and trotted into the room.
Shining stayed for a few seconds, his ears slowly turning back to rest against
his head. "These guys… aren't of your standard run-of-the-mill sort," he added
before likewise shifting to face the door and trotting into the room beyond.
"Everyone, your attention please," he said in a firm voice, one that quelled
the bickering yet again. Ivory lifted a brow when 'everyone' instead of
'everypony' left Shining's mouth, and it rose higher with his next utterance.
"It seems you'll have to be discreet today, as we've confirmed that the rest of
Ponyville has caught on to your presence. That said, we've decided to introduce
you to the mayor of this town, as she's promised me and Twily to keep a
secret," Shining announced. "Are you fine with this?"
Several voices said "yes" or "yeah" in unison. Among them, a cat meowed, which
caused Ivory's mouth to twitch a little. This was followed by a shuffling of
what sounded like cards.
"Alright then," Shining stated. "Ivory Scroll, come in please," he beckoned.
Ivory did not need a second invitation; she trotted to the door and went into
the room to find Twilight's friends, in addition to Pumpkin and Pound Cake. All
sans the aforementioned babies were engaged in a card game with the strangest
ensemble she'd ever seen.
Maria wasted no time putting her cards face-down on the floor as soon as Ivory
turned to her. "You're a pretty pony," she innocently chirped.
Ivory blushed and managed a small smile. "W-why thank you, d-dear," she
stammered. She turned to Fenrir, whose paws dwarfed the cards he held so much
he may as well have been in possession of bobby pins. "A… oh, um…"
Fenrir smiled at Ivory and lifted a paw to gesture her over. "It is alright; me
and my acquaintances do not wish you any harm."
Ivory hesitated for a full minute before she slowly walked over and sat next to
him prior to turning away, only to then find herself staring at a pale face
that at first seemed like that of a filly's. But then it shifted into a
grotesque, almost skeletal thing with a flare of gold and a buzzing of wings.
It was this abrupt change that caused Ivory's pupils to dilate into tiny
pinpricks.
"Long and complicated story. But I won't bite," Katie chirped, her orbs
twinkling with some fleeting vestige of emotion that Ivory couldn't pinpoint a
name to. She extended a card-free hoof in greeting, noticing that Ivory stared
at her with a jittering jaw that threatened to drop. "Broken as I may be, I'm
not going to drain you of your love or anything of the sort. I've lost that
kind of drive a long time ago."
Pinkie, who sat directly opposite of Ivory, piped up, "She's actually friendly,
if only a bit blunt. Still, she's not a meanie-pants like Chrysalis and her
army."
Ivory sighed through her nostrils and hesitantly lifted a hoof to grapple with
Katie's, and she made sure to very tenderly shake it as soon as she had it in
her grasp. "This is… a lot to take in…" Her eyes flew to look at each and every
new face present. "Where'd you guys come from?"
"World over yonder," Natalie answered with a slight smirk. "Things, ah… got a
little hectic lately."
"You're telling me," Ivory snorted, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
"I had to have help calming down a crowd in the last hour and a half." Then she
registered the 'world over yonder' bit and her eyes widened. "Wait, so you are
the Fantasians everypony's been fussing over?" When ten heads nodded at once,
she turned to Shining with twitching eyes. "Um… why aren't they in Canterlot
presently?"
***** Chapter XLVI, Part I- 'Pretty Please?' *****
Shining's shoulders slumped, and he opened his mouth to speak when Lance turned
to Ivory and beat him to the punch, "We don't want to be the target of another
mob-fueled riot, thank you."
Ivory turned to Lance, eyes still twitching. "Riot?" she queried.
"Yes. We're trying to stay out of sight, because a whole lot of ponies
weaponized furniture against us in Canterlot, and we didn't do anything to earn
their ire," Lance replied with a nod.
Ivory managed to get her eyes to stop twitching, and she lifted a hoof before
tapping at her chin with it. She gave his remark some thought, then turned to
Shining. "Is what he said true?" she asked.
Shining nodded. "I had to help in crowd control while Canterlot's populace
erupted like a volcano," he replied, his tone glum. "At first, the rioters
thought it was Cloudsdale's fault."
"And then someone got the brilliant idea of pinning it on us," Katie finished
for Shining, snorting derisively.
Ivory Scroll took a few seconds to let what she heard sink in. She opened her
mouth to speak, but closed it and jerked her head up towards the root-laden
ceiling when she heard the distinctive sound of a crash of thunder. "Now what
was that about? There aren't any storms scheduled today, are there?" she
queried.
"Not that I know of," Rainbow replied, wincing as she heard glass breaking
seconds later. That was promptly followed by three thuds and then another of
metal hitting wood. Everyone else turned upward as well, with Katie's ears
standing to attention. Pumpkin and Pound burbled in unison, tilting their heads
quizzically.
Then a voice broke the tranquility, a young and stubborn one at that. "Gosh
dang it, Scoots! I knew we couldn't get our cutie marks in paragliding!"
Applejack's brow furrowed, and she looked about to find Fenrir on one side of
her and Rarity and Rainbow on the other. "Again?" she hissed upon turning back
to the ceiling. She stood up abruptly, dropping her hoof of cards in the
process.
Another voice squeaked from above, "Hey, is that a flight of stairs?" This was
followed by a rustling of something sounding like a flapping sheet of paper,
albeit one mixed with another of groaning metal.
"I think it is, Sweetie Belle. Where do you think it leads?" another voice
queried, one brash yet feminine in tone.
Rainbow Dash turned to Applejack and rolled her eyes. "Again," she stated. Then
her eyes widened when three sets of hoofsteps repeatedly thumped from above,
still tailed by flapping paper and groaning metal. "Here we go." She lifted her
front hooves and plugged her ears with them.
Matt's horn started glowing, and his eyes zeroed in on Katie. "You know the
drill by now." That was the only warning he gave before he zapped her with a
beam of golden light from across the basement, hitting her squarely in the
barrel before letting it dissipate as she took on her filly guise almost
immediately after.
Ivory turned to Katie as the spell died off in a flurry of golden dust. "Now
that's something I don't see every day, even by Ponyville standards," she
remarked, her eyes going wide again. Her ears pinned back when the hoofsteps
resounded, only to give way to a series of thuds, screams, and metal snapping
like twigs that got closer and closer with each passing second.
Silence fell as three little blurred forms bowled into the room, dragging with
them a poor paraglider that was beaten and singed beyond repair. They stopped
just short of Matt, who lit his horn and used his magic to grapple them before
they could crash into him. As soon as they stopped, he found that the blurred
forms were a slightly-singed Scootaloo, a bruised Apple Bloom, and a muddied
Sweetie Belle. All of them had bits of glass shards in their manes, yet nothing
else was out of the ordinary with them.
He sighed and turned to the wrecked gliding equipment and found that the trio
had gotten their tails snagged on one of the horrendously-bent rods, and so
disentangled them by merely sliding the rod in question in the opposite
direction. That done, he picked the whole contraption up and set it aside near
a pile of books where nobody could trip over it.
Once the trio regained their senses, they shook their heads and turned up to
look at Matt. He merely lifted a hoof and gestured to Applejack, Rainbow Dash,
and Rarity. "You do realize Twi's gonna need a new window, right?" Applejack
hissed, eyes narrowing slightly, yet twitching as though she struggled to keep
them from scrunching any further.
Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle all flinched back with ears folding
to rest against her heads. "B-but a stray thundercloud hit the glider and w-we
lost control!" Sweetie exclaimed with widening eyes.
Rainbow sighed and exchanged glances with Rarity and Applejack. She opened her
mouth to speak, only to close it as Apple Bloom turned to Natalie and asked,
"Hey, why're you sparkling? You weren't last time you were here."
Natalie blushed with ears pinned back. "Uh… I'm a crystal unicorn, but I'd
rather not talk about it," she replied before letting her eyes narrow a bit as
she stared at Apple Bloom. "And are you sure a thundercloud hit your glider?"
she asked, a note of disbelief in her voice.
Apple Bloom and her companions frantically nodded. "Yeah! It came from the
Everfree, too!" she added.
Pinkie's eyes bulged to the size of saucers, and she stood up on her back legs
abruptly. "Wait, the Everfree?!" she cried. When the trio nodded, her pupils
shrank to pinpricks. "That's not good," she murmured.
Fluttershy sighed, and then put her cards down before shifting to stand up on
all fours. She turned to Rainbow, flaring her wings as wide as they could
spread. "I think we might have to look into this again," she stated with her
brow slanting.
Dash nodded, and likewise dropped her cards before bolting up. She rushed to
Apple Bloom and her friends before giving them a quick once-over, though other
than singe-marks and bruises and mud and small glass shards, she found that
they looked more or less alright. Turning her attention to the wrecked
paraglider, she spotted a clear object stuck between the rods, and it would
have been otherwise unnoticeable had there not also been a forming puddle
directly beneath it.
Dash trotted over to inspect the anomaly and dipped a hoof into the liquid
before feeling a slushy coldness, as though she'd found a pile of melting snow.
Then she turned back to Fluttershy. "They're not kidding. A stray hail cloud
might also have joined in," she reported. "Besides that and a much-needed bath
for the Crusaders, I don't see anything else."
Fluttershy's wings gave the slightest twitch. She nodded and turned to Lance,
whom she immediately noticed to have been looking at the newest arrivals with a
slightly-furrowed brow and a tight frown, complete with concern glimmering in
his eyes. "You might want to be careful on the hot-air balloon today," she
warned, garnering little more than a quick-second look and a nod in response.
Scootaloo noticed Lance's staring and turned to him with a snort. "Why're you
giving us the stink-eye? What'd we do?" she asked.
"Aside from the obvious, I feel the need to ask: how the hell did you manage to
crash into a stray cloud?" Lance asked in a very sincere, slightly miffed, and
heavily-concerned tone that was only betrayed by the sparks in his eyes.
"Uh… we found out we weren't good at paragliding. And Scoots thought it was a
good idea for all of us to try and control it at once," Sweetie Belle answered
in a sincere voice, immediately garnering an indignant glare from Scootaloo.
"At least it was worth a try, and nothing like trying to get our cooking cutie
marks that one time!" Scootaloo seethed.
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes, and punctuated it with a snort. "Or that one time
I got cutie pox," she added, causing the other two to turn to her with shudders
running down their spines.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
About another hour and a half ticked by after that, and as the sun reached its
apex the group trotted out of the library, a few of them sporting cloaks and a
saddlebag or two. They stood in front of the library before Twilight gathered
Shining, a bandaged Apple Bloom, and a now-clean Sweetie Belle before her.
"You sure you want to go with Lance?" Twilight questioned, looking at the foals
in particular. When they nodded, she sighed. "Alright then. Let me cast a quick
spell on you three."
"Why?" Sweetie questioned, a brow raised.
Twilight turned to Sweetie and answered, "Lance wants to go to Cloudsdale. On
you three, I'll have to cast a special spell on you that'll let you walk on
clouds." With that, her horn glowed and her magic embraced the trio in front of
her, lingering for a few seconds before fading with a pop and a fizz. "There,
that should do it."
"How long will it last?" Shining piped up once the spell faded.
Twilight turned to him and smiled. "A good twenty-four hours should have you
and Sweetie and Apple Bloom covered," she answered.
Then the two fillies rushed to join Scootaloo, and after that they rushed to
Lance as though of one mind, with all three sporting wide eyes and grins to
match. "Can we come with you, mister Lance?" they pleaded in unison.
"No," Lance replied flatly, shaking his head at the trio.
"Please?" they pressed, their grins widening. "We'll be good, honest."
"No," Lance replied, eyes narrowing slightly.
"Pretty please? Sprinkles on top?" they asked again, their grins widening to
the point their cheeks started twitching just to maintain them.
Lance stared into the collective eyes of the Crusaders and saw sparks of
pleading. A niggling feeling started to claw at the back of his mind, and as a
result a small frown formed on his face. "No," he replied, but in a warbling
voice that was less firm than he'd have liked.
"Please?" the Crusaders begged yet again, grins somehow widening just a smidgen
more.
Lance's shoulders sagged, and the niggling feeling got that much stronger. He
stared at them for some five minutes in silence, and it grew and grew until his
head began to hurt a little. "Fine, but be good," he relented.
"Yay!" the Crusaders cheered in unison, jumping up and down in place for a few
seconds before ceasing, still maintaining their grins for some seconds after.
With that, the group turned and then started trotting away from Golden Oaks. As
they went on, Maria opted to hitch a ride on Lance's back again by jumping onto
it. She found that she now had to contend with his saddlebag and his gunblade,
both of which rattled like a million shards of glass as he took the lead.
Getting situated, she kept her wings closed and her claws on his withers.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders trotted after Lance like a mother duck leading her
ducklings. They weaved around a few roads in a trot lasting for a few minutes
in silence before the lot split in two at a fork in the road; the Crusaders
still tailed Lance, as did Shining, Anna, and Sarah. The others simply went in
the opposite direction, intent on heading elsewhere for the day.
Scootaloo in particular eyed the gunblade with brows raised and a tight frown
forming on her face. "Mister, why would you need that… sword in Ponyville?" she
asked.
Lance sighed and shook his head. "It's not necessarily for just Ponyville, but
put it like this: I'd rather err on caution than end up in something I didn't
prepare for," he replied.
"But Ponyville's full of nice ponies. I don't see why you'd need a big sword
like that," Apple Bloom remarked, frowning.
Lance shook his head again. "Canterlot gave me serious doubts, and the Crystal
Empire only solidified them. I'm just being careful," he retorted in a firm
voice.
Apple Bloom exchanged looks with Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, both of whom
shrugged to her as soon as their eyes locked for the barest of instants. She
sighed and turned back to Lance with her brow slanting and her frown deepening.
"Alright then," she stated in glum resignation.
Sweetie Belle turned to her companions and flashed them a grin. "Maybe we could
get him to open up more," she suggested, momentarily lifting a front hoof
higher than normal to gesture to Lance with it.
Scootaloo turned to her with a tight frown and slightly-narrowed eyes. "Are you
kidding? Sweetie, you might as well try to grow wings," she spat. "He has a
sword in public, and Celestia knows what in his saddlebags! I wouldn't put it
past him to seriously hurt somepony with it! For all we know, he's probably
done something that'd get him stoned by the Elements faster than you can say
'caught in a landslide!'"
"I heard that," Lance growled without turning to give the Crusaders so much as
a split-second look. "Every. Last. Word." He snorted before adding, "If you
were my kids, I'd be reading you the riot act here and now!"
Scootaloo rolled her eyes and shook her head, spreading a wing to point at
Lance before mouthing, "Case in point."
"Daddy, what's a riot act?" Maria queried, her utterance causing Lance to sigh.
"Basically, a form of punishment, kinda like being grounded. Except your ears
get yelled off in the process," Lance answered, shaking his head. "Ergo,
something I wouldn't do to you unless you really, really goofed up and outdid
Armin in one go."
Maria nodded and craned her neck to look at the Crusaders. "Are you bad foals?"
she asked, causing the three to jump at the question and gawk at her with
widening eyes, ears folding all the way back, and jaws instantly going slack.
"N-no, we're not!" Sweetie exclaimed defensively.
Apple Bloom shook her head. "No. We don't mean anypony any harm," she replied.
Scootaloo's wings flared and flapped indignantly. "Worst we've done is try
doing other things to get our cutie marks…" Her wings snapped shut, and she
lowered her head a bit. "And so far, we got no luck."
Maria's ears twitched. She opened her mouth to speak, but shut it as Anna
trotted straight up to Lance before turning to look at her. "Don't even think
about it. You're still grounded, and given what we've seen of a rather
disastrous paraglider attempt, I don't want you jumping in that sort of
danger," Anna stated firmly.
Maria's ears fell back. "Okay," she murmured, wings twitching as a frown formed
on her face. Her ears perked up when Anna smiled at her.
"You'll get your cutie mark in time. Don't worry about it too much," Anna
chirped. "I didn't get mine until about six months ago." She craned her neck
when she heard the Crusaders gasp in unison, and she lifted a brow at them.
"What?"
"It took you until you were already grown up just to get your cutie mark?"
Sweetie queried, her pupils approximately the size of a nail's head and her jaw
hanging open as soon as she finished speaking.
Anna nodded. "To cut a long story short… and this is going to sound bizarre,
but Lance actually helped me earn my mark," she stated. That utterance caused
Sarah to jostle until she was next to her sister, who turned to look at her to
discover that she donned a look similar to that of Sweetie Belle's.
"Y-you serious?" Sarah asked, her voice going no higher than a squeak. When
Anna nodded, her good wing flared instantly, and she draped it upon her
sibling's back. "A-and how long w-were you in the army?"
Anna chewed her lower lip and hummed simultaneously, though she managed to keep
her grin nonetheless. After a few seconds, she ceased chewing and answered,
"Last… three years, actually. Had to work my way up the ranks, and busted my
flank off ten ways to Sunday in the process."
Sarah's eyes grew until they were the size of small plates. Her jaw worked, but
no matter what she did, she could not utter so much as a syllable. Her eyes
flashed, though whether in concern or awe, Anna couldn't tell.
Then Shining piped up from behind them, "You were a late bloomer? I'd have
thought you'd earn your mark sooner."
Anna whipped her head around to frown at Shining. "Uh… extenuating
circumstances got in my way," she stated uneasily.
Shining nodded. "Understandable," he replied.
He turned his attention to a peculiar porch-like object up ahead, and one with
a sparkling pink hot-air balloon centered in it and tied down to a surrounding
fence-post very firmly, further weighed down by brown burlap and heavy-looking
sacks. Next to it, carrying a rather large receptacle of some kind on her back,
paced a pink-coated mare with a blond mane and a flying helmet strapped to her
head. The sisters turned to Lance and nodded in unison, and he turned to them
and did likewise before they turned tail and trotted away to attend to other
things.
The sextet approached the pacing mare, almost instantly garnering her attention
when they came closer. They stopped five feet away, and Lance nodded to the
mare. "Are you Cherry Berry?" he asked. "I heard a pony by that name managed
the hot-air balloon around these parts."
The mare regarded Lance for some seconds, taking in the query and the fact that
he had his gunblade out in the open. "Yes, I am. Why do you ask?" she replied,
a brow shooting up as she spoke.
Lance nodded and craned his neck to look at Maria. "Think you can fish out the
bag of bits from my saddlebags?" he asked.
Maria turned to look at the gunblade, still frowning. She gulped before
outstretching a claw and leaning a little before sticking her limb under the
flap and started pawing around. Amidst small, metallic objects, she felt a
rather large and rounded form that had the feel of cloth. Fumbling around a
little more and feeling strings attached to the bundle in question, she grasped
it and pulled it out to reveal a satchel as big as both of her hooves.
Only when it was pulled out did Lance turn back to Cherry Berry. "We'd like to
use your hot-air balloon. How much does a ride cost?" he asked.
Cherry Berry's eyes swept over the sextet before her, with a small frown
forming on her face when she briefly saw the gunblade again. "Two bits per
foal, and five per adult. You, mister…" She turned to Lance and sighed. "Lemme
see the saddlebag."
Lance's brows shot straight up to the base of his forelock. "Why?" he queried.
"You're carrying a weapon, and I need to make sure you don't have anything
dangerous on you, that strange sword notwithstanding," Cherry replied, her
frown tightening. "Not many ponies have the gall to trot in broad daylight with
such a thing in plain sight." She lifted a hoof and made a sweeping gesture
with it as she added, "Even balloons have regulations, after all."
Lance sighed, his brows falling back. He regarded Cherry with a flat look. "If
you do, just mind the sword. Don't need you hurting yourself with it," he
stated. Cherry nodded and trotted to him before lifting a hoof to grapple the
flap, lifting it whilst being mindful of the weapon in the holster. She blinked
upon finding a motherload of bullets, mostly steel and copper with a few golden
and dark grey ones here and there.
Lowering the flap, she turned to Lance. "What're those?" Cherry asked, lifting
her other hoof to gesture to the bullet-laden satchel.
Lance pursed his lips, their corners twitching for a few seconds. "Pieces of
random ore," he replied after some seconds. "I smelt them to make swords like
what's on my saddlebag."
Cherry Berry nodded and backed away to give Lance some space. "A smelter, huh?
Alright then. Fork over the bits and you can use my balloon," she said, her
frown turning into a smile. Shining's horn flared to life and his magic took
the satchel Maria had, and he opened it before he plucked out the amount of
bits needed. He counted twice to be sure he had the right amount before
depositing them in the receptacle.
Before Berry had the chance to turn away, the Crusaders broke into a gallop
with grins on their faces, whizzing around Lance in a collective blur and
straight to the hot-air balloon. "Are we heading to the weather factory?" Apple
Bloom asked.
"Or maybe the Wonderbolts Academy?" Scootaloo added, wings flared and buzzing.
"Or the Cloudsdale Arena?" Sweetie finished, her horn fizzing with light green
magic that flickered like a lightbulb about to go out. "Maybe we'll get our
cutie marks soon!"
Lance's shoulders sagged, and he groaned. "Now I'm babysitting three
hyperactive foals…" he bemoaned, ears falling flat against his head. "Godcat,
have mercy on me…" he mumbled as he started trotting to the balloon. But as he
got close, he heard a flapping of wings and turned his head upward to find
Rainbow Dash heading towards him, blinking as she banked smoothly and landed
safely on all four hooves.
He noticed that she was decked out in a blue-and-yellow jumpsuit that started
at the neck and ended a little past her wings, with a golden badge attached to
the collar. In addition to that, she sported goggles that rested upon her
forehead. "Oh, there you are. What took you?"
Dash flashed Lance a smile. "Just had to get my Wonderbolt cadet uniform," she
answered. "Where we're going, if I don't show up in uniform, Spitfire'll chew
me out worse than you do Alexander."
Lance nodded. "Alright then." He heard a door swinging, and turned to find that
the Crusaders had opened the door to the balloon's basket before they rushed
inside. He trotted after them, hearing Shining coming after him not long after.
Once they were loaded, Maria hopped off of Lance's back as Cherry came up and
closed the door.
"My advice: take the ride slow. Don't need to crash into clouds, do we?" Cherry
asked, though it came out more like a statement. Six heads shook at once, and
three of those heads had innocent smiles plastering their faces. With that, she
untied the balloon and set about removing the weights.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The balloon took off lazily and ascended in the air for a good two hours
without pause, going higher and higher at a rather comfortable speed. Dash was
flying in a particular direction some ten feet ahead, and she had a rope tied
to her middle, which was also attached to the balloon—effectively dragging it
with her.
As it started going higher thanks to both heated air and Dash's tugging, Lance
slipped out of his saddlebag's strap, letting his gunblade and bullets clatter
noisily to the bottom of the basket. He lifted his front hooves and placed them
on the rim of the basket before taking a deep breath and unfurling his wings
from under his cloak, letting what few budding feathers he had get caressed by
the wind as the vessel continued onward.
His ears barely twitched when he heard Scootaloo gasp. "What happened to your
wings?" she queried.
"Had a bit of a rough time. I don't think you need to know the specifics, but
my wings are getting better," Lance replied without even giving Scootaloo a
split-second look. His eyes drifted closed, and he sighed deeply. "Maybe
someday, I'll tell you. But not right yet."
Shining looked at Lance with a slight frown on his muzzle. "I take it you miss
flying?" he guessed, garnering a slow nod in response.
"Haven't flown for as long as Anna's been in the army," Lance answered, his
voice glum.
Shining's eyes widened. "F-for three y-years?" he stammered, his voice an
octave higher. "T-that must've been a nightmare for you…"
"It was an annoyance at best, compared to some of the other things I've seen
back home," Lance stated matter-of-factly, closing his wings and retracting his
front hooves from the rim of the basket. He fell onto his haunches thereafter,
eyes remaining shut and ears still twitching about.
"Don't be so down. You'll fly again; your newly-budding feathers are proof
enough of that," Shining replied, smiling when Lance opened his eyes and looked
at him. "Hay, you could teach Maria to fly, once your wings are as they should
be again—laden with feathers," he added, his grin widening.
Lance gave Shining's remark a bit of thought before nodding, a smile of his own
budding on his muzzle. "Point taken," he agreed. His smile dropped before it
fully formed when his vision began to cloud, and he shook his head whilst
blinking to confirm that it wasn't just his eyes playing tricks again.
Alas, it was in vain—the haze continued to build, and it was building up
thickly. Not only that, but the others in the balloon mimicked his movements to
find the same happening to them. Lance exchanged looks with everyone else
before turning his attention to Rainbow Dash, who was a partially-greyed blot
already. "What's with the mist?" he cried.
"It surrounds the place Spitfire's training grounds operate at 24/7! Trust me,
it's natural!" Dash called back. "Hang tight everypony—I'm about to crank up
the speed!"
Lance obliged, planting one hoof on the basket's rim and the other on his
saddlebag to make sure it wouldn't get away. "Training grounds?" he yelled out,
flinching when Maria wrapped her claws around his bag-pinning foreleg, followed
in short order by the Crusaders doing likewise to her and then each other.
"You'll see shortly!" Dash shouted in reply, and true to her word the balloon
started gaining momentum. In seconds, the manes of the entire lot were whipping
in racing winds generated by their acceleration. Lance's cloak started whipping
about as well, and shortly after he shuddered as needle-like gales assaulted
his bare wings and back mercilessly.
Shining let his horn glow, and his aura embraced himself, the others, and the
lone saddlebag-with-gunblade. The speed continued to climb, at this point
stinging at his eyes with fierce air flying right at his face, and it also
started trying its damnedest to make his cheeks fly off. Despite this, he
could've sworn he saw the barest sliver of sunlight pierce through the haze,
but now the balloon was moving too fast to let him discern whether or not it
was an illusion.
Then he saw another sliver, and another whiz by after that. His eyes squinted
as the battering winds kept up their onslaught, yet still he saw more slivers
of light dart by at split-second rates. What's more, the slivers kept getting
bigger and bigger, up until one struck him square in the eyes and momentarily
blinded him.
Shining yelped and shook his head to recover from the slight mishap, and his
eyes widened as he heard a crackle and a fizz coming right from his horn. He
gulped and forced himself to calm down with breaths that were shallow thanks to
the balloon's momentum.
Lance turned to him with a frown. "You okay?" he asked.
Shining nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine!" he replied, seeing his aura dim dangerously
around the saddlebag. He immediately channeled more mana into his horn, re-
asserting his telekinetic hold on the blasted thing to keep it in place. The
aura brightened again, and he let himself relax just a little with another few
breaths of coming-and-going air.
He noticed something shortly thereafter; the haze began to clear, and up ahead
he could've sworn he saw a faint splash of greyed green. How big it was and
other little details like that, though, he still couldn't discern yet thanks to
the remaining fog that persistently lingered all around.
"Almost to the training grounds! Everypony still in the balloon?" Dash called
out, causing Lance to turn to her yet again.
"Still in the basket in one piece!" Lance cried out. "Are we slowing down
anytime soon?"
"Not yet!" Dash answered. "Still got some ways to go!"
"Alright!" Lance yelled. He and everyone else turned to the splash of greyed
green up ahead, and as the fog grew weaker and weaker, they could make out
darker shapes jutting out upon the entity here and there. One particular darker
shape stretched upon the length of the whole splash sideways, oddly rectangular
when the other shapes were more erratic in nature.
In a few minutes, the fog finally gave way altogether, giving the group a
crystal clear view of a ring of clouds surrounding a raised, flat plateau that
sported a runway, some trees, and rings affixed to meter-high poles anchored to
the ground. Buildings crafted of clouds dotted the ring, and along with the
runway and rings, the plateau sported colorful flags here and there. A stream
coursed through it and under the runway, and half of it was rainbow that itself
poured from a cloud-bound reservoir in a colorful waterfall.
A massive wheel on wooden legs was affixed on the runway, with a pony operating
switches not too far from it. Another line of ponies was assembled before it,
watching as it spun at stomach-churning speeds. Between the spinning machine
and said line of ponies, a particular splash of orange caught Dash's eye, and
she turned to slow her momentum in a decelerating circle.
The balloon began slowing as well, and for a few minutes that was all it and
the pony dragging it by rope did. The occupants of the basket collected
themselves as it slowed further still, and Maria took the time to eye the
scenery. "Daddy, it's so pretty!" She turned to the spinning apparatus.
"Release!" a slightly-muted feminine voice cried out as it finally stopped
abruptly and launched a pony that was on it sharply to the upper-left.
"Can I try that thing? It looks fun!" Maria asked, gesturing to the apparatus.
"Rainbow Dash, what took you! Get down here this instant!" the feminine voice
from before called out as the balloon continued to slow, this time much louder
and clearer. It was one that Lance instantly recognized as that of Spitfire's.
"Can't do that right now ma'am, got a few passengers on board. I'll land once
the balloon is slow enough to safely land!" Dash called back. "I don't want
another Lightning Dust recreation!"
"Fair point! Get your tail down as soon as you can!" Spitfire commanded.
"Roger!" With that, it took about a minute for the balloon to finally shed its
excess momentum, and another for Dash to drop to the runway so the damn thing
could land. As soon as it hit the runway and stayed put, Spitfire's galloping
form came into view, eyes narrowed behind a pair of violet sunglasses.
"And what do we…" Spitfire began, but stopped when she saw Lance in the basket.
He nodded to her and knelt to pick up his saddlebag and gunblade before
affixing them to his middle, and only when both objects were securely on him
did he turn back to her. "Aaaaah, so you brought me the general, huh? I see
he's not in uniform."
"Long story regarding that, but Ponyville's in a fuss," Lance sighed, shaking
his head as Dash turned her attention to the rope on her body. "Being in
uniform would be like painting a target on my cutie mark."
Spitfire huffed, though she nodded nonetheless. "That town's residents usually
find something to fuss over, from what Dash told me of it. For them, it's in
never-ending supply." She paused, though only for a few seconds. "Is a certain
pale being with you presently?"
Lance shook his head. "No, she isn't. She had other matters to attend to," he
stated flatly. "I'm saddled with four extra foals at the moment, and last thing
I need to do is give three of them a heart attack."
***** Chapter XLVI, Part II- Odd Sentiments *****
Spitfire's brow rose as Shining checked the burner to find a weak flame.
"Foals?" Then she donned a smile, directing it straight at Lance. "You didn't
seem the type to babysit."
The door of the balloon's basket opened, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders tumbled
out with awe-struck faces. They turned to the line of ponies as one flew up to
the apparatus, and they smiled as it started spinning again. "Release!" a
masculine voice called seconds later. As if compelled by the utterance, the
device ceased spinning instantly and launched the pony who flew up to it in the
sky.
Spitfire turned to the trio and her smile fell. She spoke before any of them
could get one word out of their opening mouths, "Tell me, why are you with the
grouchy general?"
"Because we wanted to get our cutie marks," Scootaloo answered, a grin forming
on her face.
"No," Lance objected, trotting out of the basket with his nostrils flaring.
"You already tried that once this morning, and I think that's enough!" He
turned to Spitfire and saw that her brow rose and sighed before elaborating,
"Paraglider. Stray cloud that made thunder and hail." He gestured to
Scootaloo's singe-marks. "May or may not have been her idea." He ignored the
glare Scootaloo sent his way after he finished speaking.
Spitfire shook her head. She turned to Rainbow Dash. "Are you ready for your
overdue session?" she asked.
Dash nodded. "Give me all you've got," she replied in a level voice. "But
before you do… I'll need to know if you'll head to your office once the other
cadets are done with their rounds," she added.
Spitfire turned to Lance, who turned back to her with a small, tight frown on
his face. "Are the foals coming to my office, or what?" she asked in a flat
voice, a tight frown forming on her face.
Lance shook his head and turned to Shining. "You think you can babysit for a
few?" he asked.
Shining smiled at Lance before nodding. He turned to Spitfire. "Can we keep
Dash for a while longer, since foals are present?" he queried.
Spitfire turned to regard the Crusaders for a bit, and sighed as Maria bumbled
out of the basket before trotting behind them. "You're mean-looking," Maria
remarked, flinching and scooting a little closer to Lance as she spoke.
Spitfire sighed and shook her head before turning back to Shining. "Considering
one of the kids doesn't like me, I'll let you keep Dash a while longer," she
answered. "But I don't know how I am gonna get the general to my office,
considering he informed me of his current flightlessness." She lifted a hoof
and waved it before turning to the apparatus, finding that another pony of the
line started flying up to it. She spread her wings and waved them like
feathered hands, before the pony operating the levers saw it and responded by
blowing an ear-piercing whistle.
"Mess hall, on the double!" the pony who blew the whistle cried, his voice as
firm as he could muster. The lined-up ponies, plus the one who flew towards the
apparatus before the whistle blew exchanged glances and murmurs before
shrugging. They took flight with the already-airborne one leading them, heading
towards one of the smaller buildings perched on the clouds.
Spitfire closed her wings and turned back to face Lance. Then she looked at
Maria. "I'm only mean-looking around my cadets, particularly if they mess up or
skip training." Her expression eased a little after she gave Dash a sidelong
glance, and she added, "And only one cadet is present, but I'll let her have
her dues later. For now…" She turned to Rainbow Dash again. "Help Mr.
Flightless to my office, on the double."
Rainbow Dash saluted Spitfire with a hoof. "Yes ma'am," she answered before
dropping the hoof and trotting to Lance. She eyed the saddlebag for a few
seconds, but shrugged and asked him, "Would you like a ride on my back, or on
the balloon again?"
"I'd rather not take any chances," Lance replied, promptly turning tail and
trotting straight back to the balloon. Shining and Maria followed him, and so
did the Crusaders. He lifted a hoof and closed the basket's door with it before
adding, "That, and this is my first time being here. I don't know where the
office is at."
Dash rolled her eyes at him and trotted over before taking the rope in her
mouth. She used a wing to gesture to Lance as she turned to Spitfire, who
donned a smile and nodded. Shining let his horn glow and magically took hold of
the burner, fumbling for a bit before letting the flame consume more fuel to
subsequently expand.
Then the balloon lifted about an inch from the runway, and then another shortly
after. It languidly climbed up until the rope that Dash had in her teeth pulled
taut, letting it stray no farther than ten feet. Dash shot another glance at
Spitfire and received a curt nod and flared her wings, donning a grin as she
prepared to start dragging the balloon to its next destination.
Spitfire started flapping her wings, lifting her hooves as she became airborne.
"What are you waiting for, Dash? Take him to my office, on the double," she
commanded in a firm voice.
"Yesh ma'aw," Dash replied through the rope in her mouth, likewise spreading
her wings to prepare for takeoff.
"But daaaaaddy! I wanna try the spinny thing!" Maria complained, followed by
the sound of a hoof stomping on the bottom of the basket.
Lance groaned and lifted a hoof before letting it connect with his face. "No,
and that's final," he grumbled. "It looks like it could catapult you straight
through a wall, and I'd rather not have to deal with the particular fallout of
such an aftermath."
Spitfire sent Lance another grin as she, Dash, and the balloon rose higher into
the air. Then she flew to the balloon before leaning over the basket's rim to
look squarely at Maria. "No, kid, you're not tall enough to take a ride on the
Dizzitron yet. And besides, it's reserved for Wonderbolt cadets only," she
stated.
Maria's wings flared and her chest puffed, but a glare from Lance had her
deflating and closing her wings seconds later. Her ears pinned back and her
head dropped a little. "Okay…" she said glumly.
Spitfire smiled. "But, if you practice your flying and get really good, then
once you're big enough, I'll let you tackle the Dizzitron one day," she
chirped. Her tone took on a stern note as she added, "But only if you get good
at flying. Got it?"
Maria nodded. "Okay," she replied, the slightest hint of a smile budding on her
muzzle.
Spitfire nodded back and relinquished her hold on the basket's rim before
turning tail and flying towards one of the nearby cloud structures. Dash
followed after her, making the balloon jerk behind her before it re-oriented
itself a second later. It took a minute or so to reach a particular cloud
structure that was oddly shorter than the others, and the balloon settled on a
nearby perch for it as though it were nothing. Again, Lance clambered out as
soon as the vessel stilled, though he took a few seconds to prod at the clouds
beneath his hooves after.
"These things are sturdy as concrete. Where do you get these clouds? Do you mug
ectoplasms or something?" Lance asked sincerely, garnering an immediate wide-
eyed stare from Spitfire. "What?"
Spitfire turned to Dash. "From what I've seen of Fantasia, ma'am, there are no
weather pegasi," Dash stated flatly, shaking her head. "None. At. All. Lance
was the only non-hippogryph pegasus I found during a three-day stay."
Spitfire's jaw dropped, though only for a second before it reeled back up and
her face hardened. Then she turned back to Lance. "Hrm... " She considered his
'mugging ectoplasms' remark for a few seconds and sighed. "I take it there are
some thorns in the side in Fantasia?"
"A lot," Lance replied tersely, nodding only once as he spoke. His wings
shifted, briefly jostling both the cloak and his saddlebag as he added, "I have
some measures of dealing with ectoplasms that involve a flute, but said
measures keep them away only temporarily."
Spitfire eyed Lance critically, with the only movement on her face being that
of a brow raising a meager inch above her sunglasses. Then she cracked a
smile—a very small smile that looked more like a set of tightened lips, but a
smile nonetheless. "So you came here seeking a more… permanent solution?" she
guessed.
Lance nodded. "As soon as you came and told me you were Dash's instructor of
sorts, I thought 'why not hit two birds with one stone?'" he replied. "I've
been wondering how weather was managed in these parts for a while anyway."
Spitfire's smirk grew. "Luckily for you, Dash is also a weather pony around
these parts. But I've a feeling she wouldn't get anywhere by herself, if she
were to return to Fantasia…" Then she turned to Dash. "Mr. Flightless got
anything to curb the ectoplasm problem?" she whispered.
That time, Dash nodded. She trotted up to Spitfire and leaned in to whisper
into her ear, "Gryphons and changelings at his beck and call, ma'am."
"And one of those things can walk on clouds…" Spitfire's grin grew as she
whispered back to Dash. "Tell ya what, forget making up for training… you're
gonna be part of a little project…" She turned her attention to Lance yet
again, her smile widening just a smidgen more. "What're you standing around
for?" She turned around towards the building, spreading a wing and using it to
gesture to the others in the balloon instead of a hoof. "Come. We have much to
discuss."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Soarin paced around a small office, sporting a full-body blue-and-yellow
jumpsuit and goggles covering his eyes. As he made circles, his eyes were
repeatedly met with nothing more than a desk, a circular rug, a filing cabinet
opposite to one side, and some posters tacked to the walls.
His wings spread, flapped, and twisted each and every way they could, and his
brow slanted as sweat started to bead down the bridge of his muzzle through the
fabric of his uniform. Yet more formed when he spotted the three windows behind
the desk, with blinds partially drawn.
With him in this room, sporting a shirt with some badges, a hat, and goggles, a
mustachioed, grey-coated pegasus stallion stood next to a door at rapt
attention. Said stallion lifted a hoof to rub at his prominent cleft chin, and
huffed in a sort of refined accent, "Is something the matter?"
Soarin immediately ceased on the spot, jerking his head to the stallion with
flared wings and wide eyes stationed behind the goggles. He attempted a smile,
but it warbled dangerously before faltering into a shaking frown. He opened his
mouth to speak, but all that came out was a short-lived whicker.
The mustachioed stallion raised a brow so slowly Soarin could've sworn he heard
it raising. "I don't see what you're getting your feathers ruffled over," he
stated in a smooth voice. "What. Is. Wrong?"
Soarin whickered again, but he forced himself to take some deep breaths of air
as sweat continued to dot his brow through his suit. "Th-the cadets… o-or some
of them," he stammered, his voice raspy and almost choked.
The mustachioed stallion lifted his raised brow slightly higher. "They'll be
fine. This batch is the toughest the Academy's had yet. I don't see what you're
prancing and panicking over," he replied, his voice still smooth as butter.
"But some of them just got over the feather flu, Whiplash! What if—" Soarin
stopped when Whiplash dropped his front hoof and perked an ear up, along with
his other brow.
"Feather flu doesn't spread that easily, and besides, the cadets looked like
they were in tip-top shape. I really don't see what the problem is," Whiplash
stated, face and voice hardening a little. His ear twitched and he lifted his
hoof again, letting it stray to hover in front of his muzzle. "Shush. I hear
something," he whispered, just loud enough for Soarin to hear him.
Soarin nodded and closed his wings slowly, taking in another wave of deep
breaths before sitting on his haunches. His ears twitched, straining to hear
whatever it was that Whiplash caught. His pupils shrunk when he heard a young
and rather faint voice pipe up, "Daddy, what's a loop-de-loop?"
Another voice answered, slightly louder and masculine, "A flying trick. Which
you're not going to perform in a few years. It's for hardcore flyers, which you
aren't." A few seconds passed before the owner added, "But, once I can fly
again, I could teach it to you."
Another feminine voice snorted with a hint of amusement, "Lance, you're gonna
need flying lessons yourself before that can happen. Your wings look like limp
noodles attached with glue."
"Yours would too, if they were plucked and magically steel-bound for three
years straight, Rainbow!" Lance barked in response.
Soarin's ears folded back a little, and he swallowed a lump that started
forming in his throat. "Be glad Scootaloo wasn't around to hear that, along
with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle! You wouldn't hear the end of it otherwise!"
Rainbow shot back.
"Both of you, can it. We're almost to my office," a third feminine voice cut
in, making Soarin's ears fold the rest of the way back.
"What's an office?" the young voice asked again, this time a lot louder. A
second after the question was uttered, the door flung open, and Soarin found
Spitfire trotting in with a cadet and two guests behind her.
"This," Spitfire began, turning to Maria and making a wide gesture with a
raised hoof, "is an office." She dropped her hoof and turned to Soarin, and a
brow quirked when she noticed his harried look. "You need a glass of water?"
she asked.
Soarin opened his mouth to speak, but closed it when air wafted into his mouth
and prickled his senses in a way that made it feel as though he'd eaten sand.
He nodded apprehensively. Spitfire turned to Whiplash and sent him a single
nod. "Get Soarin a glass. After that, head to the mess hall," she stated.
Now it was Whiplash's turn to let his eyes widen. "W-why the mess hall?" he
asked.
Spitfire rolled her eyes. "Got some guests there, three of which are fillies. I
don't want any accidents to happen while I chat with…" She spread a wing and
gestured to Lance with it. Whiplash nodded and trotted out of the room,
spreading a wing and using it to close the door behind himself as he went out.
Spitfire trotted around Soarin, behind the desk, and to the windows. She spread
a wing and used it to pull the blinds fully over the windows, one at a time,
prior to circling around the desk a second time and stopping to sit behind it.
She lifted a hoof and made a wide gesture with it, eyes falling on Lance
specifically as she sparked up a conversation, "So, how would you like it if
Dash trained some of your gryphon troops?"
Lance's eyes bulged and a choked gasp came out of his mouth almost immediately.
"G-guh?" he managed, his inflection a solid octave higher.
"I'll give you a moment," Spitfire chirped, grinning at his flabbergasted
reaction. She suppressed a snicker even as his jaw dropped open, but she could
do little to keep her grin from going down the Cheshire route.
Lance wasn't the only one to be flabbergasted, but he was certainly the first.
Soarin's reaction was delayed, but after a few seconds his eyes bugged out and
his wings snapped straight open. "C-come again?" he stammered, his voice
nothing more than a squeak.
Maria looked at Lance, then to Soarin, then at Spitfire and back again. After a
solid minute of silence and repeatedly glancing at the three, she turned to
Rainbow Dash. "What did you do?" she innocently queried, causing Dash to send
her a grin accompanied by a barely-repressed laugh.
"I didn't do anything," Rainbow cooed, her own grin widening. "Honest."
"Yes you did," Maria shot back, her brow furrowing. She raised a talon with
claws bared, but a burnt orange hoof shot to her and stopped just at her
barrel, causing her to turn up to find Lance giving her a wide-eyed look.
"It… doesn't matter whether or not Rainbow did something," Lance stated in a
subdued tone of voice. "Leave it alone." Only when Maria dropped her talon and
sighed did he turn to Spitfire. "A…" He swallowed a lump. "Are you serious?"
Spitfire kept her grin as she slowly nodded. "That I am. But before we continue
this discussion…" She leaned forward and her smile dropped. "Is it true that
weather really is wild in Fantasia? With nopony to manage it?"
"All ruled by ectoplasms," Lance answered with a nod. "Only thing that can hold
a candle to them are airships."
Spitfire leaned back, brow furrowing. "And that would explain how you even got
here, yes?" she pressed, garnering another nod from Lance. She turned to Maria
and softened her hardened look a little. "What do you know of ectoplasms,
little one? Surely somepony taught you something back home." Her eyes widened
when Maria shook her head.
"I don't know anything about ectomoplasms," Maria replied in a sincere voice.
She deflated with ears folding back as she added, "Bad gryphs only taught me
what a cock was…"
Spitfire's jaw dropped. "Say what?" she uttered, her voice several octaves
higher.
"That part, sadly, is true," Rainbow interjected in a glum voice, causing
Spitfire and Soarin to both jerk to her. The latter made a choking sound and
the former could not stop her pupils from dilating. "I've seen how 'the bad
gryphs' treated her with my own eyes. They came close to tearing off her face."
"I'm sorry…" Maria uttered, shuffling closer to Lance as her head dropped when
Spitfire turned back to her.
Spitfire sighed and slanted her brow. "You did nothing wrong," she stated in as
soothing a voice as she could manage. Then she turned to Lance again. "Do other
foals go through what she did?"
Lance nodded. "I can't say that for certain, or any definitive numbers for that
matter. But, what I can say is that it has happened before. Usually without an
iota of knowledge on how to control the ectoplasms. Or how to do other things,
like fly in Maria's case," he stated, lifting a foreleg and wrapping it around
Maria. "Seen it first hoof."
Spitfire sighed and let her ears fold back slightly. She took a few seconds to
compose herself before asking, "You know gryphons can cloud-walk, right?"
Lance shook his head. "Might as well ask me when my feline colonel is gonna
find a kitty-friend to go to bed with," he said in a sincere voice.
Spitfire's ears folded back a little more. "Well this just got awkward," she
murmured to herself, sighing once again. "How else would Maria be able to walk
on clouds?" she asked.
The room fell dead silent. Lance stared at Spitfire, and she held her gaze;
neither uttered so much as a puff of air laced with an inflection. Dash,
Soarin, and Maria were likewise quiet, and they merely lingered in their places
to let the query sink in.
After a few seconds, Maria spoke, "I don't know how I can walk on clouds…"
Spitfire turned to her and managed a small smile. "Kid, gryphons and pegasi
share a few things in common, and one of them is cloud-walking magic," she
stated. "Which means they could, theoretically, manipulate the weather."
"If the ectoplasms were dealt with," Lance interjected, garnering Spitfire's
attention with his utterance. "But we're talking one pony teaching somepony
else's troops here. I reckon most of said troops wouldn't want anything to do
with it."
Spitfire's ears stood to rigid attention, and her brow furrowed again. "And
that would leave a small hoofful of troops, right?" she asked.
Lance sighed. "Affirmative," he stated tersely. "Which brings us back to square
one."
"How are you going to get Dash to train them, though?" Soarin interjected,
causing all eyes to turn to him in the span of a second. "Wouldn't that be… a
lost cause?"
Lance pursed his lips, mentally going over Soarin's remark. Then he turned to
Spitfire. "How about this: Dash trains me to deal with the ectoplasms once my
wings are fully flighted again, and then I take it from there with my gryphon
troops?"
Another palpable silence descended upon the room. It lingered for a full minute
before the door swung open abruptly, causing the others to turn to the source
as he strode in with a plate laden with glasses of water held up by folded-
forward wings. "Not to sound callous, but what are the extra glasses of water
for, Whiplash?" Spitfire asked.
"Well, I figured everyone else would want a glass, so I got extra," Whiplash
replied smoothly, trotting past Lance and Maria to set the plate of glasses on
the table. He took a few paces back once he slid his feathers out from beneath
the plate, and for a few seconds longer everyone present still stared at him.
Spitfire donned a small grin. "I appreciate the gesture. Thanks," she chirped.
Then she lifted a hoof and motioned for Whiplash to leave, but as slowly as she
could manage due to the glasses now sitting directly before her.
"You're welcome," Whiplash replied, turning tail and trotting to the door. He
paused before he left, and craned his neck to give Spitfire another look. "Oh,
the foals in the mess hall are behaving admirably. And they told me to tell you
they said 'don't keep Lance for too long.'"
Spitfire nodded. "Tell them I said 'duly noted,'" she stated. She watched as
Whiplash left the room again, making sure to close the door as he went, before
turning to Soarin. "You get first glass, but I'd advise you to drink slowly,"
she added.
Soarin nodded and stood up before trotting over with a wing extending outward,
with which he tenderly plucked a glass of water from the plate. He returned to
sit next to Lance, causing Dash to come up and take her glass, followed by
Maria, and then finally Lance himself.
Spitfire plucked the last glass and the collective lot took a second to get a
small sip of water into their mouths. Once she swallowed her mouthful, Spitfire
leveled another look at Lance. "Dash training you, a general…" She let her grin
widen a teensy bit at the mere notion. "What next, cotton candy clouds? Or Luna
growing another pair of wings?" she joked. "Maybe another alicorn?"
Lance smiled back with ears twitching. "I'll eat a hat and some bullets if I
ever see a cotton candy cloud," he stated sarcastically. "Ten, if Luna grows
another pair of wings. Twenty, if we get another alicorn."
"Frankly, it sounds absurd," Soarin piped up with a snort.
"Why would daddy want training?" Maria agreed, nodding in assent.
Spitfire considered the rather bizarre idea carefully, also taking into account
what Lance said about his gryphons. The longer she thought, the more her grin
widened, and the more she found herself nodding almost subconsciously. "It's
worth a shot, but…"
Lance lifted a brow and his glass of water. He took a sip and swallowed before
asking, "'But' what?"
"Speaking strictly on a hunch here, but if there aren't any weather pegasi… or
weather gryphons in Fantasia, there's just one teeny tiny problem that needs
addressing. An elephant in the room, if you will," Spitfire began, pausing to
take a sip of her own drink. She frowned as she added, "Namely, a severe lack
of knowledge on how to manipulate the weather itself."
Lance took a few seconds to let it sink in, and as it did, his eyes widened yet
again. Spitfire watched as his pupils shrank and his ears folded all the way
back. "That look tells me all I need to know. But, there is a solution
available to your particular ail, and I don't speak of a lack of feathers on
your part."
That got Lance's ears perking straight up. "A solution?" he parroted, tone
riddled with disbelief.
Spitfire slowly nodded. "Yes, though it'll require some books in your case."
She turned to Dash. "And one of my cadets happens to know a librarian…"
Lance abruptly lifted the glass of water, downed it in one go, and promptly
spit half of the contents straight back out when 'librarian' left Spitfire's
mouth. Choking the rest of the water down before it could fight its way past
his lips, he was left gawking in a manner that made it seem as though he'd been
jabbed in the stomach. His wings twitched under his cloak as Spitfire turned
back to him with another small grin on her face.
"T-Twilight?" he stammered, his voice once again several octaves higher.
"Bingo," Spitfire chirped with a nod. "That mare has books on almost
everything. I'd reckon you'd get something out of her shelves easy-peasy." She
turned to Maria and added, "Heck, she's probably got foals' books on weather
manipulation."
Maria frowned and tilted her head. "Do I have to read a book?" she asked
sincerely.
"Not if you don't want to. Just a tidbit if you ever wanted to control the
weather yourself," Spitfire replied. "If anything, that should keep you and
your daddy busy while he grows his feathers back."
Lance trotted forward and placed his empty glass on the plate. "Something tells
me I got a long few months ahead of me," he stated, frowning slightly.
"But I've a feeling you'll pull through those long months just fine," Spitfire
cooed, still grinning. "Sorry that I couldn't be of much help, but I got an
Academy to manage." She turned to Soarin. "Soarin, help him and Dash and the
others get to the library, pronto."
Soarin nodded and downed the rest of his glass, prior to plodding forward and
setting it on the desk itself. Maria and Dash followed suit, though the former
had to rear up in order to put her glass on the desk. "Thanks for the intel,
Spitfire. Much appreciated," Lance stated in a sincere voice before he turned
around and trotted to the door.
"Thank you," Maria chirped, turning tail to follow Lance as he lifted a hoof
and opened the door with it.
Dash looked at Spitfire with a big grin sprouting on her muzzle. "This is gonna
get very interesting," she mouthed before following suit.
Spitfire nodded and turned to Soarin, clearing her throat as he made to turn
around. "Oh, and before you go... " she began.
"Yes?" Soarin asked, turning back to her with a brow quirked.
"Tell Bulk Biceps I need to see him in my office," Spitfire stated, still
grinning. Soarin nodded and turned around to trot to the opened door as Lance,
Maria, and Rainbow all trotted out of it in a single-file line.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The three trotted out to the balloon, finding that Shining and the Crusaders
had already beaten them to it, and the door of the basket was wide open. "What
took you?" Shining asked with a grin. "Did Spitfire hit on you?"
Lance smiled back and shook his head with a twitching eye. "Spitfire didn't hit
on me, but she did re-direct me back to your sister. Said something about
weather control books," he replied.
Shining's grin widened. "Now that you mention it, I do recall seeing some books
in her library like that before we headed to the Crystal Empire," he chirped.
"What are we waiting for?" Lance trotted to the basket and climbed inside,
followed by Maria. The door closed behind them, and Dash took the rope in her
mouth again.
She turned to Soarin, who likewise donned a grin. Both flared their wings on
some unspoken signal, which prompted Shining to let his horn glow and magically
fiddle about with the burner until the flame expanded quite a bit. The balloon
started lifting of its own accord as a result, and with it Soarin and Dash
started beating their wings to likewise ascend a little. Once it started
drifting further from the cloud, Dash tightened her grip on the rope and flew
around the balloon, making it follow her once it pulled taut after ten feet.
The balloon was dragged back through the fog surrounding the Academy, though
now the sun had risen higher, and as a result slivers of light didn't penetrate
it at odd angles. Instead, the light bore straight down at a sharp 90 degrees,
forcing the lot to squint their eyes in an attempt to keep from temporarily
going blind. Soarin took the time to slow down his flying and let the balloon
catch up to him, and he turned to Lance with a grin.
"So how's the ride so far?" Soarin asked.
"Makes me long for flying that much more!" Lance replied without returning the
look. "But well worth it."
Soarin's grin did not budge, nor falter. "Good to hear," he said. The balloon
started to get ahead of him, so he beat his wings a little harder to keep pace
with it. Doing that as Lance lifted his front hooves to rest them on the
basket's rim enabled him to see his cutie mark as the wind started picking up
enough to lift part of the cloak. "Say, what's your cutie mark mean? I haven't
seen one like that before."
Lance turned to Soarin with a brow raised. "If you want the short of it, long
story!" he replied.
Soarin blinked. "A bit personal, I take it?" he queried.
Lance nodded. "Very," he stated tersely. He turned to Scootaloo as she giggled.
"That cutie mark is wicked, but not as wicked as Rainbow's," Scootaloo chirped
with a grin on her face.
Lance rolled his eyes in response. "You make it sound like a contest," he
snorted.
"Nah, it's just that Rainbow is awesome in every way," Scootaloo replied,
sporting a Cheshire grin.
Lance raised a brow. "Oh, I get it… you're idolizing her?" he asked. When he
got a nod, he sighed and turned to look ahead again. "I see."
Maria turned to Scootaloo and sent her a grin. "But Dash doesn't have daddy's
gunblade," she chirped.
"Pfffb." Scootaloo's cheeks bulged as she tried and somewhat failed in
containing her laughter at that. She leaned forward and giggled before stating
matter-of-factly, "Dash doesn't need swords. She can kick plenty of flank
without them."
Maria's grin widened. "Dash doesn't have daddy's tank," she retorted.
Scootaloo threw her head back and started laughing. When she stopped seconds
later, she leveled an amused look at Maria. "She has an awesome tortoise named
Tank, who's probably stronger than your daddy," she replied.
That caused Lance to turn to her again, this time with both brows raised.
"Excuse you?"
Scootaloo turned to Lance, still grinning. "Dash has a tortoise that's stronger
than you," she repeated.
Lance's eyes widened. He turned ahead again and shouted, "Do you really have a
tortoise? Because I'm getting smack-talked over here by a filly who think's
you're the best thing since sliced bread!"
Dash shot a glance over her shoulder and lifted a hoof to grapple the rope with
it. Letting the end in her mouth go, she replied, "I do have a tortoise! I left
him with Fluttershy before going to get my uniform!"
Lance nodded and turned back to Scootaloo, eyes narrowing a little. "You mean
physically stronger, or mentally?" he asked.
Scootaloo still smiled serenely at him. "Tank's as strong as Big Mac," she
snarked.
Lance began smiling. "Physical strength isn't everything. It's useful, sure,
but you don't see me showing off by trotting around and punching boulders, do
you?" he retorted, his voice equal parts cold and amused.
Scootaloo's smile fell, and she lifted a hoof to her chin before rubbing it for
a few seconds. "... no," she answered.
Lance's grin began widening. "Alright then. Besides, you don't know what I can
do anyway. Don't run around assuming things, it's bad for your state of mind,"
he stated matter-of-factly.
"Why's that?" Scootaloo asked, a brow raising.
Lance sighed and shook his head. "Let's just say I assumed things once. That
lead to my wings going bald," he replied, turning back to Dash once again.
Seeing that the haze of grey was rapidly lifting again, he decided to peer down
to the ground and found Ponyville and the Everfree Forest below, with the
latter sporting thick grey clouds that crackled with scant traces of
electricity. Then he turned to Dash again. "The forest is crawling with
stormclouds today!"
Dash slowed down and turned to the Everfree Forest, and she too saw the buildup
of clouds that formed and roiled below. "Great, just what we all needed," she
hissed, stopping momentarily to fiddle with the rope in her hoof. She looped it
once around itself and her hoof before she sent the end through the loop,
forming a knot that she pulled tight. She tugged afterwards to make sure it was
secured to her hoof before turning to the balloon. "Hang tight—we're going
down!"
That was all the warning she gave before her body angled a solid 90 and she
closed her wings, causing her to plummet steeply. This ended up dragging the
balloon with her, slowly at first. For the first few minutes, the descent went
at a sluggish pace, and Lance continued to eye the growing formation of
darkened clouds warily. His brow furrowed the longer he stared at it, the more
the balloon came closer and closer to it, and his lips began pulling into a
frown as more and more violent sparks darted around and between them.
Then one bolt shot straight up from the clouds as the balloon came above
several hundred meters of Ponyville, and it raced up and up to the vessel,
causing Lance's eyes to widen. "Take cover!" he bellowed, immediately
retracting from the rim before crouching at the bottom of the basket with his
hooves over his head.
"Why's that?" Shining asked, and in seconds he got his answer as the bolt
whizzed past Rainbow, burning the rope to cinders as it passed and forcing her
to release it altogether to keep herself from getting scorched, and struck
solidly at the balloon itself. This wasted no time grabbing his and everyone
else's attention, eliciting a few shrieks of surprise from Maria and the
Crusaders, as well as making it catch fire and deflate in one go. He turned to
it with a whicker, and almost immediately after his horn started glowing again,
grappled at the flames themselves as they ate away at the balloon, paying no
heed to the even-faster burning ropes.
Yet he had no such luck in containing the blaze. In seconds, the flames died
and took the balloon and ropes with, leaving just the basket behind. He and the
foals grappled the basket's rim as it started plummeting much faster than
before, and in seconds the air around them was filled with their screaming.
Lance joined in the wailing too, with eyes shut tight as he kept crouching on
the basket. He could barely hear Dash and Soarin flying after the basket, but
part of him wasn't sure they'd catch the contraption in time.
It felt like an eternity, yet the basket raced to the ground in a matter of
seconds. The air left Lance's lungs as he wailed, until he blacked out from the
sheer stress and shallow breaths he took in between screams. The last thing he
heard while he was still conscious that day was a voice screaming, but he
couldn't make out the words as they were drowned out by a deafening boom, and
for that very same moment he could've sworn he felt almost weightless.
***** Chapter XLVII- Poison Clouds *****
Dash flew down with reckless abandon as the basket plummeted, the screams of
the occupants driving her to fly faster and faster with front hooves
outstretched before her. She did not avert her gaze to the swelling
thunderclouds as they crackled violently, nor to the ground as it slowly
approached.
The wind rushed through her mane, her eyes watered, yet through it all she
pushed herself. Her wings propelled her madly, flapping and flapping to the
point they seemed to buzz. They even felt as though they were pulsing with raw
power that only now started trickling from her feathers.
The screams got louder and much more hysterical as the thunderclouds sent more
bolts in an attempt to hit the basket. "Hold on everypony!" Rainbow called. In
a matter of seconds after that utterance, she was going fast enough that the
very air itself was trying to stretch her cheeks wide and peel them right off
of her face.
A flash of horror hit her as she realized the basket was still a football
field's length ahead of her. It merely amplified when a bolt whizzed over
Scootaloo's head, narrowly missing by mere inches. This made her blood start
boiling, and her chest compacted slightly with a building ache the closer she
got.
Still, she continued to plummet in the hope that she could catch up to the
basket, flying right in the face of coming-and-going electrical bolts that
barely grazed her as she passed. For a few seconds, time slowed drastically as
sparks danced in front of her hooves. All she could hear was the howling of
wind; even the panicked screams emanating from the basket were almost entirely
drowned out.
Then white started to overtake her vision almost entirely, leaving the tiniest
tunnel for her to see through. The air tried its best to rend Dash in half,
stretching her until she almost reached breaking point. The bolts got more
heated in their attempts to strike the basket, though it simply dropped just
out of range each and every time. Still the only sound she heard was the air in
her ears.
Yet, the wind itself was drowned out in a matter of seconds as a deafening boom
rang through the air, during which Dash felt a strong pulse from her still-
beating wings as she descended to the basket with split-second haste. Leaving a
sparkling rainbow trail and a glimmering ring in her wake, she caught up to the
basket in mere seconds and clamped her front hooves onto its rim.
Seconds after that, the ground below seemingly expanded, eager to meet her.
Before she could crash herself and her passengers, she veered at a sharp 90
degrees, jostling everyone within the basket, yet keeping them from death's
door in one fluid motion.
Spotting Ponyville not too far away, she raced to it without hesitation,
getting her charges away from the onslaught of lightning bolts and to safety.
It took another few seconds, but she found Golden Oaks and simply dropped the
basket off to let it land in its branches.
"I'll deal with the thunderclouds! Stay put!" Dash ordered as she then turned a
full 180 and darted straight back to the source of her bubbling anger.
"Alright!" she barely heard Shining call out behind her. Dash pressed on, wings
still flapping, though now she was already decelerating to the point that the
trail she left was fast dissipating. She cared not for the gawking stares from
the streets below as she flew overhead, because right now she had bigger fish
to fry, and she intended for the entire mass to be fried thoroughly.
By the time she got to the gathering thunderclouds, she found Soarin already
working on getting rid of them. She spotted little yellow blots adorned with
thunderbolt-like protrusions in the clouds, which Soarin grappled with his
front hooves and yanked them right off their lofty perches before sending them
flying with a firm throw to the Everfree's outermost tree branches.
Then, he angled his body mid-air and kicked the cloud, making it hiss and
release a few buckets' worth of rain. He moved onto the next nearest cloud
without waiting for the first to finish emptying itself, grabbing the next
yellow blot and repeating the process over again. She eagerly joined in,
rushing right to the very front lines of the clouds and seizing several small,
yellow, and circular bodies with her front hooves.
She dropped them unceremoniously prior to bouncing between the clouds she'd
torn the forms from, forcing them to empty their rain reserves before hopping
over to the next batch to jostle off of their crackling clouds. Effortlessly
sending some more yellow bodies to crash-land in the canopy, Dash felt some of
her boiling blood cool off a smidgen.
But only a smidgen. There were still crackling clouds hovering over the forest,
each one affixed with a tiny yellow body at their individual epicenters.
"Oooooh, you ectoplasms are gonna pay for threatening Scootaloo…" Dash murmured
to herself, her tone equal parts angry and laced with venom.
"Did everypony make it out of that near-miss okay?" Soarin called as he
dispatched another ectoplasm with a firm kick straight off its cloud.
Dash turned to Soarin momentarily. "In one piece, but I didn't stick around
long enough to check! Had to decelerate before something worse happened," she
called back as she rounded up another hoofful of ectoplasms to dump upon the
forest below. She paused to look at the mass of clouds still present and
accounted for, brow furrowing when she saw that, despite her and Soarin's
currently best efforts, they didn't even put a dent into the stormfront.
Which made her blood start boiling yet again. Her wings pulsed, feathers
rippling with a faint blue glow that almost blended in seamlessly with her coat
as the limbs worked to keep her aloft. Her nostrils flared and she puffed out
her chest, blowing air out prior to once again darting about grabbing as many
ectoplasms as she could hope to carry. This time, she used her tail to grab
another half-dozen or so of the creatures, likewise using it to throw them down
in tandem with those in her front hooves.
Soarin glanced at Dash and saw her particular approach to the still-growing
stormfront. "You sure that's a good idea?" he cried. "They could shock you
through your spine, with your tail as a medium!"
"I've been through worse!" Dash shot back, at that point laden with another
bundle of ectoplasms that were shaken off and promptly dropped down to the
canopy. "Soarin, stop griping! If we don't deal with this now, Celestia knows
what it'll do once it decides it wants to outgrow the forest!"
Soarin gulped, ears pinning back when the balloon's rather spectacular and
unexpected bursting into flame came into the forefront of his thoughts. He
shook his head to rid himself of the thought before he heard a growing crackle
behind him. He twisted around and gaped, finding himself face-to-face with a
blot as big as he was tall, with two lightning-shaped horns and small beady
white eyes glaring back at him. It had stubby hands which crackled with growing
balls of plasma, and a jet-black bowl-shaped bottom that was anchored into the
cloud it came in on.
"Dash, we got lightning sprites!" Soarin called as he twisted vertically, mere
seconds before he gave the sprite in question a good two-hoofed kick in the
face that sent it careening a few feet away.
But the sprite did not get off its cloud; if anything, the cloud was dragged
with it as the force of the kick propelled it a bit. It stopped after about a
second, re-orienting itself and leveling a glare at Soarin, tiny hands still
aglow with plasma balls that consumed more and more energy.
"Great, little Prickleplot's charging," Soarin seethed, snorting with his own
eyes narrowing. He lifted his front hooves and bashed them together in a manner
reminiscent of knuckles cracking, but he stopped before his hooves could even
part as Dash charged from behind him with another wad of ectoplasms in her
hooves and tail.
Dash homed right in on the charging sprite, and it turned to her with plasma
balls growing as wide as a pair of wings. Before she got within a foot of it,
she twisted around so her back hooves would be the first to meet the creature.
At the same time she connected with it, she dropped the ectoplasms she was
carrying. This time the assault wound up sending the sprite off the cloud,
arcing over a few more, and subsequently crash-landing in the forest below.
This was followed by a lightning bolt tipped with a plasma ball shooting up
from where the sprite landed that arced the opposite way, but as it came closer
Dash lifted a hoof and yawned into it. She dropped the hoof before perching on
a cloud and calmly side-stepping aside. The bolt stopped where she was flying
prior to coiling around itself until it compacted into an orb-like structure,
whereupon it exploded in a loud boom and a dazzling shower of golden sparks.
A few sparks hit Dash, but they landed on her uniform and only singed it
slightly. She turned to where the sprite had landed and snorted. "I could dodge
that asleep," she scoffed, directing her attention to the rest of the cloud
front. She assumed a frown on her muzzle when about seven more lightning
sprites cropped up not too far away, this time with another batch of ectoplasms
flanking them.
In that moment, her frown turned into a small but wicked smirk. Her ear
twitched when she heard the sound of beating wings encroaching on her location,
and turned to her left to find that it was Soarin. She lifted a hoof and
gestured to the sprites. "I don't think you suppose that those are the source
of the storm?" she asked.
"Not entirely sure, Dash," Soarin replied, turning to the sprites as the
ectoplasms behind them merged and sparked violently, seemingly pulsing as more
and more ectoplasms converged upon the scene to heap upon the dogpile. The
sprites sported grim expressions, and each one in turn was crackling with two
plasma balls at the ready. "But they don't look too appreciative of our
retaliation."
"Buck 'em. They came really close to hurting Scootaloo, her friends, Twilight's
brother, and two diplomats. That's crossing a line in my book," Rainbow
scoffed, nostrils flaring again. She turned to the gathering ectoplasms, a brow
quirking when more and more heaped onto the pile with their own thunderclouds.
The sprites hopped forward, hands raising to the sky as their charges built up
and up.
Rainbow flapped her wings again and wasted not one second flying towards the
sprites, darting to them before they could unleash their plasma balls. She went
to one after the other, firmly kicking them into the still-growing mass of
converging ectoplasms, causing their own charged and concentrated bits of
electricity to loudly explode on impact with said ectoplasms.
This caused the already-massive swell of clouds that remained to merge with
both the sprites and the ectoplasms, forming a roiling dark grey mass that
viciously rumbled and sparked as it twisted into a new form with a distinct
pulse of yellow mana. Dash flew back to Soarin and turned to the growing mess
that rapidly swelled and contorted into the shape of a house-sized lightning
sprite with three horns on its head.
The two pegasi looked at the monstrosity as it turned from sable to golden in
color, hovering on a cloud large enough to support its singular black foot. It
stared back at them with eyes glowing, and it raised its hands to start
charging them with more electricity. The orbs it generated crackled ominously
before it threw them at the duo who immediately flew out of the way.
The orbs exploded before they could come into contact with the trees, and the
sprite started charging another volley, slowly turning to where its quarry had
flown to the side. It lifted its arms to launch another strike, but Dash caught
sight of something shooting up from a clearing at the behemoth's side that was
before concealed by clouds.
That something came with a distinctive red glint, in addition to another of
glass. The gigantic sprite turned to it as it came closer with a whistle before
flicking a hand and swatting it out of the air, causing it to plummet back down
in a dangerous spin. Then something else flew toward it, from the same
clearing, and Dash faintly heard a buzzing of wings as the two connected just
above the canopy in addition to glass breaking and a splashing of liquid.
Dash's eyes zeroed in on the anomaly, and she flew over to it only to gape as
she found that the second entity was a thin form with a distinct red mane,
clawed horseshoes, and an arrow perforating her head just beneath her horn. On
top of that, glass stuck out of her cranium in broken shards that gleamed with
a bluish tint. As if to complete the look in a mockery of a crown, a few vines
of poison ivy draped her head, adding flourishes of green to crimson.
Despite the new additions to her cranium, Katie still hovered in the air, but
she did not shake her head to rid herself of her unwarranted and impromptu
splinters. "What did you do?" Dash asked, pupils shrinking as blue spots
started to dot Katie's body spontaneously.
"I was taking a trip through the Everfree with Anna and Zecora, and we were on
our way back to Ponyville when we caught sight of this," Katie explained,
lifting a hoof and pointing at the lightning sprite that turned its attention
to her.
Soarin flew over, shouting at Dash, "What are you doing, we have to deal with
that thing pronto!" He stopped when he saw Katie, gasping as the spots on her
body started rippling with blue mana. "And now you're sick?!" he exclaimed.
Katie rolled her orbs and looked below, ignoring Soarin in favor of spotting
two forms that stayed on the ground in the clearing. "Fire another one, I got
an idea!" she called.
"You sure?" Dash heard Anna call back.
"Do it, or this thing'll barbeque us all!" Katie retorted, lifting her forelegs
above her head and waving them about. She stopped when the tell-tale crackle of
growing electric balls rumbled through the air, and she, Soarin, and Dash all
turned back to the lightning sprite that still loomed over them.
Dash and Katie exchanged glances. "Alright, what's with the spots?" Dash asked.
Katie tilted her head a little. "Made to catch an arrow laden with a poison
joke brew, and well… your eyes still work, don't they?" she retorted. The
growing crackle made her ears twitch, and she turned once more to the big
sprite that lifted its orb-tipped arms again. "Change in plans!" she cried,
turning downward and descending to the canopy as fast as she could.
"Wait!" Soarin cried, immediately flying after her. Dash tailed after him, and
the three just barely reached the canopy when the sprite unleashed its
coalesced spheres of lightning right onto them, which they narrowly missed as
they exploded behind them.
Another object whizzed up from below, one which Dash caught sight of. She
twisted out of the way and grabbed its tail with a lightning-fast hoof before
it could stray any further. She brought it to her face to find a crystal arrow
with a glass bottle of blue-tinted liquid crudely tied onto the shaft with more
vines of poison ivy.
Dash turned to Katie as another ominous rumble rang out into the air. Katie
merely nodded back and gestured to the sprite. "Well, poison joke doesn't seem
to do much to me," she snorted. "But now I wanna see what it does to Mr. Three
Horns over there."
Dash's jaw dropped. "Y-you mean…?"
Katie nodded again. "Damn straight," she answered flatly. Dash's face hardened
and she turned to the lightning sprite, brow furrowing as it charged up another
volley of crackling orbs. She flapped her wings and ascended straight up with
the bottle-tipped arrow in her hoof. The sprite turned to her as she climbed
higher and higher, slowly lifting its arms once more in tandem with her
ascension.
But then Dash angled herself at a sharp 135 degrees and launched herself bodily
towards the behemoth, gaining momentum and speed as she let gravity do most of
the work. She stopped only when she landed squarely on the sprite's head and
thrust the arrow onto its cranium, both breaking the bottle and splashing its
contents on the target, whilst at the same time firmly stabbing it. She
catapulted off not a second later, first going up before sharply U-turning back
to the canopy.
Katie and Soarin had dropped to the ground by the time she joined them, in
addition to an armed Anna and saddlebag-laden Zecora, both of whom just looked
up at the sprite as it discharged its orbs on itself without firing them. She,
Soarin, and Katie also turned to the sprite as it then lifted its hands to its
head and started pawing around in an attempt to find where the arrow went.
"I have noticed that the sprite's volleys never stray near the canopy," Zecora
intoned, frowning a little as blue splotches started growing on the sprite's
head for all to see. "Perhaps it will not—or cannot—attack even one tree."
Katie turned to Zecora, both ears perked. "Translation?" she queried.
Zecora turned her attention to Katie, her frown deepening a smidgen. "Have you
seen the Everfree maim itself once, through magic or creatures thus far?" When
Katie shook her head, Zecora continued, "It seems that even this wild wood must
maintain some semblance of order, which I'll admit sounds a little bizarre."
She turned back to the sprite as it shrunk and shrunk with a hiss, at which
point the blue splotches completely overtook it.
"Huh, so poison joke is useful," Anna noted with a smug grin spreading on her
face. She loaded an unburdened arrow into the drawstring and fired, watching as
it sailed until it hit the still-shrinking sprite in the cranium and caused a
swell of crystals to exhume from the inside outward. With a final hiss the
fiend burst into flame, and the clouds that were generated evaporated shortly
after. In seconds, the sky was momentarily ashy before giving way to a clear
crystal blue. "Well, that was a bit boring."
Her smile dropped when she turned to find Dash looking at her with dilated
pupils and pinned ears, who then spoke in a rapidly-turning-frantic tone. "We
gotta check on Lance and Maria. Those ectoplasms and sprites managed to strike
the balloon, and I didn't stick around to check when I saved them and the
basket and dropped them off at the library."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The first thing Lance heard as he came to were a series of clamoring voices,
and out of them, he could make out one mumbling and the other screaming in
hysterics. How or why, though, eluded him, and so he laid in the blackness with
eyes shut tight.
"... he's still breathing," a hollow feminine voice murmured, and Lance stirred
faintly at the feeling of four small and distinctly cold hooves planted firmly
upon his barrel. "His nose scrunched! He's waking up!" the voice declared
before the hooves scuttled off of his body. Only when he confirmed a second
later that his nose did indeed scrunch slightly and that the intruder had
gotten off of him, he slowly cracked his eyes open.
He didn't get them parted more than an inch before a green-and-tan blot rushed
him, hefted him up on all four hooves, and wrapped forelegs around him tightly.
This was followed by a hysterical laugh before the entity peeled themself off
of him, and stared at him as he opened his eyes the rest of the way to find a
haggard face, a frazzled mane, and pinprick pupils. "Anna, I'm fine," he stated
in a subdued tone. Afterwards he looked around the room and realized they were
gathered in the basement.
"F-fine? Y-you almost d-died! If Rainbow Dash d-didn't heft up the balloon's
basket when sh-she did…" Anna began, eyes watering before a brown talon arched
around from behind her, grappled her by the shoulder, and pulled her sharply
back. As that happened, Lance turned his attention away from Anna and towards
the talon, then he turned his gaze a little upwards before spotting another
form still sporting a wing-cast.
Then Sarah tottered around Anna and stopped at her side, eyes leveled at Lance
as a small frown graced her muzzle. "Anna's been gushing over you sideways,
and—" She stopped when the basement door opened and Maria ran up behind Anna,
prior to going around her. She wasted no time homing in and then pouncing Lance
in the chest with a shriek that sent him staggering back. She wrapped her
forelimbs around the base of his neck with a whimper.
"Daaaaaaddy," Maria wailed, clinging tightly to his neck and burying her face
in his barrel. "Big scary clouds…" she hiccupped and sniffled. "S-scary clouds
made b-big monster…"
"A monster?" Lance repeated, ears flattening against his head. He turned to
Anna and wrapped a leg around Maria, eyes glinting in askance.
Anna slowly nodded. "The ectoplasms merged to form a lightning sprite the size
of this library," she clarified. "But it was taken out with a poison joke brew
and two arrows to the face."
Lance took a few seconds to let it sink in before he let off a heavy sigh. He
rubbed Maria's head with his hoof and looked around before spotting Katie in
front of a few bookshelves a few trots away. He saw what she sported on her
body and slowly lifted a brow. "Do I want to know?" he queried rhetorically.
Katie tilted her head. "I think my new afflictions speak for themselves," she
snorted. She turned to the still-sniffling Maria, whose fit had calmed down a
bit. "Though honestly, I don't really feel that all different." She turned to
one end of the room, looking at something behind Lance before nodding in that
direction.
Lance slowly turned to find Rainbow and Soarin looking at him, the latter with
a small frown and the former letting out a sigh that held a note of relief. "I
think we can agree that we're not doing the balloon again anytime soon?"
Rainbow asked.
Lance nodded. "I've had enough heart attacks for today, thank you," he
answered. Something clicked in his head, and he looked about once more to
discover that nobody else had so much as trotted a step through the basement
door, though he did hear voices murmuring above. "Where's everyone else?"
"Zecora's talking with Twi, the Crusaders went home for the day, and Shining's
getting everyone else to regroup here," Rainbow answered, smiling when Lance
turned back to her. "We should take it easy for now."
"I agree," Soarin stated, nodding fervently. He took a few seconds to spread
his wings and stretch them, grunting as he felt some bones pop here and there
prior to closing them. He smiled. "Ah, nothing like a good stretch after
dealing with a bunch of ectoplasms and lightning sprites," he chirped.
Dash likewise spread and stretched her wings, though she had to curl the joints
into configurations vaguely resembling fists before some of her bones popped.
"You said it," she agreed, uncurling and closing her wings once she made sure
no more bones would pop. She turned to Anna, who had begun taking some deep
breaths. "You look like you need a nap."
Lance turned to Dash again and rolled his eyes. "Give her a few," he said
tersely. He flinched when he felt Maria shifting and leveled his gaze at her,
and he smiled as she mumbled and turned her head.
Dash also looked at Maria in that moment, sitting on her haunches as she saw a
pair of closed eyes. "Well, at least she's relaxed now," she chirped in a
whisper.
Lance lowered his head to nuzzle Maria between the ears, causing her to open
her eyes blearily and look around before she turned up to see her surrogate.
Lance pulled back with a chuckle and said in a soft voice, "Your claws are
still on the back of my neck. Could you let go, please?"
Maria obeyed and stumbled onto the ground, standing on all fours for a full
minute before her head dropped to where her feathers ended and the tarsi of her
talons began with eyes closing once more. Still standing thereafter, she gave a
soft snore.
"Guess she tires out quickly," Soarin noted, his voice low.
"Give her a break, she's just a kid," Katie scoffed, causing Soarin to turn to
her with a warbling smile forming on his face. The others, sans Maria, followed
suit shortly afterwards.
Anna slowly walked up to Katie, her steps hesitant and almost silent. When she
reached the splotch-bespectacled wraith, she lifted a hoof and gestured to the
arrow in her skull. "Uh… want me to remove that for you?" she asked.
Katie rolled her orbs. "Go ahead. I probably won't feel a thing," she answered,
whereupon the raised hoof dropped and she caught sight of Anna's horn glowing.
The green aura seized her head, but she did not protest in any way as the arrow
was also embraced prior to giving way to a few tugging motions. After a few
tugs, the arrow slid out, coated faintly with very dark green goo that
congealed fast.
"Is that… your blood?" Anna queried, garnering a nod from Katie as the new
wound oozed a little.
"Yeah. Still flows through me like anyling's blood does," Katie replied with an
earnest shrug of her shoulders. Anna's jaw dropped as the wound started to
pulse with blue mana and simultaneously close of its own volition, and before
long it healed to the point that not even a scar lingered. In addition to that,
a blue splotch on Katie's bridge shrunk during the rather bizarre process.
Anna eyed Katie critically, reeled in her jaw, and sighed after a few seconds.
"Hold still. Gonna get the glass off of you." She grappled Katie in her magic
again, and hastily plucked the shards of glass as fast as she could manage,
though she did not throw them callously to the side once they slid out of pale
chitin and drew some more droplets of viridian blood. The wounds pulsed with
mana, the spots closest to them shrunk about an inch in diameter, and the small
lacerations healed near-seamlessly.
Finally, the poison ivy vines were the last things to be lifted off, though
they did not leave any sort of rash or itch that Anna could see. She took a
step back, still holding the arrow and shards and vines in her magic with a jaw
that once again fell open.
Katie lifted one of her own hooves and probed around her head and neck, orbs
shrinking when she realized that the only thing left of the wounds that she
could feel were the droplets of blood that managed to escape. "Poison joke…
makes me heal faster?" she squeaked in sheer disbelief.
Her wings spread out, but she closed them just a second later as she turned to
her legs and found their holes pulsing and likewise closing shut with a swell
of mana. Sinew reformed around exposed bone, followed next by chitin, until all
that remained was a faint scar where each perforation had been.
Her split grin started glowing, but by that point, the blue spots on her body
shrunk until they could be seen no longer and the pulse of mana died before it
could start on her lack of cheeks. Katie's jaw likewise dropped, left only to
swing with a crack of bones. She turned to Anna, orbs merely the size of
pinpricks, wings snapping open again.
Anna made the arrow, shards, and vines vanish in a flare of light and silently
nodded before turning to Lance and the others. Dash and Soarin simply stared
straight back with similar expressions, while Lance managed a pair of widened
eyes and nothing more. Sarah gulped, but did little else. Silence hung in the
air again, and for a few minutes on end nobody dared to even attempt to break
it.
At least, until the voices above multiplied in a feverish conversation, and the
sound of hoofsteps echoed into the room from the door, making everyone sans the
still-asleep Maria to direct their attention to it. A second after that,
Shining Armor entered the room, and this time he had a tortoise with a
propeller strapped to its shell and goggles over its eyes perched on his head.
If not for the shock of Katie's unexpected semi-regeneration, Lance would have
smiled at the tortoise on Shining's head. As it was, though, all he could
manage was opening his mouth about an inch before lifting a hoof and gesturing
to Katie with it. "Alright, what is…" Shining trailed off as he turned to Katie
and blinked as he registered the lack of holes in her legs. "What in the name
of Faust…"
"Poison joke did this to me," Katie answered in an uneasy voice.
Shining managed a grimace. "P-poison joke?" he stammered, prompting the
tortoise on his head to also look at Katie with an accompanying grunt.
Katie slowly nodded. "Poison joke," she repeated. Then she finally turned her
attention specifically on the tortoise. "And whose is that?" she asked, which
caused it to crane its neck and tap at the stem of the propeller with its nose.
It turned back as the propeller began spinning with a golden glow, lifting off
of Shining's head and flying rather fluidly in the air for a full minute before
it descended and settled on Rainbow's back. All eyes followed the reptile up
until the moment its feet landed on a blue-and-yellow uniform.
"The tortoise is mine," Rainbow answered, craning her neck to nuzzle the
reptile. "How ya doing, Tank?" Tank gave a grunt and managed a small smile at
Rainbow before taking flight again and subsequently hovering all the way over
to Lance and making his head into a perch.
Lance looked at Tank cross-eyed. "This is very weird," he remarked, earning a
tap on the forehead from one of Tank's feet. He turned his attention to Shining
as soon as Tank lifted off of his head and flew back over before perching on
Shining, whereupon he heard him clear his throat.
"Well… I wanted to inform you that I've gathered everyone, and that they want
you all to come upstairs," Shining said, smiling a little as Tank tapped him on
the head.
Anna nodded and turned to Maria, trotting over to her before lifting a hoof and
jabbing her in the shoulder with it. Maria lifted her head, sluggishly opened
her eyes and grumbled, wings spreading as she directed her attention to Sarah
instead. "Whaaa?" she groaned tiredly.
Sarah turned to Maria and stood on her back legs before coming to her,
kneeling, and picking her up with her talons in one go. "Shining wants us
upstairs," she answered.
"But I wanna sleeeeep," Maria whined, wings closing as Sarah held her to her
barrel.
Shining let his smile widen just a smidgen. "Uh… I'll go upstairs and tell
everyone to keep their indoor voices," he stated, and with that, he turned tail
and trotted out of the basement. Then Sarah ambled after him on her hooves,
clutching a fast-dozing Maria as tightly and securely as she could manage.
Katie trotted after the two, her gait noticeably less unsteady as she went.
Soarin and Rainbow went with her, leaving just Anna and Lance in the basement.
The former turned to the latter and went right up to him before staring him in
the eye. "Can we… not do the balloons until after you can fly again?" she asked
in a subdued tone.
Lance did not hesitate in nodding in assent. "Yes. That's a good idea," he said
in a hushed voice. Anna lifted her front legs and hugged him again, and he
returned the gesture. The two broke the embrace and turned to the basement door
a second later, shifting to go single-file before trotting to it. They went out
of the basement, through the small hall, and up the winding stairs leading to
it to find that, indeed, everyone else had already gathered into the main room
of the library.
They turned to Fenrir, who donned a rather amused grin as they noticed that he
had a rather large backpack on his back which was so full with many colorful
gems that it was almost at bursting point. "So… how was your day?" Lance asked
with a slight frown.
Fenrir's smile widened. "Splendidly. I found a trio of my Mythonian brethren,
and they allowed me to search their quarry. They even handed me this two-strap
satchel to take whatever gems I found with me," he answered.
Rarity piped up with a rather wan smile, "Of course, I went with him to meet
his fellow dogs, and helped him find the gems."
Anna turned to Rarity, a brow raised. "How'd they treat you?" she asked.
"Well… more of a nuisance, but they didn't stop me and Fenrir at all," Rarity
answered. "They were afraid that I'd start… for a lack of better words, pouting
like a petulant child."
Lance and Anna exchanged looks at that, then turned back to Rarity. "I… don't
know how to respond to that," Lance said after a few seconds of silence. He
turned to Pinkie and noticed she was no longer carrying the Cake twins.
"Where're the babies?"
Pinkie smiled. "Oh, I took them home and put them to bed, and then I had a talk
with Mr. Cake. I told him I was heading for Fantasia in a few days and all that
other good stuff, except for the fact that we have a wraith with us," she
answered in one breath.
"And speaking of heading back," Matt interjected from behind Lance, causing him
to whirl around, "We've all agreed to board the train tonight."
For a few seconds, silence hung again. This time it was Twilight who broke it,
"So, is everyone ready?" All eyes fell onto her and heads nodded immediately,
with some faces hardening and others easing a little. "Alright. It's still
light out, so we'll board the train when it gets dark out. Sound good?" Another
series of nods answered her in unified silence. She deflated a little at this,
but nodded back just once. "But before we go to the train, there's just one
last thing I need to take care of while I'm here."
With that, she turned to the door, opened it with a quick flick of magic, and
trotted out without an iota of hesitation. She closed it behind her before
galloping down the road as fast as she could.
***** End of Arc III: Chapter XLVIII- Last Respite *****
Hours passed, and as the sun started to set upon the horizon, a pinkish-mauve
unicorn with three gemstones on her hips and a purple mane fiddled about with a
small section of fencing surrounding a house. Her horn glowed brilliantly
violet, and she was using her magic to adjust a peculiar plank at various
angles until it stood upright. She released it for a few seconds, and groaned
as it fell to the ground with a muffled clatter immediately after.
"Great, now I gotta buy a hammer and nails tomorrow…" she grumbled to herself,
lifting a hoof and kicking at the stubborn plank before turning around to head
for the opposite direction. "Note to self, make grocery list…" She turned to a
fence gate that swung open in a passing breeze, which she trotted to and gently
kicked closed prior to heading for the house.
She trotted to the door and lit up her horn before grasping the knob in a soft
violet aura prior to flinging it open. Before she could set hoof inside, a set
of galloping hooves reached her ears with such faintness she almost thought
something was running away. The mare shrugged and trotted inside to a quaint
living room with a table perched upon a rug, a couch beside that, and a small
doorway that was closed at the far end.
A blond-maned unicorn filly sat in front of the table and scribbled on a piece
of paper, using her mouth to hold and guide a pencil as steadily as she could.
She stopped as the mare began speaking, "What'cha doing, Dinky?"
Dinky dropped the pencil and turned to the mare with a grin. "Sparkler, I'm
doing my homework," she answered. She lifted a hoof and reached for the pencil,
but stopped as her ears twitched and caught the growing thunder of galloping
hooves. She turned to Sparkler, the pencil not even an inch away from her
raised limb. "Is there another bunny stampede?" she asked, her smile fading in
that moment.
"Last I checked, rabbits didn't have hooves," Sparkler answered as she raised a
brow about an inch and turned back to the door. Said brow climbed up the rest
of her forehead as she saw Twilight bumbling into view, who then skid to a halt
at the fence gate. She blinked as her guest opened the gate with a hoof and
immediately after made directly for the house Sparkler didn't quite finish
entering yet.
"Oh, thank goodness you're still awake, Sparkler. Oh, you've no idea how much
I've been running around Ponyville today," Twilight crowed as she trotted right
up to her fellow mare with a smile on her face.
Sparkler returned the smile, though it faltered when she saw a faint sheen of
sweat dotting Twilight's brow. "Was just gonna tuck in for the day, actually,"
she replied. "You need something?"
Twilight nodded. "Yes, actually. Would you be willing to care for Golden Oaks
for a while?" she queried.
Sparkler's other brow rose up to join its mate. "Huh?" She eyed Twilight for
some five seconds, blinking all the while. "Why?" she ventured.
Twilight's grin warbled a little, but she seized the muscles in her muzzle and
cleared her throat before elaborating, "Well… to cut a long story drastically
short, I'll be away for a while."
"How long is 'a while?'" Sparkler asked in a flat voice, brows dropping and
then leveling so rigidly one could have rested a measuring tape on them.
"Anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. I don't know definitively. You see…
I'm going on a diplomatic trip of sorts," Twilight deadpanned, her warbling
grin fast dropping and fading with the grace of a cat that tumbled out of a wet
bag.
Sparkler's brows shot up again. "To where?" she asked. All Twilight did to
answer was lift a hoof and gesture skyward with it at a 45 degree angle,
prompting Sparkler to look in the diagonal direction before gawking as she
caught sight of the sister world. "You're pulling my tail, right?" she squeaked
with pupils shrinking. She turned back to Twilight, only for her ears to fold
back when she garnered a somber look and a shaking of the head.
"No, and I sincerely wish I was," Twilight replied in a low voice. Her face
hardened and she added much more firmly, "But there's something wrong going on
in Fantasia, and I only caught mere glimpses of it. There's hardly a
compassionate, friendly soul there."
Sparkler's eyes went wide. She leaned in until she was muzzle to muzzle with
Twilight. "Grouchy, or…"
"Worse," Twilight cut her off. "But I managed to run into a few friendly
Fantasians. You saw the papers, right?"
Sparkler stared into Twilight's eyes, her jaw quivering as comprehension
started to dawn onto her. "... the diplomats?" she guessed.
Twilight nodded. "And I can tell they need serious help. With what… I don't
know exactly. I'll have to delve deeper into that rabbit hole just to get to
the root of whatever the problem is. And since you were the town organizer
before I came to Ponyville… would you be willing to look after the library in
my place starting tomorrow morning?" she asked, her tone taking on a slightly
hopeful note that Sparkler couldn't have missed.
Sparkler nodded. She pulled back, her own face hardening. "You can count on
me…" She shot a brief glance over her shoulder at Dinky, who waved at her with
a hoof, "And Dinky, if she wants."
Twilight donned a smile, reared up, and threw her forelegs around Sparkler's
neck. "Oh thank you so much," she cooed as Sparkler returned the hug. They
broke the embrace seconds later and exchanged awkward smiles that twitched to
the point they seemed more like grimaces.
"One question… will Owlowiscious be at the library?" Sparkler asked, her ears
slowly lifting up from the back of her head. "Because Dinky's… ah…"
Twilight shook her head. "He'll be going with me," she answered in a soft
voice. "I'll head back to Golden Oaks; gotta do some things before I head off
to Fantasia." She turned and started trotting away from the house, only to
pause at the fence gate and crane her neck to look at Sparkler one last time.
"Can you keep this secret?" she queried.
"Can and will do," Sparkler replied. Twilight smiled at her again and turned
back before she let her horn start glowing. An aura surrounded her, and before
it embraced her in an explosion of purple light, she barely heard a "Stick a
cupcake in my eye, I Pinkie Promise to keep this secret," from Sparkler as she
vanished from the lawn.
She promptly reappeared in her library, and the first thing she saw aside from
floating colored splotches were cloaks, masks, and saddlebags laden on her
Fantasian guests. Nolegs stood next to Spike, who had a great horned owl
perched on the side of his head. In addition to that, she also spotted Harry
and Angel behind Fluttershy, both of whom chittered with each other fervently.
On top of that, she spotted Tank still perched on Shining's head. She also
caught sight of an ornate blue box with golden trimmings, inlaid by several
gems dotting all four sides and the top, tied onto Applejack's back by rope and
cloth.
As soon as she cleared her throat once the splotches of color stopped swimming
in her eyes, all other sets of eyes turned to her when their owners finally
noticed her. The only sound that broke the silence was a hoot from the owl.
"We're all ready, I take it?" Twilight asked.
A series of nods, many voices uttering "yes," and growls and chitters and hoots
and a meow answered all in perfect tandem before half their owners returned
right back to their conversations. She then turned to the owl specifically.
"Owlowiscious, you promise me not to hurt NoLegs for any reason beyond
'accidentally?'" she pressed, garnering another nod and a hoot in return.
Twilight turned to Applejack thereafter and did not hesitate to inquire, "Did
you get the Elements of Harmony while I was gone?"
Applejack nodded curtly, and lifted a front hoof to lift the lid of the box
slightly, revealing six golden objects gleaming within. "Tucked away nice 'n
tight 'till we need 'em," she answered.
Twilight smiled and turned to the door, which she immediately found that Katie
sat in front of. She had her orbs fixated on the wooden obstacle, as if waiting
for it to do something. "Sun setting yet?" Katie asked, keeping her cloaked
back turned to everyone else.
"Just about," Twilight answered, raising her brow when a rustling of cloth and
something rather slick-sounding reached her ears seconds later.
She subsequently flinched when Katie slowly twisted her head in her direction,
without moving the rest of her body, yet causing the hood of her cloak to turn
with her in doing so. Everyone caught sight of a long, thin, pale tongue
dangling from under the cloth and porcelain copy of a pony's face. The slender
thing was wrapped around a portion of the base of the hood, and it was what
gently tugged it along as her head turned.
"So fwe cah leaf sooh?" Katie queried, her tongue fiddling with the cloak as
she spoke.
Twilight shook her head. "Not yet, and certainly not without your muzzle facing
the same direction as your barrel," she replied. Katie nodded back and twisted
her head around again, keeping her tongue on the small bunched-up bundle of
cloth to reorient her cloak as she did so.
"Guess ponies are still out and about at this hour?" Natalie queried, garnering
a look and a nod from Twilight.
"Not many, but there are some still out doing things on the route to the
Friendship Express. Had to stop by and ask one of them something," Twilight
answered in a soft tone. "Last thing we need any of them seeing is… ah…" She
swallowed a lump before carefully finishing, "a cranium that can twist full
circle with a long prehensile tongue on top of that."
"True enough," Lance piped up, his wings shifting a little under his cloak. He
turned to Owlowiscious. "Does the owl eat meat around these parts?" he asked.
Twilight turned to him with a grimace, though she hesitantly nodded. "He
usually hunts in the Everfree for his food, though," she answered in a low
tone.
Lance turned to Twilight and sighed. "Oh, and before we hit the road and board
the train…" He turned his attention to a shelf at the left side of the room,
before zeroing in on Twilight again. "Got any books on weather manipulation? A
little bird told me I would need some, and that you might've had a stock on
that..."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The Friendship Express rolled on into the night after it came to Ponyville,
picked up a batch of train-goers and departed an hour after. Everyone had
tucked away for the night, some still with their cloaks and masks on, with the
exception of one lone soul who stayed up well into the midnight hour, several
questions rolling through her mind as she sat on the edge of her bed. She
scanned the pair of beds sitting directly opposite of her, never once taking
her eyes off of them as their occupants softly dozed.
Sarah sighed softly, eyes more fixated on the sleeping form of Anna. "Took you
three years to get your mark, huh…" she mumbled quietly, more to herself than
to her sister. "There's something you're not telling me… is there?" Anna didn't
stir in her bed, save for an unintelligible mumble leaving her lips.
She sighed again and turned to Lance, who was snoozing in the bunk above Anna
with a book covering his eyes. "And how'd you recruit my sister… did you
convince her of it, or is there something I'm not getting…?" she queried, half-
expecting some sort of answer. "How did you two even meet in the first place?"
All she got was a snore and a murmur of "Pass the salmon" in return.
Sarah rolled her eyes and shook her head, her good wing twitching as she heard
a rustling of blankets. She didn't bother looking towards the source, even as
the noise persisted for a few seconds on end. In fact, it wasn't until she
heard muffled thuds land upon the floor of the car did she tear her attention
away from her sister and said sister's superior, frowning as she turned to the
bed on her immediate right as paws landed against the floor.
A beak poked out a second later, followed by a pair of sable talons. Alexander
yawned widely, the noise partially distorted by a sound akin to a keen, before
he smacked his tongue against the roof of his upper mandible. Slowly, he looked
to his right and then left, half-lidded eyes zeroing in on Sarah as soon as he
caught sight of her. "What are you doing up?" he queried.
Sarah donned a small frown on her muzzle. "Half-tempted to ask you the same
thing," she retorted.
Alexander yawned again. "If it's the 'I can't sleep' excuse, I won't argue.
I've heard it enough times from my general and his small circle of second-in-
commands," he snorted.
Sarah's lips twitched at their corners, and she managed a slight grimace at
that. Her ears twitched as Alexander crawled out of the bed and gave his limbs
a stretch, and she seized her facial muscles as she heard a few bones pop here
and there. "General McGrouch got cranky one too many times?" she guessed.
Alexander shuddered and hesitantly nodded. "Yes. But Anna's worse than him some
days, especially in heat…" he mumbled.
"How worse?" Sarah asked, her ears still twitching at the sound of another set
of rustling sheets. She abruptly shifted her gaze towards her sister, who
started flailing her back legs in her sleep.
Anna kicked off her sheets violently, revealing to Sarah that not all was as it
seemed. Her sister's front hooves crossed awkwardly over her stomach as the
rear ones kept flying every which-way they possibly could, prior to shifting up
and back over her head. Her coat's hairs stuck out straight on their ends, and
for some bizarre reason the flute of her cutie mark started to radiate a soft
red aura that pulsed in time with her frenzied kicks.
What made Sarah jump out of the bed and rush over to Anna in a heartbeat with
widened eyes, though, was what Anna managed to utter. A single, ominous,
shuddering whimper of, "Please… stop..."
One second Anna was on the bed, and the next a pair of talons grappled her by
the shoulders and yanked her bodily to the floor. She jolted instantly, eyes
snapping open and mouth opening wide for a scream, only for the same talons
that grappled her shoulders to shoot and wrap around her muzzle with lightning
quickness. This ended up clamping it shut as fast as it had opened. The hooves
began flying again, though now the front ones were reaching for the claws while
the back ones struggled to find purchase on the floor.
"Calm down," Sarah ordered in a low voice, right as Anna's front hooves
connected with both of her tarsi. The hooves slid off a second later, and when
the struggling ceased entirely thereafter, Sarah slowly let go of her sister's
muzzle.
Anna shifted her hooves under herself and rose to stand as soon as she realized
that she was awake. She narrowed her eyes at Sarah, and her irises briefly
flashed red as her cutie mark pulsed again. "The fuck was that for?" she
hissed.
Sarah shifted to stand on all fours, not once flinching in the slightest under
the gaze she received from her sibling. "You'd have woken everyone else up had
your nightmare been allowed to progress," Alexander answered before Sarah could
open her mouth, causing Anna to whirl around and level her glare at him. "It
was not my idea," he added coolly, shaking his head.
Anna spun around again, and for a few seconds longer returned to glaring coldly
at her sister. When her cutie mark stopped radiating a red aura, her face
eased. "Could you not… throw me to the floor next time, please?" she asked, her
tone soft.
Sarah nodded. "Can do," she answered, her nose scrunching slightly as a very
faint scent wafted into the air. What it was, she couldn't pinpoint.
The scent intensified greatly as Anna whirled around again, and it took in a
rather bitter hint as she trotted to Alexander. "Could you… ah, move please?"
Anna asked, her voice still low.
Alexander nodded and stepped out of the way, and as soon as the path between
her and the northernmost door was cleared, Anna broke out into a harried trot.
The door opened with the aid of a swift flick of green magic as soon as she
reached it, and without a second thought Anna trotted through it and closed it
behind her. The very instant she left the car was the same instant that Sarah
turned her attention back to Alexander.
"D-did… you see her cutie mark g-glow, or am I the one who's still dreaming
here?" Sarah asked, ears folding back as Alexander slowly nodded.
"Ever since she'd acquired it, in fact, though especially whenever she goes
into heat for some reason…" Alexander replied, frowning himself. He lifted a
talon to the collar of his cloak and adjusted it slightly. "And considering it
just happened while she was still asleep, the gates to hell might have just
opened."
"She was in heat when she got her mark?" Sarah guessed, grimacing as
Alexander's frown deepened a considerable margin.
"Yes, she was. But she was more or less alright before getting her mark,"
Alexander replied, his tone a little bit somber. "After… I can't quite say
whether or not she'd changed, mark aside. I wasn't in the same place with her
when she'd acquired it."
Sarah nodded. She stretched her good wing and trotted over to crawl into her
bed. "Should we stay up until she gets back?" she asked as she started going
under the sheets.
"She should be back soon, but if you want to wait for Anna to return, then be
my guest," Alexander replied, his tail swishing as he turned and likewise
cantered over to his bed. He crawled in with a snort, and after some rustling
gave an utterance that sounded as though muffled by a pillow, "I should've
brought nose plugs."
Sarah kept silent as the utterance reached her ears, her face turning a twinge
of green as what he meant clicked in seconds later. "Oh, if he did my sister,
his beak'll be the first thing to go…" Her eyes narrowed at the mere thought of
her sister being mounted by Alexander, and her face turned greener as her
stomach started forming knots and doing backflips in her abdomen.
Sarah turned back to Anna's empty bed, scowling with a face as green as her
mane. Then she turned up to Lance's bed, and thankfully found that the sod
within was still snoozing away with the book covering his eyes. A series of
lewd and disturbing images flooded her mind in short order, and she lifted a
talon to her own muzzle to keep it closed as she felt the tell-tale sign of
bile rising up her throat. She turned away, forcing herself to swallow her own
bile just as it reached the top of the tunnel.
A hideous acidic taste greeted her tongue before she could get it back down her
gullet, but she did not open her mouth or remove her talon even as the bile
fought with all its might to get out and enter the world. Even as it managed to
flood her mouth to the point her cheeks expanded to make room, she did not
yield to her body's desire to expunge itself. Swallowing again, she took a
scant few seconds to breathe through her nose and fill her lungs with as much
air as they could allow.
Her stomach churned in protest, still twisting in a fit. A few minutes passed
as it threw its temper tantrum before it gave up and let Sarah swallow the bile
without trying to shoot it back up. It gurgled angrily, depositing its contents
down the back door and causing cramps in the process. Satisfied that her system
had more or less calmed, Sarah crawled out of bed again, careful not to make
any sudden movements to avoid agitating her stomach again.
She glanced about, finding that nobody else had stirred. Sarah sighed as she
turned to the northernmost door and cantered over to it, her stomach giving off
another gurgle as she went. "I wonder where my sister went…" she murmured,
lifting a talon to try for the doorknob.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Anna sat in a small bathroom with only a sink, a toilet, a toilet roll holder
tacked to a wall, and an oaken door behind her. She rested her back against the
door as she fell to her haunches, face flushed to hell and cutie mark once more
pulsing. Her rear legs shook, and her tail swished nervously in tandem with her
mark pulsing red. She stayed like that for several minutes on end, gaze fixed
forward yet staring into the middle distance; the exact amount of time passing
unknown to her.
Her horn glowed and her flute appeared in a flash of light once a few more
minutes passed. The instrument was, likewise, also shimmering red, though the
color was somewhat concealed by the green aura holding it in the air. Anna
caught sight of very small runes carved into the object, and she swallowed a
lump that formed in her throat.
The runes glowed the longer she stared at it, softly at first. Then the glow
gradually overtook her green aura over the course of thirty seconds, shining a
bright crimson that was ominous yet somehow enticing. She dropped the flute and
watched it clatter noisily to the floor, and at once it hissed and rolled
towards her. Anna took a few seconds to look at her cutie mark, sighing as the
flute therein vanished in a red pulse.
Then she turned back to the flute as it stopped at one of her back hooves. It
hissed on contact, but did little else. "Not tonight, you enchanted
instrument," Anna mumbled, eyes narrowing as she stared at her flute. "Not
tonight."
She pushed it away by shifting the hoof it stopped against, shuddering as it
rolled back a few inches prior to returning to her hoof seconds later. Her ears
twitched as a faint scritch-scratch echoed into the room, in perfect tandem
with a clip-clop of hooves. Her horn glowed again and she snagged the flute in
her magic before making it vanish, lifting a forehoof to her temples to probe a
little.
Still warm, but not much more than usual. Her hoof dropped and she stood up.
"No more fucking around," Anna mumbled as the scratching and clopping started
to get louder. She turned to the door and used her magic to fling it open, only
to yelp and stagger back as the knob hit her square in the side of her nose.
Her hoof shot up again to the now-aching spot once she stilled. "Gah, forgot it
opened inward…"
The scritching and clipping not only doubled as she mentally kicked herself for
getting attacked by a door, but it then almost entirely stopped almost
immediately after. "Anna? You okay?" a feminine voice asked from outside,
echoing slightly.
"I-I'm fine," Anna stammered in reply, grimacing as she caught sight of a dark
brown talon landing on the floor outside the door, followed by the rest of said
talon's owner.
"That's good. Can I borrow the toilet for a few?" Sarah queried, her stomach
giving a loud grumble as she spoke. Anna nodded and let Sarah trot in before
she dropped her hoof again and trotted out, using her magic to close the door
behind her to let her sister have some privacy.
Anna found herself in the car lined with a row of doors on both sides, and she
shrugged and trotted to the southernmost door with a bit of a harried pace. "No
sense staying up all night," she murmured to herself as she flung open the door
with her magic as she got within five feet of it. Wasting not a second more
heading for bed, she closed the doors behind her and crawled into her bunk as
silently as she could manage.
She'd just settled beneath the covers when a head poked from above and grumbled
something unintelligible , and she gave a grunt as she turned from her pillow
to the source of the sound. "Yes, Lance?" she asked in an irritated voice.
Lance huffed and took a sharp whiff of air, eyes narrowing as a bitter scent
tickled his nose. "Season again?" he asked flatly, his tone low so as to not
rouse anyone else. When Anna nodded, he gave a displeased groan. "Remind me to
get you the chastity gear once we get back to Fantasia."
Anna's horn glowed and, in a flash of light that made Lance squint his eyes,
summoned a thick metal belt that looked more like a pair of underpants with a
smaller, partially rectangular hole and another small hole a few inches under
it. Both of these holes were settled between the much larger ones meant for the
thighs and hips, and the whole thing was beset by softly shimmering runes
carved into the metal itself.
"Brought it with me in case I went into heat here; just didn't apply it yet,"
she snorted, lifting the covers just enough to slide the contraption snugly
beneath them.
Lance nodded. "Just put it on before you get back to sleep," he grumbled. With
that, he pulled his head back, and Anna turned to her pillow and threw her face
into it with a sigh of resignation. She fumbled for a bit, twiddling her front
hooves and delaying putting on the belt for some seconds before sliding it
behind her rear hooves.
She lifted her rump, steadying herself as she slid a back hoof into one hole of
the contraption and then following up with the other. Her magic dragged the
cool metal up her legs shortly after, never once letting it snag itself on the
sheets that covered her rear end. As it did this, the partially-concealed aura
grabbed her cloak and moved it up her back to keep it out of the way. Seconds
ticked by, and the belt stopped for a little bit as Anna grappled her own tail
in her magic and guided it through the larger half-rectangle hole prior to
lifting it up the rest of the way.
As soon as it was secured and snugly in place her rear dropped down to the bed
with a soft plomf; Anna gave a muffled sigh as she felt the metal brush up
against her inner thighs and more sensitive spots. She took a few minutes to
let herself get used to the accessory she now wore, letting it absorb some
warmth just to make it a little bit more bearable to wear. Then she adjusted
the blankets and cloak with one last flick of magic, all the while trying to
keep her eyes from fluttering shut.
Alas, it was a losing battle, and she fell asleep after another minute had
passed. Yet she didn't have time to dream, because not one second later hooves
and claws reached her ears and roused her before she could go into a deep
slumber. Keeping her eyes closed, she slowly turned to the source of the soft
ruckus and grumbled something unintelligible as she felt a talon coming to rest
on her withers.
"Before I go back to sleep, Anna, answer me this," Sarah began lowly, pausing
to cough and clear her throat. "How'd you get into the army?"
Anna snorted and frowned a little at the query. "Extenuating circumstances,
partially of my own volition," she replied, letting her head flop back onto the
pillow as she spoke. "Long story." She left it at that, causing Sarah to let go
of her withers and clench her talon into a fist.
"Well, wasn't that just a bunch of argle bargle? It almost sounded like she
pulled it from her ass," Sarah muttered to herself in a low enough voice that
Anna couldn't hear her, eyes narrowing. She turned her gaze upward, almost
glaring at Lance's slumbering form. "Maybe I should join the ranks to see what
all the fuss is about…" She turned and cantered back to bed, grumbling
something about her sister and spilled beans as she crossed the distance and
crawled in.
As Sarah crammed her face into her pillow upon settling in the bed, she gave an
indignant sigh. Her broken wing gave an ache of protest, but at this point it
was just a minor inconvenience and nothing more. "Can't beat 'em, may as well
join 'em… at least my sister and I are alive," she mumbled into the pillow, her
own eyes drifting closed.
Little did Sarah know that someone in particular with longer-than-usual ears
heard every single bit of her fervor with Anna, and every utterance she made
thereafter. Someone that likewise drifted asleep in short order, waiting for
the dream world to whisk her away.
***** Start of Arc IV: Chapter XLIX- Returning Party *****
The starscape glittered, and the dream-like air was filled with the fervor of
several voices chattering about. Luna sat in a chair at a table, speaking with
Twilight, her friends, Spike, Shining, and Katie. "Luna, I can't send you or
Celestia letters all the way from Fantasia. I looked through my library, and
not one book had a spell to help me on that front," Twilight complained,
stamping a front hoof on the table.
"Not even from an airship?" Luna queried, her brow slanted.
"Especially not from an airship," Twilight replied, frowning. "Let alone if
it's already in the sky."
"She kinda exploded when I suggested it to her on the return trip home," Spike
added, waving a claw dismissively.
"Which means, if you and Celestia want to maintain contact while you're stuck
on Fantasia, unless we find something to remedy that particular predicament…"
Katie trailed off, orbs fixed on Twilight. "You're screwed, to put it lightly,"
she finished.
Zecora sighed and tapped at the table with a hoof to garner everyone's
attention. Only when all eyes turned to her did she speak. "Forgive me if I
sound dismissive or otherwise of little aid, but would a portal be a remedy to
this blockade?" she queried, and for but a moment the dreamscape fell into
silence.
Luna shook her head, a dour frown on her face. "I'm afraid not. At such
distances, not even we can provide portals for such a purpose. Mayhaps Discord
would have better luck," she replied, her tone solemn.
"Key word being 'mayhaps,'" Katie stated curtly, garnering a nod as soon as she
turned to Luna. "Last I seen of him, he decided it would be a good idea to hit
Lance upside the head with a potted plant."
Luna lifted a hoof and rubbed her chin with it. "Discord, ever-typical…" she
muttered. "But as it stands, he's our best bet."
"Lacræ fhram Dhescald eltreya," Katie hissed, eyes narrowing. She waved a hoof
and fluttered her wings, rattling on in a tongue that made everyone else raise
their brows, "Zhelkaar, estirm ghraalk astæ tras-delsch!"
"Could you repeat that in a language we can understand? Because that sounded
like pure gobbledygook," Rainbow snorted, earning a huff from Katie.
"Apologies, just lapsed into my mother tongue for a second. What I said was
'How would Discord help? In fact, he did anything but.'" Katie rolled her orbs
and waved a hoof dismissively again. "He'd probably fuck with us first," she
added.
Twilight pursed her lips and turned to Fluttershy. "Maybe we could call him
here and ask?" she ventured, tilting her head a little as the query more or
less hung in the air.
Katie waved her hoof yet again and, in a flash of light, a massive monitor not
unlike that of the Valkyrie tank materialized behind her. A coiled wire formed
from the object and hooked itself to her shoulder, and only when it was secure
did she briefly rattle off again. "Dæsch mhaltchiik scia," she muttered. The
screen behind her beeped and turned crimson, and the words "Be my guest"
appeared on it in a bright, almost clashing pink in tandem with her utterance.
Before any of them could ponder any further, a cloud of smoke and confetti
exploded at the center of the table. When it cleared, it revealed Discord
standing on his horns, with the rest of his body stiff and straight as a plank.
"Did somepony call me?" he chirped with a toothy grin.
"Twelisc Sræliich astæ," Katie replied with a snort. The apparatus hooked to
her translated, "Twilight Sparkle did."
Discord looked at Katie, both of his eyebrows falling off of his head and
landing squarely on the table. "Now that's moonspeak if I've ever heard of it,"
he snorted.
Katie rolled her orbs and snarked, "Shrelmfæ ghreelzaak. Ghralscht mætria
khalzt azuld, Dhescald." The machine chipped in with a beeping, "Swarm dialect.
Like you'd understand it, Discord."
"Changeling tongue, I assume?" Discord queried, garnering no more than a mute
nod for his answer. He swiveled around to look at Twilight, his body still
rigid with the notable exception of his horns, which bent and curled and spun
at the base of his cranium to cause him to twist towards her. "What is it this
time? I'm afraid I'm lost here."
To punctuate his point, he snapped his talons and the starscape melded around
them in several vibrant explosions of light, forming a vast ocean of blue with
a starlit sky as a backdrop. Beneath the lot, ground formed and grass sprang
upwards, followed by large trees that were sparse in number. The only thing
that remained of the starscape was the assortment of tables and chairs, as well
as the machine hooked to Katie.
"This is fast getting out of hoof…" Luna muttered to herself, shaking her head
at the spectacle going on before her eyes. She cleared her throat and garnered
everyone's attention in the process, though when she made to speak words would
not come out. She lifted a hoof and coughed into it, which then gave way to a
sharp squealing in surprise as a frog jumped out of her mouth and landed on her
raised limb with a wet pop.
Discord sniggered, looking at Luna with his paw dangling next to his head. "Oh,
my dear Princess, it seems you've had a frog in your throat," he teased.
"Gralkæ, veist breikskaal estralk," Katie snorted in a flat tone, lifting a
front hoof and hitting her own face with it at the display. The machine beeped
and translated, "Well, that escalated quickly." Orbs shrank to pinpricks before
enlarging, and Katie began sputtering and hacking frantically as magic seized
her throat and crawled into it via her split grin. Seconds later, her throat
grew in size, akin to a pearl forming in a clam at a breakneck pace.
When the magic grew to the size of a small boulder, she violently spat it back
out to find that, somehow, it turned into a hissing cat that was soaking wet
with saliva and green flecks of blood. Katie hissed back in disapproval,
earning a swipe across the snout from sharpened claws for her trouble. The cat
vanished in a puff of smoke thereafter.
"Brakalz meriitoulk," Katie hissed, turning her narrowing orbs onto Discord.
The machine beeped out a swift, "Very funny." She turned to it when it started
fizzing and crackling, a brow raising up as it trembled with the aid of some
unseen force. The screen cracked, unfurled in a manner reminiscent of flower
petals, and spewed out a sea of bits that engulfed her without warning.
All that stuck out of the bit pile was a lone, raised pale hoof that twitched
just seconds after the ludicrous amount of coins settled and ceased spilling
forth. Discord turned to Katie and guffawed as the raised hoof started flailing
about desperately, trying to find something solid to grab onto only to instead
make the bits shift about to hinder her attempt. "What's the matter, Pennybags?
Got a little loose change?" Discord chortled prior to turning back to Luna.
"So, fill me in here, Moon Pie. I haven't got all day."
Luna tried to keep from scowling, but could not seize her facial muscles fast
enough to prevent her nostrils from flaring. Her horn glowed and she grappled
Discord's head briefly with her magic, and turned her attention to the pile of
money as soon as the first flash from her uninvited guest faded. The coins
rattled when the magic snagged them, prior to shining brilliantly and then
bursting into a waterfall of multi-hued and glittering confetti.
The confetti drifted down, though only in a smaller pile than when it was bits.
Katie still had her hoof raised, though without the extra weight pinning it
down she managed to snag the edge of the table with it and hauled herself back
up with a groan. "Remind me not to get on Discord's bad side ever again," she
hissed.
"Well… this ought to be interesting," Discord cooed, turning to look at
everyone that was already assembled. "What's in it for me?"
That utterance caused Twilight and Fluttershy to exchange a nervous glance, in
addition to making Shining sigh in exasperation. Rainbow shook her head and
muttered "Greeeeaaaat." Applejack's eyes shifted between Discord and her
friends. Zecora and Rarity donned matching frowns. Katie's brow slanted and her
wings snapped open. Spike lifted a brow and did nothing more. Silence held,
though for the span of a few passing seconds.
"If you want," Luna began, ears folding back as she spoke, "I can let you see
into our guests' dreams. They're… quite chaotic, to put it mildly."
Discord spun around to Luna, his eyes widening. "Come again? Are my ears
working right?" he asked.
Luna slowly nodded. "Yes. With the exception of a present third party. Her
dreams are… now tranquil," she replied, taking a scant few seconds to lock eyes
with Katie.
Discord donned a toothy grin again. "So long as I don't harm them, right?" he
asked.
Luna nodded, turning to Discord again. "That's the only requirement, really.
They won't let me into their dreams, but perhaps you could manage it. Miss
Windwood's dreams… are the most disturbing of the lot."
"That reminds me… Luna, I stumbled upon a juicy tidbit, and I didn't even need
to do anything," Katie began, ears rising to stand as she spoke. Holding her
gaze as Luna turned to her, she started to elaborate, "It involves the twins…"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Hours passed, and in the early afternoon sunlight the wings of the Lavender
Spirit and Scylla were beating in sync, though oddly the latter had been moved
to sit next to the former.
In addition to that, this time however, there were special metal-and-wood seats
with thick leather straps sporting steel buckles attached. Said seats were
installed in the former's storage room. On top of that, the boxes of wood were
replaced by those crafted of some sort of metal, likewise strapped in right and
packing additional bolts all around the edges and corners for reinforcements.
The seats also sported leathery blue cushions, the sort that was sturdy and
uncomfortable in most circumstances to lean against, in addition to gripping
rails, which Twilight and her company were in the process of testing out.
Spike sat in one, nestled with Angel and Owlowiscious at either side of him and
the jeweled box under all of their rumps. All three of them, plus said box,
were strapped in nice and tight. Harry, instead of a simple seat, had more of a
cylinder of steel with enough space cut out for him to enter, exit, and overall
contend with. It had more firm cushions all around including top and bottom,
also further affixed with gripping rails as thick as a pony's front leg.
If anything it looked more like he was in a bizarre prototype escape pod, or
perhaps some sort of carnival ride. He was likewise strapped in, growling out
something in bear-tongue that held an air of curiosity.
Observing this with a critical eye over things was Princess Celestia and a
small batch of no more than a half-dozen golden-armored unicorn guards who bore
saddlebags on their backs. "Are the new additions to the airship… sturdy?" she
asked, looking at Harry the bear in particular. "I do not trust the…"
"The measures we took to accommodate the bear safely?" one of the guards piped
up.
"Yes, that," Celestia replied with a nod. She turned to Spike, Angel, and
Owlowiscious. "And shouldn't they have separate seats?"
"We tested smaller seats. They proved too flimsy," replied a second guard.
"It's the best we could manage."
Celestia nodded glumly. "Well, if it works…" she muttered under her breath. Her
eyes fell onto Twilight, and she assumed a warm, almost motherly smile as soon
as their eyes locked. Her grin lingered for a second, only to drop as soon as
she opened her mouth again. "Are you certain you can do this?" she asked
sincerely. "This is your tallest order yet."
Twilight nodded, her face hardening. "I've faced Nightmare Moon, Sombra,
Chrysalis and Discord. I'll tackle whatever Fantasia throws at me, up to and
including Lance if need be," she replied, her voice firm and resolute. Her tone
brokered no argument; her nervousness, if any, was not present. She did not
break out a single drop of sweat, or exude an aura of fear.
Celestia nodded and turned to the others, finding that they too donned similar
expressions. Even Spike, Angel, and Owlowiscious seemed to give off an air of
unwavering determination. "Very well then…" Celestia murmured, almost in a
saddened tone as she turned to Shining Armor. "I bid you all a safe trip." With
that, her horn glowed, and in a golden flash of light she vanished from sight.
One of the half-dozen guards spoke up, "So, er… how are the seats?"
Shining dropped his firm face, giving a heavy sigh in its place. "I'd say it
needs a little more cushioning," he answered, his horn glowing. His magic
grappled the straps on him and fiddled with the buckle, before it clicked and
parted in two pieces to let him lean out to then land on all fours. He trotted
forward once he was sure that he had solid footing, and one by one Twilight and
her companions did the same. In unison, they trotted to the guards.
One of the guards immediately lifted a front hoof up, over, and back before
using it to open the flap of his saddlebag. "Shining, sir, the Fantasians gave
me this…" His horn glowed and his blue-tinted magic grappled an object that
prominently protruded out of the opened bag prior to pulling it out, revealing
it to be a small portable radio. "This device. One of them said something about
communications."
Almost as soon as he said that, the radio began emitting static, interspersed
with murmuring voices. "Scylla to Spirit, do you copy?" one masculine voice
asked as Shining plucked the radio in his magic, causing all the other voices
on the other end to hush immediately.
"Shining Armor speaking," Shining sighed. "Lance, is that you?"
"Yes," Lance snorted on the other end. "Are you ready to launch yet?"
"Just about," Shining replied, briefly turning back to the assembled guards.
Giving them no more than a stern glare, the six nodded, bowed, and quickly
filed out of the modified storage room in short order. "Was doing some last-
minute checkups, since the Spirit's storage room had gotten some new additions
for safety and such."
"Good deal. I'll launch, you follow," Lance replied in a slightly pleased tone,
the sort that gave Shining the distinct impression that he was nodding on his
end. Shining trotted to the exit of the storage room with the others in tow,
carting the radio in his magical grip along the way as they left and found
themselves in the lounge. The Lavender Spirit lurched a little, and out of the
nearest window the lot could see the palace seemingly drift downward by a few
inches.
"I have no idea why they decided to move our ship next to yours, but whatever
works I guess," Matt's voice grumbled from the other side of the radio.
"Must've been to keep thieves out of it with guard patrols," Lance stated,
presumably in reply to Matt. "I'll have to ask how they managed to move it
later." As that utterance was made, Shining caught sight of the Scylla shifting
and slowly, very slowly inching away from the Spirit. A few minutes passed, and
all within the lounge watched intently as the Scylla weaved around and took
point, ascending into the air and headed right towards Fantasia.
No less than a minute later, the Lavender Spirit lurched again and followed
suit, giving way to the sight of Canterlot and the mountain it sat upon
shrinking little by little. Silence fell as the two airships flew further and
further away from the city, almost languidly at that.
It was only seconds before a voice on the other end of the radio broke the
silence, this one sounding vaguely like Katie, "How are you lot holding up?"
"Doing good so far. Though… I feel the need to check on the guards in the lower
deck," Shining answered.
"Might wanna do so now, then. Reading Lance's large screen… thingy, and
according to it we're approaching the... the space between Mythos and Fantasia
fast," Katie warned, prompting Shining to turn to a particular corner of the
lounge that was beset by a small table.
"It's called a monitor, you pale twat," Lance hissed as Shining trotted to the
corner with the table, radio still in magic. He lifted a hoof and shoved the
table to one side once he was within reach, though not too abruptly so as to
keep it upright. Doing that enabled him to catch sight of a small metal ring
hooked to a rectangular metal post, which stuck out in amidst the carpet like a
sore hoof. Around it, a thin line was cut into the fabric, forming a square
just big enough that he could stand in it and still have room for another pony
to join him.
"You expect me to be as technologically-addlebrained as you, General Smartass?"
Katie snarked on the other end, her tone giving off an air of irritation.
Shining rolled his eyes at the way the conversation on the other end was taking
a turn for the south, resisting the urge to chip in with his two bits as he
snagged the ring in his magic without a second thought.
As he pulled and found himself lifting up a trapdoor with the square section of
carpet cut and glued to it, he stared down another staircase, albeit one facing
toward him instead of away on its downward path. "Honestly, I wouldn't,
considering I heard you got a marble column to the face. I'm almost wondering
if you suffered a few concussions or even brain damage, you brittle skeleton,"
Lance retorted, the tiniest hint of amusement in his tone.
"Says the bald-backed stallion who can't fly worth shit!" Katie hissed in
return, her utterance giving way to a shuffling of hooves. Shining sighed and
made for the new staircase, carefully cantering down and out of sight of his
sister and her friends. As he slowly descended, the sound of gears turning and
chains clinking filled the air, interspersed with crackles of magic and a
pumping of pistons that echoed softly at first.
"Says the wraith who can't use her horn for even a smidgen of a second!" Lance
shot back, his voice rising a little as Shining continued to descend. Shining
started to imagine the two, in the midst of their argument, glaring at each
other without backing down or faltering in the slightest. He turned the dial of
the radio slowly, turning the volume of the shouting down as it continued to
rise. Amidst the already-present noise, he couldn't hear the arguing now.
He cantered on a few more steps, stopping upon finding himself in a room with a
great big engine that was easily as tall as Celestia, thrice as wide as her
full wingspan, and roughly twenty times as heavier if the sheer size was any
indication. It pumped pistons frantically, turning gears and pulling chains as
much as it was able, tightening and loosening springs at its leisure. The whole
construct glowed with varicolored runes, pulsing with pure power.
He could've sworn he caught sight of a carefully groomed blond tail retreat
behind the machine, but a mana pulse that occurred that very same moment made
him question what he saw. Shining shrugged it off and turned to look at what
was beside the massive engine.
All around it guards worked at some massive oars, all of them unicorns. Shining
saw a few still sporting saddlebags, though between them he caught sight of an
orange pair of wings that stood out very starkly, further accentuated by royal
purple armor that gleamed like crystal. The form retracted from between the
ponies and trotted down the row, only stopping once his blue eyes locked with
Shining's own. "Uh… I… I'm here of my own volition. I came by train."
Shining smiled at the stallion's remark. "I understand, Flash. Gotta have
somepony keep a close eye on progress," he chirped.
"Oh yeah? Try channeling magic through your hooves and get back to me on that,
you overgrown dodo!" Katie yelled from the radio, though now her voice was
barely above a whisper thanks to the ongoing activity.
"You itchin' for a fight, shortstock? I'll pin you flat on your back the very
instant your soft hooves even attempt to punch me!" Lance responded in kind,
his utterance punctuated by the sound of a stomping and subsequently grinding
hoof that scraped against metal. The sound of something crunchy being chewed on
barely reached Shining's ears, and against the machinery and activity going on,
he had to strain his ears to hear it.
He rolled his eyes, more at the radio's transmissions than at Flash's presence.
He noticed that Flash was staring at the radio. From it, some sort of
incomprehensible shouting, followed by hooves scraping, emanated with a heated
fervor. "Don't mind it; it makes all sorts of noise," Shining said in a
reassuring tone, making it vanish in a flash of light shortly thereafter.
Flash nodded. He took a moment to stretch his wings. "I wonder what Fantasia's
like," he murmured.
Shining's eyes narrowed so slightly that Flash didn't seem to notice it. "I
heard some pretty awful things about it," he replied somberly.
"As have I," another voice interjected, garnering Shining and Flash's
attention. They turned to the machine, only for the latter to bow and the
former to gawk as they saw none other than Prince Blueblood standing next to
the construct. He lifted a hoof and looked at Shining Armor specifically. "And
before you ask, I have had a long couple of weeks to think about this entire…
debacle, as it were."
Shining shook his head to make sure he wasn't seeing things. Alas, his eyes
failed to deceive him. "What are you getting at?" he asked.
Blueblood's eyes narrowed slightly. "To put it mildly, I have wanted to see
exactly why the Fantasians spoke ill of their own homeworld." His raised hoof
dropped and his expression hardened. "Their talk of how the locals over there
don't embrace cutie marks was another flag; I simply wanted to come to see if
that was true."
"Well, you might have to get your hooves dirty…" muttered Flash, who rose to
stand only to flinch as Blueblood's seemingly cold gaze zeroed in on him.
"Of that, I am aware," Blueblood replied, almost scowling at the mere thought.
"But haven't our Fantasian… envoys done that already? The way they spoke and
trotted in with cloaks and masks, and unveiled a series of most unfortunate
wounds, made me realize something."
Shining's brow rose. "That 'something' being…?" he pressed.
"What if they were forced to trot around like that back at their homes? Hiding
behind cloth and porcelain just to get by? What if we have to do likewise,
despite becoming diplomats ourselves?" Blueblood retorted, his voice firm and
level. "What if we have to hide our cutie marks? We don't know what we're
getting into, Shining Armor. For all we know, it could be a do-or-die system
over there; the only clue pointing to that would be the presence of their
wraith, and that's going by when they initially arrived."
Shining's eyes narrowed as he started to consider Blueblood's point. "Any
evidence against the 'do-or-die system' that you suspect?" he asked.
Blueblood solemnly shook his head. "They had hardly anything to suggest the
contrary," he replied, his tone equally as glum.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Lance and Katie brawled in the pilot room as everyone watched with a few
popcorn bowls at the ready, with the exception of NoLegs, who had taken the
steering wheel to keep the Scylla from going off-kilter. Katie kept throwing
punches at Lance before backing off with a nimble buzz of her wings, hardly
giving Lance so much as a chance to strike back.
Or at least, that's how it started and then lasted for ten minutes before the
tables flipped. The brawl was pretty one-sided after that, with Lance towering
above Katie, his front hooves clasping her neck and keeping her pinned to the
floor flat on her back. Pale back hooves feebly attempted to kick at her
adversary's gut, but failed simply because they always came just inches shy of
fully reaching.
"Do you concede yet, you overgrown gnat?" Lance hissed with a wicked grin on
his muzzle, only further accentuated by a dangerous gleam in his red eyes. "Do
you agree to stop this spectacle you have the audacity to call a fight?"
"I give! I give!" Katie wheezed, orbs having shrunk to pinpricks as she kept
desperately kicking. Her rear legs fell slack after a few seconds, aches
already running rampant through her nerves, further flaring thanks to hooves
cutting off her air supply.
Only when she completely stilled did Lance retract his hooves, nimbly backing
off a few paces to give her a bit of space to stagger back upright. Katie
turned to regard him as she rose, shivering upon finding that he still had that
dastardly grin on his muzzle. His eyes narrowed to thin crimson slits, almost
daring her to try something else. She merely stiffened in response.
"If you do find yourself in my army's ranks… I'll expect you to be standing as
you are now," Lance hissed in a no-nonsense, deathly serious tone of voice that
was only offset by his seemingly fixed smile.
Something about the way he stared—Katie could not pinpoint what in that
moment—made her legs buckle slightly and her tail quiver like a rattle. She
forced herself to stiffen again, yet could not stop her ears from giving the
faintest twitch. "Y-yes sir," she squeaked.
Lance nodded. "Good," he replied tersely, and he left it at that. He turned to
the steering wheel and trotted to it, leaving Katie to slump back to the floor
so fast her legs spread out from under her form first chance they got.
Fenrir looked at Katie's prone form, eyes wide and blinking. "That was… a very
interesting turn of events," he stated.
Sarah helped herself to some popcorn, making sure to chew and swallow first
before addressing Lance as he reclaimed the steering wheel, "Would you hit a
mare?"
"Only in self-defense, and you saw Katie strike first. Had it been you, I'd
have pinned you to the wall instead, Sarah," Lance replied, giving Sarah little
more than a glance over his shoulder.
"I tried hitting him once, with a good buck to the face. He merely turned me
flat on my ass and pinned me until I stopped," Anna snorted, garnering a squawk
from Sarah as she took a helping of popcorn for herself. Turning past her
sister, Sarah could see that Matt and Natalie both had a front hoof raised.
"We were there when it happened," Matt added with a nod.
"Just on standby, in case things got really out of hoof. But all in all, we
didn't need to intervene," Natalie chirped, frowning slightly.
"I had the popcorn," Armin piped up, leaning over so Sarah could see him at
Natalie's side. He wore a toothy grin on his face, his eyes glimmering in
mirth. "It's always amusing to see General Boltwing get into fights, as long as
I'm not on the short end of that stick."
"Why does daddy fight?" Maria questioned, looking at Armin with a small,
innocent frown on her face.
Armin turned to her and shrugged, popping some more popcorn in his mouth with
his magic. "You're asking the froth thuy," he replied through his mouthful. He
gestured to Lance with a hoof. "Fate until the airfip lands in Fanfapia, then
ask," he added.
"Your…" Alexander lifted a talon to his beak in a futile attempt to stifle a
snicker as he turned to Maria, "Your daddy fights because it's more or less his
job to keep order in the army. He has to keep his troops in line, after all."
Maria turned to Alexander, still frowning. "Including mommy?" she asked.
Alexander snickered into his claw again, and all he could do to answer was nod
very slowly. When Maria continued to stare at him expectantly, he took a few
seconds to gather himself and let his talon drop from his beak. "Though… their
quibbles are more… ah, civilized as it were," he said.
"You say 'civilized,' I say 'explosive!'" Lance chimed in from the steering
wheel, his retort accompanied by a meow from NoLegs.
"Same thing," Alexander chortled, a grin forming on his beak. An hour or two
passed in silence after that, and all eyes fell onto Lance during that time.
Matt used his magic to stow away the popcorn bowls and any leftovers, and he
shifted his forelegs with a hint of nervousness, only betrayed by his brow
twitching into a slant.
Lance looked at the monitor before him, eyeing it carefully as Fantasia came
closer and closer, greeting him with a great white splotch roughly as big as a
good sixth of Equestria itself. After checking the vitals in the corner, which
gave him yellow bars instead of vibrant green, he sighed. "Get to the seats,
everyone," he warned, his voice low. He spread his wings out from under the
cloak he wore, the thin digits reaching intently towards the keyboard.
"But we're not in terminal velocity yet…" Anna trailed off, glancing at
everyone else before turning back to Lance with a worried frown on her face.
"Right?"
"Not yet, but we're about to reach it very soon," Lance replied, using his bare
wings to type on the keyboard, the digits moving deftly and fluidly from key to
key. He waited until everyone else filed out of the control room before he
stopped typing, turning his eye onto the corner of the screen opposite of the
vital signs.
He found a small black box bearing the words "Incoming call," though from who
it didn't say. He typed onto the keys again, and static filled the room for a
second before melting into silence. "By Godcat's teats, General, what took
you?! I've been trying to call you for the last few weeks!" a masculine voice
snapped, one accentuated by a low buzzing sound.
"Delta Unit? I didn't expect you to call me so suddenly," Lance replied,
feigning ignorance. "I thought I told you and the rest of the troops that it
would be at least a week before I got back from Mythos."
"And?" the voice on the other end queried, an air of impatience at his tone.
"How'd it go?"
"Overall, so-so. I managed to exhume some interesting tidbits… and the
Mythonians that first dropped by are back with me and my little expedition
party for diplomatic purposes," Lance replied with a snort.
"Same ones, including the psycho who busted the elder of Frostbite's head?" the
voice queried.
"Same ones. Including the psycho, and a hoofful of new arrivals," Lance stated,
frowning as the patch of white grew bigger and bigger. "Gonna take them for a
joyride around Fantasia and then head back to the base, though now I'll remain
in contact with you."
"Good, because some of the troops were getting antsy about your vanishing act,"
the voice snarked. "Wait, new arrivals?"
"Yeah. I'll introduce them proper when I get them to the base," Lance answered,
resisting the urge to sigh as the Scylla trembled. He folded his wings sharply.
"Cover your ears, Delta. Just warning you now."
"I'm picking up your ship and the Mythonian vessel on the radar. Yeah, I'll
stuff chitil in my eardrums. You owe me a mission, by the way," the voice
replied in earnest, followed by the sound of something squelching and
squeaking.
"Once I touch down, why don't you explore the area in and around Frostbite
Haven? Last I checked, there was a temple of some sort there. I'm headed there
anyway, so we'll meet soon," Lance stated, this time letting off a heavy sigh.
"From where did you hear about a temple in the middle of buttfuck nowhere?" the
voice asked, the squeaking and squelching coming to a halt as he spoke.
"The damned wraith I found before leaving," Lance replied with another sigh.
"She said she'd heard that from someone else that went gibberish on her." The
Scylla shook again. Lance braced himself, clutching the steering wheel tightly
in his forelegs as the white splotch grew even bigger, to the point it almost
entirely overtook his screen. Gravity began shifting in that moment, and
abruptly at that, but he wasn't caught off-guard by it this time.
A small smile crossed his muzzle as the ship trembled again.
***** Chapter L- Intuition *****
Airships bearing predominantly-changeling motifs, such as tattered wings and a
single-headed bust sporting a curved horn paired with fearsome fangs, hovered
incessantly a few miles around and above the region of snow. Changelings in
military uniforms and coats watched from the decks, using rails for support and
leverage as they scanned for anything that wasn't white and pure. This search
lasted for some thirty minutes, and nothing turned up.
On one of the airships such a changeling with purple wings, dog tags stylized
in the shape of a triangle, and an extra horn growing out of the top of his
muzzle snorted. His lavender eyes narrowed slightly, his dark grey long coat
billowing in a passing breeze.
Another changeling, one with what looked like a mottled leaf-green hood growing
out of its skull and matching wings sprouting from its back with a pair of
elytra covering them, stood next to the one with the extra horn. "Major Rhinoc,
is it just me, or have we been had?" it asked in a feminine tone.
"I think the General got had. He told me something he himself heard from a
fucking wraith," Rhinoc scoffed, nostrils flaring again. He turned to the
changeling with the hood, almost eying her carefully. "Sergeant Cassida, we
might not find anything at all out here." He lifted a holey hoof and gestured
to the white below. "Except maybe Frostbite Haven."
Cassida scowled, her hood contorting slightly inward as she donned a very firm
frown. "You mean the most recent town of filly-fuckers the General came across
personally?" she hissed, her hood rippling with her low and angry tone.
Rhinoc nodded mutely, turning away from Cassida and to the landscape below. His
ears twitched, and for a split-second the horn on his forehead gave off just
the faintest glow of deep violet before it faded. "No love here… just as empty
as it looks," he grumbled.
Cassida looked up at the dull, grey sky that hung heavily with clouds just in
time to see another airship dart past the one she was on from above. Oddly, the
vessel descended shortly thereafter, slowing down as it came to land, and she
followed it with her eyes before noticing that it had an extra pair of gryphon-
like wings. "Is that what I think it is?" she queried as another airship with
fish motifs flew past and landed a few feet away, to the left of the first.
"Only one way to find out," Rhinoc snorted, his wings spreading as he turned to
Cassida again. "Keep this ship afloat while I go down there to see what all the
hubbub's about." Without waiting for a response he jumped the railing and fell
from the ship, only stopping himself about halfway down to the ground with a
furious buzzing of his wings. He flew to the two just-landed ships, likewise
descending lower and lower as twin gangplanks opened from the sides facing
outward and landed with snow-flinging thuds.
He paused in his advance as two groups filed out of the airships, trotted
around behind them, and converged on the spot. A minute after that, two more
forms trotted hastily out of the Scylla to catch up with the others, and one
was adorned with distinct black garbs. Rhinoc flew to the gathering to see what
the fuss was about, landing just in time to see Lance and Matt join the others.
All eyes, foreigner and friend alike, fell on him in that moment.
"My, you are a sharply-dressed changeling. Your purple eyes only further
accentuate your uniform, quite fabulously might I add," Rarity chimed with a
grin, her utterance causing Rhinoc to flinch and blush.
He opened his mouth to reply, but Maria cut him off, "Daddy, who's that?"
Rhinoc blinked and turned to the foal, his jaw dropping when he saw that she
was pointing at him with a talon and looking at Lance in one sitting.
"Long story," Lance stated with a roll of his eyes when Rhinoc turned to regard
him with his face turning a tinge of blue. "She's… unofficially adopted."
Natalie gave a snicker at the utterance, grinning even as she got a sidelong
glare in her direction.
"Where's she from?" Rhinoc asked, turning to Maria.
"Let's not discuss that. Have you found anything in this frozen hellhole yet?"
Lance replied, watching as Rhinoc turned to him with a shake of the head.
"Only started the search in the last half-hour, sir," Rhinoc said, assuming a
frown. "Where is the wraith who told you about a Godcat-forsaken temple?"
Katie tottered forward, wordlessly lifting a hoof and nudging Rhinoc in the
foreleg with it once she was within reach. He turned to her and she looked up,
and for a few seconds silence lingered in the freezing air. Rhinoc blinked
once, twice, thrice, yet his eyes didn't deceive him. His horn glowed again and
his violet aura seized her, though it did nothing else to her that anyone
present could see.
But a sickening feeling settled deep within his body the longer his magic held
her, making his stomach form into tight knots and his head start pounding in
pain. It faded in seconds, yet the flashes of agony he felt only lingered
thereafter. "Holy hell in a hoofbasket," Rhinoc muttered, turning away from
Katie and to Lance yet again. "Sir, I think you've found a… this is the first
time I've seen and sensed a changeling devoid of love."
Lance slowly lifted a brow. He lifted a hoof and gestured to Katie with it.
"Devoid of love? Are you suggesting she eats something other than love, if
she's even able to do so?" he asked.
Blueblood decided to interject before Rhinoc could answer, "Pardon my
forwardness, but where is the nearest town, General?"
Rhinoc turned to Blueblood and sighed. "Nearest one in the immediate area is
abandoned and consists of igloo huts," he stated in a flat voice, garnering
Blueblood's attention as he spoke. "Second-closest… I think would be Whitefall
Town."
"Whitefall?" Blueblood parroted, turning to Lance with a slight frown on his
muzzle. "Is it anything like this 'abandoned space consisting of igloo huts' at
all?"
Lance turned to meet Blueblood's gaze, promptly shaking his head as soon as
their eyes locked. "Almost nothing like… the abandoned igloo… huts," he
replied, his brow slanting a bit.
"That abandoned place is now very likely a mausoleum anyway. All the better, as
far as I am concerned," Katie piped up, waving a hoof dismissively as the two
stallions turned to look at her in unison. "That place was as sour and bitter
as a bunch of screeching old nags with nothing better to do with their time
other than snub the next generation."
Rhinoc grimaced. "And entirely devoid of love," he added as an aside. He turned
to Lance again. "How long do you want me and the rest of Delta Unit hovering
around here?"
Lance pursed his lips, and for a few seconds he was silent. "A day or two, if
you don't find anything. A week, should you or someone else in the unit happen
upon something," he answered. "After that, head to the base. I'll catch up with
you there and you can give me the full report."
Rhinoc nodded and lifted his foreleg to give him a quick salute. "Yes sir."
With that, he spread his wings and took off in a furious buzz, rocketing
towards his vessel with purpose. This left the groups to themselves, and for a
minute silence hung in the air as Shining regarded the platoon of airships
already hovering about.
"I'll tell you what… your changelings are more organized than those of
Chrysalis," Shining piped up, turning to Lance with a slight frown on his face.
When Lance turned to him with a brow raised, he elaborated, "Instead of just a
huge swarm going after everything at once, yours have airships and what I
assume to be specialized groups."
"Sounds to me this Chrysalis you speak of lacked sorely in tact," Lance
snorted, garnering a nod from Shining.
"And foresight." Shining smiled. "Now, then, shall we head to Whitefall?"
Lance smiled back. "After we discuss whether or not we'll sleep in the airships
again, and how often," he retorted.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
A small village with no more than forty houses of brick walls and wooden
shingles sat at the very far southern end of the tundra, marked by a forest of
pine trees growing all around it. The sky was filled with dense grey clouds,
which released snow onto the small town in a gentle flurry.
Some unicorn stallions, in addition to a gray-maned and speckled, hulking earth
pony with very furry legs and ice blue eyes, were out and about. Instead of
making snowponies or shoveling snow aside, they boasted leather armor and steel
swords sheathed in to scabbards, and all of them were patrolling diligently
about a small altar that was no more than a withered tree stump adorned with
tattered paper talismans. The altar boasted a hoof-sized, star-shaped blue
jewel with a diamond-shaped vein of gold in its center resting atop it that was
kept out in the open.
The ponies paused and turned their gazes skyward when two airships sailed
overhead at a sluggish pace, descending until they vanished behind the cold
canopy of the surrounding forest. The earth pony drew his sword with a fur-
laden hoof, wordlessly exchanging glances with the other assembled ponies. "You
lot, stay here. I'll investigate," the earth pony ordered.
One of the smaller unicorns, one with a red coat and a beige mane, rolled his
eyes. "Yeah, yeah, sure. We'll do what ya say, you shitty excuse for an in-
law," he snarked.
The earth pony turned to glare at the red-coated unicorn, eyes narrowing to
chilling slits. "I beg your pardon?" he hissed in a low voice that froze the
pony who made the statement.
Another unicorn, this one with a beige coat and dark brown mane, donned a smug
smile. He turned to the red-coated stallion. "You're just mad Bartholomew here
did your sister and married her, Andrew," he chortled. "I wonder what your
family reunions are like."
Bartholomew sighed and crammed the handle of his sword into his mouth before
cantering towards the pine forest at a brisk pace. Crossing the makeshift
border between town and wood, he heard Andrew raising a fuss, though about what
faded with rapidly-increasing distance. But that wasn't his concern, let alone
something as immediate as two airships touching down somewhere in the forest.
His mind whirred about, presenting several dozen scenes as to what the arrival
of the vessels meant. He gripped his sword tighter, taking no more than a
second to blow out a huff of air through his nostrils as more vivid and
disturbing imagery came to the forefront of his thoughts. Five minutes passed
as he trotted through the wood, and the only sound he heard was the crunching
of snow beneath his hooves.
Ten minutes after that, the world seemingly stood in silence, with him being
the only soul daring enough to press on and break it. The air itself grew
colder, and the snow started to fall in heavier clumps that were still light
enough to gently drift down. Light grey mana pulsed faintly from his hooves as
he took each step forward, barely concealed by the white surrounding him.
Fifteen minutes passed in short order, and only then did Bartholomew stop dead
in his tracks.
His ears twitched as he caught a very faint fervor of voices, and he scowled as
he realized one of them was hollow. "You sure travelling on hoof is a good
idea? It's gonna be a bit before we get to Whitefall," the hollow voice said.
"A wraith... absolutely no other creature on this Godcat-forsaken planet has
such an empty voice. This ought to be a challenge," Bartholomew muttered to
himself through the handle of his sword, just low enough that he could hear
himself. He raised a hoof, but it halted in mid-air when another voice broke
through the forest, this one slightly louder and masculine.
"Only for you, if you didn't just fly into town with those puny shredded wings
of yours. I doubt your legs could carry you for more than ten miles before
giving out," the masculine voice snarked.
Another voice piped up, also masculine, "You would too, Lance, if you were a
trotting twig like she is. Give her a break."
The hoof dropped in an instant, and Bartholomew's scowl only deepened. He
clenched the hilt of his weapon harder, certain that he would leave visible
marks in it before the day was out. One second he was still, and the next he
took off towards the voices in such a frenzied gallop that snow all but flew
behind him in his wake. He could feel portions of the earth itself shake as he
rushed headlong into what he assumed would be trouble, only to find himself
airborne as a hoof snagged on an errant root of a pine tree and caused him to
tumble helplessly into a clearing.
He found himself staring skyward, flat on his back and with his sword no longer
in his mouth. Snow whirred around him as the two airships he saw minutes ago
rose into the air with flapping wings. Only when they ascended past the canopy
and took off did the snow cease flying in all directions.
"Look!" the hollow voice from earlier exclaimed before, though only now
Bartholomew could definitely make out a slight feminine hint. "A tour guide!"
Sluggishly, and with the realization that he was no longer armed fueling him
onward, he rolled over and stood on shaky legs that threatened to buckle.
Finding himself facing the trees and his sword as he stood, he gave a sigh of
resignation and almost haltingly turned himself around.
The sight before him made his lower jaw drop instantly. There was an entire
ensemble standing before him, and among them, a speckled face like his own also
sported a dropped jaw. "Matt? … is that you?" Bartholomew questioned in a low
voice that only held shock.
"Dad?" Matt replied, his eyes widening. "H-how… I-I thought…" Words failed him
as Bartholomew bumbled forward and wrapped his front legs around his neck,
pulling him into a hug that was somewhere on the scale between tight and
outright crushing. Matt returned the hug, and after a few seconds they broke
the embrace and stared each other in the face. Apart from minor differences
between them, it was almost as if they stared into a mirror head-on.
Katie decided to toss in her two bits, garnering the attention of the stallions
and ruining the moment in the process, "Alright tour guide, can you take us to
Whitefall please?"
Bartholomew took a few seconds to size Katie up, and he frowned with a slightly
slanted brow when he realized just how puny she was before him. He turned his
head this way and that to do a headcount, scowling briefly enough at Lance that
only a few present could see the quick-second contortion of his face, before he
turned back to Katie and sighed. "As long as you behave." He snorted when a
drifting clump of snow landed on his snout, making it fly off.
"Can't do much as I am. Alright, I'll be good," Katie replied with a shrug.
Blueblood piped up, "I say, you are… ill-equipped, considering the weather out
in these parts. Do you not have enough funds for something a little more…
decent?"
Bartholomew turned to Blueblood and shook his head. "This is the only suit of
armor they had that'll fit my body. At least, until the armor-forgers can make
another set," he replied in a solemn voice.
Blueblood's eyes widened, and his jaw quivered. "Is the issue that horrendous
here? H-how would you be able to motivate the forgers here?" he asked, aghast.
Bartholomew's shoulders sagged slightly, and he huffed through flared nostrils.
"I sometimes ask myself that. Haven't found a good answer," he stated.
"Would a good bonfire on their tails be a decent-enough motivator?" Natalie
suggested, making Bartholomew jerk in place before turning to her to find her
horn already alight and flickering with orange flames.
The flames died when Bartholomew sent Natalie a firm glare once he had gathered
himself. "No; if anything, they'd kick you out of town," he responded coolly.
"And you remember the last time you set somepony's tail alight?"
Natalie donned a small frown and nodded. Katie looked at the two for a few
seconds, orbs darting from one to the other and back again. Her mind then
whirred, and it took just one second for something to click in. "You adopted
Natz, didn't you?" she asked, looking pointedly at Bartholomew.
"Yes," Natalie sighed, turning to Katie with shoulders sagging slightly. "I'm a
foster foal, but I'd rather not get into the specifics."
Katie turned to Natalie and her orbs dimmed momentarily. Slowly, fractionally,
a pale brow climbed up her forehead until it threatened to connect with the
base of her horn-stubble. "And you're also freaking crystal…" Katie added,
carefully.
"My lips are zipped," Natalie replied, and to emphasize her point, her horn
glowed and seized her own muzzle before a zipper materialized over her mouth
and seemingly fused with it. With the odd accoutrements in place, her mouth
sealed shut in an instant. Her form then dulled until it lost its luster
entirely, thanks to another quick flash of magic.
Katie's raised brow tabled instantaneously. She turned to Blueblood and sighed.
"Am I dreaming?" she asked in a flat voice.
Blueblood shook his head. "You would not be the only one wishing you were doing
so at this time," he stated somberly. He turned to Bartholomew and raised a
hoof to gesture to where said ill-dressed pony tumbled in from. "To Whitefall,
if you please. We haven't all day."
NoLegs jumped on Bartholomew's back and mewed. Bartholomew snorted and turned
around, trotting a little ways ahead before stopping to pick up his sword and
put it back in its scabbard. He went on his way, his ears twitching when he
heard the sound of several hooves plodding and paws and claws scrabble along
through snow behind him. Ten minutes flew by wordlessly, and still the snow
continued to pile on in growing clumps that soon stuck to the heads of all.
"Matt, you do know wraiths are bad news, right?" Bartholomew asked, keeping his
back turned.
"The one with us can hardly do anything on her own. Talk, fly, trot, and maybe
poke if she felt like it—that's about it," Matt replied. He sighed as Katie
took flight for a few seconds, only to land on his back. "At most, she's a
hitchhiker. So we put up with her."
Bartholomew snorted, though whether in amusement or irritation, Matt couldn't
tell. "Oh, the other guards in Whitefall are gonna give me an earful tonight,"
he sighed. "Say, who are the other folks with you? I haven't seen such a well-
groomed coat, or a pink mane, or a diamond dog in a while."
"Vagabond," Fenrir answered tersely, averting his gaze to the side when he felt
something climbing up his arm. He turned his attention back forward when Angel
perched himself on his shoulder a few seconds later.
"Me and my friends, and my friends' pets… and Blueblood are Mythonian…" Pinkie
began, only to halt when her brain momentarily went blank. "Oh, what's the
word…" she grumbled after a few seconds, trying to rack her brain for an
answer.
"Diplomats," Blueblood finished for her.
"We took these guys for a trip in our country, so they're doing the same with
us. Fair's fair," Flash added, his response causing Bartholomew to halt and
turn to him with both brows raised.
"So, is this… a sort of…" Bartholomew began, his ears twitching.
"'You show me yours, I'll show you mine;' exactly what it sounds like. For
diplomatic reasons on their part," Katie answered, lifting a hoof to wave it
dismissively. Her hoof fell in Lance's direction and she added, "He started it.
His idea."
Bartholomew nodded and turned to Lance with a smile on his muzzle, but the
smile was so faint that it seemed more like a slight twitching of the lips. "Is
that true?" he asked in a calm tone.
"It's not entirely my fault," Lance began, briefly shifting his glance sidelong
to find Shining Armor smiling at him, "but yes, I have some burden of
responsibility on my withers."
"Mister, um… are cutie marks accepted in Whitefall?" Sarah interjected, again
causing Bartholomew to halt in his tracks and, this time, toss his head back. A
roarous laughter escaped the large stallion's mouth and echoed through the
surrounding area, though thankfully it lasted for no more than thirty seconds.
"Not many in Whitefall mind cutie marks all that much; you've got nothing to
worry about," Bartholomew replied once he'd calmed down. With that, he started
trotting once again, and this time he broke out into a brisk pace. Everyone
shifted gears and still trailed after him to keep up.
Sarah raised her brow, a skeptical frown on her face. She opened her mouth to
speak, only to close it when she noticed that the trees were starting to thin
out a little. Owlowiscious gave a hoot, and Sarah turned to him to find him
sitting on Spike's head, and said drake himself had hitched a ride on Twilight.
"What?" she asked.
Owlowiscious gave another hoot and turned to Sarah with a feathered brow
raised. He hooted again, eyes glinting in askance. "Need something?" Sarah
tried again, frown deepening as Owlowiscious nodded and lifted a wing to
gesture up ahead. She turned to the direction he pointed at and she found the
trees had finally gave way to the snow-covered village.
Andrew trotted up to Bartholomew and lifted a hoof to jab him in his barrel.
"What's this gaggle you have here?" he queried.
Bartholomew looked at Andrew and assumed a wide smile on his face. "Your nephew
and adopted niece are among them," he said in a smug tone.
Andrew rolled his eyes. "You're pulling my leg again, aren't…" Words died as
Bartholomew stepped aside to give Andrew and the other guards a full view of
the entire group he brought back with him. The other guards took one look and
burst out into laughter as Andrew's face drained of its color then and there.
"He brought guests to the family reunion!" the beige-coated stallion howled,
whereupon he promptly fell to the ground flat on his stomach. "Looks like
Barthy and Drew-colt are gonna have a full house tonight, boys!"
"What's a full house?" Maria asked, nudging Lance's foreleg with a talon. He
just stared straight ahead, seeing almost all of the guards assembled around
the altar losing themselves to an almost-maniacal laughing fit. The only
response he gave at that moment was a faint shiver as the air turned colder
still.
"You lot, follow me and ignore the peanut gallery," Bartholomew stated,
catching the attention of the group. He donned a smile and added, "I want you
lot to meet somepony."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
A little ways away from the altar, about no more than a half-mile away, stood a
grand church that boasted two stories and a bell tower slapped atop for good
measure. The sky started to darken, and the snow started coming down in even
bigger clumps as Bartholomew escorted the group right to it without so much as
a flinch in his step. At this point everyone shivered, though they pressed on
until their makeshift guide stopped at the church door.
Bartholomew lifted a hoof and tenderly tapped at the door three times. Though
'tenderly' in this case meant that each time his hoof connected with the door,
it still shook as if it were a rattle and pulsed with light grey mana that
faded as soon as the hoof dropped.
"Seems your pops is packing a lot of magic to accentuate his bulk. I'd hate to
be your mother if he gets heated," Katie whispered to Matt, who merely
responded with a dismissive snort and a twitch of an ear.
The door glowed with a soft blue pulse of mana and creaked open in an outward
swing, and Bartholomew backed off before it could hit him in the face. Standing
in the doorway was a tall and lanky unicorn mare dressed in a thick coat of
fur, and one that covered up most of her body save for a light purple face
accentuated by teal eyes.
She was one who could easily look Shining Armor in the eye, though her gaze
seemed fixed straight ahead. For a second she was still, and a faint breeze
touched a strand of blond mane that spilled out next to her horn before lifting
it ever so slightly.
Then she turned to Bartholomew and smiled. "Honey, isn't it a little early to
be off duty?" she asked.
"Snow's piling thick tonight. I don't think even my fur could help me withstand
the night. Besides, I brought guests, Eve," Bartholomew answered, smiling back.
He stepped aside again, giving Eve a wholesome view of what he was referring
to.
Eve soon spotted Matt and Natalie, and her smile only widened. She nodded to
them. "Come inside everyone." Her horn glowed a faint blue again, and her aura
grabbed Matt and Natalie by their horns. "Especially you two." Without any
further warning she dragged them both into the church with almost no effort on
her part, and for a few seconds she didn't seem to notice Katie clinging to
Matt's backside as she too went inside.
Bartholomew trotted in after them, going quickly enough for everyone else to
start filling inside. As soon as everyone was in the church, the door slammed
closed with a faint blue pulse, echoing through what the group found was a
dining room with eight tables scattered about with accompanying chairs and
thick table cloths.
Atop each table was a bunch of foodstuffs, mostly breads and vegetables with
some meats here and there. Behind the tables stood a hall lined with several
doors, culminating in a ladder at the very end that led upward. "Expecting the
rest of the guards to hole up here again?" Bartholomew asked, watching as Eve
dragged Matt and Natalie to a table and used some more of her magic to make
them sit down. Oddly, Katie wasn't anywhere in sight.
"Yes, though I wasn't expecting more than just the guards tonight," Eve
admitted with a sheepish grin, leaning over to nuzzle Natalie's cheek. Lance
watched her just sit there and take the nuzzle. "But our babies coming to visit
is fine too." She turned to the rest of her guests. "Sit down at the tables and
help yourselves; I'll be in the kitchen making some more food." With that, she
turned to the hall and merrily cantered down it before opening a door on the
left and vanishing behind it.
"This is… quaint," Anna remarked, turning to Matt and Natalie to find them
shrugging in return. She trotted to them and sat next to them, pausing when she
felt a back pastern brush up against something sharp and pointy. She leaned to
look under the table, fiddling with the cloth in the process to find Katie
hiding under it.
"I can't eat; it would be rude of me to sit at the table," Katie explained, her
snout wrinkling slightly.
"You're still at the table, technically," Anna pointed out with a frown.
"My point still stands," Katie huffed, eyes narrowing.
Anna rolled her eyes and leaned back prior to eyeballing the food before her.
Seeing Matt and Natalie taking plates with their hooves, she followed suit as
everyone else moved to sit down and do likewise. Soon the room was filled with
the sounds of eating, though after a few minutes Bartholomew noticed that Katie
was hiding, if only because her red tail poked out from under a table. "Take a
seat and grab a plate; you need it," he remarked.
"I'm literally unable to eat; I'll spare you the specifics on why," Katie
stated from her hidey-hole. She hissed when Anna nudged her with a back hoof,
only to stop when Matt followed suit and managed to sock her in the mouth in
such a way as to part her jaws. Only then did Katie comply, though she had to
remove the hoof that lodged itself in her maws before crawling up into a seat.
"This is very homely, if a little large and much," Zecora began, pausing to
bite into a rather large stem of cauliflower before swallowing. "I must say, I
wonder who owns this place and keeps it such."
"My wife does," Bartholomew answered, turning to Zecora. "She always prepares
before…" Words died when the door opened again, and in marched Andrew and the
other guards, all of whom were slightly blue in the face and partially covered
with snow. They filed in, and one used a warbling magic aura that was pink to
close the door behind them. "That," Bartholomew finished awkwardly.
"B-beat u-us to th-the grub a-again?" Andrew hissed through chattering teeth,
glowering at Bartholomew.
"Eve wanted us to park, so we parked," Bartholomew argued. He lifted a hoof and
gestured around. "Go ahead and sit, and get to know the guests some. You need
to warm up anyway, and your stomachs are first priority."
"They look like they barely escaped frostbite," Katie called from her seat, and
she made to speak further before Natalie reached over and jammed a hoof that
had a small biscuit into her mouth.
Grudgingly, Katie swallowed the biscuit whole—there wasn't much else she could
have done, as a blue field of magic sparked around her and held her to the
seat, coming from the same pony who shoveled the hoof into her face. The trip
the biscuit pulled off on its way down sent aches upon aches through her
system, and she shuddered as it stopped in her stomach and made it start
gurgling instantaneously.
Andrew and the guards complied with Bartholomew's request once the spectacle at
Katie's table died down, languidly shuffling over to the other assorted tables
and taking seats. They were silent as they took their plates and started
feeding themselves, though as they ate the food perked them up a bit, and the
blue tinge on their faces faded a little in response.
"I have to say, this is good chow," Flash piped up with a smile, holding a fork
in a hoof with a piece of cooked carrot impaled on its prongs.
Blueblood ate slowly, hesitating with each bite. Shining Armor looked at him.
"Not your usual fare?" he asked.
Blueblood nodded and took another bite, chewing and swallowing. "It is… decent,
though. I'll let it slide," he muttered in reply. His eyes fell on Lance, who
had more meat on his plate than greenery. "Is… is he alright? Ponies don't eat
meat…"
"Lance does. He's not a normal pony, Blueblood. He has an… allergy," Shining
murmured, frowning. "But at least he has some greens on his plate."
"Daddy, what's this?" Maria asked, using a fork to prod at a pile of mashed
potatoes.
"It's good for you, that's what. Try it; it's tasty," Lance replied, using his
fork to heft up a small bit of potatoes that sat on his own plate. He shoved it
into his mouth, and smiled as Maria picked up some of her own potatoes and
crammed them into her muzzle.
She chewed the potatoes for a bit before swallowing, turning a slight tinge of
green in the face, yet managing a smile despite the fact. "It is good," she
chirped, wings flapping for a few seconds.
Eve emerged from the room she went into earlier and trotted into the dining
room, carting with her a few more plates in her magic. "Who wants…" She stopped
upon seeing the guards, and smiled at them. "Oh, dear, you look like you've
seen ghosts. You lot need to rest as soon as possible. Are you full yet?" All
the guards shook their heads, Bartholomew included. Her smile widened. "Then
help yourself to some seconds."
Armin and Alexander watched as she heaped on more food on the tables, and the
latter smiled while the former frowned. "Why are you such a sour pants?"
Alexander asked before biting into a roll.
Armin turned to the beige guard and eyed him warily. "I can't put my hoof on
it… but something's amiss," he replied.
Alexander looked around at the fervor going on, yet he saw nothing wrong. The
room was alive with chewing and conversation, and all in all nothing was out of
the ordinary. "Changeling's intuition, I assume?" he asked.
Armin's frown deepened and he slowly nodded in mute reply. He turned to Katie,
who yet again had a piece of food shoved into her mouth by Natalie's hoof. His
eyes locked with her orbs, and her ears stood upright in seconds. He grimaced
as he continued watching as a bulge formed in Katie's throat and she was forced
to swallow. "I think Katie feels it too… whatever it is."
***** Chapter LI- Midnight Hour *****
The sky darkened further, and the snow came in something on the scale between
blizzard and hellish needles of ice that stung any unfortunate soul that dared
to remain outside for more than two seconds. The church bell rung as a
particularly strong gale jostled it, and everyone filed into rooms on the first
floor via ladder after dinner concluded.
The groups found another door-laden hall, and the guards, sans Flash and
Bartholomew, filed into one to find barracks with bunk beds waiting for them.
Other rooms were more homely, sporting dressers and one or two beds and
nightstands with lamps and picture frames.
In one such room with two beds, Matt looked out a window that sat next to a
dresser, seeing Natalie and Katie behind him via a faint reflection. The latter
was on one of the beds and she sported a very distended stomach, held in place
by the former's magic as she kicked her legs feebly and constantly whined,
"Make it stop! Please, make the pain stop!" A gurgling kept coming from Katie's
swollen gut, yet no matter how much she pouted and flailed Natalie would not
yield her magical grip in the slightest.
"Welp, now I know why she doesn't eat. Her body's simply no longer used to the
concept of food," Natalie sighed dejectedly, loud enough to be heard by Matt
through Katie's ongoing hissyfit.
Matt turned from the window, a small frown on his face. "How long do you think
she's been starved?" he asked in a serious voice.
"... I haven't a clue." Natalie shook her head. "Don't have her exact date of
birth, date of death, or how many years she's been a wraith since. Best guess?
A decade at least. Her stomach must have shrunk enough for it to swell in such
a way as to make her look like she's pregnant after only three biscuits."
"I'll take that as her body flipping out and going a little bit overboard on
the acid buildup," Matt sighed, closing his eyes and lifting a hoof to rub his
temples with it.
"You call looking eleven months pregnant 'a little overboard?'" Natalie
questioned, her brow raising fractionally. "In this case, I think her entire
system is outright overreacting and exploding in a spectacular fashion. She may
as well be a yodeling firework display!"
Katie's wings began buzzing frantically, but all this accomplished was making
her arch her back slightly. "Aest scrilaak—" she began, only to have her muzzle
clogged up with another intruding hoof in short order. This only made her
thrash about more, to the point she was able to knock the pillow off the bed.
Shortly thereafter, another bulge formed in her throat, and her gut shrank a
little.
"Swallow," Natalie instructed, and for once Katie stopped flailing about and
did just that. The bulge refused to shift, at least until Katie swallowed a few
more times. "You need some nutrients, and there's only one way you can get them
now." She saw a pale hoof rising up and added, "Don't struggle. It'll only
worsen your pain and make you more likely to throw up."
Katie's orbs shrank to pinpricks. "From here on, you'll eat at least one
biscuit or piece of fish or something like that. Consider it… tough love on my
part," Natalie stated, her tone between motherly and stern. "The only way you
can get strong and healthy is if you eat daily. Trust me, your body'll thank
you for it."
"It's gonna be a long road for her, Natz. She'll have to get her gag reflex
under wraps for starters, and we haven't even figured out what to do about that
split grin of hers. She may have parasites, too, and we'd be none the wiser
until we got Alexander to look at her innards or something," Matt pointed out,
trotting over to the two with a frown.
"Then again, this wouldn't be the first time we've dealt with stick-thin
shenanigans," Natalie sighed, turning to Katie to find the orbs still pin-
sized. The jaws her hoof had parted moved slightly, and something akin to a
hissing groan rumbled in Katie's throat. "Oh, yes, I've done this song and
dance before… short of shoving hooves into faces. You're a more… extreme case,
so the hoof-shoving's sadly necessary for the time being."
"That, and us feeding you will let us see… if you have any other problems with
your system," Matt added, lifting a hoof and poking Katie's shoulder with it.
He gestured to her stomach and poked at it, feeling it resist his hoof with
every iota of strength it had. "Yeah, three biscuits have filled you up
squarely. Gonna need to work on that."
Katie made a croaking noise. "He's saying you'll need to expand your gut if you
want to take in more fuel. But that'll take some time," Natalie translated,
frowning as she heard the swollen gut gurgle again. "Though, I doubt you have
intestinal parasites since you're undead." She saw pale nostrils flaring, and
the chest expanding a little. "You feel like you're gonna hurl?" Fractionally,
Katie shook her head.
Only then did Natalie remove her hoof from the pale maws. Her frown deepened as
the last few teeth Katie had squished and scraped themselves, before sticking
to her limb on its way out, forming yellowed spots that blemished her cream
fur. "Might wanna consider a set of false teeth. All I see now are gums and a
tongue," Matt noted.
Katie flinched, and her nose wrinkled a little. "Give me a tooth maker first
and I'll be willing to bite," she groaned, tossing her head to the side. "Sweet
Godcat, I still ache…"
Natalie shifted her hoof and patted Katie on the head, being mindful of her
horn stubble. "This is going to sound really weird," she began, turning to Matt
as she spoke, "but would it be feasible for Armin to share some of his love
with Katie?"
Matt shook his head. "He couldn't collect any in Equestria. He'd need to do a
little draining before that could happen. That, and he could think we mean
something else entirely with 'share his love,' if you get the drift," he
sighed.
Katie lifted a hoof that shook and threatened to drop back down. "I concur.
That sounded wrong on so many levels," she stated. "That, and we changelings
don't share love; we hoard it like dragons." Then her hoof dropped and she
trembled as her stomach burbled again.
"We'll see if that claim is true," Matt muttered, and with that he turned to
the door. He trotted to it, opened it, and went out into the hall prior to
making a beeline to the room right across from the one he left. He lifted a
hoof and knocked the instant he reached it, tapping no more than three times
before backing off. He waited for a full minute before the door opened and
Alexander poked his head out.
"Hrmmmmmyes?" Alexander asked, a brow raised.
Matt donned a small smile. "Where's Armin?" he chirped. The smile fell when
Alexander's brow tabled.
"Lance gave him permission to hunt, on the grounds that he tread with someone
that can rush him back here if things go south," Alexander replied with a sigh.
Matt frowned again. "Who's with him?" he asked.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Snow-carrying winds howled around Armin and Twilight as they pushed on through
the pine forest, and both felt the chill despite being dressed in thick fur
coats complete with boots on their hooves and wool-knitted hats on their heads.
Both were armed, with Armin having the Accelerator slung across his back and
Twilight letting a light-forged blade hover next to her in a reasonably close
proximity. They strained their eyes for any other sign of life in the woodland,
yet nothing turned up except for the trees and the whistling of the wind.
Armin snorted before recoiling as he managed to accidentally inhale a bit of
snow through his nose immediately after. He shook his head, sneezing in rapid
succession prior to getting the telltale tinge of brainfreeze. Despite that,
the only thing he managed was nothing more than a grimace. "What's it take to
find a morsel up here? There's plenty of trees to hide in," he grumbled.
"Maybe these 'morsels' are underground. Several animals hibernate or hide
around this time," Twilight remarked, taking a second to glance about their
current surroundings as the snow and winds let up for a few seconds. She caught
sight of a silhouette sporting many protrusions on its form, though their
purpose or what the thing was eluded her as it slinked past some trees to her
left. "What was that?"
"Huh?" Armin turned to Twilight to find the back of her head turned to him.
Then he too caught sight of something slinking past the trees, further away
from them. A toothy grin spread on his muzzle. "Oh boy, free food in aisle
tree!" With the giddiness of a foal he surged towards the slinking form, making
Twilight sigh and roll her eyes before she took off after him with a shake of
her head.
Twilight was honestly tempted to warn Armin of the possible danger. She opened
her mouth to make such an utterance, when her brain caught up to the fact that
he was a soldier employed under a pegasus who wasn't afraid to kill wraiths at
the very first sign of trouble. She shut her mouth before the cold air could
thoroughly chill her gums and teeth, and she simply plodded behind him with her
sword inching just a little closer to her as she went.
Armin licked his lips in anticipation as he followed after the silhouette, a
trickle of drool running out of the corner of his mouth as he trotted onward.
His horn gave off minute green sparks of mana, briefly making it seem as though
his face had taken on a demonic cast. He kept going, his pace picking up
despite the cold and snow all about him.
Five minutes passed before the silhouette turned to him, and he cast a green
light to find he'd run into a giant arctic blue slime with a massive hunk of
ice growing out of its back, a big pair of eyes and a mouth to match, and three
smaller, disjointed pieces of slime acting as limbs. Atop the frozen spire were
two white bush-like creatures sporting piercingly blue eyes that stared him
down. Armin only let his grin widen, to the point it made him look maniacal. It
was at this point Twilight caught up to him and stopped at his side.
"That's… what we were going after?" Twilight asked uneasily, her brow slanting
as the slime and bush-like creatures continued to give them the thousand-yard
stare.
Armin nodded, another trickle of drool seeping out of his mouth. He licked his
chops again. "These things could feed the entirety of Delta Unit for months,
and still go strong," he answered, lifting a hoof and gesturing to the slime in
particular. "They're also used in non-fatal production of chitil."
To emphasize his point, his horn flared brighter, and his magic seized the
slime and bushes before they could do anything. It was a weak, feeble hold at
first, flickering dangerously as Armin opened his mouth as tendrils of pink
energy started seeping from the slime and wafting towards him. He eagerly
sucked in the energy right into his gullet, which to Twilight seemed green at
first. Though as he sucked it in, his hold on the slime and bushes became
stronger with each passing second, the aura brightening to match the light he'd
cast.
Five minutes passed, and Twilight watched on warily. The slime's eyes widened,
seemingly realizing that it was pinned and being drained. It lifted its
disjointed limbs and thrashed wildly, but all this accomplished was a minor
shaking of the ground that only sent faint tremors up Twilight and Armin's
legs. It followed this up by inhaling deeply before blowing out a hefty puff of
air that chilled them a little more, yet still did nothing to dissuade them.
Two minutes after that, the hold on the slime died down, but not before it
grabbed a disjointed limb and swiftly tore it away. The limb vanished in a
green flash, and Twilight turned to Armin to find him very bloated in the gut,
to the point he almost looked pregnant. "Are you done now?" she queried in
exasperation.
Armin nodded. He gestured to the slime as it regrew its lost limb and growled
at him. "See? Slime's not harmed by it. Now let's go, before it decides it
wants us for dinner." Twilight nodded and her horn glowed, and as a bright
purple light wrapped around them the sword she had dissipated into thin
ribbons. These ribbons coiled around the two, only adding to the spectacle
before they were engulfed and vanished from the scene.
Seconds later they reappeared in the dining room of the church, just inches shy
of Eve. "Oh? Back so soon?" she asked, with nothing more than a smile and a
brow raised.
Armin turned to her, trying to blink the spots out of his eyes as he nodded
with a dopey grin forming on his face. "I fed well tonight," he chirped.
Eve's smile widened. "Alright, but your legs are trembling a little. Get some
rest you two," she stated, and Armin and Twilight sheepishly looked at their
legs to find that they indeed shook in their boots, if only slightly. They
exchanged a glance and started ambling for the ladder before Eve had the chance
to tell them twice. The inside of the building helped warm their legs as they
moved, though they paused at the ladder.
"Can you climb up that, looking like you're six months pregnant?" Twilight
asked in a sincere voice, using a hoof to gently poke Armin in the gut for
emphasis.
"Not the first time I've overstuffed. I'll need to expunge the excess love
soon," Armin replied, shaking his head. "Can you do the flashy… spell again?"
Twilight grinned. "One teleportation, coming right up," she chirped, her horn
glowing again. She gripped herself and Armin in her magic and promptly
teleported them both to the floor above, right into the hall to find Lance and
Matt in said hall, chatting with Maria sitting between their forelegs. The
three gave the barest of glances to Armin and Twilight as soon as they'd
arrived and went right back to their fervor.
"She's bloated like a whale? And bedridden?" Lance asked, a brow raised.
Matt nodded with a snort and a frown on his muzzle. "That's just what three
biscuits do to her system, Lance. Biscuits," he replied. "Natalie's suspecting
a very bad case of the trots in the coming hours." His nose wrinkled at the
notion. "She barely managed to keep her from puking."
Lance's shoulders sagged a bit, and he dropped his head before releasing a
groan. "Great, the frost wraith's allergic to everything on the local menu," he
mumbled. "What next, she gonna get hay fever too?"
Matt turned to Armin and noticed his bulging gut. "Did you raid the fridge?" he
asked.
"No; I pillaged a slime," Armin replied, using his magic to summon the detached
slime limb in such a bright flash of light that even Lance squinted his eyes
under the intensity.
"Seriously, you could convert the simple act of summoning an item from the
friggin' thaumic plane into a flash grenade," Lance hissed, turning to Armin
and lifting a hoof to rub at his eyes and make the spots dancing in his vision
go away. He too eyed the fact that his troop had a swollen gut. "How much of
the slime did you eat? How big was it? If it was another large one, then it
looks like you've slurped a third of it up."
"Just its accumulated love, and it was huge. Though I went… overboard," Armin
replied, his lips twitching slightly.
"This is gonna sound weird," Matt interjected, looking at Armin. When he felt
insectoid eyes fall onto him, he elaborated, "Think you can share some of the
love you've gathered with Katie?"
Armin's eyes bulged. "C-come again?" he asked.
"Well, it's… follow me," Matt replied tersely, mentally facehoofing himself and
outwardly sighing as he turned to his room door.
Finally, Maria spoke as she likewise turned to the door, "Is nice wraith okay?"
"According to your Uncle Matt, that'd be a no. But I've yet to see whether or
not…" A shrill and hollow cry of pain cut through the air from behind the
closed door Matt was looking at, cutting Lance off before he could finish his
statement.
Armin flinched before he hurriedly cantered to the door as another wail sang
through the air. "That sounded like she got her legs torn off," he grumbled,
seeing Matt make a beeline for the door before flinging it open with a swift
hoof. He swiftly made the wad of slime vanish before following after him.
The lot filed inside in short order, only to shudder as Katie thrashed on the
bed with wild abandon, screaming for all it was worth. Though they also found
Natalie holding her to the bed with magic, it did little to keep her from
floundering about madly.
Matt turned to Armin and gestured to Katie with a hoof. "That's why," he said
curtly.
"Definitely not okay. I'm wondering if we'll need to sedate her," Lance
grumbled. Armin sighed and trotted over to the ailing Katie, who kept screaming
and struggling in pain.
"Share my love, right?" Armin asked, averting his gaze to look at Matt. As soon
as he got a slow nod, his horn began glowing, and his now-bright emerald aura
wrapped around Katie. For just a second she slumped, panting and shaking and
groaning, only to start anew as soon as Armin opened his mouth as wide as it
could go.
Pink tendrils seeped out with the aid of green magic and slipped their way into
Katie's wide-open muzzle, and for the barest of seconds her barrel gave an odd,
heart-shaped glow that was as blue as her orbs that turned redder by the
second. Armin too had a glow on his barrel, bright and barely-concealed by his
thick coat of added fur.
Armin's swollen gut shrank as he kept giving her energy for five minutes, until
it looked only slightly distended. Katie on the other hoof had swollen even
more, as if she'd managed to eat three watermelons whole, before the glow died
and a blue pulse of mana accentuated by pink highlights shot across her body
and made her gut shrink. Only then did her kicking and yodeling die down, and
she turned to stare at the ceiling dazedly as her stomach compacted even more.
"Will… it help her digest the biscuits?" Matt queried warily, looking at Katie
as another pulse rippled upon her body.
"It'll do more than that, but she'll need a nice and loooooooong nap in the
meantime. I'd say… about eight hours, maybe twelve if she's still sickly,"
Armin replied, smiling. He turned to Lance and asked, "Want me to cast a
nighty-night spell on her?"
"Looks to me like she tuckered herself out," Natalie piped up, her own magic
receding from Katie's stilled form. "I'm impressed her stomach still works."
Twilight fell onto her haunches, gaze fixed on Armin and Katie. "You two glowed
when you shared your love… not in that sense, of course." She turned to Lance.
"Have you seen your other changelings glow like they just did?"
"On occasion, but I'd have to be near a bunch of them to see that glow whenever
they share the spoils, so to speak," Lance replied with a nod, turning to
Twilight with a brow quirked. "Why do you ask?"
"Sparkletop… muffins…" Katie croaked from the bed, shakily lifting a hoof
before dropping it back on the bed. The others briefly turned to her, only to
roll their eyes as she gave a throaty snore rivaling that of a bear.
"And Katie can still eat and breathe and wail like a normal changeling, even
though she's undead…" Twilight's eyes started to gleam as she fixed her gaze on
Armin again. "Would that mean wraiths preserve themselves somehow, enough for
bodily functions to work?"
"She told me and Fen that she's immortal. I'd bet ten bits and a sweet roll
that 'bodily functions' was included in her immortality package," Armin chimed
in, turning to Katie as her gut shrunk again with another pulse of mana.
"Yeesh, that extra love I gave her is already going to town."
Twilight's eyes widened as soon as Armin said 'immortal.' "Okay, that would
actually explain a lot…" she mumbled before getting back on track. "And she can
use her magic via… horseshoes…" She pondered some more, and lifted a hoof to
rub her chin in thought. A second later and her hoof dropped as fast as it had
risen. Twilight turned her eyes on Lance again, this time grinning. "I think I
know what this calls for…"
Lance turned to Twilight again, frowning slightly. "'For' what?" he pressed.
"Would you mind me doing a little research on Armin and Katie? I promise I
won't probe them; I need only study into that odd glow they make when they
share love…" Twilight began in a sweet tone, the kind that dripped with
enthusiasm and curiosity in equal measure. "Because I've seen changelings drain
love before, but sharing it… not only seems odd, but yields an even stranger
effect."
"I wouldn't mind, but you'll have to wait for Katie to wake up. Considering
she's only fed tonight on both food and love, I'd wager she'd be a wee bit
sluggish in the morning. But I'll look out for any other side-effects as a
precautionary measure." Armin lifted a booted hoof and gently nudged Katie in
the withers with it, and she responded by mumbling incoherently. "Yep, she's
out like a light. Looks like I don't need to cast a healthy helping of nighty-
night magic yet."
"What is… this 'nighty-night' spell you keep going on about?" Twilight asked,
her eyes glimmering even more.
"Well… I'd have to be around another changeling to use it, but if you want,
I'll demonstrate it tomorrow if Katie proves restless," Armin answered with a
shrug. "Or if she decides to try and tangle with Lance again."
Twilight's brow rose. "She… tried to tangle…" For but a moment her thought
processes halted, unsure as to what Armin meant.
"Decided it was a good idea to punch me," Lance snorted in response, shaking
his head at Katie's sleeping form. "She hit me… with hooves so soft I almost
thought a baby slapped me."
Maria fluttered her wings and she turned to Lance. "Daddy, what's sharing
love?" she asked, the question almost instantly causing his eyes to bulge and
his throat to start issuing a choking sound coupled with an attempt at
sputtering something coherent. On top of that, Matt and Natalie turned to the
foal with blushes painting their faces, jaws agape and likewise producing
noises that made Twilight think the air of the room started attempting to
strangle them.
"Sharing a special energy-based food between changelings, using thaumic
energy," Armin answered as Lance, Matt, and Natalie continued to flounder on
each and every attempt to utter a response. Maria turned to him and opened her
mouth again, but he cut her off with a firm, "And no, it doesn't have another
meaning."
"Okay," Maria chirped, tail swishing for a second. "What's thaumic energy? That
sounds weird." That made Lance, Matt, and Natalie slump and sigh with relief in
unison.
"You know, you almost sound a lot like me when I was a foal. I wanted to gain
knowledge, and you're going down the same path with a few twists of your own,"
Twilight remarked, turning to Maria to give her a warm smile. "If you want, I
can teach you what thaumic energy is."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Blueblood and Flash Sentry stayed up well into the midnight hour, having
themselves a small table between them and a spot of tea with ceramic cups. The
only light in the room came from a small flickering scone, casting an orange
glow about the room as the duo sat in silence. As they sipped the tea, they
looked out the window in unison, seeing the snow outside continue to pile it on
thick. Ironically, because of that, they could see a few buildings a trot or
two away from the church, already closed up and with lights off.
From what they could see of Whitefall Town, it looked relatively peaceful. "For
all of his banter that several things were amiss on the face of Fantasia,"
Blueblood began slowly, continuing to observe the impassive scene outside, "the
General somehow found a great place to start his little 'tour.'"
"What'd he do, rattle?" Flash queried, turning away from the window to look at
Blueblood.
"More or less," Blueblood replied after a few seconds, taking his time to
continue staring out. "And yet… I cannot help but feel that something is quite…
off, to put it mildly." He turned away and used his magic to lift his teacup
and put it to his lips. Sipping at the liquid, he frowned slightly as he
realized it was starting to turn cold. That made him take another sip, hastily
at that.
Flash mutely nodded and turned to the window again, feeling his wings twitch as
he caught sight of a cloaked form slinking past the houses he could see, and it
shuffled and swayed and twitched without rhyme or reason. Its legs were done up
in black garments, though they seemed to sag slightly as it moved. "I see
something," he stated grimly, eyes narrowing slightly as they watched the
creature just amble about past houses.
Blueblood finished his drink and turned to the window again, his brow furrowing
as he too caught sight of the odd, and painstakingly obvious figure. "I hope to
Faust that isn't a drunkard out there. Yet it's unseemly gait and aimless
shuffling are signs of such," he snorted, frowning. "I hope that pony, if it is
one, gets home before…" Words died in his throat as, abruptly, the figure stood
on a pair of lanky back legs and turned rigid on the spot.
"Now that's utter foolishness if I've ever seen such an act," Flash muttered,
shaking his head as the creature dropped to all fours and started milling about
without even a smidgen of purpose again. "Only other soul I know of who'd do
that at least has an excuse; she's undead."
"Perhaps that's a wraith, then," Blueblood scoffed, eyes still fixed on the
figure as it continued to look like a fool. "But I can't see anything past that
garment it donned."
The figure rose on its back legs again, and for but a brief second a crisp,
forest green light flashed from the top of its head. In that same instant it
was gone, leaving no hoofprints in any particular direction whatsoever. All
that remained of it as the light faded were the hoofprints in the snow it had
already left before deciding to put on a split-second light show.
"Looks like we got a teleporter. Guess the sod couldn't stand turning blue any
longer," Flash sighed, turning back to Blueblood again. "You think we should
tell Shining and Lance about this?"
Blueblood shook his head and returned the look. "It didn't do anything
noteworthy, unless tottering about like a complete buffoon constitutes as
noteworthy," he replied solemnly. His stomach twisted a little, sending cramps
of pain through his abdomen, and for a few seconds he was silent. With a wince
he added, "But, I suppose we should play it safe and inform the others in the
'morrow."
Flash nodded. He lifted his own glass and took a sip before setting it back
down a second later. "You think they'd be on the lookout for a cloaked
teleporter with a magic aura as green as a pine tree's needles?" he asked in a
low, serious tone.
"They may, or they may not. Their prerogative either way, and tragically so if
they choose not to and it proves to be a threat," Blueblood answered with a
rather slow shrugging of his shoulders that came off as more a bare twitch.
"But we don't know why it was here, why it stumbled about, or even if it was
faking something out." A flash of green burst from below, and he turned to the
window to find that the figure was back again, once more tottering about
aimlessly.
Flash turned to the window and lifted a hoof to slap his own face with it. "Oh
here we go…" he grumbled as the hoof slid down his bridge. "I hope it doesn't
perform a samba…"
"Whatever it is, it is simply too incompetent to perform a samba. I will bet a
million bits that the General could muster up something better with his wings
out in the open," Blueblood snorted, his face contorting into a glower as he
watched the figure below stumble and tumble with the grace of a sick duck.
Flash dropped his hoof and snickered at the thought of Lance performing a
samba, and he shook his head to rid himself of the thought. "What should we
call that dude's attempt at dancing, besides incompetent?" he queried
sincerely, his voice carrying an amused note.
"I'd wager, on account of teleportation—" Blueblood stopped for a second as the
figure reared up, summoned another flash of light, and promptly vanished from
sight again. "—that the attempt should be henceforth dubbed 'Shoddy Lightshow
Special,'" he finished, a slightly smug grin on his face as 'Shoddy Lightshow
Special' rolled off his tongue. "I have seen my fair share of performances, and
that was the worst yet."
The lit scone flickered dangerously, and Flash turned to it to find that it was
on the verge of burning out. He sighed and made to blow it out, but stopped
just shy of opening his mouth as it went out by itself, immediately sending the
room into a darkness so thick it seemed to be corporeal. Silence hung in the
room, yet Blueblood continued to stare out that accursed window, as if waiting
for something.
A howling gale blew outside, strong enough to make the bell toll and caused the
window to briefly rattle. Flash looked out through the glass pane again, just
in time to witness another green light flash into the snow-laden street below.
But the figure that came back did not stumble about after that, nor did it
revert to all fours. This time it stood upright and turned to the window
itself, the very same one through which Flash and Blueblood watched it,
revealing that its barrel was likewise draped in sable cloth. Both could barely
see a pale muzzle grinning up at them, only accentuated by twin glowing orbs of
forest green and the cloak overshadowing its head. A horn barely poked out of
the garment, aglow once again.
In one last flash of light, it was gone. Yet as soon as it disappeared, an aged
wooden sign sporting a green glow about it flew up and affixed itself to the
window from outside, both startling the duo and cutting the sole source of
light off in an instant. They strained their eyes, and grimaced as they slowly
made out a message that was carved into the obstruction.
"I know you have her. Return her to my hoof at once."
Blueblood's eyes narrowed. "I don't know who that pony was, or who they were
referring to with 'her,' but I will not yield to their whims," he scoffed.
"Nor will I. That pony isn't getting 'her,' whoever 'her' is," Flash agreed
with a slow nod, frowning deeply.
***** Chapter LII- Cloak and Crystal *****
Natalie laid on the other bed with her back facing the ceiling, keeping one eye
on Katie's slumbering form and the other on Matt, who had fallen asleep next to
her with a grin on his face. Sitting next to Katie's bed was Armin, who closed
his eyes for brief intervals lasting a few minutes before opening them and
keeping watch again.
Only Katie's snoring ensured that the room wasn't fully bathed in silence,
though sometimes she mumbled and snorted about sparkletop muffins. As the hours
passed, her stomach shrunk and her body pulsed with mana, until she was once
again pencil-thin. The night drew on, and eventually Matt wrapped his front
hooves around Natalie's barrel and pulled her close to him, and she leaned over
to nestle her head into his shoulder.
She still kept one eye open, facing Katie so intently that the slightest twitch
of a hoof or the buzz of a wing caught her attention for a few seconds on end.
Natalie's eyes closed as Matt pressed her closer, and she gave a small sigh as
the legs on her barrel shifted a bit, tickling her with their fur. Sleep
claimed her in minutes, leaving Armin awake in the darkened room.
Armin turned to the two and grinned as he watched them cuddle, and his eyes
stayed on them until a few minutes passed and Natalie gave a soft whinny. "I
swear, they're cute together. I wonder what they'll do when they get back to
base," he pondered, turning back to Katie as she jerked a leg outward and poked
him in the barrel with it.
"I… will not be… denied my muffins…" Katie grumbled, before her long tongue
snaked out and licked her torn chops eagerly.
"Note to self: make muffins tomorrow," Armin murmured to himself, giving a sigh
as he slowly lifted a hoof and brushed Katie's off with such a faint touch she
wasn't roused by it. He saw the tongue dart around before inserting itself into
one of Katie's ears, probing around for a second prior to reeling out and then
diving right back in again. "Now that's just gross."
He turned away, having no intention of witnessing Katie prod at her own brains.
His eyes fell on Matt and Natalie again, and he found that they had stilled and
started murmuring. Armin's lips quirked in a smile as Natalie neighed and gave
a flinch of her shoulders. "You want… celery?" she grumbled with a snort.
Armin sniggered, his lips still locked in a grin. The grin fell as a pair of
back legs shifted, followed by Matt giving off a soft groan mixed with a
whinny. "Is he okay?" he wondered, watching the two intently for a few more
seconds.
"Not… the ginger…" Matt mumbled, his rear legs fidgeting about as he spoke. He
stilled a minute later, and began snoring quietly.
"Ginger?" Armin mouthed, a brow raising disbelievingly as his brain processed
the remark. It took several minutes for it to register, during which time Matt
began kicking and struggling again. Before he could dwell on it once it finally
gained admission, though, Matt abruptly sat bolt upright with wide eyes and a
paling face. He dragged Natalie with him into more or less the same stance
thanks to his hooves still being wrapped around her barrel, in turn waking her
up with a startled gasp.
"The hell?" Natalie murmured, looking around before her eyes fell onto Matt's
front hooves. She stared for a second before craning her neck to look at him in
the face. "You okay?" she asked.
Matt sighed and flopped back down, but not before he slid his hooves off of
Natalie first. "Had a bad dream is all," he replied quietly. He turned to Katie
and winced as he saw that her tongue was still lodged firmly in her ear.
"That's freaky," he hissed, turning away to stuff his face into a pillow. "I've
seen enough for tonight."
Natalie turned to Katie, stared for a few seconds, and proceeded to turn away
when the anomaly registered. "I concur." With that, she buried her face into
Matt's shoulder again and released a groan of exasperation. "Never before have
I heard of or seen a wraith try to eat their own brains," she added with a note
of disgust.
Armin's horn glowed and his magic seized Katie's tongue before yanking it out
sharply, and he turned to find that it managed to drag out at least a good inch
and a half of blackened, foul-smelling ear wax. "Someling's gonna need more
examinations," he snorted as his magic began to remove the wax with a gentle
scraping motion.
Without hesitation, his magic ended up causing the blackened substance to
ignite into flames as its gooey bits were forcefully parted from the organ. The
tongue began writhing in response, but ceased as the magic seized it in its
entirety and snapped it upright, taut, and as far as it could stretch in one
go. In response, her neck caved in a little, but that alone did not take
Armin's attention at all.
Armin gave a low whistle as he scanned the pale instrument of taste up and
down, seeing that it easily reached four-and-a-half feet by itself. "Damn
thing's as long as her body," he remarked, eyes glimmering with a slight awe.
The utterance caused Matt and Natalie to turn to him in an effort to find what
he was babbling about, and in the very moment they did their jaws dropped
simultaneously.
Armin turned to the two unicorns and regarded them for a long moment that hung
in silence. Slowly, he lowered the tongue to the bed with his magic, and
nestled it in a way that not only ensured that Katie remained asleep, but in a
way that they could see the tip easily reached the end of her red tail. "Huh.
Seems like we may have a mutant with us," he whispered lowly, just enough that
they could hear him.
"Mutant?" Natalie murmured, eyes darting between Armin and Katie as she
struggled to process the fact that the latter had a ludicrously long tongue.
Part of her imagined the organ taking residence in her skull and going in one
ear and out the other. The other part imagined a brain being displaced in a jar
because of it.
"Considering she has four wings and a tongue long as this, who knows what breed
of changeling she is. Might be a mix, but the likeliest candidates for making
something like this would be...." Armin trailed off and racked his brain for a
way to finish the remark. It fell short as Katie's orbs lit up and she turned
to him, her long tongue slinking back into her mouth inch by inch.
He turned to her and found her throat expanding as the organ slid in, though
not in a way that gave the impression of having something wedged into her
esophagus. For all he knew, it may have been a throat pouch specifically for
her tongue. Only when her tongue was fully back in place a minute later did
Katie speak, "The hell did you do?"
"You, uh… feel anything in your ear?" Armin answered with a slightly shaky
voice, and for a moment Katie lifted a brow. Then, she lifted a hoof and felt
her ear with it before finding a slick substance coating it. At her nod, he
answered, "Your tongue went in your ear. I pulled it out and got most of the
wax off."
Katie's orbs widened as the utterance sank in and the taste of foul wax finally
registered on her tongue, and she immediately slid it out and started to spit
frantically. Armin's magic grabbed it again and got what little wax was left
off, but that did nothing to remove the taste itself. "M-my ear?" she croaked
between attempts to spit.
Armin lifted a hoof and gestured to Matt and Natalie with it. "I have
witnesses," he confirmed.
Katie turned to Matt and Natalie, and her orbs then shrank to pinpricks as she
found them both nodding in tandem. She turned to Armin again after taking a
second to stop retching. "I need a muzzle-cover… thingy. Can you make one,
please?" she asked sincerely, her brow slanting.
Armin nodded and his horn started glowing again. "Chitil, or another
substance?" he replied.
"Chitil," Katie immediately answered.
Armin grinned and summoned the ball of blue slime he'd retrieved. "One chitil
muzzle, coming right up."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Sarah sat up in a queen-sized bed, mane frazzled, thought processes muzzy, and
eyes bloodshot. Her good wing fanned out, and its feathers were askew in all
directions. She turned to her wing and sighed as she found her primaries
brushing up against the back of Fenrir's head, though it took a few seconds
simply to process the sight. Slowly, her wing folded shut, and she laid back
down to stare absently at the ceiling.
Her eyes squinted, and they started burning and aching at the same time. She
lifted a talon and rubbed at her eyes with it, opening her mouth wide and
releasing a hefty yawn in the process. She turned onto her left side, still
rubbing her eyes, and found herself yawning again. "So… tired…" Sarah grumbled
as she pulled her talon away from her face. She blinked before realizing she
was now staring at a window on a far wall, and the snow still falling beyond
the pane, dancing in the darkness outside.
She tried counting the flakes that whirled elegantly beyond her reach, mouthing
to keep from making noise. "One… two… three-four…" Flakes kept drifting on down
in such amounts that, soon enough, she started to lose count. "Fifteen…
seventeen? Twenty-one? Damn…"
Sarah started over with a sigh of resignation, "One… two…" As she counted, her
eyes started to slowly close, and her body began lulling itself back to sleep.
Six minutes passed before her eyes fully slipped shut, and her mind fully
clouded not long after.
The world shifted around her just before sleep could claim her, gravity altered
drastically, and for a second it felt like the bed ceased to exist beneath her.
Sarah's eyes snapped open and she yelped before rolling over, tumbling out of
the bed, and then landing face-first in the floor. "Shit…" she hissed, turning
her head to rest it on her cheek once her brain caught up with the fact that
she'd fallen rather ungracefully.
She shifted her talons and then stopped when a rustle of cloth reached her
ears, and her eyes shifted peripherally as Fenrir leaned over to peer down at
her. "May I inquire as to what that was about?" he grumbled, his voice equal
parts tired and irritated.
"Had… a falling dream," Sarah mumbled in reply, figuring that was as good an
answer as any. She did not make an attempt to haul herself off of the floor
yet, if only because yellow eyes bored into her in such a way she had the
impression that Fenrir was going to try something.
He continued to stare instead, incredulously at that. "Tumbling-from-a-
cliffside variety?" he queried.
Sarah nodded. "Sideways," she replied tersely. "And it turned into a nosedive…"
Fenrir frowned, and huffed through flared nostrils. He stared for a second
longer and caught sight of a green tinge budding on Sarah's face. "No, I am
not…" he paused, racking his brain for a way to finish his utterance, "sporting
a particular protrusion, if that is what you are pondering."
With that, he retracted and flopped on the bed, and patiently waited for the
telltale sound of claws and hooves scraping against the floor. Seconds later,
that exact sound reached his ears, and after that Sarah crawled in and dropped
next to him with a groan. She flinched as he lifted a paw and gently scratched
her between the wings, the sensation almost immediately sending shivers and a
secondary, unfamiliar feeling up and down her spine. The hairs and feathers on
her back stood on end, from the dock of her tail all the way to her withers.
Fenrir felt Sarah tense up and pulled his paw away. "Not fond of gentle
scratching?" he asked softly, turning his head to look at her face.
Sarah nodded apprehensively. "That was… out of the blue. Last time I was
scratched on the back was before me and Anna split up," she explained, her tone
having a distinct note of uneasiness to it.
"By whom?" Fenrir inquired, his brow lifting ever so slightly.
"Mom," Sarah answered, closing her eyes before giving off a sigh. "Only she
managed to draw blood that time."
Fenrir's brow proceeded to climb up the rest of his forehead. "Intentionally,
or not?" he snorted, barely managing to keep a growl from his voice.
Sarah merely shrugged. "Not really sure," she answered. "And honestly, I don't
want to dwell on it." Leaving it at that, she buried her face into a pillow and
rubbed it furiously, mumbling incoherently as she did so.
Fenrir's brow fell, and he put his paw on Sarah's backside again, making her
stop and tense once more. "Are you well?" he asked, and he frowned as she
turned from the pillow to look at him.
"Aside from being tired, so-so," she answered, staring him in the eye. Her own
eyes twitched as she asked, "And why must you put your paw on my back? I'm
trying to sleep, Godcat-dammit, and you're not helping."
Fenrir's frown eased a little, and a twinkle came in his eyes. "I thought it
might ease your apparent restlessness," he explained in an overtly innocent
tone that had Sarah thinking he pulled that one from beneath his tail. "But
should I happen to draw blood, I will cease immediately," he added in a
slightly firmer voice.
Sarah simply stared at him for the span of about six seconds. "Just avoid my
broken wing and you've got yourself a deal," she relented, turning to rest her
chin on the pillow again. The paw began scratching her between the wings once
more, which caused her to tense all over again at first. She didn't have an
itch in that area that she didn't know of; the action was very foreign to her
and made her crawl a little.
But after a half-minute, she relaxed and slowly sighed through her nostrils. If
it would help her get back to sleep, it sure was taking a bit of effort. She
felt the paw trail up to rest on her withers, garnering a slight twitch and a
pair of eyes slipping shut. "Okay, that's… starting to feel… wow," she thought,
her mind going muzzy again as the paw kept up its soft scratching. "Never
thought he could… do… that…"
Fenrir kept scratching for a good few minutes, moving his paw along her upper
back to keep from turning one spot raw. Only when he heard a soft snore mixed
with a squawk did he stop and pull back, and he looked at her face as she
dozed. She gave a twitch of her ear, but then a small smile crossed her face as
she started to purr. Nodding to himself, Fenrir closed his eyes and laid back
down before drifting off to sleep himself.
Approximately thirty minutes later his eyes opened again as he heard a very
soft tapping at the door. Consigning irritated murmurings to the back of his
mind, he slowly sat up and crept out of bed, making sure to keep his tail low
to avoid poking Sarah with it. Once he was on his paws he padded his way to the
door on all fours, crouching low to keep himself steady. As soon as he was
within reach he lifted a paw up, grasped the knob, and slowly turned it before
pushing the door open.
He blinked when he heard chittering coming from the hall, very closely at that.
Looking down, his brow climbed his forehead again as he saw Angel looking up at
him. "Yes?" Fenrir asked, watching as Angel hopped into the room, going between
his legs in doing so. He turned away from the door without closing it, and to
the bunny as he darted right up to the window and pointed at it with a paw.
A few seconds ticked by before Fenrir registered what the gesture meant, and he
mentally facepalmed as he padded over to the window to see what the deal was.
Peering out, he caught sight of… something jutting from a rooftop a good thirty
feet away from the church. The whirling snow obscured its features, but he
could still tell it was there and was so oddly shaped that it did not do a
terribly good job of trying to pass off as part of the roof. Turning to Angel
again, he caught sight of a pair of small, furry arms crossing over a fluffy
chest.
Peeling himself from the window and bending forward until he was eye to eye
with Angel, Fenrir softly asked, "Do you have any idea what that… form may be,
perchance?" When Angel shook his head with a frown forming on his muzzle,
Fenrir turned to the wall and gave a heavy sigh prior to turning back to his
unexpected visitor.
He jolted when Sarah started mumbling in her sleep. "What are… you doing to
her?" she hissed, her face scrunching slightly as she spoke. "Stop… you're
hurting her…"
Fenrir and Angel turned to Sarah with brows raised. They slowly crept to her,
as silently as they could manage. She started shuddering when they took no more
than three steps forward, her talons balling into fists as her face tightened a
little more. "Lemme go…" she hissed, and that was all the initiative Fenrir
needed. In an instant he bolted to her, crossing the distance before clasping
her by the shoulders and hauling her right out of bed, leaving her to screech
and dangle above the sheets as she was violently roused from sleep.
Sarah now stared at Fenrir incredulously, her eyes wide and her pupils but tiny
slivers. For a moment, she heard murmuring voices, but shoved that aside to
gather her thoughts."E-excuse you?" she hissed, before her ears twitched as the
sound of soft hooves and claws against the floor wormed its way inside.
Fenrir opened his mouth to utter something in response, but whatever it was
he'd wanted to say immediately left before it could roll off his tongue. He
then noticed the sound of the hooves and claws, both of which then stopped
prior to giving way to a soft tapping that immediately echoed in from the
still-opened door. Both he and Sarah turned to find a droopy-winged Maria
staring at them, a talon balled into a fist and hovering just inches from the
door. They could spot heavy bags formed under bloodshot eyes, accompanying a
tight frown on her muzzle.
"Daddy wants me to tell you…" Maria paused to yawn, her voice groggy and
scratchy, "to shut the fuck up."
Fenrir gaped. "Did… you just say that… word for word?" he asked.
Maria nodded tiredly. "And that mommy told me to tell you to keep it down," she
added, making the two flinch at the implications of her utterance. She turned
to Angel as he hopped over to her. "Daddy wants you to sleep with me tonight,
so the bad hippogryphs go away." Angel nodded and plodded around her before
jumping onto her back. With that, she turned tail and shuffled into the hall.
Fenrir lowered Sarah to the bed slowly, until her haunches were connected with
the mattress and sheets. He lifted a paw and shifted his index digit up whilst
curling the other ones tightly—'hold on for a second,' he seemed to say. At
Sarah's mute nod, he turned and cantered over to the door with as silent of
steps as he could muster, and when he reached the wooden slab he tenderly
nudged it closed. The instant door and frame connected with a soft click, he
plodded back over to the bed.
"Can we discuss this tomorrow?" he whispered.
Sarah nodded again, and gave a sigh. "I suppose," she whispered back, turning
to the window to stare outside once more. All she saw was the dancing snow.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Lance flopped on his bed with a groan, his face buried in his pillow as the
sound of soft hooves and claws hitting the floor echoed once again. A minute
later, they came to a brief halt when a door opened, closed, and then resumed
before completely stopping with a faint rustling of sheets. Only when silence
thoroughly permeated the room did he lift his head and turn it to his right,
finding Anna more or less in the same position barely a centimeter away, and
Maria and Angel situated on a bed about two feet from theirs.
"They stopped yelling," Maria reported, smiling in spite of her apparent
exhaustion. Lance nodded in approval, and he watched as Maria flopped on her
pillow before she gave a soft snore. Angel curled up next to her, out of
immediate reach of her claws, but still within touching distance. Seconds
later, Anna and Lance themselves flopped and fell back asleep as though nothing
had happened.
Some three minutes passed before Lance lifted his head again, grumbling
unintelligibly as he heard a very faint sound of something akin to sliding.
That was immediately followed by a thin, chilly breeze wafting its way into the
room that made his wings press up more tightly to his stomach. He turned to the
window and frowned as he barely managed to catch sight of a black form moving
away from it.
From outside the pane, no less. It took him a few seconds to register that bit,
but when it gained admission and checked into the topmost floor of his mental
processes, his eyes went wide. Slowly, he crept out of bed and cantered over to
the window before nudging it closed with his snout once he was within range,
and then checking for anything even resembling a basic locking mechanism while
he was at it.
There was none to be had; at least, not one that he could immediately see
within the inky darkness of the room. A niggling feeling started whirring in
his head and working its way down his neck, culminating in shivers rushing
through his spine and a realization that he'd need something to keep the window
closed lest the darkened form come back. Lance gave a sigh of resignation; he
didn't know what that figure was, much less what it wanted.
But it had tried to enter the room, and he'd barely caught it in the act. That
in itself was enough grounds for him to stay up a few minutes longer. Since
there were no latches or anything of the sort to keep the window down, he'd
have to use unconventional tactics. That made him snort indignantly; what sort
of house didn't have locking windows? He made a mental note to consult Eve at a
later time about it, but for now he had more pressing matters to sort out.
He turned to scan the room in search of something that could be used to block
off the window. Slowly, his head moved from corner to corner, and with it his
body turned until his gaze settled on the window again, taking in everything
the room had to offer. "I could move the dresser here…" he mumbled, turning
around to the corner closest to both the door and Maria's bed. Shrouded by a
deep blackness, he could barely make out a foot of his chosen piece of
furniture.
He trotted to it, giving a grimace as he soon found it was taller than he was.
Adding to that, there were a few photo frames atop it, and a vase at one end of
the picture row and a small lantern on the other. "Great. Couldn't move this
thing if I'd wanted to… I just haaaad to think a dresser would be a good idea,"
he inwardly hissed, and made to turn to the window again when he heard a
rustling of sheets.
His gaze fell onto the beds instead, and he found Angel sitting bolt upright
and looking at him with eyes widened in alarm. Lance lifted a hoof and held it
to his lips, motioning for Angel to be quiet. As soon as the furry white head
nodded, he sighed and turned to the window again.
The black form was back, but it turned away and fled before he could get a good
look at its features. He made out glowing green orbs accompanying a horn bathed
in viridian light and scowled. "A likely wraith. Even better," he found himself
murmuring. "And the fucker's waiting for me to fall back to sleep. That does
it. I'm keeping watch." A soft chittering tore his attention from the window
again, and he turned to Angel. "You saw it too?" he asked in a whisper.
Angel nodded furiously, ears jumping up and standing to attention. He turned to
the window again after that, his little brow furrowing in the process. "Good to
know me and Admiral Bunnykins are on the same page," Lance mentally snarked as
he likewise turned to the window, racking his brain for a possible solution to
the current problem. Part of him wondered if having Angel help him in some
manner would be a good idea or not; there were several pros and cons on either
end of that particular spectrum.
There was size, posture, the ears, and overall maneuverability to account for.
He had to give the bunny bravery points for mustering up a death glare in his
direction when he was parked in Ponyville, but death glares alone rarely solved
things. That, and if Angel was hurt, how would Fluttershy react? The bunny was
more or less one of her pets, after all, and he didn't know how well she'd take
the news of his possible wounds.
A few minutes passed before he came to a decision. "Angel, can you wake me up
if that… thing outside the window decides to drop by again?" he asked in a
whisper, turning to Angel as he spoke.
Angel turned back and nodded once more. "Scream if it comes to it," Lance
added, garnering another hasty nod as his response. That was all the
confirmation he'd needed. Lance smiled and trotted back to bed, crawling into
the sheets before resting his head on the pillow. He flexed his wings a little,
but did not let them part his sides in the slightest. Once he was sure they
didn't snag under his stomach, he stilled and attempted to fall asleep.
The pitter-patter of Angel's feet as he got out of bed and hopped to the window
reached his ears, though they were very soft. If not for the room being
otherwise dead silent, he wouldn't have heard the noise. But he didn't say
anything; it simply couldn't be helped. The bunny was his only alarm at this
rate; he made another mental note to speak to Matt and Natalie later for
unwittingly incapacitating Katie.
Then his mind wandered further, and he grumbled as he pondered whether or not
the dreaded 'trots' had visited the sorry wraith yet. That did little except
keep him up for a few minutes longer. His response was to bury his muzzle in
his pillow so deep its sides jutted out to hug his cheeks and neck. "Of all the
times to have an alert brain worrying about this and that, it had to be now?"
he mentally grumbled.
The black figure formed in his mind, and he gave a slight shudder of bald
wings. "But I have to be alert… if the damned figure wants Maria…" His thought
processes ground to a stop, and slowly he lifted his head from the pillow and
directed his gaze at the still-sleeping foal. The last time they'd shared a
room…
"No. I can't let that happen again. Filly's been through enough already," Lance
murmured so lowly he scarcely heard his own utterance. But it was an utterance
that solidified his resolve. A shrill scream pierced the air, and he instantly
turned to the window to find it was sliding open with the aid of something dark
and distinctly hoof-shaped. A form rushed in once the window had fully opened,
seizing Angel in an instant. It picked the hapless bunny up, who unleashed a
louder cry as a hoof went to his throat.
Lance found himself jumping off the bed and rushing to the darkened form in a
full gallop. "Get your motherfucking hooves off of that motherfucking rabbit!"
he barked, wasting no time in crossing the distance and pouncing at the figure,
which culminated in him sending it to the floor.
His hooves landed on the creature's neck, which felt unusually solid, and he
felt Angel squeezing out of the hold the form had on him and scampering away,
still shrieking in alarm. But his hold slipped as the figure lifted a back leg
and kicked him solidly in the stomach, sending him tumbling backwards into the
wall with a cry of pain and surprise. Then its horn began glowing in a pale
green light.
The scuffle managed to jolt Maria and Anna awake, and both turned to the scene
to find Lance just in time to see him fall to his haunches. Anna's horn lit up
with magic, and a green light started glowing from the tip, casting the sight
in a stark relief that made her blanch.
On the floor, with a glowing horn of its own, was a cloaked unicorn of some
sort that was flailing about, attempting to get up despite having shoved its
attacker away and yet failing to right itself. She jumped out of bed, charged
over and summoned an inhibitor before thrusting it upon the glowing
accoutrement of the intruder. The act immediately made the form jerk as dimly-
glowing bolts ran across their body the very instant the horn was capped.
Afterwards, the bolts of magic faded, and so too did the aura of its horn.
Lance rose to stand with a grunt as the figure went still. He turned to the
window and closed it before turning to the door to find Angel cowering next to
it in a tightly-compact ball. "You okay?" he asked in a much softer but pained
voice, garnering a shaken nod as his answer. Then he turned to the intruder and
sighed. "Who the hell is this pony?"
Anna shrugged, eyes also lingering on the form that lay on the floor. Her magic
took hold of its clothes and slowly unravelled them, going piece by piece in
case there were wounds present. Maria hopped out of bed and cantered over,
turning to look at Lance. "Is this a bad pony?" she asked.
Lance nodded as Anna worked to undo the black bindings. "Tried to hurt your…"
he trailed off, lifting a hoof to gesture to the cowering Angel for emphasis.
He frowned as Anna successfully freed one of the intruder's forelegs from a
cloth binding, revealing a cracked form with ball-like joints where the front
knee, hoof, and elbow would normally bend. Said ball-joints were made of blue
crystals, and further crystals grew out of the front of the leg in a jagged
structure that was small. Pieces fell off of the leg, giving the impression
that it was barely holding together.
"What the…" Anna murmured, working hastily to undo the rest of the bindings to
see what the hell the creature was. She freed the other three legs and found
more or less the same result as the first, except two legs had red crystals
instead of blue. Angel stopped shivering, uncurled himself, and hopped over
with his curiosity now piqued. The instant he reached the scene was the same
instant he tapped at Anna's back pastern to let her know he was there.
The door opened seconds later, and Fluttershy and Blueblood trotted into the
room. Lance turned to them to find a pair of widened eyes, a flared horn aglow
in shimmering blue, a pair of wings spread wide, and frazzled manes. "What
happened?" Blueblood asked, turning to the pony who was being stripped. He
shook his head upon seeing patches of crystal. "What is the meaning of this?!"
"This bastard broke in, tried strangling Angel, and kicked me off the moment I
jumped him. Anna's holding him down," Lance explained, turning back to the
figure before paling as Anna forcefully parted its hood from its face.
Dim light shined on the form, revealing an entire mane of rainbow crystals and
a set of unblinking emeralds acting as eyes, all seemingly affixed in a face of
what looked like stone. The last of the bodily bindings came off next,
revealing a snake-like tail ending in yellow crystals and some kind of
swirling, varicolored orb set into the stomach that jutted out just enough to
look like a normal belly had the cloth stayed on.
"What the fuck?" Lance found himself asking. For a moment the emeralds
shimmered with vibrant, similarly-colored mana before Anna lifted a hoof and
punched the spot between them, channelling mana into her hoof the moment it
connected with stone. For a few seconds, this did nothing except make the
creature's 'eyes' crackle.
A green glow pulsed from her hoof and made the thing quiver violently, causing
more pieces to flake and break off of the body. Only when it threatened to
crumble altogether did she stop channeling mana, and she stayed still for a few
seconds before she lifted her limb up and punched again, just hard enough to
break the entire face of the construct. Considering it was already falling
apart at this point, the face more or less caved in on itself.
"It's… it's a pony-shaped crystal golem… an enchanted but flimsy one at that.
How did it get here?" Anna asked as she lifted her hoof, dragging with it
shards of broken stone and emeralds. The rest of the golem shuddered for a
moment before it crumbled into pieces with one last fleeting pulse of mana and
a low groan. The inhibitor rolled off of a stone fragment, and was quickly
encased in a green glow that made it vanish.
"A… crystal golem?" Fluttershy parroted, pupils shrinking to pinpricks. "B-
but…"
"Nevermind how it got here," Blueblood snapped, garnering the attention of Anna
in the process. She whirled around to face him, being mindful of Angel's
presence. "Who enchanted it is the bigger question. Why did it come here? Who
constructed it if it was not built by nature, for what purpose at that? Why did
it fall apart just now? Those are some even better queries."
***** Chapter LIII- Cold Shoulder *****
The clouds parted during the early dawn as the sun rose, ensuring that it was
casting its light over Whitefall that made it take on a pinkish hue. Rays of
warming sun filtered in through a single window in the dining room of the
church, where everyone had gathered with plates full of food laden on the
tables. In addition to that, the remains of the crystal-pony-golem... thing
were placed on a blanket on the floor to one side where all could see it.
Blueblood crossed his forelegs and huffed. "No clue who could've crafted our
wayward visitor last night?" he snorted, garnering several shakings of heads as
his answer.
"I don't even know anypony who could do that. It's delicate work to create a
golem, not to mention whoever did it might've needed an earth pony on standby
just to keep it together with said earth pony's magic," Anna replied, taking a
few seconds to bite down on a biscuit.
Blueblood's brow rose. "Earth pony magic? Pardon my bluntness, but you're a
unicorn for Faust's sake. How would you know about earth pony magic?" he asked
sincerely.
Anna swallowed her bite and gestured to Matt with a hoof. "He taught me a thing
or two," she answered. Her hoof then shifted to point at Natalie. "And she
helped." Blueblood turned to the two and sighed as he found them nodding
fervently, one with a biscuit halfway lodged in his mouth and the other
magically stabbing a fork into a cooked egg.
Lance lifted a piece of sausage and bit into it. He did not speak until a few
seconds after he chewed it up, gulped it down, and turned to Anna, "Speaking of
earth pony magic… was there a distinct signature of some kind, if at all, even
lingering ever since the golem was taken down?"
Anna shook her head. "No. I caught nothing of the sort," she answered.
Katie, who was wearing an ice-blue chitil muzzle over her split grin as she
apprehensively nibbled on a muffin which had sprinkles on top, decided to
interject, "Y'think there's an anti-signature spell or something?"
Anna lifted a hoof and idly tapped her chin with it, a small frown forming on
her muzzle as she gave the question some thought. "It's possible, but… it would
have had to be a really skilled unicorn to even cast such a spell. Not likely,
since there was earth pony magic present in the golem, and it was more or less
falling apart when it dropped by," she murmured.
Katie snorted and turned to the golem's remains, forgetting her muffin for a
few seconds. "Hrm…" Her gaze fell on the massive crystal orb that once made the
creature's stomach, still surprisingly intact. "Would it be possible to make
something better out of what's left? That massive crystal in particular… it
looks like it could be part of a helmet of some kind if cut down to size," she
stated.
Natalie's horn glowed, and she used her magic to gently nudge Katie's shoulder.
"Finish your muffin first, then we'll talk about crystal helmets," she chided.
Katie wilted a little, but turned back to her muffin and began nibbling again.
"I'd sooner give her a set of crystal teeth," Lance snarked before tearing into
the piece of sausage again. He chewed and swallowed before looking at the
muffin and seeing barely a dent being made before adding, "Because she's not
making much progress."
Anna turned to Bartholomew as she bit into an egg. A bit of runny yolk managed
to spill out and dribble down her chin, but she caught it with a fork and
scooped it up into her mouth before swallowing. "Has any strange activity been
happening around here as of late?" she asked the instant she retracted her
fork. "Strange ponies visiting, or more slime attacks or anything else like
that?"
Bartholomew pursed his lips before sighing through his nostrils. "A couple of
days ago, a cloaked unicorn lad paid Whitefall a visit. He spent the night
here, ate a few plates' worth of food, paid for his grub, and then left," he
replied with a shrug. "All I could get out of him was a name."
"A name?" Natalie parroted, turning to Bartholomew with a brow raised. "Well,
what was it?"
"He called himself Laz," Bartholomew answered, sighing again. "Nothing more,
nothing less."
Matt's eyes narrowed slightly as he turned to his father. "Just 'Laz?' What did
he look like?" he asked in a low, apprehensive tone.
"All I saw was a beige muzzle and horn and a pair of blue eyes. Couldn't see
his mane or tail, or even his cutie mark if he had one. Had no weapons on him,
either. He was about…" Bartholomew's eyes scanned his guests carefully before
settling on Lance. "About his height, give or take a few inches with his horn,"
he finished. "And he waltzed in praising you and Natz, oddly enough. Almost
like he knew you two." His gaze turned to Matt, whose eyes narrowed a little
more. "When I asked how he met you two, if he did meet you, he just… didn't
answer."
Matt's eyes slid closed and he snorted. "Anything else?" he asked.
"Other than that, he didn't act suspicious or anything," Bartholomew replied
with a shrug.
Twilight interjected, lifting a small biscuit with her hoof as she did so, "So,
aside from this 'Laz' fellow, anything else of note?"
"A few hippogryph stallions came by trying to cause trouble, and they came from
the north or so I heard. Me and Andrew kicked them to kingdom come, and only
the biggest and burliest survived. He's currently in the town jail, and we
buried the others," Bartholomew replied, donning a rather small yet sincere
grin. "He told me that we were just good-for-nothings waiting to be eaten. But
we showed him otherwise."
Andrew chimed in, nodding fervently as he did so, "Yep. He underestimated my
magic; I just let him go at Barthy for a few minutes before intercepting him.
Thought he could go hoof-to-claw with an earth pony like him."
"From the north?" Armin piped up, both brows going up within seconds. "Did he
say a specific name, location, or something?"
Bartholomew nodded. "Yes he did. Frostbite… something," he answered, his
utterance sending a collective shudder through the spines of Fenrir, Sarah, and
Spike. His smile fell as he heard a whimper, and turned to Maria as she moved
to wedge her head between Lance's foreleg and his barrel before wrapping her
tarsi around said foreleg tightly. "Is something wrong?"
Lance's brow furrowed. "Can you take us to this big and burly gryph once we're
done eating? Just me, Anna and Maria, if you don't mind. I'd like to give him a
piece of my mind," he hissed.
At that, Bartholomew shook his head and frowned. "He's gone stark-raving mad.
Been like that since he got canned. You probably wouldn't get through to the
bastard," he answered, his tone glum. "Worse, most he does is roar. Sometimes,
something coherent comes out of his beak, but it's… awful."
"So… this 'Laz,' the golem, and the raving gryph aside…" Flash began, but
stopped when Bartholomew turned to him and smiled.
"Well, there used to be a smelly waste disposal plant here. But it was
dismantled, and the 'waste' part was cultivated by local slimes in a way the
environment wasn't harmed. Other than that, and the one time Whitefall's jewel
was stolen before me, Andrew and Eve came here, nothing really major has
happened," Bartholomew replied, his grin widening.
That managed to get Twilight's brows raising. "Okay… I gotta see where this
'waste disposal plant' once stood. Do you think you could take me there?" she
asked sincerely.
"And this 'jewel' you mentioned…" Blueblood paused, recalling what the guards
were circling the eve before when he'd arrived, "pray tell, why is it out in
the open? Especially since it was, by your own admission, stolen one time?"
It was Andrew who answered, his horn briefly flaring to life with a golden aura
to catch Blueblood's attention as he did so, "Because it snows every night, and
gets so cold not even Bartholomew could stand it for long. We only guard it
during the day, when the sun's out. The weather takes care of the rest."
"In short, it would be suicidal to steal the jewel now," Bartholomew stated
calmly, though he could not keep a slightly smug hint from his tone. He turned
to his plate and closed his eyes serenely as he found it empty. Slowly, he
stood up, pushing back his seat in doing so. "So… jail, where the waste plant
was, or jewel first?" he asked.
"Hrm… I guess the place where the supposed plant was can wait… Lance, would you
mind terribly if I went with you to the jail?" Twilight asked.
"No, I wouldn't mind," Lance answered, turning to Katie to find she was still
struggling with making a dent in her muffin. "You're coming with, and you're
bringing the muffin too." At her nod, he turned to Blueblood. "Would you like
to come with as well?"
Blueblood pursed his lips in thought, and his eyes shifted to Flash for a few
seconds. Then his gaze turned back to Lance. "Only if I have a guard
accompanying me. Better safe than sorry, if what I hear of this 'mad
hippogryph' happens to yield a grain of truth to it," he replied.
"I can get behind that," Lance stated, nodding in assent.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Sitting close to a steep cliff with a yawning cavern mouth at the southmost end
of Whitefall was a stone-brick building sporting a steel door instead of one
made from wood. What little windows it had were only inches long, lined with
steel bars that kept all but the smallest of hooves from reaching in and out.
Guttural roaring, hollow yet piercing, issued constantly from one of the small
windows, accompanied by a nonstop rattling of chains.
Within the first room of the building, sitting behind a quaint receptionist's
desk, was a lone unicorn stallion with aged leather armor and a small, bristly
white mustache on the upper lip of his muzzle. He looked around, finding empty
wooden seats with worn cushions and a hardwood floor bearing eight deep gouges
in twin clusters of four leading from the door all the way to another door
sitting right next to his desk. Behind him were knick-knack shelves, barren
except for an inkwell and a quill.
Above the seats were wanted posters, all except one scribbled over with the
words 'caught and executed' in hoofwriting so ludicrously large and messy the
beings within the pictures may as well have been sporting demonic horns and
scraggly beards for extra flair. The one who had escaped being scribbled on
depicted nothing more than a fragmented horseshoe accompanied by what looked to
be knives.
Surrounding the shoe and knives was a puddle of blood, but that was all it
contained; not one strand of hide nor a lock of hair was to be seen of any sort
of sentient being. It also sported the words 'Wanted: Envoy of Cocytus,
Preferably In Pieces' and a sum of twenty thousand bits to whoever managed to
catch and hack this 'Envoy.'
Within hoof's reach was a thick sheaf of papers sitting on the desk, easily
tall enough to reach his neck if it were on the floor instead. On the other
side was a small picture frame, also within hoof's reach. Other than that and
the unicorn himself, the place was empty, save the incessant roaring that had
declared this place it's home as of late.
He turned to the second door as another roar tore through the air. His chest
puffed up and he bellowed out, "Shut your beak hole already!" He deflated as
another roar answered his call, and his horn started sputtering to life with a
grey aura. Two shapeless blobs started floating next to his ears, before
compacting and shaping themselves into vaguely-bullet forms and gathering
matter. Bit by bit, two small sponge-like objects formed, grey at first before
orange blossomed across their frames as they came together.
When the blobs took on a definitive shape and color, he stuffed them tightly
into his ear canals. To the unicorn, sound may as well have ceased existing in
that moment. "Aaaah, earplugs. Can't live without 'em," he murmured, smiling as
he realized he couldn't hear a single iota of his own utterance, let alone the
roaring. With another faltering flick of magic he grasped the paper at the top
of the sheaf and plopped it down before him. "Let's see… how much should the
guard unit get paid this week?"
After pondering for a moment and scanning the paper to confirm what he was
seeing, he moved the paper aside without doing anything to fill it out. "Eh,
I'll pay them later." He picked up the next sheet of paper, looked at it, and
then set it aside atop the first. So it went like that for several minutes on
end; him in his soundless bubble supplemented by earplugs as he set papers
aside after reading them just once with self-spoken promises to do them later.
Over the roaring and his plugs, he failed to notice the sound of several sets
of hooves fumbling about outside, let alone the sound of the steel door being
magically opened by a green glow. In fact, he noticed nothing until a tan-beige
hoof slammed itself on the desk before he could slide the most recent piece of
paper over to the growing pile, snagging his attention. He turned up to find
Anna looking at him, accompanied by a few other ponies, in addition to an armed
Katie resting on her back with a quarter of what looked like a muffin lodged in
her mouth.
The unicorn stallion sighed and turned to magically fetch the inkwell and quill
before focusing on Anna again. He noticed her mouth was frantically moving, but
he could not decipher what at all she'd been saying. He turned to the piece of
paper he had yet to throw onto the pile, noticing it was completely blank. He
lifted a hoof in a 'hold on' gesture before popping open the well and dipping
the quill's tip inside.
Anna backed off, tilting her head at the stallion. She turned to Bartholomew.
"Is he deaf?" she asked.
Another roar issued through the building again, and Bartholomew shook his head.
"Likely has his earplugs in. Wouldn't blame him with the ruckus going on," he
answered. That garnered a groan from Anna as she turned back to the mustachioed
stallion as he started to scrawl onto the piece of paper before him. With a few
deft flicks of his quill, he was able to jot something down with such ease it
seemed second nature for him. He only paused once or twice to dip the quill
into the inkwell, but even that was swift, calculated, and precise.
The moment the quill ceased moving altogether was the same moment he lifted the
paper up to scrutinize it. Anna waited until he nodded at his own handiwork and
sighed as he flipped the paper so the scrawlings he'd made faced her.
"Please, for the love of Godcat, can you silence Mr. Yellingsworth? My head
hurts, and he's been raving for the last five days! I'll pay you handsomely, no
matter how you go about silencing that beak of his."
Anna nodded, and the stallion smiled before using his quill to gesture to the
door next to his desk. She turned to Bartholomew and asked, "Does that lead to
the cells?"
Bartholomew nodded as another roar came and went. "Need a key to enter the
cells, though," he remarked, trotting up to the second door before pushing it
open with a hoof. Taking point, he lead his group to what was beyond; a
relatively medium-length hall sporting cells with iron bars that criss-crossed
like chainlink fencing. At the very end of the hall, from between a set of
crossing bars protruded a pair of shackled, pale tarsi that ended in talons
whose digits were clipped past the first knuckle.
Another roar issued out from that cell, further supplemented by rattling
chains. Blueblood took a few shaking steps forward to stand shoulder to
shoulder with Bartholomew, and slowly turned to him. "Is that… our 'mad
hippogryph?'" he asked slowly, his voice quaking slightly.
"Yep. Can't believe he's still pitching a hissyfit, though. I thought he'd have
tired out by now," Bartholomew answered. With that, he began trotting to the
one cell with clipped talons poking out of it, and hesitantly his guests
followed him.
Flash winced as the roaring ceased and the talons drew back, giving way to a
low grumble akin to a warning growl. He turned to Lance, who had Twilight
trotting next to him and Maria on his back. "Big mean hippogryph…" Maria
mumbled, trying in vain to stuff her face into Lance's mane.
Bartholomew nodded. "Oh, yeah. This one's got some guts, I'll give him that,"
he replied. As the group came closer to the cell in which the 'mad hippogryph'
resided, a keening hiss echoed in from the bars in place of a roar. This was
quickly followed by a frantic flapping of wings that was strong enough to kick
up dust in the opposite cell.
It took them a minute to reach the cell, but when they did and looked inside,
Lance and Anna paled. Katie had to force herself to keep her mouth shut lest
she lose the remnants of her muffin, and Maria fanned her wings before curling
them forward to shield her face. Flash and Blueblood squawked in unison and
shuffled back to stand behind Lance, while Twilight could do naught but stare.
Beyond the cell stood a musclebound hippogryph stallion in an upright stance,
and although his muscles had shrunk considerably to reveal a despairingly thin
ribcage some time ago, his legs and shoulders were still very toned and bulky.
Large wings flapped and sent horrifically pale feathers everywhere, and he let
off a growl with a beak that was only little more than jagged mandibles barely
an inch long.
A deep gash ran across his chest, stained with dried crimson. Each movement of
his body caused the wound to ooze slightly. His pasterns as well as his tarsi
were chained, anchored to the wall by a few inches of links just long enough
for him to reach out of his prison. What had the group's attention, though,
were his eyes. Streaks of black, dried gunk trailed from blackened sclera that
housed glowing red orbs, just stopping at his ruined beak.
The eyes themselves were narrowed to slits, seemingly alight in crimson. A deep
frown creased his face from what remained of his beak, and his gaze fell onto
Maria in seconds. "Little… cunt… when I get out of here, you'll wish you'd have
died…" he hissed.
Bartholomew jumped back, eyes widening. "Now hold your horses! Who the hell are
you talking to?" he asked.
The crimson orbs fell on him. The gyrph lifted a pale talon and mutely gestured
to Maria with it, before issuing another deep growl from his throat. "That
cunt… is why Frostbite Haven is no more," he snarled. His frown then twisted to
form a hideous grin as he added, "But she can't get a cutie mark. She's as
worthless as any other cunt; only fit to bear foals, and nothing else."
Anna's eyes narrowed, with red forming on the fringes of her irises and
spreading rapidly across her face. She stomped a hoof, garnering the massive
gryph's attention. The instant his orbs fell onto her was the instant she
snapped, "If you think she's worthless, buster, then I have a whole fucking
bridge to sell you! 'Fit to bear foals?' She's probably not old enough to have
kids of her own, and thanks to you and your fellow sick fucks, probably won't
have any for a long while yet!"
Katie snapped her head up to swallow her muffin's remnants whole before turning
back to the bound hippogryph. Slowly, she lifted her forelegs up, and her wings
buzzed before she ascended off of Anna's back. She rose to hover an inch below
the ceiling, eyes narrowing at the cell door. She brought her forehooves
together to scrape the claws against each other with surprisingly swift
movements, making the shoes shriek as they raked one another again and again.
"Can you let me in to deal with him? Because I want to give him a taste of cold
shoulder," she hissed, her jaws quivering as mana pulsed across her hooves. The
temperature dropped, and ice rapidly formed on her legs. The claws lengthened
by a good inch of frost, becoming more akin to little sickles than anything
else.
Bartholomew turned to Katie, a brow raised. "You sure about that? He could rend
you a new one, and he still has some bulk on him. What're you gonna do, poke
him?" he queried sincerely.
Katie's split grin twitched at the fringes and both sides curled onto
themselves, giving the distinct impression that it was widening beneath her
chitil mask. "Poke him? No, no, no, I'm gonna do worse than just poke him," she
replied. She shifted her gaze to let it fall on Twilight. "Say… is it possible
to put me in the cell with him, without using the key?"
Twilight glanced up at Katie, a tight frown creasing her muzzle. "Why do you
want to bypass the cell door?" she asked in a flat tone.
"I reckon that the instant the door opens is the instant he bolts," Katie
retorted, turning back to the incarcerated hippogryph, who was oddly silent as
he slinked to the furthest wall of his cell. "That… and I think it's time I
show you what I can really do to a bastard like him."
"Wasn't Chocolate Latte enough for you?" Flash piped up, frowning.
Katie shook her head. "This time it'll be different," she promised darkly. A
violet aura flared to life, immediately encased her and it pulled her sharply
to the ground tail-first. Once she was inches above ground, she twisted around
to find Twilight with her horn aglow and a rather blank stare on her face.
"What?"
Twilight shook her head. "He could squish you, wounded as he is. That, and it
wouldn't be wise to egg him on," she replied. "You're rushing into a dangerous
situation head-first, and he could easily disarm you. It would be foolish, to
say the least."
Katie rolled her orbs and crossed her forelegs together. "If my mother was
still alive, you'd sound just like her," she snorted. "Next wraith I find,
provided they haven't been paddywagoned or decapitated first, is mine."
Blueblood turned to look at Katie rather incredulously, one brow lowering and
the other rising in perfect tandem. "A wraith… attacking other wraiths… or at
least making threats of such," he began slowly, his tone low and bemused. "That
I find highly absurd, even when accounting for your being a changeling." He
waited until she looked at him before asking, "How many of your fellow wraiths
do you trust enough to not wish to attack upon sight?"
Katie giggled at the query, her torn smile only curling in on itself to widen
some more. "The one wraith I have trusted… she was put down per her own
request," she replied. She turned her gaze to the caged beast in chains before
adding, "But that one… chains and bars would do little in teaching him a
lesson."
"What do you mean by that?" Bartholomew asked, his brows raising
simultaneously.
"He's likely immortal. And sooner or later, he'll find a way out," Katie
replied, barely keeping a growl from her voice. "I'd like to remedy that while
I am able."
Twilight and Bartholomew exchanged glances at that, and for a few seconds they
simply stared at each other, unsure of what to do. But their shackled
hippogryph rushed forward and thrust his talons out, swiping frantically to no
avail as everyone jumped back to get out of range. "I will end you all, even if
I have to bend these damned bars to do so! That little bitch especially! I'll
make her watch as I rip your guts out and decorate the walls with crimson!" he
bellowed, eyes fixed in an angry glare.
Katie lifted a hoof and gestured to him with it. "See what I mean?" she asked
rhetorically.
Twilight's horn gathered particles that emitted a bright white light, and so
too did the aura around Katie. "You asked for it," she sighed in resignation.
In a burst of light Katie vanished, only to then reappear in the cell. She
whirled around to find herself hovering behind the hippogryph, who was now
staring at Twilight with a lower mandible going slack. He turned to look at her
for a second, during which time she stopped buzzing and landed on the floor,
before twisting back to face Twilight.
"H-how did you…" the hippogryph stammered, orbs shrinking to pinpricks.
"Simple teleportation spell that I learned in magic school," Twilight replied,
watching as Katie started heading to the furthest wall. She frowned as she
scaled it, releasing pulses of mana and making patches of ice just thick and
strong enough to hold her weight in the process. Then Katie twisted herself to
walk upside down on the ceiling once she got to it, her steps slow and
calculated. Not even her movements, which broke frost patches constantly, made
sound; the instant her hooves parted from the patches was the instant the
patches vaporized before forming again.
"But mares… can't teleport objects!" the hippogryph yelled, his tone laced with
several notes of disbelief. He continued to stare at Twilight, unaware that the
gazes of the rest of his visitors fell onto Katie as she moved to stand
directly above him, turned around and reared down. Her wings faced them as her
forelegs inched towards him, while her back ones kept her suspended via frost.
"But you just saw me do it. Isn't that evidence enough to the contrary?"
Twilight rebuked firmly, noticing the frost on Katie's back hooves shrinking by
the second. "Here, lemme demonstrate it again." Her horn glowed and her aura
seized Maria, making her squawk before she vanished and reappeared on a stunned
Bartholomew's back. The hippogryph dropped to the floor, shifting to all fours
with a few digits connecting with the bars, seemingly in a position to pounce.
"Lies!" the hippogryph hissed, and he would have bared fangs if he had any to
spare. His wings flared, though, and flapped just once.
Seeing that the bulky hippogryph was distracted and had crouched low with
talons brushing up against the bars, Katie made her move. The ice on her back
legs broke away entirely, and her wings buzzed at the same time, propelling her
onward to him before she shifted her forelegs violently. Her claws angled and
wasted no time stabbing him in the back of the neck from both sides with the
aid of gravity, channeling mana and dislodging a few vital vertebra in the
process.
He lost all feeling below the neck, and weakly crowed as he felt his blood turn
solid in his veins within thirty seconds. He did not slump, but instead managed
a gurgle that cracked as ice grew on his body at such speeds he simply couldn't
react; the ability to react had been stolen the moment claws slid into his
neck.
Even his gaping wound went stiff as a board, with a thick layer of frost
growing outward from it. Then, when his entire body was coated in a good rime
of ice, it continued to spread until it encased both his chains and the bars
he'd been foolishly touching at that point. Mana pulsed across his body once he
was fully trapped in a cold, unmoving stance.
"A very curious thing about us wraiths… most cannot regulate body temperature
by themselves to save their hides," Katie dryly remarked as she pulled back,
her claws sliding out with ease. "They have just enough warmth in their bodies
to still be able to move. Maybe a little more if they eat, but nothing like
they had before coming to the very border between life and death. But they have
to move in places like a tundra, lest they risk desiccation."
"And all it takes for it to go wrong… is a slight chink in the rime," she
finished, flying around to hover at the hippogryph's side, just below the left
wing. She found the start of his wound and stabbed it with her claws, though it
did not immediately go into the solidified flesh. "Either pre-made at the very
border… or forged by claw post-revival."
She applied force and tilted her weapons up and down whilst using her back legs
to tap repeatedly, until she found purchase and managed to impale successfully.
The instant the claws were in was the instant she pulled out, and she watched
as a good crack formed from her probing and stabbing, which only further
widened his gash considerably.
The crack pulsed with blue mana momentarily. "How… long is he gonna stay like
that?" Flash asked, taking a second to swallow a forming lump in his throat.
"A good… few hours or so as a popsicle," Katie answered with a snort. "But I've
probably made him immobile for a while yet." A purple aura embraced her and
made her vanish in a bright light, before causing her to reappear in front of
the whole group on their side of the bars.
For a few minutes on end, everypony else was silent. Then, Lance's mouth inched
open, and he spoke up, "So… would you like military training once we get to the
base?"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Matt and Natalie were patrolling with Andrew and the other guards, hovering
nigh-incessantly around the blue jewel like it was more important than their
lives. One was wearing a thick fur coat comprised of brown fuzz, while the
other opted for a scarf and fuzzy boots. Spike accompanied the lot, if
'accompanied' meant being seated on Matt's back that was reinforced with fuzz
twice over.
"So, that jewel thingy… what's it do?" Spike asked, barely feeling Matt tense
under his clothes.
"By itself, nothing. But with two other jewels like it, the end result… let's
just say it's not very good," Matt replied, his voice low and chilling.
Spike's brow rose and he turned to Natalie for clarification. Instead her horn
glowed and a zipper formed over her mouth again. He sighed, and decided to drop
the subject considering it was this quick to get such a reaction from the two.
He turned to Andrew and asked, "So, do you have a cutie mark?"
The question, while fairly innocent, made Andrew blush a little. "Yes, but it's
just a shield," he answered, lighting his horn and using his magic to lift a
patch of armor away from his hip. Indeed, resting on that hip was a shield, one
sporting a golden pentagram affixed in a silver surface. He dropped the leather
patch before another guard passed him, and his horn ceased glowing. "It's… odd,
though."
Spike's brow rose higher. "Odd? How? That looked like a perfectly ordinary mark
to me," he stated.
"You see me toting around a shield?" Andrew snarked, a small but wry smile
playing on his lips.
Spike gave the remark some thought. "Maybe you have a mana-based shield," he
retorted.
Andrew rolled his eyes. "You got the wrong pony," he replied, lifting a hoof
and gesturing to Matt with it.
Spike sighed. "Aside from guard work, what do you do?" he asked, hoping to
strike up a conversation.
"Eat, sleep, wonder why the hell my nephew and adopted niece joined the
military… and sometimes I take weapons to the forge-pony around these parts and
have him repair them," Andrew answered with a rather modest shrug.
Spike nodded. "Is it true that Natalie set somepony's tail on fire one time?"
he queried, instantly garnering a muffled giggle from the mare in question.
"Well… the forge-pony tried asking her out once, and this was before we moved
to Whitefall with him, and wouldn't let up even after she told him she was
dating her adoptive brother. She about gave me a heart attack saying that,"
Andrew began, his small smile evolving into a large grin. "So she lifted his
tail and set its very tip in the furnace with her magic, without him even
noticing."
Spike donned a smile, very easily envisioning some poor sod with his tail
caught in a furnace. "What happened next?" he asked, barely suppressing a
chuckle.
"He was left tail-less for a year, and had to cover the remains with a cloak
until the hairs grew back. I told all the guards here about it once we
arrived," Andrew answered. "And to this day, me and my fellow guards call him
Scorched Stubble."
Spike cracked up upon hearing 'Scorched Stubble.' He leaned into Matt's mane
and laughed. The other guards chuckled a little as well, and soon their little
clique was alive with the fervor of conversation and laughter. When he calmed
down, he lifted his head from blond locks of hair and wiped his eyes for any
stray tears that may have formed.
He glanced around afterwards, before his gaze turned to the beige guard. Almost
immediately, Spike noticed that he was frowning. "Why the long face?" he asked.
The beige guard sighed. "That was my brother whose tail got burnt," he
muttered. "I paid him a visit earlier this morning and he was still head-over-
hooves."
Spike's smile faded. "Isn't he mad about the whole 'Scorched Stubble' thing?"
The guard shook his head. "His tail grew back, so he's more or less over it.
But he still wants a hot piece of flank, if you get the drift," he answered.
Spike found himself nodding. It would make sense for the sorry sod to let the
incident go after having regrown his tail, but a niggling feeling started to
sink in with that realization. "Where is your brother anyway? I'd like to meet
him," he stated, donning a small smile as he spoke.
"My brother has the horsey hives, and something fierce. I was only at his place
long enough to make sure he was fed for the day and everything," the guard
replied, his frown deepening. The utterance made the fervor die down, and all
eyes turned to him in the span of a second.
"Horsey hives? Why didn't you tell us sooner, Noah? You could be carrying it
right now and don't even realize it!" Andrew exclaimed, paling with his
utterance. The fervor began once again, but now it was little more than hushed
murmurs and worried glances going this way and that.
Noah lowered his head. "My brother… didn't want the whole town going in an
uproar over it. Everypony in Whitefall knows him, Andrew. And he had me board
up his house before I left," he replied glumly.
"Hold up, hold up. Board up his house?" Matt interjected, making Noah jump. He
lifted a hoof to signal for the rambling of the other guards to halt, and
within seconds they saw the gesture before shutting their mouths. A palpable
silence fell upon the area, but it lasted for only seconds. "Why board his
house up? That just seems… strange."
"He didn't want the horsey hives spreading," Noah replied, lifting his head up
to level his gaze at Matt.
Matt's brow rose, and he frowned. "How is he holding up?" he asked carefully.
Noah's head dropped again. "Been awful. He can barely trot a few paces before
he has to scratch. I had to put a magic bubble around myself to keep clean," he
said.
Spike's niggling feeling got that much stronger. "How bad does his throat hurt,
or how much has his appetite shrunk?" he piped up.
"I had to magically force biscuits into his mouth, and he wouldn't stop
hacking, either. Poor bastard was going on like a friggin' lumberjack, I swear
to Godcat," Noah sighed, his ears folding back against his head. "So if you
guys want any armor reforged or whatever, don't go near him until he gets
better and that I know for sure that he's better."
The other guards nodded. "Should one of us go tell Bartholomew, though? He went
to the jail earlier…" Andrew trailed off as all eyes fell onto him. "What?"
"I think it would be best if you did it. You're his in-law, after all," Noah
stated with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Something about Noah doesn't seem right. I think I'll need to consult
somepony…" Spike murmured, so lowly that nopony else heard him speak. Andrew
nodded and turned sharply to the town before galloping away, causing snow to
fly behind him in his wake. "Question is… who? If it's horsey hives as he says
it is, then I may need to warn Twilight…"
***** Chapter LIV- Tipsy Tangle *****
As the sun rose to its apex at early noon, Twilight and her group found
themselves standing near a chainlink fence surrounding several acres of land on
the eastern end of Whitefall, and the fence kept them separated from what was
on the other side. Beyond the fence, there were a few dark grey walls hewn of
steel erecting upwards, though they were sparse enough they may as well have
been trees in a desert. Slithering around the walls, carrying huge steel bins
with caution signs that housed sickly green, bubbling liquid were humongous
black slimes.
Each slime was about the size of the Valkyrie by themselves, and their
disjointed limbs were big enough to squish Bartholomew if they were inclined to
do so. Katie let off a low whistle upon seeing the slimes. "Yeesh, those things
could swallow Fenrir whole!" she exclaimed.
Blueblood's nose wrinkled at the stench the green liquid gave as a slime came
close to the chainlink fence and slithered along right behind it. "That smell
is abysmal!" he complained, his face turning several shades of verdant within
seconds. His horn flared to life, but diminished when a massive, fuzzy hoof
flew to rest in front of his barrel. He turned to find Bartholomew standing at
his side with a stern, narrow-eyed look on his face.
"Those slimes are very toxic. It would be best not to mess with them. Besides,
they're minding their own business," Bartholomew said in a firm voice.
Blueblood opened his mouth to argue, only to shut it and turn his gaze to Lance
as he cleared his throat.
"He's right. Had some bad run-ins with these slimes once, and I'm not too keen
on trying to have another go at them," Lance piped up, his gaze fixed on the
slimes in question. "Especially with bald wings."
Blueblood snorted, trying to keep the acrid stench from wafting into his nose,
but he said nothing. Twilight piped up, looking at one of the few steel walls
that were still standing, "How did the plant get dismantled anyway? And what
was it being used for?"
Bartholomew shrugged. "Dunno the answer to either question," he replied
solemnly. "All I know is the workers took it down at some point."
Twilight turned away from the scene beyond the chainlink fencing and to Anna.
"Could you take us back to the jewel, please?" she asked.
Anna's shoulders sagged a bit, and she assumed a small, tight frown. "Well…"
She turned to Bartholomew. "Before we do that, did these toxic slimes breed or
something? Last I checked, they weren't this big."
"Well, I haven't been around to see how they do it. Most I heard was that they
just crawled from the wreckage of what's left," Bartholomew answered, once more
shrugging. "That, and I don't want to see poison-packing slimes get down and
dirty, thank you very much."
Anna turned back to Twilight, whose face turned a slight tinge of green at the
thought of slimes engaging in mating habits. "I guess we can visit the jewel
now," she answered. Turning to Whitefall, she muttered, "I wonder what Zecora
and your pals are doing now."
Twilight's lips twitched slightly. "Well, hopefully not too much." Pinkie Pie
came to the forefront of her thoughts, and her ears fell back. "But it might
not hurt to check…" Reluctantly, she started trotting back to Whitefall.
Blueblood trotted up to her side and then past it, deciding he was going to
take point. "What's the worst that could happen? Golems and slimes aside, I see
nothing wrong with this town," he chirped, though his voice had a very distinct
waver about it that was brief, but still there. He lifted a front hoof, unaware
that a pair of orbs were now poised in his direction.
Katie's ears stood to rigid attention. "Uh, did you already forget I froze a
hippogryph ten times bigger than me an hour ago at most?" she retorted. "What
if more like him show up?"
Blueblood froze before his raised hoof could touch the snow. "A-are you
implying there's more than one brute like him?" he asked, slowly craning his
neck to look at Katie. His stomach began forming tight knots when he found her
solemnly nodding.
"He's just the most recent one of exactly that nature that I have ran into,"
Katie answered solemnly. "You're tame compared to them, even accounting for
your behavior when we first met."
Blueblood shuddered and turned back to Whitefall again. "Let us never speak of
that again," he murmured. "It was horrendously bad manners mixed with paranoia
on my part."
"Can do," Katie chirped. Twilight turned to Katie for an explanation, but all
she got was a head turning to her, a hoof lifting up, and motioning across the
split mouth in a straight line. The gesture elicited a groan of exasperation
from Twilight, who then turned to Whitefall and began trotting to it. As she
went, Bartholomew filed in behind her, and after that everyone else fell in
step.
Maria, who was still on Bartholomew's back and looking at Twilight, decided to
pipe up, "How do you do the… the… the sparkly thing?"
Twilight's ears twitched. "The sparkly…" Her brain struggled to process that
bit. "Could you be more specific? I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean."
"How did you take me off daddy's back and onto great-uncle's back?" Maria tried
again, frowning.
Then it registered. "Oh." Twilight nodded and pursed her lips, racking her
brain for a way to phrase an answer that Maria could, hopefully, understand.
"Well, teleportation is really easy: all I have to do is imagine where I want
to go, cast a spell, and there I go. It also applies to if I want to teleport
something or somepony else, buuut there are limitations to the spell," she
began.
"Such as brick walls?" Katie snarked from further down the line.
"Limitations?" Maria parroted, cocking her head a little.
Twilight nodded. "Yep. I have to account for distance, how much mana I have
left, and who or what I am teleporting and where I am teleporting the who and
what to," she chirped. "Long story short, there's a lot of things that could
get in the way."
"Is it one of those advanced spells?" Anna called out from behind.
"Not really advanced, but not something any unicorn should try unless they're
certain they can cast it right," Twilight replied. "You just have to think of
where you want to go, how much distance there is—" She stopped as a green flash
of light exploded from behind, and she whirled around to find that Anna was
gone.
Next thing she knew, Anna reappeared right next to her in another flash of
light. "Like that?" Anna asked, smiling as Twilight staggered a little bit
before shaking her head to reorient herself.
Twilight turned to Anna after she finished shaking the spots out of her eyes.
"Yes, like that. Just don't abuse the spell, or your horn will turn red-hot…
trust me, I've tried it before," she replied.
Anna's grin widened. "Looks like I'll need to practice, then." Her horn glowed,
and she was engulfed in another flash of light. Seconds later, she reappeared
behind Lance and smiled as he turned to her with a small frown on his face.
"Save it for when we're not out here freezing our asses off. I might need you
to keep watch tonight, in case more golems show up," Lance warned in a stern
tone, which caused Anna's grin to falter momentarily.
Anna nodded. "Yes Lance," she muttered in reply.
Flash piped up from the back of the line, "Want me to fly across Whitefall to
get the others?"
Blueblood shouted in reply, "Yes, that would be spectacular. Please do that."
With that, Flash spread his wings and flapped just once before launching into
the air, and like that he was off with swift, graceful movements.
In that moment, the group caught sight of Andrew barreling towards them with a
harried, panic-stricken look on his face. "We got possible horsey hives!" he
shouted. Flash heard the outcry, and flapped his wings as fast as he could, his
face hardening as the words 'horsey hives' began lingering in his mind.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Zecora, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie were trotting around Whitefall's streets,
passing by foals building snow constructs and adults giving them vexed gazes as
they went on their merry way. They waved their front hooves from time to time
at the townsponies to be friendly, yet still the strange looks more or less
remained fixed in their direction.
Even as the three neared a building with a sign depicting a tankard hanging
over the door, the gazes continued to bore into them. Rainbow Dash turned up to
look at the sign for a few seconds, but no longer than that as Zecora opened
the door. "Tipsy Tankard Tavern…" she muttered, wings fluffing at her sides as
she turned to the door.
The first thing that registered to them once they entered were the various
ponies that turned to eye them up and down. The second was the state of the
tavern itself; the wood was polished, yet there were a few stains here and
there. The tables and chairs, however, were old and splintering, lined with
hole-riddled cloth and cushions had cotton spilling forth from unchecked tears
in the fabric. The bar was well-kept and stocked, lined with brands the group
couldn't recognize. The place had an air of dissonance about it, but the mares
couldn't quite put their hoof on where that dissonance came from.
Then, there were the ponies themselves. At least half of them were gruff-
looking stallions with faces so hard they seemed to be scowling, while the
others were scrawny stallions with seemingly-twiggy legs, and all of them were
unicorns. Some had bloodshot eyes, and others had unkempt manes. Most had
harried looks and sullen frowns, all accentuated by beading sweat.
Pinkie shuddered as she saw that not one pony was smiling. "U-um… h-hi?" she
stammered. A horn glowed in the crowd and a red aura pulled her, Dash, and
Zecora further inside, before the door slammed shut behind them.
"Hello to you too," a low, smooth voice answered. Pinkie turned her head this
way and that to find the source, before her gaze settled onto a cloaked form
sitting at the very back of the tavern. All they could see were a beige horn
glowing in a field of crimson, a beige muzzle, and blue eyes staring at them
with as judgmental a gaze as the rest of the attending patrons. The aura
dragged the trio all the way to this pony's table, and the gazes followed them
for the whole trip.
Once they were forcefully parked in chairs against their will, the cloak pony's
horn ceased glowing, but not before the aura turned a pleasing shade of blue.
He leaned over the table a little, icy eyes scanning them up and down. He
turned to address Zecora first, "It's been an awfully long time since I've last
seen a zebra." Then, his attention turned to Rainbow Dash. "Or a pony with as
many colors as you." Finally, he turned to Pinkie Pie. "Let alone somepony as
pink as candy. No offense." He leaned back to let them take their turn studying
him.
It didn't take long for them to exchange glances before turning back to the
cloaked patron. Dash leaned forward, her eyes narrowing slightly, daring the
mysterious stallion to do something else. He did not flinch, unless his lips
quirking up in a smile counted as such. When none of the mares at his table
spoke, he gave a soft chuckle. "So," the stallion began, "where'd you three
come from?"
Pinkie pursed her lips, her ear twitching as the stallion's question lingered.
"Are you gonna believe us if we told you?" she retorted, tilting her head a
little.
"Believe…" The stallion's mouth closed and contorted in a manner that seemed
reminiscent of deciding whether or not to spit something out. He let the word
sit on his tongue, and he turned to Pinkie again. "I've seen some things in my
life… so I guess I'll bite."
Rainbow leaned back. "We came from Equestria… which is a country in Mythos. We
came by airship," she answered. The utterance caused the rest of the patrons to
start chattering amongst themselves immediately.
"Mythonians are here?"
"That doesn't explain why one of them's colorful as hell…"
"What's with the striped one?"
"Forget that, I'm struggling to make sense of their cutie marks…"
The cloaked pony closed his eyes and sighed, taking a few seconds to absorb the
chatter going on around them. "I'll have to see the vessel you three came in on
before I can believe you. Sincerest apologies," he stated. Then he leaned
forward again. "But, I'm also willing to give you three the benefit of the
doubt. You stick out like sore hooves in these parts," he added.
Zecora kept her gaze fixed on the stallion as Pinkie and Rainbow exchanged
glances again. "Pardon my bluntness, for I feel it is needed, but who are you…"
she paused to turn to the bar before returning to the stallion, "and have you
yet been treated?"
The stallion cracked up a small smile again. "Laz," he answered. "And no, the
waiter hasn't served me yet."
"The town guard mentioned something about you… well, several somethings."
Pinkie sucked in a deep breath, leaned over, and whispered, "Do you know a pair
of ponies named Matt and Natalie? We heard you knew them."
Laz's eyes opened and his grin widened, to the point it threatened to become
one of a Cheshire nature. "Had several run-ins with those two before over the
years. Last I saw of them was before they went and joined a military," he
whispered in reply, though he could not keep the amusement from his voice.
Pinkie nodded and leaned back. "Well, at least we have our stallion… more or
less," she chirped with a shrug. "So… why are you still here? We heard you
left."
"I just left the church, not the town. The couple running the once-holy place
may as well have woken up the entire neighborhood during my stay," Laz snarked,
still grinning. He lifted a hoof clad in black cloth, giving the trio a view of
an equally-veiled barrel as he waved said hoof in a wide, dismissive gesture.
"I thought they were fighting. Turned out, they just broke the bed… and a
nightstand."
Rainbow grimaced, her mind painting an idea of how that likely went down. She
shook her head to rid herself of the thought before it could linger and get any
more vivid. "So… they're those kind of ponies behind closed doors?" she asked,
swallowing heavily at the notion.
Laz nodded fervently. "I'd suggest earplugs if you spend another night here,"
he replied tersely. He made to speak further when one of the other patrons at
the bar—a stallion with a light brown coat and an eyepatch—stumbled away from
his seat on legs that were doing less trotting and more actively flailing for a
hold on the ground. This stallion turned his bloodshot eye onto the group. For
a few seconds, this patron was seemingly tapdancing just to remain standing.
Dash, Zecora, and Pinkie turned around to the patron, brows raising in unison
as he stumbled towards them, bumping into other patrons and into tables and
chairs as he went. Because of his seemingly severe bout of disorientation, it
took him at least ten minutes to wade his way to the group. As he got closer,
the three mares and Laz scrunched their noses up as he brought with him a
terrible alcoholic smell which all but radiated its way to them.
The unsteady unicorn stiffened upon reaching the table, but his head swayed in
a nauseating, almost hypnotic manner as he eyed the quartet. "Ooooh… praaaiteh
littal thingseses," he mumbled, his voice heavily slurred to the point his
utterance almost sounded like pure gibberish.
"Do what now?" Dash asked, her brow raising higher.
"Can I take one of you… back home?" the brown unicorn asked, his words a little
more coherent that time.
"No way. Sorry, but I am not into drunk stallions that can't stand up without
tripping everywhere," Dash replied, firmly shaking her head.
"I'm afraid I have to agree with Dash on that one," Pinkie added, frowning. "On
the grounds that the smell is awful."
"I would rather any stallion who asks me to dance to be sober. Come back, when
your bout of drunkenness is over," Zecora finished, tilting her head a little.
The brown stallion huffed and turned to Laz. "Can ye come home with me?" he
asked.
Laz shook his head, and his smile had fallen. "I agree with the mares. Answer's
no," he retorted.
The drunk stallion huffed and donned a lopsided smile. "But I want somepony to
hang out with," he mumbled.
"Not sure what your definition of 'hang out with' is, pal. Could you enlighten
us?" Laz asked, his horn starting to glow once more.
The drunk stallion's horn started glowing in a faltering, flickering blue
light. The aura, though warbling, managed to grasp Rainbow. "Hey! Lemme go!"
Rainbow yelled, spreading her wings even as the aura struggled to keep her in
her seat. The aura around her diminished as the drunk stallion was grasped in a
flash of crimson and sent several feet back, his hooves slipping out from under
him and adding slight scuff marks in the floor as he went.
Dash turned to Laz, finding his horn now burning brightly. "Stand down. Let me
handle this," he warned, getting up from his seat with such swift movements his
chair was sent right into the wall behind him. Only now did Dash realize that
something about Laz was off, but what it was she could not point her hoof on.
She turned to Pinkie when she heard a seat wobbling in place, only to grimace
as she found her friend trembling with such speeds half of her body and the
chair beneath her were but a blur.
"D-doozy," Pinkie warned as the other patrons rose out of their seats as one,
all eyes turning to Laz as he slowly cantered around the table and his
tablemates. Zecora kept her eyes on Laz, and gaped as a crimson glow began
emitting from his irises.
The red then spread to his sclera. His oculars may as well have been enveloped
by vermillion in that moment. Some of the larger stallions shifted to close in
on Laz, leaving the others to waddle and wade towards Rainbow and her friends
with such unsteady movements a cicada would have been able to dodge their
hooves. "Look at that puny pony; he's not stallion enough to expose so much as
a leg!" one of the patrons taunted.
"And he's using magic to make his eyes glow so he looks tougher than he
actually is! I'll bet he runs home crying to his mommy every night!" another
jeered, grinning as a patch of air behind Laz was enveloped in red, forming
into a vaguely-pike shape.
Laz turned to Dash, and donned a serene smile that only seemed demonic thanks
to his eyes. "50/50? You seem to be itchin' for a fight with these shitheads,"
he chirped. Dash turned to him and nodded, lifting her front hooves and bashing
them together. Then he turned to Zecora and Pinkie. "Do you two think you can
sit a while?" When he got another set of nods, he turned back to the large
ponies that were advancing towards him.
One of the smaller patrons turned to Pinkie and eyed her quizzically as she
continued to fidget rapidly. "Hey, what's wrong with that mare?" he asked.
"Don't ask," Rainbow interjected, flapping her wings to take to the air. As she
ascended, the smaller patrons looked up at her, and some tilted their heads.
"She does that from time to time."
A long shaft of crimson-tinted steel formed behind Laz, with a small golden
foot on one end and a massive blade hewn seemingly of gold on the other. The
blade formed a crevice that beheld a bright red ruby in the center, and its
edges formed into a stylized sun before ending in a jutting vaguely-spade-
shaped tip. This was only further accentuated by a cloth of crimson with gold
trimmings tied very close to the base of the dangerous end.
Laz shifted his weapon and waved it once before him in a wide arc, causing the
stallions who were intent on cornering him to shuffle back a few paces. Some
bumped into each other in the process, but that only made the ones further back
push forward again. As a result, everypony that was surrounding them was
stumbling about, trying to get into position. Then somepony near the entrance
got a bright idea and could not keep his trap shut about it, "Ey, fellas, why
don't we beat up the unicorn punk? And make him pay for all our drinks and
grub!"
The Tipsy Tankard fell into a palpable silence, only broken by the perfect
rhythm of Dash's beating wings and Pinkie's trembling. Slowly, the eyes of the
patrons all fell onto Laz, who still held his spear before him with his magic.
Another stallion near the front spoke up, "That's a fancy little thing… how
much did it cost you to get it?"
Laz's grin widened. He seemed to have gone insane. "What matters not is how
much bits it cost me… what matters is where the blade is going," he hissed, his
eyes twitching as he continued to stand still. "That's if you guys don't lay
off."
Uproarious laughter immediately rang out through the tavern as the patrons
tossed their heads back in unison. Laz was easily outnumbered, and drunk or
not, somepony could snatch his spear from him in the blink of an eye at the
first chance they saw. It took the other patrons a few minutes to cease
laughing, and Dash saw the barkeep fumble away from the bar and towards the
door. "I'm getting the guards!" the barkeep complained as he managed to get to
the door, right before he galloped out of the establishment.
Dash turned to Laz and sighed in exasperation. "So… want me to kick some flank
still?" she asked.
Laz nodded and turned to look at Dash with nothing short of a murderous grin.
"Go ahead. I wanna see how you mix flying with fighting," he chirped before
turning back to the patrons as one stupid soul surged forward in a clumsy
attempt to overpower him.
Laz shifted his weapon and sent the stallion staggering back with the foot of
his spear to the patron's barrel. Instantly, the rest of the patrons surged
forward, only for a few of them to be sent back with a quick series of diving
jabs from Rainbow. Every single horn in the vicinity flared with several lights
and from there, all hell broke loose.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Sarah, Fenrir, Fluttershy and Rarity were in the church, gathered in one of the
bedrooms, sitting in chairs surrounding a small table. Harry, Angel,
Owlowiscious, and NoLegs were with them, though they'd curled up to fall asleep
in a corner. On the table was a picture frame, and all eyes were looking
intently at it as Rarity used her magic to tenderly spin it around.
The photograph had six ponies and a tiny blue form clustered up before some
kind of wooden house that stood in a plain. There were four ponies behind, and
two in front with the blue form standing up on one of the heads of those up
front. It depicted a strange, pale grey stallion standing next to a younger-
looking Bartholomew, Andrew, and Eve. All four of them sported smiling faces.
In front of them were two foals, though one of them was twice as big as the
other. Both were standing at an angle, showing off a pair of then-blank hips.
Sarah and Fenrir immediately recognized a bright scarlet mane and a white horn
jutting up before a pair of black ears, as well as a legless feline who was no
bigger than the talon of a small hippogryph when the picture was taken. "I have
to say, they look adorable as foals… but something feels off," Rarity began,
stopping the picture's spin cycle just as it turned to face Fluttershy.
She used a hoof to gesture to the then-filly Natalie, who oddly wasn't smiling
nor sporting her crystal coat. Indeed, she did not have the exuberance of a
typical foal either; her gaze seemed vacant and her irises sullen. She'd tried
to manage a grin when the photo was taken, but it came out more as a grimace.
Fluttershy nodded with a small frown. "Natalie seems… troubled in this picture.
I wonder what could have happened to make her… um, assume such a look on her
face," she noted.
"And that's not the only thing. Who's that pale pony in the corner?" Sarah
asked as the picture began to spin again. "And what was he doing when the
picture was taken?"
"I'd wager 'likely foal-sitter.' Or perhaps a close friend, mayhaps even the
one who took the picture," Fenrir piped up, taking a moment to sigh. "And
considering that Natalie was adopted… maybe that could have been the pony who
delivered her to them. At this point, we have nary a clue."
Fluttershy smiled. "He seems nice enough. I'm just glad Natalie ended up with
Matt's family," she cooed, giving a small nod of approval. "They taught her
well."
"But that raises another pressing matter: what was Natalie's life like before
she was adopted?" Fenrir asked, donning a small frown. "That troubling look on
her face… was she in an abusive home at some point?"
"Or maybe NoLegs had a potty accident on her head. He was a kitten then, after
all," Sarah pointed out, tilting her head. "But yeah, Fen… you do raise a good
point nonetheless."
"Maybe she was a baby when she was adopted, and they got that whole talk out of
the way the moment she could form complete sentences," Rarity retorted,
frowning herself.
"Another sound possibility," Fenrir agreed with a nod. "But it still doesn't
answer the question of who the pale stallion is." He peered closer at the
stallion in question as the picture turned to face him, noticing a pale purple
mane and eyes to match. Because a then-kitten NoLegs was in front of him, he
could not see his cutie mark if he had one at all. He turned to Rarity and
asked, "Would it be feasible to inquire Natalie about this matter?"
Rarity shook her head, lifted a hoof, and waved it dismissively as her frown
deepened. "She's ashamed of being a crystal pony, so something could have
happened that would be linked to that shame. I honestly doubt anything would
come out of it, but you're welcome to try," she sighed dejectedly. "She might
even be more incensed to not answer if asked about it, let alone the
circumstances of her adoption."
"We won't know until we try. That's how I figured out Anna wasn't gonna talk to
me about how the hell she got into the military," Sarah snorted, her face
hardening. "She was just… silent."
"That's not very reassuring," Fluttershy interjected, her ears folding back.
"Did she act… hostile or something of the sort?"
Sarah shook her head. "She was more or less a statue until something else
caught her attention. It's bad enough I've considered joining the military
myself just to start digging elsewhere," she answered, punctuating her response
with a huff. "But after having to hear my terribad harpist skills, Lance may
turn me down."
Rarity put her raised hoof to her chin and idly tapped at it. "Have you
considered that, perhaps, Lance may not let her speak of how she got in?" she
queried, her tone equal parts sincere and piqued. "There could be something…
going on between those two, as it were."
Sarah groaned and rolled her eyes, but stopped midway as something clicked in
her head. "Now that you mention it… she said he helped her get her cutie mark,
and that Matt and Natalie taught her a thing or two about unicorn and earth
pony magic…" Then her claw lifted up and she rubbed her temples with it as soon
as the gears started turning. "And she was going on left and right about
'extenuating circumstances…'"
Fenrir's face hardened a little as he absorbed this information. He leaned back
in his chair and blew out air through flared nostrils. "Hrm… that seems awfully
suspect…" He turned to Sarah and added, "The way she accused us of… doing
something… now that I dwell on it, it would seem Anna has quite a few things to
hide."
Sarah slowly nodded. "You're right about that. That's something only a pony
would say to save their own skin," she murmured, her talon still rubbing at her
temples contemplatively. "Good reason or not, it does seem fishy, especially
since this is my sister we're talking about here."
"Did she hide anything before you two parted ways?" Fenrir asked, instantly
garnering another shake of the head as his answer. His frown deepened
considerably.
"Which means she could be ashamed of something, too. And maybe Lance does have
her back in that regard; possibly even Matt and Natz are lending their hooves
in that manner as well," Sarah mumbled, eyes narrowing as more gears in her
brain switched on and started spinning. "But… why?"
"Perhaps they've been hurt by bad ponies, or worse?" Fluttershy interjected
again, and all eyes fell onto her in that moment.
Rarity rolled her eyes. "Darling, don't be ridiculous. Aside from those shoddy
hotel ponies—"
Fluttershy turned to Rarity with a hardening face and cut her off in a firm
voice, "Lance's wings were steel-bound. Don't tell me that they weren't
possibly hurt." Rarity's mouth instantly snapped shut, and her ears folded
back.
"And on the topic of metal-encased wings… who did it? Lance told me that mess
happened around the same time Anna joined him and his makeshift herd," Sarah
cut in, her utterance managing to get Fluttershy to ease her expression and
turn to her. Sarah lifted her talons and intertwined the claws before propping
her elbows on the table and her chin atop her talons. "I think we're just at
the tip of the iceberg here."
"Are you implying that she might have had a hoof in his… unorthodox form of
bondage?" Fenrir asked, his face contorting into a scowl as he got a somber nod
that time.
"She may not have cast the spell, though," Sarah stated, closing her eyes.
"It's one of those oddball spells that probably require a lot of concentration,
and the recipient of the makeshift shackles to be unconscious. I don't see
Lance taking it… laying down otherwise, if you catch my meaning."
"That doesn't sound particularly pleasant either way," Rarity chimed in. "If
anything, it just brings us back to square one all over again."
"I think your best bet would be joining the military, then. At least Lance
seems like a decent leader to his gryphons and changelings," Fluttershy piped
up. "But… what about your wing? He could send you through grueling courses
and…"
Sarah opened her eyes and stared straight at Fluttershy, her pupils but tiny
slivers in green voids. That alone cut her off. "I have considered the training
regiments and all of that… the problem is, neither of us know how he trains his
soldiers. I guess I'll be the guinea pig, just to find out if it's worth it or
not," she murmured, her voice as cold and chilling as her gaze. "At least then,
I'll get somewhere."
She turned to the door as the sounds of galloping hooves echoed in from below.
"Are they back already?" she asked, rising to stand from her seat on her
hooves.
"If that's your sister and her companions, then it would be a really good time
to make a resume right now," Rarity piped up as Sarah started striding to the
door. "That is, if Lance operates with resumes…"
"Help! Somepony! Guards!" a masculine voice yelled out in a frantic tone of
voice, further accentuated by the sound of the church door being thrown wide
open in a reverberating thud.
***** Chapter LV- Just (Fiery) Deserts *****
Sarah stopped before she could reach the door. There was someone calling for
the guards? Silence swept throughout the church, and with its coming it caused
her mental gears to grind to an abrupt halt. But the gears jumpstarted once she
heard an alarmed mew, followed by a series of hoots and chitters and low
growls. She twisted around to find NoLegs and the other once-sleeping animals
standing up and wide awake. All eyes panned around the room, accompanied by
small frowns on their furry faces.
Rarity stood up and lowered her head, closing her eyes as a sigh of resignation
left her mouth. "So much for peace and quiet," she bemoaned. "Well, let's see
what the fuss is about… there's no use sitting around here dallying. Unless
Natalie slips, or suffers some affliction that keeps her mouth running,
whatever queries we have about her won't answer themselves."
Fenrir stood up, albeit slowly. "It is as you say," he conceded with a nod.
"Yet…"
"Guards!" the voice from below yelled again, followed by the sound of another
door being tossed open and that of still-scrambling hooves.
"Whoever is raising a ruckus might require some assistance, especially since
the guards are on patrol as of now," Fenrir finished, turning to the door and
sauntering his way towards Sarah.
Fluttershy stood up next, and with Rarity at her side, she cantered over
likewise. Her ears fell flat against her head and she muttered, "Oh, I really
hope it's not anything terrible. But why would someone just… waltz in and yell
for the guards?"
"You could say that again," Rarity chimed in.
Fenrir snorted as he walked to the mares as Sarah opened the door. "For this
issue, I'd wager a bunch of petty thieves having just gotten away with
pillaging some unfortunate soul's wares," he mused with a wry grin forming on
his face. "Either that, or a disturbing of the peace."
Sarah shrugged and strode into the hall, twisting around to face the ladder.
"You never know," she mumbled under her breath. She trudged to the ladder, but
stopped halfway down the hall before she could reach it when the sound of
clanging metal hit her ears, and it was already repeating within a matter of
seconds. Whether out of panic, anxiety, or some mixture of the two she couldn't
tell.
At least, not immediately. Within seconds a blue unicorn stallion in a simple
vest and bowtie came up to the second floor via the ladder, looking at her with
wide eyes the very second he jumped off the railing and found solid wood
beneath his hooves. "Wh-where are the guards?" he stammered, wheezing and
panting between words. "And wh-why the hell is th-there a hippogryph in
Whitefall?"
Sarah cantered to him; she decided to ignore his second query, and proceeded to
answer his first, "The guards are out guarding the jewel at the northern side
of town. They left as soon as they got done eating breakfast."
"A-and how do you know that?" the unicorn asked, his legs wobbling a little.
"They let me eat breakfast with them. Is it rude to not serve a guest?" Sarah
retorted, frowning a little.
"But they… shouldn't serve…" the unicorn began, only to balk as he noticed
Fenrir giving him a stare so level it almost seemed daring in itself. His
breath, unsteady as it was, caught in his throat right then.
"They chose to serve us last night, thank you kindly. Now then: what do you
wish the guards to do? It would seem you have something of dire importance on
your hooves, considering you scrambled all the way to this abode by your
lonesome," Fenrir stated, his tone calm and his voice clear. "So, tell us,
please. We'll be sure to inform the guards in your stead."
The unicorn just stood there, letting out no more than a croak from his mouth.
His gaze turned to Fenrir, and he only blanched further upon staring into his
golden eyes, serene yet piercing all the same. It took him a few seconds to
even open his mouth and attempt to articulate something coherent, but his jaw
stammered so much on every word he may as well have been tripping over himself.
"Th-the-the ba-bar… Ti-Tipsy T-Tankard… m-m-massive f-fight," were the only
things out of his mouth that the group before him could hope to understand.
But that was all it took. Sarah lifted a talon and firmly clasped it on the
unicorn's muzzle to keep him from rambling until he was blue in the face. "I
think that's enough. You stay here and catch your breath, and we'll alert the
guards, okay?" Sarah murmured in as comforting a voice as she could muster,
making sure to accentuate her words with a subtle purr. The unicorn fixed his
gaze upon her as she slowly lifted her talon from his muzzle.
"G-go ahead… I-I won't stop you," the unicorn uttered. He stepped aside to
allow access to the ladder, and Sarah more than happily pranced to it and
jumped on the railing. Once she started going down the ladder, the stallion
turned to look at Fenrir again. "I-I thought…"
Fenrir slowly raised a very questioning brow. "That diamond dogs were no more
than fairytale fiends?" he scoffed, garnering a hasty nod from the stallion the
very moment the query left his lips. Fenrir donned a small smile and sauntered
to the unicorn, before dropping to all fours to stare him right in the eyes.
His tail swished once and in a way that the pony could see it, arched over his
back and its protrusions glinting wickedly as they caught light. "I can affirm
that I am very much real," he murmured lowly, his smile widening just a teensy
bit as the pony's legs buckled and he fell to the floor in a cowering heap.
With that, he turned to peer down the ladder, finding Sarah in the hall below.
She waved a talon at him urgently, and he took that as his cue to head down to
the first floor. Fluttershy trotted to the shuddering stallion with a frown,
tilting her head only once Fenrir had gone out of sight. "Excuse me, um… what
happened to the diamond dogs around here? If you don't mind me asking," she
queried, just loud enough to be heard, yet soft enough to be soothing.
"They… the d-dogs… don't e-exist," the stallion mumbled in reply, his eyes
growing to the size of saucers when he caught a glimpse of Fluttershy's wings.
"P-pegasi… sh-should have b-bound w-wings," he added.
Fluttershy took an involuntary step back when his horn started to gather
energy. She turned to Rarity, ears falling back when she saw another horn
glowing. Rarity trotted forward, using her magic to gently scoot her friend to
the ladder, her gaze fixed on the stallion who more or less crumpled under
Fenrir's gaze. "And why, may I ask, should anypony's wings be bound?" Rarity
huffed, her eyes narrowing just a smidgen. "And in what sense, strictly
speaking?"
The stallion just huddled there, still shaking, his gaze not shifting in the
slightest as Fluttershy gulped and hurried on her way to get on the ladder and
then down it.
"Well?" Rarity pressed, leaning forward, her gaze now taking its turn boring
into the unicorn. Her brow raised when he swallowed heavily, before getting his
hooves situated and making an effort to stand on uncooperative legs. He tried
to stare into her eyes as he rose, yet his gaze averted from hers.
"Just… b-bound…" he stammered. Rarity shook her head and trotted to the ladder,
pausing to glare at him just once.
"I'm still not sure what you mean by that. I'll let the atrocious comments you
have made slide—but just this once," she huffed before continuing on her way to
the ladder. Her mind began whirring as she descended; what did that stallion
mean by 'bound wings,' and how bad was the 'massive fight' he'd mentioned?
She decided to push the thoughts aside for now, knowing there was a chance
she'd find out before the day was over. But diamond dogs not existing? That was
so ludicrous she started to believe the pony was legitimately insane; there was
no other explanation for his notion about diamond dogs not existing.
Yet Fenrir had to affirm he wasn't just some proverbial boogeymare. Rarity made
a mental note to ask about that later, for now she had more pressing matters to
attend to.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The Tipsy Tankard had fallen deathly silent, save for labored panting. A
wobbling Laz and shuddering Rainbow tried to stand stiff as boards, one leaning
against his spear for support and the other with wings gone numb as they eyed
the disaster sprawled before them.
The other patrons were now very heavily bruised and battered. There were a few
who had their horns broken off, some more had black eyes with hoof-shaped
indents, many more had a broken leg or two, and all of them were draped across
tables and chairs without care. Every single drunken face had eyes screwed
shut, mouths open in silent screams of pain. Not one of them dared to move. Not
one gave so much as a breath louder than that of a whisper.
Pinkie had ceased shaking in her seat, her gaze distant and unfocused. Zecora
had her eyes shut, though not to the point of scrunching them up. "The
bloodshed was needless, yet could have gone so much worse. I sincerely hope the
taverns in these parts do not suffer the same curse," she muttered grimly.
"These guys couldn't hold a candle to a little colt. Where'd they learn to
fight?" Laz queried, trying his best to get his labored breathing under
control. While it was steadying, he was still wheezing. "Damn… haven't felt
this sore since my last go with Matt and Natz."
Rainbow almost had to force herself to lift her wings. She turned to Laz as her
numbed assets came to close at her sides with a begrudging ache. "I think it's
because of all the clothes you're wearing," she muttered. Unlike Laz, she was
barely gasping. When he turned to her and cocked his head, she elaborated,
"Lots of clothes… lots of body heat, in a warm tavern… you're more or less a
sitting duck."
Laz smiled and gave a dry laugh, realizing that his body did feel much warmer
than before, and lifted a leg experimentally. It was more sluggish, and
partially numb, especially at his joints. "Eh, I'll live," he managed in a
sincere voice. With that, he trudged back to his seat and sat down, but not
before pulling his chair back in its place with magic. Rainbow followed him and
sat in her chair, her gaze still lingering on the other patrons scattered all
over the place. Some small part of her was expecting one of them to get up and
do something, yet still the pathetic lot remained motionless and silent.
Pinkie turned to Rainbow and managed a small frown. "C-can we avoid th-the
taverns from n-now on?" she asked. "B-because I don't w-want to see th-this
again."
"On that front, I will not hesitate to wholeheartedly agree," Zecora answered
with a nod. "We had best not get ensnared like this again, but should it happen
I think it wise to flee."
The trio turned back to Laz, just in time to see his sclera return to a natural
shade of white. Then, his irises became blue once more, before his spear
vanished in a flare of light. After that, his shoulders sagged and he sighed.
"Not fond of violence?" he asked, garnering hasty nods.
"I'm more of a fighter though," Rainbow chipped in. "But only when I need to
be."
Laz gave a rather sluggish nod. "Oh, you'd give Matt and Natz a headache with
the moves you've pulled. I doubt they could even catch you with their magic,
given how fast you fly," he chirped, his grin widening. "Hell, I could barely
track you myself!"
Rainbow gave a brief flinch of her shoulders, unsure if Laz truly meant
everything behind his compliments. "Drunk ponies are easy to take down. Those
two? I haven't seen much of what they could do," she muttered in earnest.
Laz jolted, his pupils shrinking as his grin fell. It took him a few seconds to
process what Rainbow had just uttered. "Wait… you've not seen them in action?"
he asked in a sincere tone of voice.
Rainbow shook her head. "Most I've seen was when they, their grouchy general
Lance, and their friend Anna took down some wraiths," she answered with a
shrug. "The wraiths barely even put up a fight."
Laz's eyes widened. "Anna? Oh… oh no. You need to watch yourself around that
one." His tone was low and ominous, and the frown that tugged at his lips only
gave the impression that he didn't like talking about Anna. "That one is
nucking futs."
Rainbow raised a questioning brow. "Nucking futs? She didn't look that way when
I first met her," she mumbled.
Laz's frown only deepened, and his head shook gravely. "That's because you
haven't royally pissed her off yet. I've… heard unpleasant things about her.
Once she's mad, and if nobody can stop her anger in its tracks in time, she
could do serious damage."
Rainbow's brow only continued to climb higher. Something definitely wasn't
right. "Define 'serious damage,'" she stated.
Laz gave a shudder, one that shook his hood. "I've heard of a few ponies who
confronted her in the past; foolish souls, the whole lot of them. Trotted right
up to Anna while she was training, sporting black armor and making insane
demands for her to bend over in broad daylight in the middle of some unicorn-
centric village. She snapped and killed them on the spot, but… she left no
visible wounds on them," he hissed, lips twitching in an effort to keep from
outright grimacing.
"My guess? She used magic to re-organize their internals in such a way they
bled without coughing blood, but it's only a guess because I haven't seen her
do something that drastic. That's just one of many unsavory tales I've picked
up on her." Laz gave another shudder and his frown deepened. He added, "I've
heard those ponies she killed somehow got right back up and trudged away. Their
coats fell out not long after."
Rainbow's brow was now brushing up against the base of her forelock. "And how
long ago was this?" she queried.
Laz gulped audibly. "I've heard she was only a private in a military then. The
pony who told me this… said it was two years and ten months ago that this
happened," he muttered. "And the thing my eyes did earlier? I've heard hers do
it, too."
Rainbow balked. "I've seen her eyes turn red for a few seconds," she hissed. "I
still don't know what that's about."
The hood on Laz's head shifted, giving the impression of ears folding back.
"Whatever you do around her, if you do run into her again…" He swallowed
heavily. "Don't. Enrage. Her. Once her handle on that… fiend she keeps
consigned to the deepest pits of her mind goes off, she won't rest until
whatever awakened it has been either been taken into custody, has managed to
somehow incapacitate her, or failing any of those things, gets impaled by
thorns."
"If her eyes turn fully red, whites and all, I'd suggest running. As far as you
can. Godcat help you if she manages to snatch you," Laz warned, grimacing as
the words left his mouth. "I don't know how strong she is exactly, but she
should not be taken lightly. Don't let her unleash her full power if you can
help it."
Rainbow could only nod, wondering why Laz was so keen to tell them all of this.
Regardless, she stood up from her seat, and so did Zecora and Pinkie. Both also
gave mute nods, still processing what he'd just relayed. "We'll watch our cutie
marks. It was…" Rainbow paused, pursing her lips as she racked her brain for a
way to finish her sentence, "strange, but a little nice talking to you."
Laz nodded back and waved them off with a hoof. "I'll stick around to endure
the barkeep's bitching. You three had best head off." The trio didn't need to
be told twice; within seconds they hurried along to the door, carefully
stepping around unconscious patrons as they went. They opened the door upon
reaching it and trotted out into Whitefall, but not before looking back at Laz
to find him nodding once more.
Once the door closed behind them, and they were in the street again, Rainbow
sighed as she and her group turned to start trotting back to the church. A
palpable silence fell on Whitefall; the foals and adults they'd seen earlier
seemed to have vanished without trace, save barely-noticeable prints that were
filling in with another fresh wave of snow. Had they, perhaps, heard the
fighting patrons and gone home? Or did the barkeep tip them off the very moment
he bolted from the scene?
Rainbow shuddered, her wings fluffing a little as she, Pinkie, and Zecora
rounded a bend. Either way, a feeling of unease settled deep within her gut,
twisting her stomach into a cramping knot that sent painful tingles through her
nerves with each step she took. The pain was dulled only by the snow crunching
beneath her hooves. She turned to Pinkie and frowned. "Say… do you have any
idea why Laz just started spouting? His talking about Anna was really creepy,"
she mused.
Pinkie turned to Rainbow and shrugged. "I haven't the foggiest, Dash. Anna
doesn't seem like a pony who would be a terrible monster in secret. Unless
you're a wraith, and then she'll hurt you," she replied in earnest. "Or if you
hurt a foal while she's there."
"Regardless, I think we should heed his warning. Otherwise, we could be in
potential mourning," Zecora intoned, punctuating her statement with a very
reluctant sigh. "She can drive the Everfree's clouds away with but a flute-
song; who knows what else she could have have done if that song had prolonged."
Rainbow sighed, nodding in mute agreement. She'd only seen a small blunder of
what Anna could do. Whether or not Laz was right, it was best to take some
measure of caution nonetheless. "Do you think we could ask her for a
demonstration? Because now that you mention it, I dunno what other spells she
could know," Pinkie piped up.
Rainbow leveled a vexed look at Pinkie, both brows twitching in a threat to
climb up her forehead. "I'm not sure that's a good idea. Maybe we'd have to
talk to Lance first; he's the one who gives the OK to his troops," she replied.
"On that I agree. I'd rather avoid any damage that can be foreseen," Zecora
added with a feverish nod of her head. "And while we're on the subject, I don't
think asking Lance would be wise. It could very well be a death wish in his
eyes."
"True enough," Rainbow agreed with a nod and a fanning of her wings. One wing
curled forward, and a primary feather brushed up against her chin almost like a
tapping hoof. "That, and we don't know what he gives the OK to, apple-bucking
help and removing foals from terrible places aside." A smile graced her muzzle
as an absurd idea crossed her mind. "Maybe he advocates tribe unification or
something."
They rounded another street, and Pinkie groaned. "Dash, that's implying
Fantasia hasn't had a unification yet. We still don't know whether or not the
tribes are doing awful things to each other," she pointed out.
Rainbow's wings flared indignantly. She turned to Pinkie with her smile turning
upside-down. "But we know that they could be doing it; how and where aren't as
important as the did! Lance's wings are proof enough of that!" she exclaimed,
her face twitching as she struggled to keep a scowl at bay.
Pinkie deflated a little, frowning as she considered Rainbow's argument. "You
know… that makes me wonder… why's he the ruler of his roost, and not Matt?" she
asked, tilting her head. "Especially since the tribes might not have unified
yet, or have but are still not comfortable with each other… it doesn't make
sense."
Rainbow's wings closed, and her face stopped twitching. Pinkie had raised a
very valid point. She sighed, deciding to not ask any more questions. Things
were already confusing enough, and asking questions left and right would only
take her so far. She turned to face the road, with Laz's warning echoing in her
mind. "Don't. Enrage. Her."
If a stranger that could barely pass as acquaintance was the one giving the
warning, then how bad was Anna truly? She shuddered again, only to halt in her
tracks as a loud, masculine scream rang out, piercing the once-quiet air of
Whitefall. "What the?!" Rainbow flared her wings and took off towards the
source of the noise, giving herself no time to prepare for what she was about
to find. Zecora and Pinkie bolted after her, having heard the noise as well.
They, too, would be caught off-guard.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Anna and her group stopped just feet away from the chainlink fencing and looked
up as a portal formed in the sky, crackling with lightning that was strangely
plaid-colored. "What in the name of Godcat is that?" Anna asked.
"I am now under the impression that space can be warped, and time can thus be
bendable," Katie stated, shaking her head as a familiar two-horned goat head
poked out of the portal. "Alright, what do you want?"
Discord grinned, and thrust out a paw that was clasped around the leg of a
dangling, half-rock stallion that had Anna tensing the moment she saw him.
"Just wanted to drop by and say that Celestia decreed this pony's banishment.
Oh, and she also told me to let you know that, because of the hotel incident,
she'll make sure to have a room in the reserves next time you guys drop by," he
answered, unceremoniously dropping the stallion before watching him land face-
first in the snow.
"So that's why we had to sleep in a hellhole?!" Lance barked, turning to
Discord with narrowed eyes and grinding teeth. "Because there were no other
places left?!"
"There were so many nobles and delegates from Yakyakistan and Griffonstone and
Mareitania that there wasn't any room left for you and your bunch. Canterlot's
smaller than even Ponyville, on account of being built upon a mountain, my dear
General. Half the nobles in Canterlot are stuffy and not particularly willing
to share on top of that," Discord stated with a sigh, turning to look at the
stallion he dropped for a brief second.
"I'm willing to bet one of those stuffy nobles vacated that particular hotel
just for you lot the very moment you showed your faces. Of course, if they did,
then Celestia might've found out by now. Perhaps somepony else ratted them out;
I don't really know, I'm not a politics kind of guy," he added, turning to look
at his paw's nails. "The delegates got free housing, and Celestia had to boot
one out to let you in. The one that got the boot was going home anyway, so I'd
heard."
Katie turned to the stallion Discord dropped, instantly recognizing a half-
buried gemstone cutie mark. "Why banish this fuckface? He could do more
damage!" she pointed out, turning back to Discord and thrusting an accusing
hoof in the stallion's direction.
Discord donned a small frown, further framed by half-lidded eyes. "Because he's
a wraith, and an immortal one at that. Any conventional punishments for mortals
is pointless. That, and the moon's too good for him, so I figured I'd let you
guys deal with him again. I shall now go back to watching Fluttershy's animals.
Ta-ta now, and be good," he answered. With that, he pulled back into the portal
and it closed seamlessly behind him.
The group turned to the seemingly-stunned form of one Chocolate Soufflé as he
laid there in the snow. It took him some seconds to even move, let alone shift
his hooves under him to make an effort to stand. Katie noticed that his bad
hoof was simply gone, and in its place was a vaguely-hoof-shaped hunk of black
crystal fused to his leg.
Lance ignored Chocolate for the moment, instead directing his scowl at
Blueblood. "Is what Discord said about cramped housing true?" he hissed.
Blueblood nodded slowly, and sighed as he turned to face the music. "Yes.
Before you were escorted into the Parliament, some of the other nobles…
suggested that Equestria and the other Mythonian nations shouldn't even attempt
to contact a Fantasian leader. But alas, that went up in smoke," he answered.
Bartholomew and Andrew exchanged glances, before turning to Blueblood for an
explanation as to what happened. Blueblood saw them in the corner of his eye
and waved a hoof in their direction. "It's a particularly long story, and I'm
not sure how to sum the whole thing up in a nice and tidy nutshell," he stated.
All eyes then turned to Chocolate as he finally got himself situated, finding a
pair of red-orange orbs spinning in their black canvases and a mouth that had
fully split at some point. The lower jaw dangled seemingly uselessly, but what
caught Katie's attention in particular was a black crystal that jutted up
before the stump of his horn. It had grown a great deal, sporting a good few
inches on its own, seemingly a horn in its own right now. "Look, a defective
bicorn!" she jeered.
Chocolate didn't seem to hear the remark. He stood there, orbs still spinning,
looking relatively dazed. It wasn't until Anna trotted over and waved a hoof in
front of his face did he shake his head and look around. As soon as he noticed
who was standing next to him, he lifted a hoof—the one that wasn't crystal—and
struck her right across the face with it, causing her to stumble back.
Anna hissed, "That sure brought back some unpleasant memories." She turned to
glare at Chocolate, her horn glowing. "Either beat it, or take an arrow up the
ass." Several blasts of light exploded around her, conjuring a few dozen or so
crystal-tipped arrows. "Your choice."
Chocolate rolled his orbs and reeled in his jaw. "You're making the vast
assumption I even have an ass anymore," he snarked.
Anna didn't falter in the slightest. Her irises began turning red at the very
centers. "Like hell that'll stop me," she scoffed.
Twilight turned to Lance, but grimaced as she found him shaking his head.
"Given his banishment, there's not much I can do," he stated. "Let them sort
this out."
Katie nodded hastily when Twilight turned to her. "Nope. He dug himself into
this hole. He'll fucking sit in it," she hissed, watching Chocolate study the
assortment of arrows poised in his direction.
"Daddy, why does that pony have rocks on him? It's making him look funny,"
Maria piped up, causing Chocolate to seize up and sputter on the spot. "And I
thought his small—" Katie flew over to Maria in a heartbeat and stretched her
tongue out as far as it could go before wrapping a good third of it around her
muzzle to keep it shut.
Lance turned to Katie as she came to rest behind Maria and nodded approvingly.
"Remind me to talk to her about that later," he stated before turning to
Chocolate. "Nonetheless, she does have a legitimate question: why the hell are
you growing rocks?"
Chocolate shook his head to snap himself out of his stupor before leveling a
glare at Lance. "That's none of your concern, you cock-blocking mongrel!" he
hissed.
Lance slowly raised a brow. "I don't think I deserve the term 'cock-blocker.'"
He snorted, and his eyes narrowed to slits. "Now answer my foal's question: why
are you growing rocks?"
Chocolate turned away, facing Anna again. The arrows were still poised to
strike. "What? You gonna turn me into a pincushion?" he snarked.
"I'm impressed," Blueblood interjected, his utterance causing Chocolate to turn
to him with a questioning brow raised.
"Impressed? Over what?" Chocolate asked, tilting his head a little.
"That she's even showing a modicum of restraint. And considering your atrocious
act has reached every newspaper in Equestria's four corners… that says quite a
lot," Blueblood snorted derisively. "It's almost as if…" He studied the still-
floating arrows for a few seconds, "dare I say, you're not worth her ire."
Bartholomew and Andrew looked between Chocolate and Anna. Twilight saw them
doing so from the corner of her eye. "I'll tell you two what he did later,"
Anna mumbled before Twilight could even open her mouth.
Chocolate decided he wasn't going to stand around doing nothing anymore. He
charged towards Anna, his second horn leveled at her throat, closing the
distance before skidding to a halt when she vanished in a flash of bright green
light. He shook his head, orbs widening when he saw she left nothing more
behind than a set of hoofprints; even the arrows went with her. "Wh-what is the
meaning of this?!" he stammered, immediately glancing around in every direction
he could, even whirling around to scan the surrounding landscape in full.
He soon spotted a flash of light, which then revealed the tell-tale splash of
green standing on a shingled roof a few paces away. The arrows, however, were
not with her now—yet her horn was still aglow. Shaking his head again,
Chocolate galloped to the house Anna was now standing on, his orbs fixed on her
location.
Lance idly looked up as Chocolate charged onward, spotting every single arrow
Anna conjured levitating in the sky in a massive cluster. Each point slowly
turned as he ran, tracking his every move. He turned back to Chocolate and
could not stop himself from grinning as Chocolate skid to a halt before the
house, finding that he ran into a little problem.
Namely, he couldn't simply scale the house to reach his quarry. So Chocolate
did the next best thing: he reared up on his back legs and thrust his front
hooves onto the wall of the house standing before him. With all of his might,
he shouted, "Get down here and fight me, you cheeky cunt!"
"What're you gonna do, grow a crystal dick and try pegging me again?" Anna
taunted, donning a wry smirk as she looked down at Chocolate just in time to
see him punch the wall in futility. "That wad of ginger you shoved up my ass
was thrice as big! And that legitimately hurt!"
Chocolate's eyes narrowed, and the rocks comprising his second horn, hoof, and
stomach pulsed with crimson mana. "You mean to tell me…"
Anna cut him off with a nod, and her smile widened. "Only reason I was
panicking was because your little rocking-horse schtick reminded me of somepony
else I'd much rather forget," she scoffed, and jerked her head just once.
Within seconds, the hovering arrows surged onto Chocolate, sticking themselves
all across his back and into his thighs with a vengeance. It took him a few
seconds to register that he was feeling something akin to a thousand stingers,
but when he did his orbs shrank to pinpricks.
Blueblood turned to the spectacle, and his jaw dropped as Chocolate released a
guttural howl of anguish when red crystals began growing from his backside
where every single arrow had landed. "What in the name of Faust…?!" he
exclaimed as the crystals continued to grow, forming a shell-like shape that
soon overtook the screaming Chocolate. A green magic aura sent him staggering
away from the house, and kept nudging him until he was in a perfectly solid
patch of snow.
"Fire in the hole!" Anna cried just seconds before Chocolate ceased staggering,
though he was still screaming as the red crystals exploded into a veritable
column of fire. It took a full minute for both the flames and Chocolate's
caterwauling to die down, but that only left embers coating…
"... he finished turning into crystal?" Lance asked, his pupils shrinking.
Chocolate didn't burn away as anypony anticipated; rather, a sort of darkened
shell of crystal comprised his entire body now. A glowing patch on the hip
formed his cutie mark, somehow still tinged in green. He turned to Anna and
hollered, "I think you turned him into a golem!"
"Thanks for the vote of confidence!" Anna replied before teleporting down to
the now-likely-golem Chocolate. He looked at her with a scowl, whereupon she
responded by lifting a hoof and poking him on the snout with it. "Next time you
do something to anypony else like you did to me, I'll fucking smash you to tiny
pieces. Capische?"
Chocolate's eyes narrowed fractionally, and he opened his mouth to reveal that
its inside was still comprised of flesh. Scorched flesh, but functioning
nonetheless. "How are you going to do that?" he challenged, his voice now
raspy.
Anna channeled a little bit of mana into her raised hoof, which sent a pulse of
green across his shell. She applied just a little pressure at that moment, and
grinned deviously as cracks formed within seconds. "Isn't crystal, I dunno,
brittle? I think you can guess," she retorted firmly. With that, she dropped
her limb and cantered past him, leaving him to turn and stare at her.
Katie retracted her tongue as Anna made her way back to the group. "He looks
like he'd been glassed! How did you manage that?" she queried.
Anna opened her mouth, but didn't have time to answer as Rainbow, Zecora, and
Pinkie hit the scene. "What the hay is going on here?!" Rainbow yelled as she
came in for a landing, sending snow everywhere in her wake.
Anna snorted and rolled her eyes at Katie. "His body just attracted hydrogen
and methane before I was even lighting the spark. Or at least, I think it's
hydrogen and methane; at this rate I am not really sure. I more or less
accelerated his… er, transformation," she chirped. "All I know is it seems
incredibly fragile at the moment, like a pure diamond."
"Erm... what?" Pinkie asked, before turning to Chocolate as he cleared his
throat. She frowned as Chocolate grimaced before bolting from the scene.
***** Chapter LVI- Ringing Light *****
"Well, that escalated quickly…" Twilight grumbled as she watched Chocolate
retreat into the distance, and some small part of her wondered how the hell he
was even able to gallop after what had just happened. But she pushed the
thought aside and turned to Rainbow with a small frown on her face. "Anything
fishy going on in town?" she asked.
Rainbow grimaced. "The local bar… well, things went to Tartarus in a hoofbasket
really fast over there. I had to defend myself against a whole mob of drunk
stallions," she answered with a wince that caused her wings to shudder. "Other
than that, I got nothing."
Twilight turned to Zecora, eyes glinting in askance. Her frown deepened when
Zecora slowly nodded. Pinkie decided to interject, raising her hoof to catch
Twilight's attention in doing so, "There was only one stallion at the bar who
wasn't drunk off his plot, and he was actually very friendly towards us."
Twilight's brow rose. "You made a new friend?" she asked.
Pinkie nodded. "Yepperoni. He won't hesitate to defend himself though. He was
dressed head to hoof in black garbs, and he told us he was hanging at the bar
because ponies got too loud at the church one night and broke a bed," she
added, her utterance causing Bartholomew to blush and wince a little.
Twilight decided to push the whole 'breaking the bed' bit aside and pressed a
little more, "Did you get a name out of this pony?"
Pinkie nodded again. "Mhm. His name's Laz." That made Katie's ears perk up.
"Wait wait wait," Katie interjected, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes as
Pinkie's gaze fell onto her. "You're saying that Mr. Cloakicorn's still in the
area?"
"Yes, but he gave us a warning before we parted. One of a mare who can't be
stopped once her anger's started," Zecora intoned, her gaze very slowly turning
to fall on Anna as she spoke.
Anna's ears fell back and she grumbled something unintelligible. She turned to
Lance, and groaned when he just shrugged his shoulders. She turned back to
Zecora and stated, "Where'd he hear it from anyway?"
"Some unicorn from a village or something," Rainbow replied, spreading a wing
and slapping her face with it, whilst spreading the other to wave it
dismissively. "That's all we could get from him, though."
Anna rolled her eyes, though her ears remained pinned in place. "I think we
should get back to the church," she mumbled near-inaudibly.
"Why?" Katie asked, turning to Anna with a brow raised.
"So we don't freeze our asses off," Anna replied with a shrug. Katie grimaced
at a tiny waver in her tone, but decided to hold her tongue.
Maria fluttered her wings, turning to Anna as she did so. "Mommy, are you
okay?" she asked, frowning when Anna nodded in reply.
"Just… tense is all," Anna mumbled, avoiding eye contact with Maria.
"You don't sound okay," Maria noted, her frown deepening when Anna merely
huffed in response. She folded her wings and turned to Lance. "Do you know how
to make mommy okay again?"
Lance sighed and nodded, one eye and an ear twitching in sync. "I'll talk to
her later," he grumbled. "She's probably in… a mood."
Maria's frown remained fixed on her face. She turned to Pinkie and tilted her
head before lifting a talon and motioning for her to come over. Pinkie cantered
to Maria, likewise frowning. "Is it me, or is daddy angry?" she asked.
Pinkie grimaced, her mane deflating a little as she turned to study Lance and
Anna's expressions, noting the eye and ear twitching and a set of green irises
that briefly flashed red. She turned back to Maria and shook her head. "I don't
think he's mad. Just… irritated. Same seems to be the case with your foster
mom," she replied. "Just don't ask them too many questions and you should be in
the clear."
Maria nodded after a few seconds. Silently, everyone turned south as a distant
bell started to toll, permeating the air with a soothing series of gongs. Katie
piped up once the tolling ceased a second later, "I was wondering… who operates
the church bell? Sure, it sounds gorgeous, but… why?"
Bartholomew started flexing his legs, eyes fixed to where the gongs had come
from. "That's the guard summons. Usually, it lets everypony on patrol know when
it's time for lunch; Eve rings it every now and then," he answered with a
slight shrug that jostled Maria and Katie a little.
Then he began trotting to the sounds of the bell as it clanged again. With his
trotting the others fell into step behind him, though Zecora had instead moved
to trot at his side. "So where do you guys eat your lunch… in the church, or
with the jewel?" Katie asked sincerely, a brow raising.
Bartholomew briefly craned his neck to look at her, donning a small smile. "The
unit usually eats with the jewel. They have ways of keeping their food warm.
Me? I just stuff my face silly," he chirped in reply.
Katie rolled her orbs as her mind started to picture Bartholomew with cheeks
stuffed so full they were the size of grapefruits. Then a thought hit her and
she ventured, "So, wait… is it rude to not eat at your tables, then?"
Bartholomew nodded his head almost instantly. "I reckon that if Natz didn't
stuff your face, then Eve would've," he replied. "She'd have probably made you
eat everything, instead of just biscuits."
Katie's ears drooped at the thought of being force fed again, let alone an
entire table's worth. Then she winced as her stomach began gurgling and
cramping, followed immediately by a burning sensation going downwards. Not even
the clanging of the bell could hope to put her at ease. "C-could you… n-not let
her d-do that?" she stammered out, in a weak mewl at that.
"Well... " For but a moment, Bartholomew sounded just a little condescending
and a little amused. Katie shivered at his 'I could, but I don't want to' tone
of voice. What he'd said next had her jaw dropping open, "It takes a lot to get
on her bad side, so I guess she could spare you the torment. So long as you ate
one thing at the table, of course."
Zecora turned to Katie, whose face started turning the barest tinge of green at
the mere notion. "Oh, dear, it seems our wraith is looking a little sick." When
Katie's orbs averted to her with a huff, Zecora frowned when that was
immediately followed up with a slump of the shoulders. "Tell me, does ingesting
food make you tick?"
"First time… eating in years," Katie confessed in a pouting groan, her legs
shifting to dangle at Bartholomew's sides. Her wings fanned out, only to droop
like her ears as her face started to turn greener. "Couldn't trot for long p-
periods, or e-else my stomach would flip…"
Zecora's frown deepened still, but only a little. She could see the logic of
Katie's second utterance, but the first made the gears of her brain start
turning. She opened her mouth to speak, only to close it when Maria turned to
Katie and asked something else, "Do you hate green stuff?"
Katie's orbs averted to Maria for a few seconds, dimming momentarily. "It's not
that I don't hate food, per se. I… haven't been able to find any until I met
with you guys," she replied with a sigh.
Zecora's eyes widened the very instant she'd heard what Katie had just uttered.
"Y-you haven't been able t-to find food? T-tell me, is th-that what made you
take on a d-dour mood?!" she exclaimed, loudly enough that everypony else who
trudged after Bartholomew could hear it.
Anna hollered from the back of the line at the top of her lungs, "Bullshit!"
Lance decided to chime in, also at the top of his lungs, "You mean to tell me
you aren't self-sufficient?! Great Godcat on a hamster wheel, I'm almost
wondering if you even know how to operate a spoon!"
Blueblood threw in his two bits, though not before audibly facehoofing first,
"If you are capable of fighting, then you are most certainly capable of eating!
Isn't that how things operate in your particular case?!"
Katie's tail quivered as her stomach continued to throw its hissy fit. She
could swear Lance was trying to glare at her now, but dared not turn her head
to check and confirm or deny her suspicion. Some part of her was pretty certain
Blueblood had been doing likewise. She gave no more than a weak groan, followed
by a sluggish shaking of her head.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Flash Sentry was still flying, though now he was circling above the patrolling
guards who still surrounded the jewel looking for a place to land. Fortunately
for him, Matt and Natalie spotted him and motioned for the guards to make room,
though at first they just stood there—probably looking at the pair funny, if
Flash had to hazard a guess—before they gave a set of audible groans. Those
groans were followed with a pair of hooves pointing straight up, and only then
did the guards break formation upon seeing who it was they'd gestured to.
"Hey Flash," Spike greeted once Flash banked for a landing and safely got to
the ground on his hooves. With a quick flap of his wings to steady himself upon
landing, snow cascaded around him before fluttering back to the ground.
"Hey Spike," Flash replied, smiling very briefly at Spike before turning to the
rest of the guard unit. "One of your pals found me and my group and hollered on
and on about 'horsey hives.'" His gaze wandered about, taking in each guard's
stance. It soon settled on Matt. "Tell me, who was rattling off about it?"
Matt sighed and his horn glowed for but a second, and during that small period
of time Flash's head was embraced by gold. Immediately, voices filled his head,
though Noah's had taken the most precedence. After several seconds, and as
suddenly as it had come, the noises faded into dull echoes that lingered for a
bit in the back of his mind.
Then Flash turned to Noah and frowned. "Any other symptoms, aside from the
standard blisters and coughing?" he asked flatly.
Noah shuddered. "And apart from appetite loss… he was ranting and raving," he
answered glumly. "I couldn't understand half of what he was saying. He was like
a pony possessed."
Natalie rolled her eyes and piped up at that, "Considering he had you board up
his house… if that's true, by the way—and I don't mean to sound
condescending—I'm thinking he might be going stir-crazy."
"You call wanting his brother to board up his house 'stir-crazy?' He doesn't
need to go to that extreme length just to keep his possible horsey hives from
spreading," Matt remarked, also rolling his eyes.
Spike opened his mouth and made to interject when the sound of a ringing bell
sang through the air. His mouth then closed and he turned to the direction of
the church. It took him a few seconds to open his mouth again before he'd
managed an utterance, "Guys, can we save the arguing… I dunno, for later?"
Noah's head dropped again. "I'm gonna get an earful from Eve about this…" he
grumbled, ears flattening against his head.
Another guard lit up his horn and magically jabbed Noah in the side, being
mindful to do so in a gentle manner. "She might lay off on that, though. Her
kids came here the other day; she might try to coddle them again," he chirped
in a reassuring tone of voice.
"Coddle?" Spike piped up, a brow instantly raising high at the implications.
"Aren't they… a little old for coddling?"
Matt craned his neck to shoot Spike a look. "Try telling that to mom and see
what happens," he replied with a teensy smile beginning to bud on his face.
"It'd be the same as, I dunno, telling Katie she's too crippled to fight."
Spike rolled his eyes, which went half-lidded in that moment, and sighed.
"Yeah, whatever you say," he snarked in reply. "Just don't come trotting to me
when she drags you again."
The guard who'd poked Noah snorted and turned to the sound of the bell as it
rang yet again. "Whelp, I think it's lunch time," he chirped, grinning.
Noah shook his head, also turning to the direction of the distant clangs. "I
dunno… it's only been a few hours since breakfast." He frowned contemplatively.
"Maybe the wind's jostling it again."
"Maybe it's something else?" Natalie suggested, immediately grimacing when
everypony present turned to her on the spot.
"Well, why don't you two see why the bell's ringing? And take your pegasus
friend with you," Noah stated, turning to Natalie with a frown. "The more you
three stand around me, the more I'm starting to think I may have given you guys
horsey hives. And I don't want to see Eve getting mad."
Matt's shoulders sagged, but he started trotting to the source of the clanging
nonetheless. Natalie fell in step behind him, and so did Flash after they'd
passed him. The guards began chattering behind them as they parted from their
group, but after a minute or two of walking, their voices faded to very soft
echoes that were almost entirely drowned out by snow crunching beneath hooves.
Natalie shuddered, and her ears fell back as they pressed forward. "If we end
up with horsey hives…" Her face began turning a shade of blue at the notion.
Matt scoffed and snorted at the thought. "Minor diseases like horsey hives
don't spread well in this cold. That, and Noah didn't even lay a hoof on us. We
don't even know how his brother has his place set up, aside from likely being
boarded up," he stated with a shake of his head. "Much less where."
Natalie opened her mouth to retort again, only for Flash to cut her off before
she could get in another word edgewise, "But what if it still spreads? Because
it very well could."
"If it does…" Matt trailed off, frowning as he gave Flash's remark some
thought. His pace slowed just enough that Natalie began stepping on the fur
clinging to his rear pasterns. "Well, shit…"
Spike interjected, crossing his arms as he tried his best to imitate some
accent he was sure Matt and Natalie didn't recognize, "Yeah, either way, we's
gots a problem."
"Hrm… should we have Noah eat elsewhere if it's lunchtime, then?" Natalie
queried, her tail shifting to drag between her rear legs. "If so, then I vote
for the treeline."
Spike lifted a hand and rubbed his chin, humming lowly as he gave Natalie's
vote for the treeline a bit of thought. "I dunno… would his food get cold out
here? And what about him? I'm pretty sure he'd be more likely to eat in a
dining room corner than… out here," he noted, dropping his hand once a flake of
snow landed onto his knuckle.
"Maybe the roof, then. Or next to the bell," Natalie suggested, smiling just a
teensy bit as she spoke. Spike twisted to stare at her incredulously, and
opened his mouth before Natalie lifted a hoof and cut him off by waving it
dismissively. "He could stop it from clanging with his magic. I mean, how much
does that thing weigh?"
Spike's eyes narrowed a bit. "Aren't bells heavy? Especially bells attached to
buildings?" he retorted, frowning.
"Well, what if the church bell's light enough to be shaken by, I dunno, a
passing breeze?" Natalie replied, her smile fading. At her half-assed retort,
Spike's eyes started to gleam.
"... I'd think the bell would sooner crumple under itself than be rung by a
breeze if it were that light. It may as well be a scrap of thin metal if that
were the case," Spike snarked back, his lips twitching upward just a little.
"I'll bet it wouldn't even hold up a birthday candle to a wind chime."
Natalie groaned as she saw Spike's point, and her head sank to hover before her
front knees, though not before she turned to look at one of the passing
buildings. "I give up," she grumbled.
Flash's wings fluffed a little, and he tilted his head. He decided to change
the subject, "So… what's your military base like?"
At that, Matt's speed picked up and Natalie raised her head. "Well… it's kind
of… the best way I could describe it would be 'clusterfuck,'" Natalie replied,
turning to Flash to give him a small smile. "Last time I was there, half of it
was still a complete mess. But it was just the storage compartments that were
messy, so it was all good."
Flash blinked and donned a small frown. "You… didn't answer my question," he
muttered.
"We'd be here all day if we started to describe our base of operations," Matt
chirped from up front, punctuating his response with a chuckle. "But… we could
give you a basic idea of what you would expect." His horn lit up again, and
Flash's head was once more embraced in a brief flare of gold.
Images of the Valkyrie tank's interior flooded his mind, from the chests to the
unsorted bag of goodies. Flash shuddered once the onslaught of telepathy had
ended, some of his feathers going askew with the motions. "Is… the base
entirely like that?" he asked.
"Depends on what part of the base you end up in. It's… divided into several
sections. Gotta have housing for the privates and all that," Matt replied. This
time he was actively shrugging his shoulders and sending Spike jostling a
little in the process.
Flash nodded with a little smile budding on his muzzle, having a very basic
idea of the military base. His pace quickened a little, and he spotted the
church up ahead, just a few trots away at this rate. Then, a thought hit him
and left his mouth before he could fully process it, "Say, do you think your
parents or this 'Laz' fellow would know anything about how the barrier broke?"
Matt slowed again, and his head tilted. He hummed for a bit before replying,
"Well… it's worth a shot. Maybe they'd know something." He shuddered before
trotting hurriedly to the church. "I doubt Laz would know anything about it,
though."
"Why say that?" Spike asked, a brow raising as he twisted to the back of Matt's
head again.
"Laz is just one pony, Spike. He just… he's not one to privy for intel," Matt
replied cryptically, reaching the door in under a minute. He blinked when he
saw that it was already wide open, before he found a little scrap of paper that
was tacked to its frame. His horn lit up, and his magic tenderly pried the
paper from the frame before bringing it to his eyes.
He found something scrawled onto its thin surface in impeccable hoofwriting.
Barkeep of Whitefall came here bitching, so I went to see what the fuss is
about while four of our guests took him to his home. Barkeep also flipped and
passed out, so I had to give the four guests directions to his place. Honey, if
you find this, please meet me at the Tipsy Tankard as soon as possible, or here
if the Tankard's issue has already been dealt with.
Yours Dearly,
Eve
P.S. NoLegs decided to come with me. Lunch is on hold. The bear is ringing the
bell.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The drunk and thoroughly-thrashed patrons of the Tipsy Tankard had woken up
with horrific headaches, aching legs, blurry vision and groans leaving their
lips. All of them then found that they were held in place by a field of blue,
but not before the door opened and their eyes locked onto their newest arrivals
as they cantered over to sit in front of Laz. One of the arrivals sat with
front hooves raising over the table to cross upon its surface and a blue aura
that flicked strands of blond mane to the side thanks to a light purple horn.
The other stood upright with his tail glowing.
Laz flashed them a smile and gave a nod. "Where's the barkeep?" he asked.
Eve lifted a hoof and waved it dismissively, still using magic to fiddle about
with her blond mane. "Being escorted, currently," she answered. "He about had a
heart attack when he saw our guests."
Laz blinked. "Guests?" he parroted.
Eve nodded. "My church is now packed. Most of my guests are sharing guest
rooms. But that's not what I came here for." She took in a deep breath. "The
guards are out patrolling, so I'm filling in for them. Now tell me…" She used
the hoof she'd already raised to gesture to the sorry, magic-bound sadsacks
behind her. "What the hell happened?"
Laz's smile widened. "Well, three mares claiming to have come from Mythos by
airship dropped by and started asking me some questions. To cut a long story
short, the drunkards over there jumped all four of us." He lifted his hooves,
put his pasterns together, and offered them to Eve on the spot. "If you would
please do the honors of lugging me to jail…"
Eve shook her head. "So what you're telling me is… you defended yourself?" she
asked, looking at the pasterns warily.
Laz nodded. "And so did one of the mares who dropped by," he added, followed by
shaking his pasterns at her rather invitingly. "Are you gonna jail me, or not?"
Eve rolled her eyes at the notion and shook her head again. "You must mistake
me for a guard from Goldenbrick, or a hired hoof from the ranges of
Blackwillow," she scoffed in reply, her aura seizing Laz's offered pasterns
before parting them and gently pushing them back. "At most, I'm pretty sure the
guards around here would let you off with a warning at the worst."
Laz chuckled and turned his attention to NoLegs. "Is she exaggerating?" he
asked with a mild note of exasperation in his tone.
NoLegs meowed and shook his head. A field of blue encompassed Laz's head before
a voice echoed into his mind, "By the way, would you know a thing about why the
barrier broke or something? My friends have been running themselves silly
tryin' to find something. I even went to Mythos with them to scrounge for one
morsel of intel, and we came back almost completely empty-hoofed."
Laz blinked, and his smile fell. His head tilted a little, and his eyes
narrowed just slightly. "Well… it's not much, but I do have something in
regards to the barrier…" His lips then pulled into a frown. "But I'd like to
think your friends would very much rather hear it straight from the horse's
mouth, so to speak." He leaned forward, until his muzzle was roughly two inches
from NoLegs. "Where're your friends at?"
"Some are with the guards, some are with the barkeep… and some went to the
prison to see someone," Eve answered, snagging Laz's attention with her
utterance. "And half of them are claiming to be Mythonians." At that, Laz's
eyes widened.
Laz sighed and stood up, his legs still a little shaky and numb. "You're
joking," he scoffed.
Eve donned a small smile. "Well… I would be, if one of them wasn't a
varicolored pegasus mare," she snarked back. This made Laz's pupils shrink and
his jaw dropped open to let out a shallow gasp that bordered on a wheeze. Then,
Eve stood up and leaned a little, and as a result they were almost muzzle to
muzzle. "But since you want me to take you somewhere…" Her magic seized Laz by
the horn.
Laz reeled in his jaw and swallowed heavily. "I-if you're dragging me b-back to
the ch-church, can I a-at least know wh-where you keep any e-earmuffs?" he
asked.
"No, largely because of the guests." Eve moved from the table and dropped to
all fours, using her magic to wrench Laz from his seat and drag him to her
side.
NoLegs embraced Laz's cranium with magic again, followed by another echo into
his mind, "Sounds to me like you're screwed."
Laz shuddered, before he planted his hooves firmly on the floor. "I can trot
just fine, thank you," he hissed. That made Eve release him him as she began
trotting to the entrance of the Tipsy Tankard, and with a slight limp in his
gait he followed her. NoLegs hopped onto Laz's back, waving his tail at the
other patrons with a meow.
One of the drunks who still had his horn piped up in a slurred voice, glaring
at Laz and Eve's passing forms with very dull brown eyes as he spoke, "Ey, pale
bitch, why aren't ya makin' that pansy-ass colt take some jailtime?!"
Eve halted, just a few feet from the door. She turned to the patron and tilted
her head. Her nose wrinkled a little, and her eyes narrowed. "I am not an
enforcer of the law in this little hamlet. I'm merely the housewife of one,"
she retorted coldly. A blue light started to build on the tip of her horn as
she saw the patron's own horn starting to glow in a musty brown aura.
The patron whose horn was glowing donned a grin, his aura likewise building
with light. "If yer jus' a housemare, then why're ya takin' the pansy with ya?"
he hissed.
"Because I'd like him to meet my guests. Surely there's no harm in that," Eve
replied coolly, her light starting to flare brightly. NoLegs chimed in with a
meow and a nod of his head.
"Ya ain't takin' the pansy anywhere," the patron hissed, his aura seizing Laz
by the legs. "Not until I get through poundin' him to kingdom come."
Laz could not keep himself from smiling. He could not keep himself from
lighting his horn and using his magic to shake off the patron's aura. Nor could
he keep himself from snarking at said patron, "Listen… you jumped me, I kicked
your ass with the help of a pegasus, and you still have the temerity to call me
a pansy? What's that say about you, tough guy? Look at you; high and mighty and
drunk off your ass, beaten by a stallion who is shorter than the wife of a
local guard. Where'd you learn to fight, from a small herd of foals?"
The patron's horn was now ablaze with a murky brown light that would have
blinded anypony had they directly looked at it. He donned a sneer and narrowed
eyes, and under the intense glare the expression seemed demonic. Eve simply
shook her head at the display, her eyes shimmering with something akin to pity.
"Son…" she began in a stern, no-nonsense tone that made the patron's smile
widen, "why are you asking for trouble?"
"I ain't the one askin' fo' trouble, ya trumped-up guard-fondlin' tramp," the
patron hissed, his smile widening until it threatened to go Cheshire. Eve
sighed, almost in disappointment as the spell he was charging was let loose
into an orb of light. She merely conjured a translucent, pale blue wall before
the attack could connect, and for a tense moment the orb of light stuck to the
barrier without doing much else.
"I attempted to be patient, but somepony forced my hoof…" Eve muttered before
her barrier contorted and wrapped around the orb of light, almost as if adding
another layer onto a clay construct. "Oh well, it just makes my husband's job
easier. Not that I'm complaining." She channeled some more mana into the
wrapped orb, causing it change color from its murky brown hue into that of a
pleasing shade of blue, before it was sent back at the patron in a rush of
speed.
The patron had no time to react; the orb instantly connected with his barrel
and sent him toppling to the floor upon his back. Then the orb retracted to
hover in front of Eve before it distorted strangely, in a manner reminiscent of
slime being pulled and pushed in every conceivable direction. The patron tried
to sit up, but found himself held in place by another field of blue with a
slight red tinge that came from Laz's horn.
As it contorted, it started to burn brighter and brighter, almost like a
miniature star being given shape, and stranger still it turned as white as a
fluffy cloud. When it was nothing more than some sort of blob, it exploded in a
bright flare of light that blinded every single patron, and Eve and Laz
shielded their eyes by raising their hooves. Laz released his magical hold on
the drunkard who foolishly attacked Eve, just as the burning light before him
intensified considerably.
"NoLegs, now!" Eve barked, and without hesitation NoLegs gripped himself, Eve,
and Laz in his aura before they vanished in a smaller, dimmer flare of blue
light. As they vanished, the blinding ball of light spontaneously dimmed prior
to collapsing on itself and poofing out of existence. The trio reappeared
outside of the establishment and bolted down the nearest street, but not before
Eve used her magic to close the door.
Once they'd settled in a nearby alley, Laz glowered and NoLegs jumped onto
Eve's withers. "By Godcat's spatial-rending claws, the fuck was that spell?"
Laz asked, using his magic to wrench off his garments and make them vanish in
individual flashes of light. An unkempt brown tail soon sprung free of the
garments, as did a messy brown mane with short bangs.
"I converted my barrier into light," Eve replied, turning to Laz to reveal her
horn turning a tinge of red. "It takes a little bit extra to do that, but I
think it was worth it." She watched as Laz worked to undress himself, revealing
a body with a runner's build and rather lithe legs to accompany it. She caught
sight of some bird-like cutie mark before Laz made his cape reappear and he
draped it over his back.
"Phwah! That feels so much better," Laz stated with a puff of air from flared
nostrils, stretching his now-free beige legs and popping some bones here and
there. "I'd rather be freezing my tail off than to suffocate in layers of
clothes." With that, he and Eve began trotting down the alley in the direction
of the church.
"So… how did you come to know Matt and Natalie?" Eve asked, causing Laz to turn
to her with an incredulous brow raised.
Laz donned a small smile, and for but a second his eyes gave the faintest gleam
of crimson. "Well… we're sorta-kinda frenemies, you could say," he replied
cryptically.
"Really, now?" Eve replied, donning a small smile herself. "I asked because… I
told them you were at the church, and they looked like they were getting antsy.
They even asked me and Bartholomew what you looked like."
Laz's eyes widened. "Wait. They're here?" he queried. When Eve slowly nodded,
his smile widened considerably. "Oh, then I can't wait to see the looks on
their faces as soon as they realize I'm still in town."
***** Chapter LVII- Strange Smile *****
Matt, Natalie, Flash and Spike idled for a few minutes in the church, having
gone inside and up to the guest rooms after finding Eve's note and closing the
doors shut behind them on their way in. Harry the bear was there to greet them,
with Angel perched on one shoulder and Owlowiscious standing upon the other.
Though after that, they took a corner of the guest room Matt and his group had
entered and merely watched with interest as the quartet moved to the table.
For a good hour after that, after they'd since moved to sit at the table,
silence held as the group waited for someone or something else to break it.
Then Flash jostled his seat and huffed when nothing dropped by to answer.
"Ain't this a load of ponyfeathers," he cursed with a frown and narrowed eyes,
crossing his forelegs indignantly.
Natalie nodded and removed her boots and scarf with a flare of her horn, taking
care to do so one object at a time and then briefly shaking each hoof after it
was free to encourage a little more blood flow. "Honestly, my tail was so cold
I started to think I kept flagging it," she stated with a shake of her head.
"Let's just stay here, warm up, and if the others don't show up in a few
minutes, then we go out and find them."
Matt, who'd sat down between Flash and Natalie, let Spike climb off his back
and onto the table itself before removing his garments and making them vanish
in flashes of light. "On the bright side, lunch is on hold. So if everyone
shows up before the guards do, then we could let them know of the horsey hives
issue and then figure out how the hell to deal with it," he chirped with a
small smile and a hopeful note in his tone.
Flash uncrossed his forelegs and set one hoof on the table, before spreading a
wing and tapping one of his primaries against the floor. He had to admit that
Matt had a solid point. Which begged a question he was all too happy to ask,
"So what do we do if everyone can't show up, or simply doesn't?"
Spike took a seat opposite of Matt and leaned back into his chair the moment he
parked. He lifted his arms and rested them behind his head, being mindful of
his protruding spines. "Well, I guess we could ask whoever gets here first and
get a handful of opinions on the matter and take it from there," he stated with
a slight smirk budding on his face. "Of course, that's assuming everyone in our
groups knows about the potential problem already. In which case, we'll just
brief everyone once we regroup in full and have our lunch, just to make sure
we're all on the same page."
Natalie and Matt glanced at Spike rather incredulously. "Dude, how old are
you?" Matt asked, eyeing Spike as if he'd just grown wings. "Because you
sounded like a war veteran talking to a trainee."
Spike's smile widened. "I'd say a little older than Maria by a few years," he
replied nonchalantly. "Twilight's technobabble just rubbed off on me a lot over
time."
Natalie nodded with a sigh escaping her lips. "Technobabble aside," she paused
to let her gaze shift between Matt and Flash, "I'm in agreement. Who's for
Spike's suggestion, and who is against?" Both stallions raised a front hoof and
nodded. At that, Natalie smiled. "Alright." She stood up. "I'll go make us a
quick snack; would you like anything in particular?"
"Well… a sandwich would do me over until the others get back," Matt answered
with a grin.
Natalie turned to Matt with a quirked brow and a widening smile. "I might not
be able to pile it on high like you usually like," she chirped.
Matt shrugged and donned a smile himself. "Hey, I've only been here a day, and
I dunno how mom keeps the kitchen organized," he retorted. "Especially since,
y'know, I honestly wasn't expecting her to be here."
Natalie snorted in amusement and turned to Flash. He snickered before stating,
"See if there's any celery in there. Preferably with beets."
"Beets?" Natalie parroted. When Flash mutely nodded, she turned to Spike. "And
you?"
"Gemstones, preferably sapphires. If that's not available, then whatever's on
hand," Spike replied. When Natalie continued to stare at him, he continued to
smile back at her. "We dragons eat gemstones from time to time; I could safely
say it's a dietary requirement."
Natalie's smile fell, and she exchanged looks with Matt before turning back to
Spike. "Polished, raw, or cut into any peculiar shape?" she groaned in
exasperation.
"Raw please," Spike replied, his smile widening a little more.
Natalie slowly nodded, and turned for the door. "I'll see what I can do," she
murmured. She trotted to the door, but not before twisting to nuzzle Matt on
the cheek. He returned the gesture with a small smile, and sighed in content as
she left the room to start snack-making. Hurriedly making her way to the
ladder, then down it, she found herself in the ground floor hall in a matter of
seconds.
After that, she opened a door to her right and strode in, finding herself in a
wood-floor kitchen fitted with a small chandelier holding lit lanterns in lieu
of candles that illuminated the room. Said room was drenched in the various
smells of cooked and raw foodstuffs that were probably there since the night
prior, and it was also so stocked it rivaled the Valkyrie tank in both amounts
of equipment and the variety thereof.
To one side of the kitchen was a stovetop that was engraved top to bottom in
odd runes, though some were almost entirely invisible without any of the
lanterns' light shining directly onto them. To either side of said stovetop
were twin counters sporting cupboards, one with a rotisserie, a can opener, and
a toaster and the other sporting a sink laden with uncleaned dishes. Some
dishes were made of glass with minimal patterns, others of polished wood that
matched the floor perfectly in color.
Across from the stovetop was a massive firepit oven that was built into the
wall, with a thick wire rack inlaid above an ashy bottom that had yet to be
cleaned. Beside that was a large fridge, also with runes engraved in its
surface. In the corner next to the fridge was a massive white box, one with
still more runes carved into it. Between the box and counters stood several
oaken shelves, laden with more dishes galore. Finally, to the far side of the
room, opposite of the white box was a cabinet of some sort, made of simple oak
wood that was only starting to splinter and grey with age. Immediately, Natalie
cantered to the cabinet and lifted a hoof to pry its door open.
The door swung open effortlessly, albeit with a noisy creak of protest,
revealing several shelves that held despairingly little in the realm of
edibility. Aside from a baguette that was already cut in half at some point and
a massive stewing pot filled with some sort of powder-like substance, the
cabinet was devoid of foodstuffs, instead piled high with bags of flour and
sugar and spices in such obscene amounts she couldn't hope to name them all.
Her horn glowed and she lifted the baguette with her magic, turning it over
slowly to examine every square inch of its surface. She smiled a few seconds
later, finding the surface relatively spotless. Natalie turned to the firepit
oven for a few seconds after having snagged the baguette. "Mom, how much do you
bake every night?" she mumbled aloud, prior to closing the cabinet and trotting
to the fridge with her prize in tow.
Upon reaching said fridge and throwing its door wide open, she heard the sound
of another door opening, followed immediately by encroaching hoofsteps that
caused her to turn to the door leading into the kitchen before she could
examine the fridge's contents. Two sets of hoofsteps, instead of just one,
oddly enough. This ruckus was briefly drowned out by a mare's voice calling,
"Is anypony here?"
"I am! I'm in the kitchen!" Natalie called back before turning to the fridge,
finding that it was stocked with more meats and vegetables than she could shake
her staff at. The thing was so packed with foodstuffs she was wondering how the
door of the device could even close at all. At least the meats were raw, but
put in separate transparent containers that kept the threat of cross-
contamination at bay. The same thing was true for the individual vegetables.
"Natalie, honey? There's somepony who wants to see you, and urgently," the mare
outside replied. "I'm taking him to the guest rooms upstairs, so please don't
keep him waiting."
"I'll be out in a few!" Natalie called again, feeling a frown starting to tug
at her lips. She began to dig through the fridge's contents, finding the celery
and beets easily enough and picking up two stalks and a bulb after dismantling
and re-assembling their containers. The meats, however, she soon found some
trouble with. There were bacon slices and ham, fish fillets and sausage links
galore, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. It took her a few minutes,
but she eventually settled on the fish, plucking some pieces from its container
and putting it back where she'd found it before closing the fridge and trotting
out the door.
As she went into the hall and up the ladder, she made all of the foodstuffs
vanish in flashes of light. The actual snack-making could wait for a few
minutes longer; besides, she'd still need to somehow wrangle in Spike's desire
for sapphires into that particular equation, or find a suitable substitute
thereof. Once she got to the first floor, she heard Matt shouting, "You?!"
"That's right blondie, it's me," another masculine voice snarked in reply with
an audible snort of amusement punctuating his response. "And by the way, how's
the military life treating you and Natz? You look a lot more rugged then when
we last bumped into each other. I say the look suits you well."
Natalie's frown deepened. She turned to a door on her left a few paces away
that was slightly ajar and trotted to it, finding Eve and Laz in the room. The
former was sitting behind Spike, while the latter was engaged in a muzzle-to-
muzzle glaring contest with Matt, all while wearing a shark's smile on his
face. She cleared her throat and caused the pair to turn to her. "Matt… and
Laz, both of you lay off. And speaking of..." Her gaze shifted to Laz
specifically. "I was about to make snacks for everybody. Do you want something
to munch on?"
Laz raised an incredulous brow, and his grin faltered for a split second. Eve
stood up and trotted around the table and group to Natalie, and flashed her a
small smile. "But dear, aren't you a soldier? You don't have to cook anything,"
Eve stated in a gentle voice that had a note of confusion.
Natalie snorted and smiled right back. "I still cook from time to time, and
besides, you're overworked as is. I just want to lend a helping hoof," she
replied in a chipper tone.
Eve's smile widened, and she leaned in to nuzzle Natalie, who eagerly returned
the gesture. "Well, why don't we start on lunch together then? It's been years
since we last made a mess of the kitchen to clean up," she cooed.
Natalie's eyes began gleaming, and she chortled. "Remember the time I froze
chili peppers by accident?" she queried, and at that Eve giggled.
"Oh, yes I do. I still can't believe you made ice cream with those peppers,"
Eve replied. "Speaking of… perhaps we should treat everyone to a special,
homemade batch."
Natalie's grin took on a fierce, malicious cast. "One Burning Frost Special…"
she whispered conspiratorially. "Of course, we'll have to portion out the
Special…"
Eve nodded and turned to Laz, her grin also morphing into one of malicious
intent. "We'll be downstairs for a while. Yell if you need anything," she
chirped before turning for the door to find Natalie already making another
stride into the hall beyond. Eve followed with a slight spring in her step,
using her magic to close the door behind her, leaving the whole room to start
dwelling in silence.
Laz was the first to speak a full minute after the two mares had gone off to
the kitchen, turning to Matt in doing so, "So, uh… that was awkward."
Matt turned back to Laz and nodded in agreement. "That's my mom for you," he
replied. "Some of it rubbed off on Natz."
Laz's eyes widened and he turned back to the door. "Wait… that blonde-maned
mare was…"
Matt nodded again. "Yeeeep," he replied tersely.
Laz blinked and tilted his head, turning back to start looking at Matt rather
incredulously. "Um, wow… that explains a lot," he mumbled. "Does she know
you're in the military?"
Matt nodded once more. "Yes. In fact, she's already met my superior," he
answered, turning to glance at the window of the room. "And speaking of… where
the hell is he?"
As if to answer him, he heard the sound of another door opening from below.
"Matt, where are you?" a stallion called from below, followed by the sound of
several sets of hooves cantering about, one of which was particularly loud and
packed enough strength to send slight tremors through the floor.
Matt sighed. "Upstairs!" he called back. His reply was instantly met by the
sounds of several hooves trotting through the building, followed by very
noisily clanging against steel one set at a time. It took a minute or two
before the leader of the hoof-stomping procession strode into the room and
showed himself. At his arrival, Matt lifted a hoof and waved. "Hey dad."
Laz turned to Bartholomew and gaped. Bartholomew lifted a hoof and waved back
at Matt, before the ponies and dragon at the table noticed that he donned a
small frown. "Why the long face?" Laz asked as Bartholomew stepped aside to let
the rest of the procession behind him file into the room. He whimpered upon
seeing Anna canter in last, though she didn't seem to notice his presence at
first. Only when everyone was in a tight line did they turn to him in unison.
Lance leveled a flat stare at Laz, but it only stayed flat for a few seconds.
Then his lips quirked up in a smile. "So we have another pony spending the
night here?" he chirped.
Laz's ears fell back, and he hesitantly nodded. "My frenemies are here… and his
mom—" He gestured to Matt with a hoof, "—took me here because some ponies with
a legless cat wanted intel on the barrier that broke or some shit like that."
Lance's grin widened until it went Cheshire. "Frenemies? And 'ponies with a
legless cat?'" he parroted, amusement twinkling in his eyes. "Do my ears
deceive me?"
Matt nudged Laz with a hoof, shaking his head at the look that now painted
Lance's face. "Good going, my superior's got that gleam in his eyes…" he
mumbled, watching as Anna's gaze zeroed in on Laz. She lifted a hoof and made
an invisible dotted line across her neck. He shuddered as she donned a similar
expression to that of Lance, though her grin looked more manic. "Yep. You're
boned."
Lance studied Laz for a few seconds, taking in his stature and the fact he had
a cloak. Then, he stepped forward before he flexed his bare wings and spread
them wide, curling one forward and using it to grasp at the hem of his own
garment. With a quick flick, he lifted it off of his neck, over his head, and
tossed it into the air. It rose up high when a golden flash of light seized
hold of it before it could descend and made it disappear.
Laz's pupils shrank at the display. He balked when Lance strode over to him,
wings still flared and showing off a dozen or so growing pin feathers. The two
found themselves muzzle to muzzle only when Lance stopped his advance, staring
into each other's eyes unblinkingly. A wing spread forward and grabbed Laz's
cloak before lifting it a little, and red eyes trailed to the hip to find a
crimson bird carrying a sun-shaped spear in its talons. A tense but brief
silence held, which Lance was all too happy to break, "There's no mistaking
it."
"Mistaking what?" Blueblood interjected, causing Lance to crane his neck to him
and reveal a shark's smile on his face.
"Matt and Natz told me about this guy as soon as they joined my army," Lance
replied, retracting his wing before turning the rest of his body and striding
towards Blueblood. Halfway, though, he stopped dead in his tracks and tilted
his head. "Lazarus Highwind… wasn't it?"
He craned his neck to eye his quarry, who gulped and nodded apprehensively. At
that, Lance folded his wings, though only for a few seconds prior to spreading
them again. "I've been looking forward to meeting you in the flesh," Lance
stated in a tone between amused and no-nonsense. How he was able to maintain
such a precarious balance in his voice, Lazarus had no idea. He looked to the
rest of the group. "Could you… please leave us to chat in private?"
Anna nodded silently. "Well, Maria needs to be preened, so… and someone needs
to wake Alexander and Armin up," she muttered in reply, before turning to the
door and being the first to file out. Everyone else went after her, though not
before giving Lance a confused look or two upon taking their leave. Even Harry
the bear and his animal entourage went out, and with their departure the door
closed. A palpable silence fell onto the room when the door shut, and the air
began to hang heavily.
Lazarus turned to Matt and his jaw dropped open. Matt returned the look with a
solemn shake of his head, a front hoof lifting up before slowly waving, and a
slanted brow framing eyes gleaming in pity. The look was one that all but
screamed 'it was nice knowing you.'
Lance was still looking at Lazarus over his shoulder, still wearing that
unnerving grin on his face when said quarry turned back to look at him, and
still keeping his bald wings fanned out like some sort of deranged peacock.
Part of him was compelled to wipe that smug look off the general's face, but
the urge went as fast as it had come when Lance addressed him again. "That
said… I believe we can work out some sort of compromise, Highwind," Lance spoke
in an ominously low, still-amused tone of voice.
Lazarus's face started draining of its color as soon as he heard 'compromise.'
His mouth then made an attempt to transmogrify into sandpaper the moment he
opened it. His voice attempted to die, leaving him to utter a strangled whisper
consisting of but one word, "What?"
Lance turned his body to Lazarus in such a way he could see his cutie mark
plain as day. His left wing leveled at him before four of its digits curled in
a manner reminiscent of a fist pointing an index finger at him. Then it turned
until its joints were facing up, before the singular pointer curled in on
itself repeatedly.
Lazarus gulped and trotted to Lance with a hesitant pace, though when he
stopped briefly, he felt some force push him onward. He turned to glare at
Matt, but his expression faltered upon finding a glowing horn accompanying a
still-solemn visage.
When he came close enough, the extended wing unfurled before it draped across
Lazarus's cloaked backside and yanked him until he was shoulder to shoulder
with its owner. "This is going to sound really strange, so bear with me," Lance
began in a smug tone, turning to look Lazarus in the eye. The smug look may as
well have been stuck on his face at this point.
Spike and Flash looked at Matt, both frowning uncertainly. "Is he okay?" Flash
asked, spreading a wing before curling all but one digit onto themselves and
using the uncurled one to gesture to Lance.
Matt returned the looks and gravely shook his head. "He's rarely like this…
hell, he doesn't just wrap his wings around anypony else," he muttered in
reply. "I'd wager 'no.'"
Lance's ears twitched, and he craned his neck to look at Flash and Spike, still
grinning like a lunatic. Evidently, something amused him, but the trio at the
table didn't know what that was to save their hides. "I'm fine," he chirped
before turning back to a paling, uncertain-looking Lazarus. He decided he'd had
enough of beating around the proverbial bush, "You get another go at Matt and
Natz… or however many you want, for that matter, but on one condition."
Lazarus's legs began wobbling to the point of threatening to buckle. Some part
of him wanted to run away from the crazy pony staring him unnervingly. All he
could do, though, was lean back as far as he was able, which was no easy feat
considering a bald wing still had a stranglehold on the area between his
withers and his croup. His mouth worked furiously as Lance continued to stare
at him, yet nothing would issue from his throat.
Lance ignored Lazarus's flailing gums before leaning in to match his retreat,
making sure to never stray too close. "How'd you like to be in their little
boat?" he asked in a whisper, lifting just one digit of the wing holding
Lazarus and using it to gesture to Matt for emphasis. He jerked his muzzle to
Matt, just so Lazarus could see it.
Lazarus turned to Matt once he felt the digit part from his body, jaws still
moving soundlessly. Comprehension dawned, and his face fully drained of its
color with the realization. His tongue continued to flail about, trying
desperately to form words without sound, but alas it was of no use. It seemed
his voice had up and left the building, taking with it the ability to mouth
even the most basic of syllables.
Matt's jaw had, likewise, dropped open at the implications. It took him a few
seconds to reel it in, direct his attention to his seemingly-insane superior,
and utter something in that order. "Y-you're… wanting to recruit him?" he
asked.
Lance nodded, his eyes not yet ceasing their twinkling in amusement. "You and
Natz quibble like you're already married. So I figured 'fuck it, why not?'" he
retorted. "Besides, Katie's also gotten an offer herself."
Finally, Lazarus found his voice and interjected, "Wh-who?"
Lance lifted his wing and folded it shut against his own side, its mate doing
likewise. "You'll get to know her," he replied.
Spike piped up, causing Lance to turn to him in doing so, "Wait… are you one of
those types who just hoof out invitations willy-nilly? That doesn't seem like
good protocol to me."
At that, Lance shook his head, but his seemingly-fixed smile did not falter in
the slightest. "I've made two exceptions. I could make another with Sarah, but
she's currently compromised. I'd rather not push my luck," he replied. His
voice faltered and his grin twitched as he added, "She engages mouth before
brain, Spike. And her level of vulgarity puts her friggin' sister to shame."
A golden aura seized Lance by the face and flexed his cheeks a bit before
tugging them sharply down, then back up as far as they could go without
tearing. It held for a few seconds before pulling down again and relinquishing
its hold, and only then did Lance stop smiling. He turned to Matt and nodded.
"Thanks," he chirped.
Matt nodded back, his gaze flicking between Lazarus and Lance with uncertainty.
"Um…"
Lazarus staggered back from Lance before falling to his haunches, followed
immediately by his front legs giving out and causing him to faceplant on the
floor. "I'll think about it," he grumbled into the floor. He lifted his head
and craned his neck to look at Matt. "So, uh…"
Spike piped up again, eyes half-lidded and a firm frown affixed to his face,
"This just got a lot more awkward…"
Matt nodded again and turned to Spike, his frown deepening. "Yeah, that."
Lazarus lifted his head a little more and turned to Lance, his features still
pale but regaining a bit of color. "I'll… take five." He shifted his legs under
him, waiting until they stopped shaking before starting to lurch up.
Before he could get onto his hooves, though, Lance trotted to him and planted a
hoof on his withers. "You said… something about the barrier. Before you head
off—"
Lazarus stood up abruptly, the sudden movements violently causing Lance's hoof
to fly off and its owner to stagger back on three legs. "I'll talk about it
later. This is… this is a lot to take in," he muttered in reply.
"Understandable." Lance dropped his raised hoof once he stopped stumbling and
flashed Lazarus another smile when he dared to make eye contact again. "You
scratch our backs, and we'll scratch yours."
At that moment, they heard yet another set of hoofsteps canter their way into
the building, this time accompanied by thudding and a very dull scritch-
scratching that was almost drowned out. The owners wasted no time dallying, as
soon the sounds were briefly replaced by the cacophony of clanging metal. Lance
perked his ears and twitched them, zeroing in on the noises. At the precise
moment the metal ceased banging seconds later, voices filled in the void. One
was particularly shrill.
"Could you believe that stallion? I was this close to tearing his throat out
and making him eat it! He was spewing so much horseshit I'm surprised his ass
didn't jump ship yet," he heard Sarah snarl in a tone between outrage and
exasperation. That alone caused Lance to trot to the door and press his ear to
it to better listen to whatever the hell was going on.
It didn't take long for a conversation on the other side to pick up. The moment
he pressed his ear to the door, he heard a lady-like huff of indignation. This
was followed by Rarity adding in a very curt tone, "Honestly, I'd like to think
that stallion had simply lost his sanity some time ago. It's the only thing
that would both explain his deranged beliefs and shed some light on the affairs
going on around here."
Sarah snorted, and audibly stomped a hoof. "Whatever helps you sleep at night,"
she scoffed.
Fluttershy piped up next, her voice barely audible, "I think I can see why
Lance keeps his wings out of sight…"
"But that doesn't explain why Sarah has yet to do likewise, especially
accounting for her broken wing," Rarity argued, which immediately earned her
another snort.
"You do realize I'm standing right here, right?" Sarah hissed sarcastically.
"Yes, I do," Rarity stated in reply.
"Ladies, please cease your bickering at once," Fenrir cut in, garnering two
huffs of indignation. "You can have your little spat at a later time. I suggest
we take a room, sit down, and engage our brains after we've had some time to
calm our tempered nerves." A wing started flapping in tandem with a keening
hiss, but it broke off when Fenrir cut in again, "Yes, I know, the barkeep had
said very questionable things as we escorted him to his abode. I'm not entirely
certain if he was merely raised with such inane beliefs, or had ceased being
sane, and quite frankly I don't particularly care. You shouldn't, either."
For the first time since the whole debacle on the other side started, someone
inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. They repeated this process for a few
seconds. Afterwards, Rarity spoke again, her tone much calmer than it had been
before, "Well… considering the barkeep's state of mind, I'm inclined to agree
that he's simply a lost cause. Unless he decides to hurt a foal of something
ludicrously appalling like that, I'm afraid we'll just have to ignore him."
Sarah audibly sighed. It didn't take long for her to concede, either, "Alright,
you two win. But if the barkeep comes back and tries plucking me, I'm breaking
his horn off with my bare talons."
"Duly noted," Fenrir replied tersely, punctuating his response with a snort.
This was followed by the sounds of more hooves, scritch-scratching, and
thudding that began wading towards something. They stopped briefly when a door
opened, before resuming and cutting off with a door closing. When silence
permeated the room, Lance pulled back and opened the door before turning to
look back at Lazarus and the others.
"I'll go see Zecora for a bit. I'll catch you lot later," Lance stated, and
with that he left the room, closing the door behind him with a bare wing.
Silence held for several minutes on end, before it broke with a brief clicking
of hooves on wood, followed by metal clanging for a few seconds.
Lazarus let his shoulders slump, and turned before trudging his way back to the
table on hooves that dragged across the floor. He turned to Matt the moment he
sat down and asked, "Are you gonna keep the crazy pony away from me?"
"Crazy pony?" Matt asked, a brow raising when Lazarus nodded.
"G-green mane… h-horn," Lazarus stammered in reply. His face then hit the table
when Matt merely shrugged and muttered something about some sort of
impossibility.
He groaned when Natalie called from below, "Lunch is ready! Come and get it,
while it's still hot!"
***** Chapter LVIII- Devil's Advocate *****
When everyone filed to the tables, they found the tables were again piled with
foodstuffs. However, there was much less in quantity now, as far as bread was
concerned. In addition to that, one seat had a small, corked, and clear bottle
filled with some bubbling orange-red liquid that was clouding up the glass from
within.
Its rim was tacked with a note on it that simply read 'for Lance' in big bold
writing. Lance filled in his seat and put the bottle on the table, and everyone
followed suit after, though Lazarus had the luxury of sitting close to Katie.
Armin and Alexander, both sporting bags beneath their eyes and some still-
lingering bits of eye-crust, sat at his table and opened wide to release dual
yawns.
Anna sat next to Lance and gestured to the bottle with the bubbling liquid,
frowning at it in concern. "What's that?" she warily asked.
Lance looked at the bottle of liquid and sighed. "I'll let it sit for a few
minutes," he answered, using his hooves to scoop himself a decent chunk of meat
and vegetables onto a plate. At that, Anna shrugged and magically took a plate
for herself.
Sarah came to sit between Lazarus and Katie, blocking the former's view of the
latter as she tried in futility to reach for one scrap of meat without crawling
on the table or using her tongue. The two made eye contact, and Lazarus
grimaced when he saw Sarah's eyes. In response, she lifted a talon and upturned
it rather invitingly. "So, new colt?" she asked, quirking up a small smile.
"Spending the night again, and I got the offer of the bloody century," Lazarus
replied, hesitantly lifting a hoof up. The talon clasped his raised limb once
it got in range and shook it, and relinquished its hold after a few seconds.
"Yeah, and I found my sister's in the military," Sarah stated, before her eyes
widened when she felt something poking at her cutie mark. She twisted around
and spotted Katie looking up at her from her seat.
"Could you get me a piece of…" Katie turned to look at a plate of ham and
gestured to it with a hoof, "whatever that stuff is, please? I can't reach it
with my hooves and I honestly don't want to make a scene."
Sarah nodded and deftly reached over to the plate of ham with a claw before
picking it up and repositioning it so it sat well within Katie's pitiful reach.
"Thanks," Katie chirped before she picked up a few slices that, when put
together, were no thicker than a slice of toast. She popped them in her mouth,
and her tongue undulated before coiling around the inside of her mouth to keep
the ham slices from escaping. The sound of repeated slurping emanated from the
torn maws, but there wasn't much anyone could do about it.
"No prob," Sarah chirped before putting the rest of the ham back on the table.
With that, she turned to Lazarus again. She found him leaning over to stare
wide-eyed at Katie, but a talon coming to rest on his shoulder soon had him
turning back to its owner. "Don't mind the shrimp. She's… quite quirky for a
changeling."
"A changeling… wraith…" Lazarus still seemed stuck on Katie's grotesque
appearance. Sarah didn't find it in her to blame him; she did, however, find
herself with a pressing question that she wanted to convey.
So she mouthed it, but not before lifting her claw higher to clasp Lazarus's
chin to make him look her in the eyes, "She's the only changeling wraith I've
seen so far. Is that not natural?"
Lazarus nodded back and mouthed in reply, "Very unnatural." Sarah let go of his
chin and turned to gather foodstuffs onto her plate, though her eyes remained
peripherally fixed in her new tablemate's direction. Lazarus turned to do
likewise, though he used his magic in lieu of hooves. He craned his neck once
he got a decent portion of food on his plate, idly stuffing a piece of
cauliflower into his mouth as he spotted Matt and Natalie sitting at a far
table.
Both were… nuzzling each other? Lazarus blinked and shook his head, if only to
ensure his eyes were functioning properly. Nope. The nuzzling was brief, but
genuine, followed up by the two laughing as they took plates for themselves. He
turned away and started chewing his bit of cauliflower, grimacing as a slightly
sweet taste graced his tongue. He swallowed and looked down at his plate's
contents.
He'd just stabbed a piece of fish with a fork when Rainbow Dash came over to
sit directly across from him. Just the sight of his acquaintance was almost
enough to make him drop his fork; he'd seized it at the last second with a
warbling magic aura. How didn't he notice her when he'd entered the church
before, especially after she basically came in on his heels? "U-uh, hi," he
stammered.
Rainbow nodded to Lazarus. "Hey," she greeted, using her hooves to scoop far
more vegetables than anyone else at his table onto her plate. "Did the barkeep
give you grief?"
Lazarus shook his head and quickly stuffed the piece of fish he'd stabbed into
his mouth, and only when it was between his teeth did he allow himself to drop
the fork. He chewed and swallowed before daring to look Rainbow in the eye. "I
found out the ponies who broke the bed and nightstand were…" He shuddered at
the mental imagery and the revelation of who the ponies he spoke of were
related to. "Oh Godcat, why…" he whined, ears folding back as he felt himself
quickly losing his appetite.
Rainbow winced, immediately seeing what had Lazarus distressed. Armin bit into
a carrot and turned to Lazarus, shaking his head and slanting his brow. "You
poor bastard…" he muttered through his food.
Alexander tore into a piece of bacon, and did not speak until he polished off
the bit of meat, "Sounds like somepony needs to see a therapist."
Rainbow turned to Alexander after having stuffed a few pieces of broccoli and
lettuce into her mouth. She talked with her mouth full, "I dub fink a ferapish
woulb helb. I ofth for frain fleach."
Katie, having finished and swallowed her ham slices, uncoiled her tongue until
it reverted back to its standard resting length. She reared up in her seat,
resting her front hooves on the table so Rainbow could see her. Only then did
she speak, "Good luck finding a therapist who offers brain bleach. That service
is as rare as a hippogryph hen with a cutie mark." That got her a whap across
the back of the head from Sarah, to which she'd barely flinched at.
Rainbow turned to Sarah, raising a brow and swallowing the mush that remained
of her broccoli and lettuce. "Hen? Hen? Are my ears working right?" she asked.
Sarah nodded and sighed in exasperation. "And male hippogryphs are called
cocks," she replied. She leaned back in her chair and popped a piece of lettuce
in her mouth before shoving it into one cheek with her tongue and adding,
"Technically speaking, my sister's a hen."
"Oooooh. So it's like mare and stallion…" Rainbow murmured, eyes widening as
she got what Sarah was alluding to.
Sarah nodded again and started chewing on her lettuce. "Mhm," she hummed. Upon
swallowing, she turned to Lazarus and smiled at him. "Now, what's this 'deal of
the century' here? Somepony's hoof in marriage?" she asked, albeit jokingly.
Lazarus shook his head. "I wish," he scoffed. "That'd require me to know who I
was marrying on a very personal level before I'd taken that offer."
"That's just as likely as Lance doing Sarah's sister," Katie snorted loud
enough for everyone to hear her, earning herself another whap upside the head
from Sarah, who now turned to growl threateningly at her. Katie turned to meet
the stare head-on, finding narrowed eyes, a face turning green, and bared
teeth.
The utterance also caused a few choking sounds to come from the other tables,
followed by a few more incredulous stares in her direction. Katie turned to
Anna, finding her red-faced and red-eyed before adding, "Oh, please, you're
more likely to perform gyromancy to summon Godcat or something."
She turned to Sarah only when the stares retracted a full minute later.
"Besides…" Her voice dropped to a low whisper, "Lance isn't attracted to Anna.
You've nothing to worry about on that front."
Sarah nodded and turned away, still glowering as she went back to eating.
Nobody dared to speak for several minutes, instead merely eating their food and
shooting wary glances at Katie every now and then. It wasn't until the door to
the church unexpectedly swung open did anyone speak as the rest of the guards
filed in and took seats. All except one soul in the platoon sat down. "Where's
the bread?" Noah asked, looking at the tables with a frown.
Natalie piped up, "A lot of it is still baking. I helped mom prepare everything
else. So if you want your baguettes, you're gonna have to wait." She turned
away and grumbled something about there not being enough chili peppers to Matt,
who nodded with a small frown.
Noah's frown deepened. "Alright." With that, he trudged to a corner of the
room, using magic to close the door behind him as he went. He decided to idle
as everyone else either began or resumed eating, though soon the feasting
slowed as, one by one, all eyes panned over to him with curiosity igniting in
each and every iris. Most gazes fell back to their plates, though a few
lingered in Noah's direction.
"What's with him?" Lazarus asked, his question causing Armin to wrinkle his
nose a little.
"I haven't the foggiest. I slept through almost all morning to let my
accumulated love digest," Armin answered, his eyes slightly narrowing when Noah
began to grin. It was a slight smile, but noticeable nonetheless. At that, his
gut began to twist even as he shoveled a piece of sausage into his mouth,
though he gave no more than a wince at its protesting.
Katie, on the other hoof, had her orbs firmly locked onto Noah. Having had her
fill, she didn't concern herself with the others, at least for the moment. He
merely grinned back at her, and even rose to stand on his rear legs, plant his
back to the corner, and cross his forelegs together in that order. He went
about this with motions so slow it was as if he'd wanted her to see him doing
so and be certain her eyesight wasn't playing tricks on her.
Sarah turned to Katie and nudged her with an elbow. She did not avert her orbs
in the slightest, but did twitch an ear and nod to let her know she was paying
some attention to her tablemate. "He's grinning," she muttered, causing Sarah
to turn to Noah.
The very split-second before Sarah looked up, Noah donned his frown again. She
turned to Katie and gave her a bemused frown that seemed to be more of a
grimace, accompanied by a raised brow. "No he's not," Sarah stated.
"He was just a second ago, I swear," Katie murmured in reply.
"If you say so…" Sarah muttered, turning back to her food to resume eating.
Katie sat down and crossed her forelegs together with an irritated grumble,
though not before she turned to glare at Noah again. Once her glare connected,
he smiled at her once more, this time smugly.
"Frathalk-creschilt eust ma'areus machelsc…" Katie hissed to herself in swarm-
tongue, the fringes of her split grin twitching as though about to curl in onto
themselves. Her eyes narrowed some more and her orbs dimmed. If she had any
teeth left, she'd have loved to start grinding them together right about now.
"Yes he is," Armin agreed in a low mutter.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Night had fallen after some hours, with Sarah, Katie, Lazarus, and Armin
gathered into one room. They listened as everyone else rushed outside to file
someplace, hearing several sets of hooves clattering noisily against wood. The
door to their room opened, and Lance and the rest of his troops, followed by
Fenrir, Maria and the Mythonians, waltzed in before closing the door behind
them.
Clasped in one wing, precariously between two of the joints, was the bottle of
orange liquid. It had ceased bubbling, looking more like a stew that had
solidified a little around the top than anything. The other wing shifted to
clasp the bottle by its cork, and as it began twisting about in an effort to
remove it, Lance turned to Lazarus. "It's a good thing we got you up to speed
on the horsey hives issue." At Lazarus's nod, he donned a small smile. "So
while I open this bottle, could you care to tell us what you know?" he asked.
All eyes fell onto Lazarus, and his ears folded back at the multitude of gazes
that began boring into him. He swallowed heavily, trying to compose himself in
front of his audience, before pursing his lips. He balked when Maria cut in,
"Is it anything like the bad hippogryphs?"
Lance stopped trying to open the bottle, spreading his cork-grabbing wing to
wrap it around Maria. He briefly broke away from staring at Lazarus to shake
his head at the filly. "No, it isn't. Besides, those hippogryphs are probably
ice cubes anyway," he answered, prior to turning back to Lazarus and mouthing
an added, "For the sake of this filly and Godcat and everybody, don't go into
too much detail if you can help it."
Lazarus nodded and let himself relax, taking in a deep breath before starting,
"Standard legend aside, there is something I've found to be left out of most of
the tales I've heard as of late. It isn't much, but this one tidbit isn't
spread around with as much frequency, so pardon me if I sound half-assed." When
his audience nodded in unison and hopefully understanding, he sighed and took
just a few seconds to gather himself a little more.
"Namely, two things are ignored in most standard tales: the crystal ponies, and
the changelings of old." Lazarus paused just long enough to see both Natalie
and Katie flinch at that, followed by exchanging wide-eyed glances. His horn
glowed briefly, and a bluish-red aura embraced his body before fading as fast
as it had come, and within seconds his body began to gleam like crystal. "Or
rather, one particular tribe of changeling," he added, the utterance causing
Katie to turn away and relax a little.
Natalie's ears folded back at the display, but her horn likewise glowed and her
magic embraced her body, revealing her own crystal coat. Lazarus turned to
Lance and sighed, his sheen dimming a bit. "Tell me… have you found any other
crystal ponies?" he asked.
Lance shook his head. "They're as scarce as a cat with legs," he replied
glumly. "Unless you went to Mythos; they're abundant there."
Lazarus closed his eyes and frowned. "Well… here goes." His eyes opened seconds
later, but his gaze seemed distant as he began his recital, "Before Godcat and
Faust had their second confrontation, the crystal ponies of old started
collaborating with a particular changeling tribe led by a ruthless king and a
powerless queen on a solution to keep the situation from escalating."
At that, he glumly shook his head, his eyes glinting with regret. "The
changeling king, cruel as he was, saw that even he could not withstand another
struggle between Godcat and Faust, and so tried to set his differences aside
with the crystal ponies. Unbeknownst to him, the other tribes had caught onto
what he was attempting to do, and most of the crystal ponies wanted nothing to
do with his proposed plan of action. They came in a stampede and wiped his
whole hive out, long before the changelings within could enact their solution."
"What happened to the crystal ponies?" Shining asked, eyes narrowing a little.
"... they stowed themselves away. But it didn't do them much good because they
were led by an alicorn, supposedly," Lazarus replied, his voice low. "Godcat
found them and spared none, save a very sparse few who were bold enough to
reprimand that alicorn for her cowardice. But she took away the gleam of those
few—not to punish them, but to hide them from their pursuers."
Lance, having gone back to trying to open his bottle, looked at Lazarus with a
slanted brow and his own torn ears folding back. "Did… it work?" he asked.
Lazarus gave a chuckle once he'd heard the query, although one that was hollow
and joyless. "Evidently no, considering I can regain my luster at will," he
replied. "But mayhaps it did either way."
"What was the changeling king's idea of stopping the feud?" Twilight
interjected, frowning.
Lazarus turned to her and shook his head, gaze still distant. "There are a few
theories, none of which have been confirmed, but… more than half of them
involved him draining his own kingdom of its love. The remainders, though, had
the hive already starving beyond the point of no return, him included. No
matter which way you slice it… that hive was doomed from the word 'go.'"
Twilight grimaced, and her ears pinned back. Chills ran up her spine at the
notion of a king draining his own subjects of resources, although said king
starving with his subjects didn't sound particularly pleasing either. "C-could
you elaborate?" she asked.
"One theory… is that he went through with draining his subjects, leaving them
crippled against the other tribes' onslaught. The queen also fell to this
tactic, and rumor has it she was granted a quick death. Though after the feud
between Godcat and Faust concluded with them being sealed… there've been
sightings of the queen, all of which have went unconfirmed for millennia,"
Lazarus began, his eyes very slowly turning to Katie. "Though, none could be
bothered to describe the queen in question."
"I'm just a mutated worker," Katie muttered once her orbs locked with Lazarus's
eyes.
Lazarus nodded and turned back to Twilight. "What about the barrier?" she
asked.
Lazarus donned a small smile at that. "That took several powerful unicorns on
both planets to create, way back when unicorns had only then stopped moving the
sun and moon for some reason. Among them was an old fart by the name of
Starswirl," he replied. "I heard he'd used ancient, cat-constructed airships to
travel to and from Fantasia before that."
Everyone in the room balked in unison, and some faces had jaws dropping open.
Lance nearly dropped his bottle, but his whole wing came to clasp around it at
the last second. Lazarus turned so his back faced them all.
"Where'd… you find out about that legend?" Sarah asked, her pupils dilating to
the size of pins shafts.
"Well… I found a few dusty tomes in an ancient language in a temple near
Glacier Valley," Lazarus answered with a shrug. "I had to have a translator
with me, and even he couldn't crack much information about those tomes.
Tragically, I couldn't take the tomes with me."
"Glacier Valley… Anna, remind me to tell Delta Unit to change course first
thing tomorrow," Lance murmured, garnering a nod from Anna as he continued to
try to pry the cork from the bottle.
"Cat-constructed… airships?" Blueblood began, his eyes widening and his mind
boggling at the notion. "Cat-constructed airships?" he repeated. "That sounds
as outrageous and asinine as a changeling king draining his own subjects and
queen!"
Lazarus nodded. "Yes, it does sound asinine, but bear with me here. Before
ponies came into power, cats ruled almost all of Fantasia. But when Faust took
away their legs, it wasn't the only thing she did to spite them. She destroyed
most of their technology, as it far surpassed that of ponykind," he answered.
"Honestly, I thought cat-made airships were myth… until somepony in this very
room unearthed them three-ish years ago."
"Who?" Pinkie asked, one of her legs beginning to twitch.
"He's the only one among us with crimson eyes," Lazarus replied.
Lance sighed as all the gazes, save Lazarus's, turned to him on the spot. He
perked his ears before going back to trying to open his bottle, and this time
he succeeded with a swift tug on the cork. "I was tryin' to see if anyone else
had found that jackpot. Short answer's 'no,'" he grumbled before lifting the
bottle to his lips and clamping around it. He tossed his head back and downed
the bottle's contents with a grimace and a face that turned a twinge of green.
As he ingested the liquid, crimson mana began to pulse across his wings. The
few feathers he'd already accumulated rapidly expanded in size, before being
followed by more that burst forth from the swollen feather tracts with a
vengeance.
Darker orange secondaries went askew, oddly crimson primaries jutted forth with
a rigid grace, and layers and layers more sprung up in between and overlapped
with the rhyme of a messy bedroom. Then, more feathers grew along Lance's neck
and back, stretching from just where his mane ended right to his croup. Some
even grew from his shoulders and barrel, as well as just above his cutie marks.
The excess feathers were as small as thumbtacks and blended in almost
seamlessly with his coat, though some jutted out to give themselves away.
The whole process took less than thirty seconds to conclude, from the first
drop of liquid to the last. Lance gently set the bottle down on the floor and
shook himself as if he'd been soaked in water, which only caused his already-
messy feathers to take on a more hectic arrangement. He turned to Zecora and
flashed her a smile. "Thanks a bunch," he chirped.
Zecora nodded back to Lance and smiled. "It seems I haven't lost my touch yet.
Although, your feathers haven't seemed to set," she intoned. "But why do you
grow feathers on your chest and haunches, pray tell? It would seem very odd,
especially for somepony who's otherwise well."
Lance's grin widened. "I was like this before being plucked," he answered. He
flexed his wings, which were now easily larger than before—to the point they
could reach Fenrir's shoulders with their tips at full mast—thanks to the
feather influx, prior to closing them at his sides. This caused him to,
unwittingly, hide his cutie marks again, in addition to a good portion of his
flanks. On top of that, his primaries jutted a few good inches past his tail,
their tips barely touching in their current position.
"By Celestia's gilded hooves, your wings are huge! Are you gonna have trouble
flying?" Rainbow asked, gawking at Lance with an expression between dumbstuck
and awed. Which of the two was trying to take precedence on her visage, Lance
couldn't tell.
"I'm gonna take it easy for a week. I don't want my feathers falling out too
early," Lance replied with a shrug. "Besides, once we finish up here, flying'll
be out of the question anyway."
"Ectoplasms?" Rainbow guessed, garnering another nod and a mutter from Lance.
She could've sworn she'd caught 'tree branches' in there somewhere. Then, she
turned back to Lazarus, finding that he'd turned to face Lance sometime during
the whole feather regrowth spectacle.
Lazarus, who'd gone wide-eyed, was gawking at Lance with a paling face. "I
haven't seen a plucked pegasus recover that fast from becoming bald… what the
hell did you drink?" he asked incredulously.
"Soup," Lance replied cryptically. "Of a sort."
Lazarus continued to stare at Lance incredulously. "'Soup' my ass," he scoffed,
his eyes narrowing a little.
"It's a rejuvenation brew, tweaked specifically for bald wings," Zecora
interjected, causing Lazarus to turn to her and raise a brow. "It was initially
an experiment, but now I feel confident in aiding other ailing things."
Lazarus blinked. "Such as?" he pressed.
Zecora lifted a hoof and gestured to Sarah with it. "Broken limbs, fractured
bones, chipped teeth… just about anything magic can feasibly fix within its
reach," she replied.
"She's still working on it," Sarah translated with a roll of her eyes.
"So… an alchemist, then," Lazarus guessed.
"More like tribal shaman," Lance interjected, fluffing his wings as he spoke.
He felt one of them snag on something, and looked around before averting his
gaze down to find that Maria had taken hold of the limb. "Yes?"
"Do your wings feel funny?" Maria asked, letting go of the wing she'd grabbed.
Lance pursed his lips, realizing he felt a sort of tingling sensation that
spread pretty much everywhere feathers grew on his body. He hesitantly nodded.
"I guess my mana's just getting itself back into gear is all," he answered as
his wings gave a very dull, faint pulse of red.
Maria nodded back. "Okay," she chirped. She turned back to Lazarus and asked,
"Do you like daddy? You keep staring at him…"
Lazarus's eyes bugged out and he gave a choking sound in response, followed by
stomping and scraping a front hoof when at least one of his legs threatened to
buckle. "N-no! I-I'm a ladies' colt!" he stammered.
"Don't mind her," Katie interjected, lifting a hoof and using it to gesture to
Maria for emphasis. "She's asked a married couple if they rolled under the
sheets… as they were kissing. Made them break apart faster than one could shout
'Faust is coming!'"
Lazarus took a shuddering breath at that mental imagery and turned to Lance
with his face turning beet red up to the ears and tip of his horn. He pushed
the thought aside and fell to his haunches. "I'll… uh… join your ranks, I
guess," he stammered. "Just hold off on ordering me around for a bit, because I
probably won't be able to sleep tonight."
Lance nodded in understanding. "Duly noted," he chirped. When Lazarus continued
to stare at him, he added, "And no, there aren't any other catches." With that,
he turned to leave. "And one more thing. Don't let Natz challenge you to a
drinking game." Then he trotted out, and everyone else sans Sarah, Armin, and
Katie filed out.
Once the door shut behind them, Lazarus turned to stare at Armin. "Natalie
drinks? Since when?" he asked.
"She's been doing it on and off with her beau since Anna joined the ranks,
though usually under some supervision," Armin answered with a shrug.
"So… what should we do about the horsey hives issue?" Katie interjected,
causing her roommates to turn to her with perplexed brows raised. She crossed
her forelegs and added, "One of the guards was grinning smugly at me. I think
he knows something about this that we don't."
"He wasn't smiling," Sarah scoffed, only to be met with a holey hoof rising in
front of her face and waving dismissively.
"Yes he was, except when you or anyone but me and Katie turned to him," Armin
cut in, frowning and shaking his head as he lowered his hoof. "Katie's got a
point. That guard is onto something."
"So… we have a weasel… but only two changelings can see him for what he really
is…" Lazarus took in a deep breath. "Is this what I am hearing?"
"That's the gist of it," Katie chimed in.
"Well… sorry to be the devil's advocate, but I won't believe you until I see
the guard in question smugly smiling for myself," Lazarus sighed, shaking his
head. "Burden of proof is on you."
Katie's eyes narrowed, and her orbs dimmed again. "Burden accepted," she hissed
in reply. She spread her wings and buzzed furiously before launching to the
window and peering out of it, seeing Noah standing around in the street below,
without even taking the courtesy of donning a cloak to protect him from the
fresh wave of cold air and snow-fueled winds outside. "But first, I'll need a
few things…"
***** Chapter LIX- Like A Moth To Light *****
"Why do you need a few things? What things do you need?" Lazarus asked, his
sheen fading entirely with a quick flash of light from his horn.
Katie continued to eye Noah from the window, noticing the snow picking up in
speed. "I won't be able to fly tonight," she grumbled, dropping to the floor.
"The wind will shred my wings." She twisted her head a full 180 to stare at
Lazarus. "Namely, I need lots of cloth and a pillow."
Lazarus grimaced, but didn't flinch otherwise. "What do you plan to do, trot?"
he asked. "And what's the pillow for?"
Katie managed a nod, albeit one that caused her neck to pop with the motion.
"I'd have to." She flared her wings and flinched when one brushed up against
her snout before adding, "Do you really expect me to not become a mockery of a
tumbleweed out there? The pillow'll be there to anchor me, somewhat."
Her body twisted, aided by her hooves, rotating in a smooth trotting motion
until her barrel and snout were properly aligned once more. She waited for
Lazarus to respond, and it didn't take long for him to do so, "But wouldn't
trotting be slower?"
Katie rolled her orbs and snorted. "For me, everything is slower," she scoffed.
Lazarus frowned and exchanged glances with Sarah and then Armin. They returned
the looks with shrugs before turning back to Katie. "Before I take my leave, I
must ask: are you going to sleep, or are you going to come with?" Katie
questioned, only to be met with mute stares. When none of the trio sharing the
room with her piped up, she rolled her orbs again.
Then, Armin piped up with a frown and a slanted brow on his face, "Listen… I
can't trot in the snowstorm. My magic can only keep me warm for so long, and
once it peters out my blood'll freeze. I don't have glycerol in my veins."
"Suit yourselves," she muttered. With that, she cantered for the door, whipped
out her tongue to grasp the knob and open it once she was in reach, before
pulling it open and taking her leave.
She trotted into the hall, using her tongue to close the door behind her and
making sure it didn't catch in the frame on her way out. Once that was done,
she started cantering her way to the ladder before pausing just a few trots
into it when a door swung open to her immediate right. Katie jerked her head to
the door, only to tilt it when NoLegs, Maria and Spike emerged from a room that
was occupied by Lance and Anna.
Katie stifled a giggle when she got a glimpse of Anna with about seventy-five
percent of her face crammed into the backside of a wing, before NoLegs flicked
his tail and closed the door with his magic. She turned to Maria and queried,
"So… mommy and daddy want some alone-time?"
"Can it!" Lance yelled from behind the closed door.
Maria nodded and lifted a talon to her mouth in a vain attempt to suppress a
snicker. "Mommy won't stop until each feather is clean," she chirped through
her talon.
"And some feathers are on…" Katie turned away, her utterance dying with the
starting throes of a budding giggle fit. She quelled it by clenching her jaws,
before pushing the thought aside and turning to Maria again. "Tell me, did you
notice anything… odd, aside from that?" she asked, still amused.
Maria nodded. "A guard was smiling funny," she confirmed, dropping her talon to
reveal a frown. "And he was standing like the big doggy."
Katie's orbs flicked to Spike, who likewise bobbed his head up and down. "I saw
it too. Something just… doesn't seem right," he added. Finally, her gaze turned
on NoLegs, who nodded with a meow that she guessed was more or less another
confirmation.
"Oh, good, I'm not the only one," Katie snorted, turning to the ladder again.
"Armin saw it too, but he'd rather stay here than investigate. Some soldier he
is."
"Uuuuh, I don't think changelings like him can tolerate the cold the way you
do," Spike remarked, crossing his arms together. "And you aren't exactly his
superior."
"A fair point," Katie agreed with a nod before turning back to NoLegs. "Cloth,
pillow, mask and shoes, please. I plan on paying Mr. Smiles a little visit." A
blue light embraced her form, and the requested objects materialized around her
before fitting themselves onto her frame, save for the pillow which instead
hovered to her side. "Could you tie the pillow to my stomach please?" NoLegs
nodded and conjured a few lengths of rope no thicker than his tail, which he'd
used to anchor the pillow to her stomach.
Then another pillow and more cloth came from blinding lights before covering
that, with the second pillow coming to rest lengthwise on her back. This was
followed up by more cloth coming in to tie the second pillow to her body and
conceal it, and this was finished off by a mirror that was about the width of
an average door planting itself before her in another flare.
Katie angled herself before turning to face her reflection, finding a masked
form laden in cloth looking back at her with the back and stomach bulging
considerably. She nodded in approval and turned to the trio that stood with her
in the hall as the mirror vanished in another flare of light. "You coming, or
staying?" she asked.
"Daddy may ground me again, and I don't wanna make him mad," Maria replied, her
tone low as her frown started deepening, while her ears begun folding back at
the notion. "It's really cold, too. And I don't wanna get taken by a bad pony
either." That said, she turned and cantered to another room, reared up to open
the door, and filed inside without another word.
Once the door closed behind her, Katie sighed and turned to Spike with eyes
going half-lidded and orbs dimming a little more, seeing that Maria had about
ten very valid points she had no hope of arguing with. "Lemme guess: you're
also going to bed?" she asked in a flat and somewhat expectant tone.
Spike shook his head. Katie's orbs immediately widened at the gesture. "Well… I
still have a lot of things I need to get off my chest, but I don't wanna worry
Twilight by telling her about them," he stated, causing Katie's orbs to widen
to the point of overtaking the black canvases that housed them. "That, and Noah
kinda creeps me out," he added.
Katie's head tilted sideways instead of backwards, cracking until it sat at a
grotesque 90-degree angle. "So, you need a listening pair of ears… this what
I'm hearing?" she queried, her voice straining and going an octave higher as
her head tilted some more to sit at an upside-down 180.
Spike didn't flinch or shudder at the display, and he nodded in confirmation.
"Yeah, and preferably belonging to someone who's already been through quite a
lot," he stated, though more as an aside. "And you've been through more than
the other nutjobs you found yourself hanging with—no offense," he added as
Katie's head twisted another 180 to rest back in its usual position.
"None taken, and I understand," Katie chirped before turning to NoLegs. "What
about you, furball?" His answer was little more than jumping on her back with a
mew and an aura seizing hold of her midsection. Her legs sagged a bit at his
weight, but threatened to buckle when Spike decided to climb aboard and rest
his hands on the back of her neck. The aura strengthened and forced her to
straighten her legs, though it also did a considerable job of lessening the
weight on her back.
"So, what's the plan?" Spike asked once he got himself settled.
"Noah's outside in a snowstorm, and with this cloak on my sharp ears will be
next to useless. Once we get down the ladder and out the door…" Katie trailed
off as a flash of light enveloped them, before it faded to reveal that she and
her two charges were now outside of the church. Even with the magic keeping the
added weight up, she found that she was knee-deep in snow. "Well, that solves
that issue."
She, Spike, and NoLegs took a cursory glance of the scenery, before all three
sets of eyes fell onto a fresh set of hoofprints that were already filling in.
The tracks led straight through a row of houses to the church's right, and they
were bunched tightly together and yet large enough that an adult pony would
step in their places and fill them in perfectly. Though, they all had a tell-
tale mound that indicated whoever the tracks belonged to was going shoeless.
Then, Spike caught on to what Katie meant. "Oh. So you need extra eyes and ears
to compensate?" he asked.
Katie nodded, and lifted a hoof before very gently resting it's shoe-covered
frame onto the snow without applying pressure. Ice formed up her leg and the
cloth with a pulse of mana, and spread out very evenly under the hoof. A second
hoof followed, doing much the same upon the blanket of white. With strength
born of magical aid, she hauled herself up before quickly making two more
patches for her front hooves while her back ones settled on the first patches.
"I was wondering when I could start doing this again," Katie chirped, taking a
second to look at her handiwork. Spike and NoLegs also spared a glance down at
the frost patches, though one shrugged and the other went back to eyeballing
the tracks. She started to trot next to the prints, albeit sluggishly, and she
was being careful to not scrape at her patches with her own weapons. As it was,
she had enough issues to contend with. Five minutes into the trot, she heard
Spike sigh.
"Is that how you usually travel?" Spike asked, briefly glancing at the frost
patches that came and went with every single one of Katie's hoofsteps.
"Only after rain or in heavy snow, since all I do is freeze water beneath my
hooves. Makes the task of slogging through bad weather or its aftermath so much
easier," Katie confirmed with a nod, tilting her head when the tracks veered
sharply to the left all of a sudden. "That, and I never leave any tracks behind
doing this. Though, I'm still not sure how Matt and his group found me all the
way up north despite that." As suddenly as the trail of prints twisted, she
twisted to start cantering after them.
Silence reigned for another ten minutes, during which Spike's mental gears
began clicking here and there. It wasn't until another minute was the silence
broken. "Then again, you're a bright red… and I think Anna has eagle eyes with
how she detected the wraiths up in Frostbite's general area," Spike murmured,
his utterance causing Katie to pause.
Giving his remark a bit of thought, Katie shrugged and continued to follow the
trail of prints. "Well… she's the first gryph I've seen with round pupils… she
may actually have eagle in her blood, then," she replied, orbs once more locked
on the trail. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's also part mustang." It only
took another few paces before the tracks veered sharply to the right, but Katie
diligently followed nonetheless.
The trail went straight after a fourth and final turn to the left a good twenty
paces after that, with that turn veering to the very sharp south of town. The
prints kept filling in, and they were almost invisible now, but that only made
Katie pick up her pace from a sauntering gait to something slightly slower than
a filly's trot. After another half-hour of trotting, she decided to strike up a
conversation with Spike again, if only to break the silence that was otherwise
filled in by her clicking horseshoes.
"So… what is it you need to get off your chest?" she asked.
"It's… what went down at Frostbite," Spike confessed, donning a deep frown. If
he had ears to pin back, they'd have touched his spines with their tips by
then. When he felt a furry head rub against his shoulder, he continued in a
faltering, shaky voice, "A… a lot happened, but things went really south once
they managed to wrangle me, Sarah and Fenrir in… a holding compartment?"
"Cut to the chase," Katie stated in a soft murmur that would have been motherly
if not for the fact that it was hollow. "The sooner you get it off your chest,
and the more compact you make it, the better. If you want, I'll translate it to
Twilight later."
"D-don't… I'll tell her myself one of these days," Spike replied, and at
Katie's nod let his shoulders sag a little in relief. He took a glance around
town, finding that no other soul was out and about. "Well… they tried to… mount
her, I guess, and she went hogwild and started scratching at every hippogryph
that even came near her. I'd even seen her bite off a few squishy bits."
"I see…" Katie could picture how that fiasco likely went down, as well as how
mad the hippogryphs were likely to have been then, and nodded once more. "You
were wrangled in the compartment first, right? I want to be sure we're on the
same page here."
"Y-yeah. They managed to hold my mouth shut so I couldn't breathe fire on them,
and also tied my arms and legs down." Spike gave a shudder, and his claws
gripped the fabric on Katie's neck a little tighter. "Anyway, they had to tie
Sarah down with… strands of guts. She just shredded through that and kept going
crazy, until the elder got a hold of her halberd and clocked her with the blunt
end. Fenrir kept them away from her, and Maria, until they were too tired to
even try anymore."
"So how'd they keep him overnight?" Katie queried, quickening her pace a little
more as the tracks kept filling in.
"Well… they knocked him out with Sarah's halberd," Spike answered, shivering.
"And they did the same with me before I could do anything, but it took them a
few tries to knock me out."
Katie would have frowned if she were able. As it was, her eyes narrowed at the
rather horrendous image that formed in her head. "That'll do. I'll ask Maria
about her side of the story at a later time," she stated, an air of anger in
her voice that resonated to the point it was almost as if a second wraith with
a deeper voice spoke right in tandem with her.
Spike grimaced at the irate tone, but relaxed as he felt NoLegs rub up against
his shoulder again. "Quick… question," he began, causing Katie to jerk her head
a little forward before perking it up. At her nod, he asked, "How do you manage
your anger?"
"I find something to stab, and freeze if at all possible," Katie replied with a
shrug. "But I only direct my ire… at something that not only deserves it, but
sparked it to begin with. That buffed-up aerobics instructor from Frostbite
would be a good example." She paused mid-trot, and turned to look down at
something. Spike and NoLegs leaned to the left and right respectively, trying
to get a glimpse at whatever had caught Katie's attention now.
It didn't take them long to notice a second set of prints that came from the
north of town, one which unusually lined up with the first trail after coming
in sharply from the immediate right and between a pair of houses. Though, that
first trail now blended in seamlessly with the rest of the snow; even so it
didn't take more than a few seconds to tell that these tracks were different.
For starters, the second set seemed a few inches larger than the first, as well
as more spaced out. These tracks lacked mounds, instead being flat as pancakes
at the bottom. "Well… this just got a lot more interesting. Lance could snugly
fit his hooves in this batch," Katie remarked, eyeing the second set of tracks
with an air of suspicion in her tone. "But we know Lance is at the church.
Begging the question: who could these belong to?"
Spike and NoLegs reoriented themselves to not slip off of Katie's back, and
they exchanged glances not long after. Spike decided to speak, "Well… Shining
went to look around town today, after breakfast… and didn't come back for
lunch…" Then Spike's eyes widened when he realized what he'd just uttered. "Oh
no! Shining could be in trouble!"
That was all it took. Katie kicked her legs into gear and started galloping in
the direction of the tracks, leaving a trail of frost in her wake. Her claws
scraped with each movement, the ice formed beneath them bearing jagged gouges
that penetrated the snow they formed over. She did not lose traction, as the
ice she made cracked with every step she took, only further supplemented thanks
to her added weight. Indeed, she seemed to gain speed, but she still went no
faster than an average foal.
Her orbs locked straight ahead, barely paying heed to the trail at this point.
Spike glanced over his shoulder and grimaced as he spotted a row of buildings
behind him and his group, one that grew more distant each and every second.
"Are we leaving Whitefall?!" he cried.
"I reckon so! There's a cave dead ahead!" Katie replied, galloping as fast as
her legs could carry her. Spike turned around and gaped as he saw the
approaching cave, its yawning mouth barely visible against the snow surrounding
it. Some sort of light, dim though it was, illuminated something within the
otherwise-black abyss. NoLegs meowed loudly, and his magic fully embraced
himself and his group, though it did not do a thing until they reached the
entrance of the cave a minute later.
Then, only then, did it seize Katie's legs and forced her to grind to an
abrupt, sliding halt right where the snow and cavern floor met up at an uneven
border. Her head jerked up as she stopped, clocking Spike in the snout and
causing him to tilt back into NoLegs, who merely ducked to avoid the spines.
The magic quickly reoriented everyone, though not without some reservations.
"Ah fuck, that hurt!" Katie yelled, her voice echoing into the cave in such a
way it sounded as though there were multiple copies of her speaking at once.
She flexed her legs and neck as the aura dissipated from everywhere except for
her back and middle, finding four semi-stiff limbs and an equally-stiff neck
that only caused burning pain to sear through her nerves with each movement.
She turned to glare at the cavern she'd found herself in front of. "Give me
whiplash, why don't you?!"
A brief glow embraced her head, and a masculine voice echoed into her mind in a
condescending tone, "Ain't my fault you ain't used to this shit."
Katie groaned and rolled her orbs with a sigh of resignation. She shook her
head and asked, "So, boys, what would you suggest?"
"Well… I don't know the layout of the cavern… so… uh…" Spike trailed off,
grimacing as Katie sighed once more. His eyes fell onto a trail of fading
prints leading inward. "And we may not be following Shining…"
"Great, we may as well be playing hide-and-seek… and we don't know whose tracks
these are... jooooy…" Katie scoffed, and with that she began to trot into the
cavern, once more following the trail of snow-prints that diminished in size
until it simply vanished after a few paces. Her back started to hurt before she
could get some distance from the end of the proverbial trail, but she simply
grinned and beared it in a more literal sense than she'd have liked. She took
the time to scan her surroundings, finding slate grey walls forming a hallway
that stretched on for a good thirty yards by itself.
Though as she trotted, the light the group initially saw brightened bit by bit,
and its source began to crystallize into view. Spike's eyes grew wide as
several glistening, glowing crystals of many colors dispelled the darkness of
the cavern, most of them circling three absolute behemoths that came very close
to rivaling the Valkyrie tank in height and half its width.
The space these gemstones occupied was a sort of round room, one that spanned a
good four hundred yards all around. The crystal behemoths were stationed in its
very center, jutting up from the ground with an imposing stature that reminded
Spike of the Crystal Empire's columns. The other crystals jutted from the
walls, their varicolored lights throwing a surprisingly flat and crystal-free
floor into a stark, breathtaking relief. This illumination, as beautiful as it
was, also threw a deep chasm on the right into view, stretching down into a
black abyss for a good few miles at least, save a scant portion of the floor
that led elsewhere.
Spike jumped from Katie's back and waddled to a small pile of blue gemstones,
his jaw quivering and drool pooling around his tongue. He reached out to the
crystals with one hand, only to stop just inches shy when he felt something
slender and fuzzy wrap around the end of his tail. He twisted around to find
NoLegs looking at him, shaking his head with a disapproving frown on his face.
An aura embraced Spike's head for the briefest of seconds, before a voice
echoed into his mind. "Tempting as they are, I wouldn't advise it. You'd need
an earth pony or someone skilled in crystal magics to safely get one out."
Spike raised a brow. "Why's that?"
NoLegs retracted his tail, hit his face with it as though it were a palm, and
turned to Katie before embracing her head in a magic aura. "Kick a crystal for
me, would you?" he asked telepathically.
Katie rolled her orbs and cantered to the nearest of the crystalline behemoths.
She turned her rump to it once she was within range, lifted her back legs… and
promptly fell over and faceplanted with her back legs dangling at her sides.
The mask cracked a little from the impact, though otherwise she was unharmed.
"I can't kick for shit like this…" she hissed, her voice a little muffled.
NoLegs hit his face with his tail again, and grumbled out a few exasperated
meows that Spike was certain was a single string of curses. His magic then
grabbed Katie by her middle and yanked her sideways, forcing her to stand into
an upright stance. She turned to look at her middle incredulously for some
seconds, but shrugged and raised her back legs again before delivering a
proper, if somewhat weak, buck to the crystal stalactite.
Immediately, the crystal responded in a most unusual way: it pulsed with mana
as varicolored as it and its companions, before a good half-dozen bits and
pieces started breaking away from the very top of the structure spontaneously.
The bits then shot up and scraped at the ceiling repeatedly, until they managed
to gather bits of stone that then joined with them with auras of their own.
Afterwards, they completed the process by changing colors, though only to a
bizarrely limited palette: red, yellow, and blue.
Once that was done, they rained down on Katie and exploded into several columns
of light that sent sparks, flames, and frost dancing about all around her.
NoLegs made her vanish in a flash of light prior to having her reappear at his
side, well before any serious damage could be done. This, though, did have the
side-effect of leaving a good scorch mark—which was still crackling with
lightning and glimmering with frost for some seconds after the exploding
ceased—where she stood.
Spike watched as the crystals evaporated during the display and turned their
stone anchors into wee pebbles in the process, his eyes bugging out with
shrunken pupils on full display. "Sweet Celestia…" he murmured, his tone low
and his voice quivering. "S-so that's why…"
NoLegs nodded with a meow. Katie decided to speak for him, "Great, exploding
crystals. What next, giant tentacled monstrosities?"
Spike shook his head and turned to look at Katie, noticing that some bits of
her cloth cover were likewise blackened and riddled with frost patches. "Are
you okay?" he asked.
Katie turned to look at Spike with eyes narrowing and she promptly hissed, "Do
I look like I'm okay?"
Before Spike could open his mouth again, a blue aura seized it and Katie's
masked muzzle. Both found themselves yanked towards NoLegs, who let off a low
growl and bared his needle-sharp teeth at the two. A voice echoed into their
heads, low and rather patronizing at that, "Both of you, behave. We got a
stallion to catch." When Spike and Katie nodded in unison, the aura dissipated
from their muzzles, but not before shoving them back just enough that they
wouldn't tumble forward and faceplant.
With that, Katie started to amble towards the southern end of the room, though
she kept close to the wall and well away from the stalactites in case they
spontaneously attacked her again. Spike and NoLegs fell in step behind her,
only to stop when Katie halted in front of a crystal formation large enough to
effectively act like a hoof to the barrel. She turned to NoLegs. "Strip me
down, please," she said in a flat tone.
NoLegs rolled his eyes, but seized her in his aura and made her garments vanish
in so many flashes of light that Spike had to avert his eyes. The lightshow
lasted for mere seconds, but Spike still found spots forming and swimming about
in his vision the moment it ended. He blinked to be rid of them, and turned
back to Katie to find her once again stark naked, save for her hooves.
"Thanks," Katie chirped as she turned to the crystal formation in front of her
before backing up just a hare or two and immediately cantering around it. Spike
and NoLegs set about following her again, noting that her ears jerked upright
and began swiveling. He opened his mouth to say something when he saw a faint
red glow at the far end of the room, one largely overshadowed by the crystals'
own lights and very dim in comparison.
Wherever it was coming from was flanked on either side by two massive crystals
that oddly acted as columns, leaving the dim mahogany to paint a portion of the
floor instead. As soon as he spotted the faint glow, he squinted his eyes at
it. "Where's that lead?" he asked.
Katie twisted her head to look at Spike, revealing an arched brow. "Huh?" Spike
sighed and lifted a claw before curling it into a fist and using his index to
gesticulate at where the red glow was coming from. Katie turned her head to it
back the way it came, followed by lifting her chin slightly and leaning forward
as much as her body could allow her to before she concluded with an
"Ooooooooooooh."
She trotted towards the red glow, canting her head as she heard a very faint
bubbling sound. Spike and NoLegs followed her, though both spread out to flank
her instead of continuing on in a straight line. Because of this, they quickly
found themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with her, which also had the added bonus
of enabling them to better discern the mahogany glow on the floor—and even
better, what exactly it was originating from.
The two gargantuan pillars flanked another hallway on either side, a long
hallway that was oddly devoid of crystals. In the crystals' place, however,
were small upwellings of magma, puddling here and there throughout the floor
for some indiscernible distance. "A fool would have to trot through that,"
Katie scoffed, turning away and instead plodding along to the chasm.
Spike plodded along after Katie, grasping her tail and halting her before she
could stray a few feet away. "Hey, I could pick you up and walk across it just
fine," he offered, causing Katie to twist her head to face him again.
Katie shook her head and wrinkled her snout the moment she made eye contact.
"No offense, but I am not willing to shrivel up more than I already have. If I
touch one puddle, much of my insides will become ash," she hissed.
Spike's brows leveled and his eyes went half-lidded. "Aren't you, y'know,
immortal?" he retorted.
"Yes, but to regenerate every organ that burnt after touching magma… I tried
that once, and it wasn't particularly pleasant," Katie stated, shaking her head
again. "I lost use of my entire stomach and reproductive regions for a whole
decade, and my back legs as well. Not happening again."
Spike grimaced, his eyes bulging out. "Y-your back legs…" he trailed off, his
mind starting to paint a gruesome picture of something involving magma and
Katie's rear end. As the image turned more horrid, he dropped his claw, letting
go of her tail in doing so.
Katie nodded that time and twisted her head to face the chasm again. "They
literally fell off all at once. With nothing more than merely brushing up
against magma puddles. I had to crawl pitifully until I fully regenerated. No."
With that she trotted to the chasm, only stopping at its very edge to peer down
into the darkness below a few minutes later. The one thing she could see was
the wall she loomed over, going down into a black abyss after a mere couple of
feet.
NoLegs and Spike effortlessly caught up with her with a brisk jog and hop, and
both turned to find her seemingly transfixed with the chasm. Something about it
had her orbs glued in its direction, though what the two couldn't discern right
away. They too peered down after a few seconds, squinting their eyes to see if
the abyss of sable had something to yield. The only thing it gave them was a
stone wall, black, and more black, coupled with a tense silence.
"So… what's wrong?" Spike asked, turning back to Katie with a brow raised. That
actually managed to make her look up at him and shrug.
"I swear I heard something come from this direction," Katie replied with a
huff. She turned to the section of floor the chasm ended at. "But it was so
faint that now I swear my ears are playing tricks on me."
Spike nodded, and glanced to the end of the chasm as well. "So, what do we do
now?" he asked with a frown.
"Well, we have two paths… both of which Emperor Carpetmuncher could've trotted
through… one has magma, and the other goes to fuck knows where…" Katie turned
to regard Spike again, her gaze drilling into his soul the moment orbs and eyes
locked. Spike opened his mouth, only to close it when Katie lifted a set of
claws to his chin, upturned them, and nudged him a little. "And don't mind the
moniker I've given your unc, crass though it is. I've called other ponies far
worse things."
Spike sighed, but only when the claws retracted and were put back on the floor.
"I'd like to explore the magma-filled hall… but Shining may not have gone that
way." When Katie tilted her nose in a nudging gesture, he elaborated, "He may
have trotted in with his shoes. Metal shoes and molten rock doesn't sound like
it'd go great together, at least not without… consequences."
"So… not very likely he'd even consider that route," Katie translated, to which
Spike nodded in confirmation. Her ears twitched, and she turned to the two
crystal columns that marked the 'magma hall.' Spike and NoLegs turned with her.
"What in the…" she trailed off as frantic hoofsteps filled the cavern, before a
wide-orbed stallion made of crystal tumbled out with his body melting in
places.
"Faust save me!" the stallion cried, scrambling towards the exit as though
Celestia were hot on his heels.
"... how the hell did he get here, and what did he piss off?" Katie asked, her
orbs widening as the stallion vanished behind a crystal column, audibly
cowering and whimpering in fright. She got her answer when something else
emerged from the same hallway mere seconds later, something as large as
Celestia herself with an imposing form to match. It snatched the stallion with
a limb after slithering its way to the column he hid behind, casting its body
into a stark relief under the crystals' light as it did so.
Many tentacles, all reddish-pink and some housing eyeballs at their ends, both
jutted from the back of and held up the frame of a monstrosity with a mostly-
stone body composed of red and orange rocks. Flecks of brown flesh pulsed
beneath the stones, barely-visible but still noticeable. What looked like
sharpened teeth folded and unfurled repeatedly near the front, which housed a
massive eyeball that looked to be a good fourth its size, sporting sickly
yellow sclera and three irises. The whole thing glimmered with a faint magenta
light, and some of its rocks were bizarrely chipped in places.
The beast turned one eye to Spike and his group, and then the rest of its body,
still clutching the hapless sod in one slimy tendril. It scanned them with its
many oculars for the barest of instants before lunging forward with surprising
speed and swatting at them with two tentacles as soon as it reached them. Spike
ran to one side and scaled up the nearest wall hurriedly, making sure to avoid
the crystals jutting out of its surface. Katie and NoLegs opted to fly over the
chasm, one with wings and the other via self-levitation.
A blue aura embraced Katie and Spike's heads before they heard NoLegs hiss
telepathically, "Oh bollocks, Chocolate Truffle enraged a Beholder. I'm betting
ten bits and a saddle we'll have to stop this thing."
"Help! This thing almost shoved its slime-maker inside of me!" Chocolate
yelled, flailing his limbs every which-way he could. This only caused the
Beholder to wrap around them with the tendril already in use, fully encasing
him in slimy mahogany and muffling any further pleas for help.
Katie took a good look at the Beholder, noticing right away that its faint aura
had started to recede. The irony of Chocolate's part of the situation did not
escape her notice, either. "Oh joy, the victimizer becomes the victim. Maybe
Peeved Rocky here has somethin' to do with Shining…" she muttered, bringing her
claws together before scraping them in a short-lived cacophony and lunging
towards the monstrosity.
***** Chapter LX- Emerald Blaze *****
Unfortunately for Katie, the Beholder struck first, lifting a tentacle and
swatting at her once she came close. At the last second she stabbed it with her
front claws and cemented herself with frost before it could fling her
elsewhere, and the Beholder roared as it started shaking its attacking limb
madly. Spike quickly realized she would not be shaken off so easily as she
bucked at the tentacle she had taken hold of, using her rear claws to further
glue herself in place.
This only caused the Beholder to shriek again, and it slithered away from the
chasm before it started bashing Katie in the stone floor in an attempt to make
her let go. NoLegs dove towards the monster, conjuring a shield with a single
spike in its center and a spear with two rectangle-esque protrusions as soon as
he got within range. He wasted no time stabbing the tentacle that held
Chocolate and used the shield to smack the Beholder inches from its large eye
simultaneously.
The Beholder roared and tried to swat at NoLegs, who merely teleported to
Spike, though not before shoving his shield into the massive, tri-irised eye
square in the centermost pupil. An unearthly scream rent the caverns as the
monster's central eye began oozing blood, caving inward slightly thanks to
being poked. It ceased flailing Katie about, instead shifting a few tentacles
to cover its wounded eye.
Katie turned to Spike, who cringed as he spotted rivulets of viridian blood
oozing from her forehead, nostrils and split grin. "You gonna hang there and do
anything other than staring?" she hissed, her tone somewhere between pained and
irate.
Spike narrowed his eyes a little and called back, "I'm not the one getting a
concussion here!"
"You said you took several blows to the head with a halberd's ass to be knocked
out! Get down here and do something already!" Katie replied, before the
Beholder ceased covering its eye and resumed bashing her into the floor again
once it realized it was more or less in the clear, this time hard enough to
make her bones audibly snap in places.
NoLegs waved his tail and telepathically told Spike, "She's gonna be a stain on
the floor if we don't do something soon. I'll distract the abomination, and you
get her out of range."
Spike turned to the tendril wrapped tightly around Chocolate just in time to
see a second horn pierce through the limb from within, which only caused the
Beholder to wail once more and undulate its tentacle just enough that four
crystal hooves poked out through the gaps not long after. It also lifted Katie
into the air, and Spike grimaced as he spotted the ice she made already flaking
away. Once the ice fell off entirely, it wasn't long before it successfully
flung Katie away, turning one smaller eye onto her as she crashed head-first
into a wall, though all this did was make her slump upon landing with a
sickening crack.
That was when the beast turned to the wall, followed by shifting its several
eyes in Spike and NoLegs' direction. It gave a hissing growl, the sound
something between a kettle hissing and liquid gurgling, before its central eye
began to glow a bright white. The aura took on a red fringe, and NoLegs's eyes
widened as it started to gather energy. Seizing Spike in his magic, Nolegs
darted to the floor and veered around the Beholder so sharply and so suddenly
that Spike couldn't even stick his claws onto the floor to slow down his own
momentum.
Just a second later, the air was filled with the sound of a very strong hum,
followed immediately by a reddish-white beam of pure energy hitting the area
just where they were with enough force to shake the whole room. Spike twisted
and watched as NoLegs continued to drag him to safety. He found himself letting
off no more than a squawk of dismay as the Beholder twisted to reorient its
beam in a sharp diagonal strike, moving so fluently and so fast it was a
miracle the strike only barely missed hitting Katie's limp form by mere
centimeters.
NoLegs hissed and continued to madly drag Spike along, all the way behind one
of the columns as the beam came on their heels, only stopping as their
makeshift shield took the impact in their stead. Spike chanced a glance around
the bend of the column, gawking as the beam finally faded, revealing molten
rock forming in a smooth, jagged line that was fast hardening. NoLegs
teleported over to Katie and magically pried her from the wall, catching the
Beholder's attention and causing it to twist away from the column.
The Beholder also failed to notice more crystal bits detaching themselves from
the column Spike was hiding behind, instead taking its time to charge its
central eye for another dose of eldritch-grown laser beams. On top of that, it
didn't notice Chocolate wriggling his hooves with all his might, though Spike
certainly did. NoLegs teleported away with Katie before another beam could
connect, which oddly enough caused the beast to remain fixed in place.
Spike took that as his cue. He rushed up behind the Beholder and quickly scaled
up its back, using its own stones as leverage as he got to the tentacle holding
Chocolate in place. He inhaled deeply before exhaling out a small stream of
green flames that was no thicker than his arm, aiming at the tentacle's base
for all it was worth.
The Beholder's reaction was to scream again, fling Chocolate away, and rear up
on its supporting tentacles in a crude imitation of a pony preparing to start
bucking whilst misdirecting its beam towards another crystal in the process.
Spike jumped ship once he caught a dancing crystal bit in the corner of his
eye, and not a moment too soon; the instant he launched was the instant the
bits started homing in on the tentacled abomination with a vengeance.
Flames exploded, lightning crackled, frost erupted all around the Beholder
without pause nor mercy. It roared as its flesh sizzled in places, as currents
ran throughout its body, as frost heaped up on top of that to further slow it
down and amplify the pain tenfold. Its own beam shorted out, and its tentacles
began flailing every which-way they could go, though this only had the added
effect of getting stray pebbles flung into every single eye it had. This,
effectively, kept it in place for the moment, though not without its
reservations.
Spike took the chance to seek shelter behind the crystal column again, finding
that NoLegs had reappeared behind it and was doing a quick check-up on Katie,
who herself was bleeding in several places. Even her eyes were producing
viridian rivulets at this rate. Her wings were now no more than tatters just a
few inches long, with several strands clinging uselessly to fraying gossamer
veins. Her legs had twisted such that her hooves were facing up with the
cannons facing down, several gashes littered her body and one such cut even
revealed that several ribs had caved in at some point during her thrashing.
To add insult to injury, her split grin had widened considerably, to the point
that the chitin on her lower jaw was peeled off and making it so her expression
was anything but. In spite of this horrendous setback though, Katie was making
an effort to stand. Contorted as she was though, she could not manage it, even
with the remnants of her wings buzzing feebly.
NoLegs had to magically hold her in place just to keep her from breaking
something else. "By Godcat's teats, you're fucked up. What made you think
hanging on was a good idea?" he telepathically scolded her, only to flinch as
one hoof immediately twisted to properly reorient itself with a snap.
"This… isn't the worst condition I've been… in," Katie grunted, eyes narrowing
as another hoof started rotating to fix itself.
"Yeah, but… you can't fly now," Spike pointed out with a grimace, frowning as
Katie shook her head fiercely, sending droplets of blood everywhere.
Katie gave a disgruntled grunt at that, wincing as her second hoof popped back
in its proper place whilst a third started its bout of rotation. A pulse of
blue mana shot across her back and her wings, but it was unusually thick and
fringed at the edges by bright pink. "I'll live," she hissed.
Spike's frown deepened when the explosions filling the cavern ceased, along
with the Beholder's wailing tantrum. He chanced a glance around the column
again, finding it frozen solid in a thick rime of frost, one that crackled and
caught fire here and there. He gave a low whistle at the sight, and retracted
his head at the very first crack in the ice. He turned to NoLegs and asked,
"Should we leave, or finish the job?"
An aura embraced his head and NoLegs telepathically murmured, "Depends on how
pissy it gets. What's its status right now?"
"Uh… cracking ice cube," Spike answered, crossing his arms. "That's partially
on fire."
NoLegs nodded slowly and gave a low, drawled out meow. "Yeah… I think we should
finish the job," he replied. The group's attention was immediately snapped by a
brisk, almost harried clip-clopping that fell a little too heavy, and their
gazes fell to the only other possible source as he came to hide with them
behind the column.
Katie was the first to address Chocolate, though not before wincing as her
third hoof finally affixed itself with a pop, "Need something, Crystal
Pegging?"
Chocolate flinched, his orbs momentarily dimming. "Are you going to stand there
and dally with your hooves up your ass, or do something about Mr. Ice Cube over
there?" he snarked back.
"Believe me, I tried harder than you did," Katie hissed, wincing again as her
fourth hoof started to go one way, only to then turn back with a series of
snaps.
"And where did that land you, hrrrrm?" Chocolate taunted, canting his head
slightly.
Katie perked her ears and lifted a front hoof to gesture to the centimeters-
long space between the tips. "About this close to wedging all four hooves up
your glassy ass," she sneered.
Chocolate gave a dry chuckle at that. "Good luck with that. My asshole is now
probably hard enough you'd need a power drill just to penetrate it," he jeered
with a note of amusement in his tone.
"Says the stallion who complained about tentacle fondling earlier," Katie shot
back in an equally dry and somewhat-amused voice. "You're a bigger boob than
Prince Blueblood."
"By the way…" Spike interjected just as the sound of something large breaking
filled the cavern, followed immediately by another piercing wail that came from
the other side of the column and then the very floor shaking with the aid of
several tremendous impacts. "What say you we put our differences aside for now,
until Mr. Eldritch Grumpsworth is dealt with?"
NoLegs nodded and hopped around the column, which unusually gave way to a
series of violent, loud pops that could easily be mistaken for gunshots
permeating the immediate area. Spike followed suit, leaving Katie and Chocolate
to sit there and have a staring contest.
Once they went out of sight, Katie made to stand again, taking extra care to
keep her last hoof up from the floor, wincing as her legs started wobbling
dangerously the moment she'd tried. On top of that, at least one leg formed
several unnatural bumps along its length that shifted and sent pain through her
nerves in ways they should not have been able to, though only now did she seem
to notice it. This was only apparent thanks to how tightly her chitin clung to
the bones to begin with.
"Regardless, you seemed to have learned your lesson. I don't entirely trust you
yet, but you're not trying to wring my neck either," Katie murmured, flinching
as her fourth hoof finished righting itself into place. She set it down, her
stance more akin to a drunken sway than a slight lurch, and it was not helped
in any way by the floor trembling every few seconds. She spread her legs out to
better distribute her meager weight, slowly turned and started to trudge after
Spike and NoLegs, wings ceasing their buzzing as another pulse of mana shot
across her back.
Chocolate's orbs widened, and for some seconds his jaw went slack before he
reeled it in. "Does that mean… you forgive me?" he asked in a disbelieving
voice, his query halting Katie in her tracks.
Katie twisted her head to level a flat look at Chocolate. "That's not my job
to. You're asking the wrong being," she stated in a level tone. "Though in a
way, I suppose I could. You hadn't wronged me in a particularly profound
manner. If anything, I wronged you, but we'll save that discussion for later."
She twisted her head back around and continued plodding back around the column,
finding that the Beholder had broken out of its frosty prison. It was now too
busy wailing and trying to slam Spike and NoLegs through the floor with its
many tentacles to really notice her. On top of that, it was also firing off
smaller blasts of light from its main ocular in a manner that reminded Katie of
Lance shooting with his gunblade. Although, the Beholder was firing at a much
faster rate, and its results were decidedly more explosive—pebbles and chunks
of molten rock were going everywhere at this point.
Even its attempts to whap its adversaries and rain exploding light on them
failed, as they merely side-stepped out of immediate range and prepared a spear
with… what seemed to be emerald fire gathering at its blade-point. With the
monster's fussing, firing and constant swatting attempts that kept Spike and
NoLegs backing up until they were forced to the furthest wall, she honestly
couldn't tell what they were doing. They may as well have been trying to
perform a samba for all she knew.
Katie ambled well away from the Beholder, or at least as much as her legs would
let her before they gave out and slipped from beneath her once she got a few
feet from the crystal column. As she fell, her shoes scraped loudly against the
floor and made Chocolate wince at the sheer shrillness of the cacophony, but
that was enough to make the Beholder cease its tantrum momentarily and turn to
her. It began advancing towards her slowly, its central eye once more aglow
with an unholy and building light.
That, in turn, was all the initiative NoLegs needed. Using his magic to keep
the green flames suspended around the tip of his spear he charged forward and
stabbed the Beholder in its central eye from the side before it could stray a
few feet from him. That one strike was all it took to make it pop entirely and
unleash a torrent of bubbling blood towards Katie. The monster reared up as
green flames, interspersed with several exploding red lights, erupted from the
now-empty cavity. With the monster distracted, Spike came in and grabbed a
tentacle, making sure to dig his claws into the flesh for as solid a hold as he
could manage.
He started to pull, making it back up from NoLegs, who wasted no time removing
his spear in the process, and towards the chasm at the far side of the
makeshift arena. The Beholder, though, made to grab anything and everything it
could to keep from going over the edge. Whatever pebbles it could grab slipped,
any crystal it could touch shot sparks and flame and frost to make it yield,
and it only further injured itself every time a tentacle came anywhere near its
nonexistent central eye.
This only made Spike double his efforts and dig his feet into the stone with
each step, his claws starting to tear at the tentacle he clutched as he inched
himself and the Beholder closer and closer to the brink of darkness. Jagged
rocks didn't stall him, magma patches did not burn his feet as he stepped into
them on his way, and whatever scorch marks were already present failed to make
him pause for even a second. They did, however, end up burning their benefactor
enough to coerce it to rear up, making Spike's work just a smidgen easier.
The Beholder was making a desperate effort to keep a solid footing, still
flailing with all its might. Though with the blood pooling from its eye, the
flames and magma that ravaged it, the crystals using their magic every time it
got a hold of them, and the fact that a baby dragon was doing the primary
tugging, it was for naught. All it could do was struggle and flail, wailing
without pause as it went to its doom.
Spike let go of the tentacle at the last second, though not before using its
own torn flesh to serve as an anchor onto a crystal that instantly froze it in
place. He wasted no time running to the front of the monster and glaring at it
the moment it righted itself and focused all of its other eyes onto him, feebly
tugging at its frozen tentacle for all it was worth.
Everyone, even Chocolate, turned or poked out of their hiding spot as the
staring contest lasted for all of three seconds. "Bon voyage, you mutated
snail," Spike hissed before inhaling deeply and puffing out one last jet of
fire in the massive cavity where the central ocular used to be. That forced it
the rest of the way back, made it snap the crystal to which it had been
affixed, and sent it over the edge in one sharp jerk of motion. And once the
Beholder had jumped, its pupils dilated as it realized it made its last and
gravest mistake. It could not reorient itself in time, and dropped down below.
With one last explosion that briefly illuminated the chasm and a deafening
scream that made everyone flinch as their ears started to ring, the Beholder
was effectively finished. Nobody dared peek over the chasm, though, instead
taking their time to regather behind the column. NoLegs simply teleported
himself and Spike to the column, and made his shield and spear vanish, now that
they were no longer needed.
Katie opted to stand again, her legs still unsteady but now capable of more
solid footing thanks to a lack of ground shaking tantrums. She took a few
minutes to walk over to the group, and an awkward silence held for a few
seconds once she reached the others and parked her posterior on the floor.
NoLegs took away her shoes and made them vanish as well, but other than that
the silence held until someone spoke.
"So," Katie began, orbs locking onto Chocolate as NoLegs magically lifted a leg
to start scrutinizing it, "what brought you here?"
Chocolate shrugged. "I should be asking you the same thing," he said in
earnest.
Katie, NoLegs, and Spike all exchanged glances and shrugged at each other
before turning back to Chocolate. "Let's start this off simple: have you seen
Shining Armor at all?" Spike asked, crossing his arms with an expectant look on
his face.
At that, Chocolate nodded. "Yes. Before I wound up here, I saw him going door
to door once the sun set," he answered.
Katie canted her head. "And how'd you end up here?" she asked.
Chocolate's face hardened, and his mouth clenched into a thin, barely-
noticeable line for a few seconds. "I saw… a tall, black form with a gnarled
horn," he began in a low voice. "It trotted through the forest on the other
side of the closest frozen town like it owned the place. I tried to follow it,
but could not get close enough to see anything distinctive, horn aside."
Katie's eyes narrowed, partly because of another wince as mana pulsed along her
lower jaw and chitin started to reform in angry, spindly webs, and partly
because of two words that Chocolate had uttered. "Gnarled… horn?" she repeated
slowly.
Chocolate nodded again, and his orbs dimmed to such a dark red-orange they were
starting to blend in with the black of their canvases. "Yes. Gnarled as in
twisted like a… closest thing I could think of would be a bent coat-hanger," he
replied. "The owner of that horn had the temerity to enter someone's house
uninvited, so I followed it and…" He abruptly stood up, snatched Katie with a
hoof, and planted her on his back in one fluid motion. "I believe it's just
something you must see with your own eyes. I'll take you three there myself,
free of charge."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Chocolate carried Spike, NoLegs, and Katie on his back on his way out of the
crystal-filled caverns and back to Whitefall Town. His trot was brisk, despite
his legs being cannons-deep within the still-building snow, and it took him
less time to actually pass two houses than it did for Katie to pass just one.
Speaking of, Katie eyed the tracks he left in his wake, which had the same deep
indents and flattened bottoms.
Which made her brain go into a tizzy once she realized she got unwittingly led
into a deathtrap, by someone who likely could not have known he himself was
going into said deathtrap until his little accident with the Beholder. She
turned to face the back of Chocolate's head and began rattling off queries,
"So… what happened after you left the house? How'd you piss the Beholder off?
Did the thing you said had a gnarled horn speak at all, or just grunt like a
beast?"
"It… lead me to the, uh…" Chocolate's trot slowed a bit as he thought of how to
best finish his reply.
NoLegs waved his tail and told Chocolate telepathically, "The tentacled thing
is what a Beholder is."
Chocolate nodded and finished, "Well, it lead me to the Beholder in some lava-
filled room, had the gall to buck it upside the head, and pointed a hoof at me
when it looked at him. And I found that crystal is melted by lava, so I could
not reach the Beholder unless the lava was willing to part. So it crossed over
to me, and… suffice to say it only got angrier once it actually reached me," he
answered. With a shrug and a sharp turn between the first row of houses on the
right that cropped up, he added, "Son of a bitch must've known I was trailing
him."
NoLegs sighed and waved his tail again. This time, his mental voice filled
Spike and Katie's heads, "Well, shit. Got no way of verifying whether or not he
really didn't piss the Beholder off…"
Katie groused in a hissing, low voice with narrowing eyes, "So, that means
we'll have to take it at face value…" Her eyes widened seconds later, and she
lifted a hoof to her recovering chin to start rubbing it, though she was
mindful of the regrowing chitin that wasn't yet finished. "You said 'son'
earlier…" she noted.
Chocolate nodded again, his trot quickening once more. A house was starting to
crystallize into view, and Katie turned back to find the rest of Whitefall
vanishing with distance. "Yes. He looked the Beholder in the eye and shouted
'he did it!' when blaming me for kicking it awake, and in a voice so deep I
almost thought the Beholder itself was talking," he stated. "Never before have
I heard a baritone that low."
Katie nodded in understanding and dropped her hoof. She watched as NoLegs
hopped on Chocolate's head, canting her head at the display before leaning as
much as she could to the side to see what had caught his eye. There was a
porched and despairingly small house sporting an overhang and windows boarded
up from the outside, splintering with age all over. The overhang was sagging
dangerously to one side, bringing a good portion of the house itself with it.
Oddly, three forms were outside the house, under the overhang, distantly
chatting beneath a bright magenta light.
Katie tried to peer closer, only to find magic embracing her head and an image
flooding her mind. Shining Armor, Alexander, and a unicorn stallion with a
short tail and burn-marks on his posterior were standing in a two-to-one
formation, only apparent thanks to the bright magenta light emitting from the
tip of Shining's horn. She pricked her ears to listen when Chocolate stopped
just a good thirty feet shy, and almost instantly picked up on their chatter.
"... so you're saying he kidnapped you, locked you in this ramshackle shed, and
made up some story about horsey hives?" Shining began in a low, calm voice that
had an angry undertone.
Another voice Katie didn't recognize, presumably belonging to the unicorn with
the burn-marks on his rear, replied, "Yeah. He said he was gonna scapegoat the
hell out of a nonexistent issue and goad some poor bastard into that rabbit
hole. And then somepony made out of black crystal got me out."
Shining's voice lowered to a murmur, though Katie could still make out what
he'd said next, "Much like how Napkin goaded me and one of my guards into
thinking that somepony wanted the Fantasians booted from Mythos…"
Alexander chimed in, "On that note, sir, are you well?"
"Well… as well as anypony can be after being abducted, locked up, and not fed
for three days straight. Is there any food? I'm starving," the burn-marked
unicorn replied with a shrug.
"We'll take you to the food, but… did you get anything on what your abductor
looked like? Anything at all?" Shining asked.
"Nada. He stuck a bag over my head first chance he got," the burn-marked
unicorn answered, his words accentuated by a loud gurgle. NoLegs magically
nudged Chocolate closer to the trio, just as they got out from under the
ramshackle overhang and began trotting away.
NoLegs telepathically told Chocolate, "If you're worried about him kicking your
ass, I'll get him to lay off. Deal?"
Chocolate nodded and trotted to Shining with a brisk pace. The two groups met
up within a few minutes, and once they did, Shining wasted no time letting his
eyes narrow and giving Chocolate the gimlet eye. He opened his mouth to speak,
before NoLegs embraced his head in magic and chimed in, "Can it wait for a few
minutes? Chalkstick here wants to show us something."
Shining clenched his jaw and nodded. "But only a few minutes," he relented.
The third unicorn, a lad sporting a suspiciously brown mane and beige coat,
turned to Chocolate and let his eyes widen. "Hey, he's the pony who got me out
of that house!" he exclaimed.
Chocolate nodded and trotted past him and Alexander, marching right up to the
house. "Well… it was nothing," he replied, going up to the door—or rather,
where one should have been under the overhang. Instead there was just an empty,
splintering space leading into a darkened room that seemed to beckon them.
He waited for NoLegs to conjure a light with his tail before stepping inside,
right into a desolate living room sporting several broken furnishings caked in
dust, with most of the furnishings so dilapidated and abused it was hard to
tell what they originally belonged to. Chocolate looked down, and Spike and
Katie followed suit to find five sets of prints, one of which sported digits
and pads in place of hooves. Two went in, leading to a splintered, already-
opened and half-broken door at the back of the room, and three were going out
from that same door.
Chocolate cantered after the two going in, making sure to never let his hooves
stray onto the tracks, trotting up to the door and into the next room without
pause. Inside was a cramped room no more than three yards in length and width,
though it housed a sagging chair surrounded by ropes that frayed at their ends,
as well as puddles of days-old urine and excrement. The group, save Chocolate,
wrinkled their noses at the stench that wafted from the chair's surroundings
before turning their attention to the farthest wall.
Written on that wall with some sort of red substance was a message, although it
was in unusual characters that looked more like runes and hastily scribbled on
top of that. Katie's brow furrowed as NoLegs started levitating himself to
hover to the message, casting it in a stark relief under his light. Soon, his
voice filled their heads.
"When the moon shimmers, when the stars gleam, when the forest flourishes and
the wind whistles without care, take heed: hope will shine like crystal. To
whom it shines, it shall bring untold joy. To whom it passes by, ill omens will
befall…" NoLegs trailed off before looking down and finishing, "To whomever
finds this message: I will take that hope for myself. Mark my words. I shan't
be stopped, no matter the cost. I will burn all of Fantasia, and all she has
built, if I must. Ill omens will befall those who seek to radically alter
Fantasia. Joy will come to those who preserve it." He floated back and
resettled on Chocolate's head.
"Whatever the Tartarus does that mean?" Chocolate asked, averting his orbs to
look at NoLegs cross-eyed.
"Honestly, I've no clue," Katie replied with a shrug. "Sounds like argle bargle
to me."
"It reads like an ancient legend or something. Maybe Lazzy knows something
about this… what say we ask him tomorrow?" NoLegs piped up, getting two nods
from Spike and Katie almost instantly.
"Sounds like a threat if you asked for my input," Spike interjected with a
frown. "But… who wants to radically alter Fantasia?"
Katie shrugged again and chittered in swarm tongue, "Framalg aulsch mastrælta."
"I don't get what you just said, but okay," Spike sighed. He turned to
Chocolate and asked, "Is this what you wanted to show us?"
Chocolate nodded. "I figured one of you would be adept in translation work… but
I never guessed it'd be your pet cat," he admitted, turning around and trotting
out of the house before rejoining Shining and his group. NoLegs magically
embraced everybody once they regrouped with an aura that then grew into a flash
of light. The light not only came and went with a loud pop, but revealed they
were all the way back at the church's dining room as soon as it dissipated.
Then, NoLegs grasped Shining and Alexander's heads with his magic and
telepathically told them all he knew of what the hell was going on. The whole
process took a few minutes, and Shining and Alexander had to silently consult
Katie and Spike by mouthing queries, only to find them nodding fervently once
they'd asked. Even Chocolate was in on it, nodding whenever Shining and
Alexander asked him something.
Once that was said and done, NoLegs teleported himself and the rest of the lot
into a guest room, before hopping off of Chocolate's head and onto a table and
curling up to doze. Shining spoke up once the spots stopped dancing in his
eyes, and when he did it was for everyone involved, "So… we've all been roped
again?"
Chocolate nodded. "And this time, it seems I was dragged into it as well," he
chimed in. He trudged to a corner, laid down, and nestled his head between his
forelegs. "I'm going to sleep. I've got nothing else to do."
Katie curled up on Chocolate's back, while Spike crawled off. She yawned widely
and shut off her orbs. Spike walked over to Shining and sighed, his shoulders
slumping as post-battle exertion finally kicked in. "So… what now?" he asked,
turning to the unicorn with the burn-marks.
Shining turned to Spike and patted his head with a hoof before turning to
Alexander, who turned back and nodded. "We'll help this sod raid the fridge
before hitting the hay. Let's talk about this tomorrow," he replied, his gaze
averting to the sod in question as his stomach began gurgling again.
Spike nodded, stretched his arms, and yawned widely. "Alright. Sounds like a
plan to me." He turned to Chocolate and Katie before adding, "I'll get them a
blanket before hitting the hay myself." With that, he wandered out of the room.
***** Chapter LXI- Bridging Into The Gloom *****
Luna frowned as she stood in the dreamscape, staring at a brand-new door wedged
between a few of the ones that had black locks barring them. Its crystal sheen
did little to ease her expression, especially with a bird-and-spear mark that
framed it. She didn't know how or why, but this door just popped up, and even
stranger it didn't come with the black, bleeding locks and shackles the others
possessed in this particular stretch of dreamland.
Regardless, her brow only furrowed at its presence. If experience had taught
her anything, it was to not barge in on unwilling ponies' dreams, especially if
they went so far as to block her attempts to help. Her ears twitched as she
heard a door open, and craned her neck to find Katie and Discord ambling out of
a red and white one. Her eyes widened, and her confusion only grew when she saw
that Discord was grinning.
"Well, Princess, it would seem Lance got himself a few… new recruits into his
little army force," Discord chirped, looking pointedly past Luna and at the
newest addition of doors.
"A few?" Luna parroted, raising a brow.
Katie nodded. "Just me and a crystal unicorn," she elaborated with a shrug.
"And, hey, his troops taught me how to eat again, and I've noticed I've begun
healing faster, so that's a plus."
Luna canted her head, struggling to process what Katie just uttered. "... how,
exactly?" she pressed.
Katie fluttered her wings, sending their tattered shreds everywhere. "Long
story short, got forcefed by hoof-in-mouth, and then took on a monster. That's
how," she stated curtly. "Though, once Smartass hears of it, he'll probably
order me to be tied to a bed until I finish healing or something."
Luna's brow remained fixed in place, and her eyes narrowed just a teensy bit.
"... why are they forcefeeding you?" she asked, an edge of seriousness in her
voice.
"'Tough love,' so I was told," Katie answered with another shrug. "I just went
with it to keep another hoof from going down my throat."
"So…" Luna spread a wing and gestured to the new, shimmering door with it,
deciding to change the subject immediately after. "What is this? Or more
accurately, to whom does it belong?"
"Well…" Katie trotted up to the door on warbling legs whose bones shifted about
with each step, and simply pushed it open without consulting the knob as soon
as she got in reach. "I think it's easier just to visit the sorry bastard that
owns it yourself."
Luna smiled and trotted beyond the door, with Katie and Discord falling in step
behind her. Discord started babbling as they went, "I've taken a preliminary
tour of Fantasia, now that the worlds are no longer separated, and honestly
it's…" Discord paused as he and his companions found themselves standing on one
end of a lone stone bridge linking two heavily-forested areas, with an ocean to
one side that itself was joined to a river that stretched under the bridge.
"Not quite what you were hoping for?" Luna finished for him as she spotted
Lazarus at the other end of the bridge, seemingly loitering about. She didn't
notice Discord's eyelids drooping, nor his brows furrowing by a considerable
margin.
"Oh please, most certainly not that. That's implying Fantasia in of itself is
boring. What do you mistake me for, a connoisseur of the mundane?" Discord
huffed, lifting his paw and violently swatting it down as if batting away a
fly. "If anything, it's just not what I'm particularly used to. A different
breed of chaos, if you will."
Katie started trotting to Lazarus. "I'm betting ten bits per biscuit that this
colt 'sinned' somehow," she hissed, orbs gleaming expectantly with each step
she took.
Both Discord and Luna looked at Katie with raised brows. The latter said
nothing, but the former decided to pipe up, "Sinned, you say? Ooohoho, I wonder
just what this colt got himself into…"
The two simply teleported over to Lazarus with a snap of Discord's talons and a
flash of light, leaving Katie to play catch-up and avert her orbs to avoid
going blind in the process. As soon as they materialized literally on either
side of him in a loud bang, Lazarus jumped with a shriek and all four hooves
splaying out as far as they could go. He then twisted mid-air and fell flat on
his back at the sudden and rude appearance of his dreamcrashers. His tail stood
on end, and his eyes went wide like those of a deer in headlights.
"Wh-who the hell are you? Wh-what are you doing here?!" Lazarus screamed, his
voice so many octaves higher the inflection could've been confused with that of
a filly's.
Luna gave no more than a teensy smirk at the befuddled look on Lazarus's face,
while Discord donned a Cheshire grin and gave a chuckle. Katie proceeded to
shout from across the bridge, "Long story short, acquaintances of mine!"
"Well… yes. I've heard of your recent… invitation to some force or some such by
one General Lance 'Smartass' Boltwing, am I not correct?" Luna chirped, her
query causing Lazarus's face to drain of its color then and there.
"Oh?" Discord turned to Luna, both brows raised and his grin somehow widening
when he'd heard her utter 'Smartass.' "I've never taken you one to poke fun at
foreigners, Lulu."
Luna spread a wing and gestured to Katie with it. "She hath rubbed off on me,"
she stated curtly.
"Wh-what're you babbling about?" Lazarus asked, his voice still high-pitched.
He didn't seem to notice her extended wing, or Katie's presence as of yet. Luna
wasn't sure if he was simply scared out of his wits, which was highly likely
given his reaction, or expecting something else altogether. And it mattered
not, either way.
Luna turned her full attention back to Lazarus and chuckled, closing her
extended wing before lighting her horn. She embraced him in her magic and made
him stand back up on his own four hooves at full height, taking a second or
two—no more than that—to scrutinize his stance. She leaned forward, her magic
dispelling itself, and flashed him a small smile. "Would you mind terribly if I
give you a very short list?" she asked. "Telepathically speaking?"
"As long as you don't violate me or something," Lazarus replied with a hasty
shake of his head. Luna nodded back and ignited her horn again, embracing his
head for the span of one second before letting go. He instantly flopped back to
the ground in a heap, eyes going wide and glowing red for a split-second and
then reverting back to their tranquil blue before anyone could blink.
Katie, at last, managed to amble to the scene. She studied the heap on the
ground, took in his expression, and turned to Luna with a brow raised. "Did you
short his brain or something?" she asked sincerely. "Because Lance had that
exact look on his face once Maria decided he was daddy."
Luna shook her head. "Give it a moment," she replied tersely. She watched
intently, waiting for Lazarus to move or speak or light his horn, though for
several moments on end he failed to even budge from his spot.
Discord sighed and took matters into his own mismatched hands after fifteen
minutes passed, snapping his talons and conjuring a massive tub filled to the
brim with something splashing within in a flash of light. The tub, floating
merrily a few feet above Lazarus, was content to stay up there and mind its own
business before an umbrella floated over from a tree and tilted the tub with
its hook. Water that was cold to the point of forming floating ice cubes rained
down on the hapless unicorn, causing him to jolt upright with another girly
shriek and his bangs coming over his eyes.
That time, he landed on just his back legs, his front hooves raised to
furiously tussle up his own mane in an attempt to recover his sight. "What was
that for?!" he yelled indignantly, only succeeding in matting his mane with a
vengeance.
"Oh, I got you up for you. No harm in that," Discord chirped with a pleased
grin on his face. "Have you got your brain up to speed yet?"
Lazarus took a few minutes before he managed to get his mane out of his eyes,
where he plonked down on his haunches and crossed his forelegs, glaring at
Discord and Luna with eyes going red for all it was worth. "Yes, I have.
Frankly, I think it's utterly insane," he hissed. "Seriously, where'd you come
from?"
"Mythos," Luna chirped, smiling when her terse reply made Lazarus blink and
tilt his head. "I've seen Lance's vessel in the flesh."
Lazarus threw his soaking wet front hooves into the air, prior to turning his
muzzle skyward. "I have no fucking clue what to make of this anymore," he
groused to the heavens, as if they would listen.
"Trust me, I have almost no idea either," Katie interjected sarcastically,
flinching when Lazarus snapped his gaze to her and started glaring almost
immediately. She turned to Luna and asked, "Is it true that Starswirl used
airships in his hayday?"
Luna frowned. "If he did, then I was never enlightened about it," she replied,
her wings drooping slightly. Her gaze averted to Discord and she added, "Me and
my sister had… much bigger things to worry about at the time."
"Like what?" Katie asked, ears twitching as she spoke.
Luna sighed. "Several… unsavory things," she stated tersely, gaze still fixed
on Discord.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The party gathered at the dining room early the next morning, though not before
Natalie made the remnants of their golem visitor vanish in flashes of light,
while also allowing Chocolate to skedaddle out of the establishment as soon as
he could. Eve, Andrew, and Bartholomew had also gathered, and were looking at
Matt and Natalie in particular with small frowns and slanted brows. "Already?
So soon?" Eve asked.
Natalie nodded, a similar look on her face. "Yes, mom. It's… we're leaving for
a practical reason. The more guests you get, the quicker the food meant for the
guards drains. It wouldn't be right to… burden you any longer," she stated, her
tone just as forlorn.
Matt gave a wan smile. "But it was good to know you guys were alright," he
added. "Even if it was… unexpected."
Bartholomew grinned. "You thought your old stallion wouldn't still be kicking?"
he queried, trotting over before lifting his forelegs and pulling Matt into
another crushing hug. This time, Matt returned the gesture, though it caused a
few bones to pop. "Ooh! Your earth pony magic's gettin' better," he chirped as
they broke apart. He turned to Lance, and his smile dropped instantly. "You
treatin' my son like shit?" he asked.
Lance shook his head. "No. If I was, he'd have ripped my wings off by now," he
replied.
"My adopted filly?" Bartholomew pressed, garnering another shake of the head
almost immediately.
"Nope. Otherwise, I'd be in an ash jar," Lance stated in a flat tone. He turned
to Matt and Natalie and added, "If you want, I'll set up a postal service so
you can write to your folks."
Bartholomew raised a brow when 'postal service' left Lance's mouth. "And how're
you gonna do that?" he asked.
Lance smiled. "I have airships and gryphons," he replied with a shrug. "Only
problem in these parts would be finding a place for the ships to land. I'll
have them write you a letter once we get to the base."
Bartholomew's expression eased. "If I hear you treated them like shit…"
Lance spread a wing and waved it dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, I know, you'll turn
my skull into a scrambled egg," he stated sarcastically.
"Oh don't worry, the pay's good and he's not breathing down our necks 24/7,"
Natalie chirped, her utterance causing Bartholomew to sigh and smile again.
Bartholomew chuckled and turned to Twilight. "So… you won't stick around for
breakfast, then?" he asked.
Twilight shook her head. "We would, but we really have to get going," she
answered. "If worst comes to worst, we'll just have to deal with it for a day."
She smiled at Bartholomew serenely. "Thank you for your hospitality. Oh, and…
what's the closest town from here?"
Eve continued to frown and said, "That would be Greenwood Village, due
southwest, on the other side of the nearby crystal caverns. It's a week's worth
of travel from here at the least." Twilight heard a shuffling of hooves and
turned to find four sets of ears—those belonging to Matt, Lance, Anna and
Natalie—folding back and no less than three smiles turning upside-down in
seconds. Eve added in a low tone, "But I've heard its elders… have been getting
more eccentric as of late. I wouldn't take any chances, if I were you."
Eve turned to Lance, whose mouth formed into a very thin and tight line and
sighed. "Just last month, I went over there to get supplies, and… one of them
had bound wings and was babbling incessantly. Please be careful."
Twilight frowned and turned to Eve. "Bound… how?" she asked.
Eve shuddered. "It's… I can't even begin to describe it… wings just shouldn't
look that way," she replied cryptically.
Twilight nodded, seeing she wasn't getting anywhere. "A-alright… we'll be
careful." She received wary looks from Lance, Matt, and Natalie, though Anna
merely swallowed nervously. "W-won't we?" she stammered in an attempt to
lighten the mood. This only made the frowns already present tighten greatly,
almost to the point of fixing themselves upon the very muzzles they blemished.
Eve was quick to notice this new development. She trotted over and nuzzled
Natalie, who relaxed and returned the gesture. The two hugged, though only for
a few seconds. "Stay safe, alright?" she implored as soon as they broke the
embrace.
"We will," Natalie replied, donning a wan smile as they exchanged another
nuzzle. "Take care."
"You too," Eve said with a hint of a wistful smile spreading on her muzzle.
With that, the group filed out of the church, with a few waving back on their
way out. They plodded through Whitefall in silence and with haste, though all
of the smaller animals sans Spike opted to perch on Lance's backside for some
reason.
It wasn't until they reached the entrance of the crystal caverns a good fifteen
minutes after departing the church did anybody speak. Lance halted and spread
his wings, in turn causing the others to grind to a stop. Slowly, he turned to
Twilight, who had Spike resting on her back. "So… did you really take down a
Beholder last night?" he asked slowly, his voice low and calm.
Spike nodded. "Yeah. I did," he replied nonchalantly.
Lance donned a small smile at that and nodded back, seemingly in approval.
"Just… let us know when you decide to have another outing next time, at the
very least," he said, his tone level. "I don't want another Frostbite fiasco."
Spike nodded. "Will do." He turned to Harry, who was carrying Katie under one
hulking, fuzzy arm. "Of course, I was only dragged into it…" he trailed off as
an aside, his utterance causing Lance to tilt his head.
Katie, who had several bundles of cloth wrapped around her legs in a way to
keep them pressed against her body, snorted and rolled her orbs. "So, General
Brassballs, how long must I stay like this?" she asked, wiggling her bound legs
as best she could for emphasis as he turned to her with a snort.
"Until Alexander can stick metal rods in your legs," Lance stated curtly,
causing Katie's orbs to widen.
Katie turned to Alexander, eyes then narrowing. "You wouldn't," she hissed.
Alexander sighed and fluffed his wings. "Worst comes to worst, once we get to
the base, I may very well have to," he stated rather matter-of-factly.
"Pardon my forwardness… but how would you be able to treat her?" Blueblood
interjected, causing Lance and Alexander to turn to him with raised brows.
Lance folded his wings and hummed, before mutely shrugging and turning to the
cavern that lay in front of them.
"Well… metal would weigh her down…" Alexander groused, brow furrowing as Lance
started trotting again. He took that as his cue to follow, and so did everyone
else. "And her wings are even more shredded…" His eyes narrowed, though only
slightly.
Twilight sighed, and would have craned her neck to face Spike if she hadn't
noticed the ever-present light of the crystals farther back. Thirty minutes
passed before the light within the cavern brightened considerably, and once it
did she addressed him, "Spike…" She sighed as she trailed off. When she felt
Spike tense and take a small bundle of mane in his claws, she shook her head.
"No, it isn't about what happened last night. You did what you did to protect
yourself. I wanted to speak with you about something else."
That made Spike relax, and also caused Lance's ears to perk. "If it's a
personal issue, and I mean personal enough to warrant a closed door, it'll have
to wait," he stated.
"Actually, it's not that personal. In fact, I wanted to try something…
involving his dragon fire," Twilight began, causing Lance to turn to her with a
bemused brow raised high.
"... that being?" Lance pressed, ears twitching and wings fluffing.
"What if we could use Spike's fire to send letters to NoLegs, just in case we
all end up separated again? That way, we could avoid a near-disaster like last
night," Twilight proposed. "But we'd have to enchant a few papers to act as
envelopes first…"
Lance nodded and turned to face ahead again. "Tell you what; once we get to
Greenwood—" Twilight did not miss the shudder that wracked Lance's body and
ruffled some of his feathers when 'Greenwood' left his lips, "—we'll work
something out then."
Anna gave a whimper, and picked up her pace to go shoulder-to-shoulder with
Lance. Her ears twitched, though they were still folded back. "I don't wanna go
back to Greenwood…" she mumbled dejectedly. A wing spread and draped over her
back.
"I know, but there's more of us now. We'll be safer, trust me," Lance stated in
as reassuring a voice as he could manage.
Natalie came up beside Anna, and leaned over to nuzzle her cheek. "He's right.
But if you're antsy, we'll stay up once we reach Greenwood before sundown if we
get there that early, alright?" she asked.
Anna hesitantly nodded. "I guess so…"
Applejack frowned, and trotted up to Twilight before leaning in to whisper in
her ear. "They don't want to get to Greenwood? Something just don't seem
right," she murmured.
Twilight nodded. "Yeah. And Eve said one elder had bound wings… maybe I could
help," she muttered in reply. She turned to Lance. "How long will it take us to
get to Greenwood on hoof?" she asked.
Lance turned to Twilight and scrunched his nose. "If everyone's in a good mood?
On hoof, maybe week and a day," he replied. "Maybe being the key word here."
"Is that the shortest route, or the longest?" Twilight asked.
Lance turned ahead again, noticing the crystal formations coming into view,
followed immediately by irregular formations in the rock that were burnt black
and glossy. "Shortest," he replied tersely.
Lazarus looked at Shining Armor, frowning as he saw that Shining was staring
rather intently at Lance. His eyes darted between them, even as Lance stopped
at the bare edge of the chasm and signaled another halt with his wings.
"Somepony's acting rather off-kilter…" Lazarus muttered, only to wince as
Lance's ears folded back immediately.
Lance craned his neck and gave Lazarus another gimlet eye. Lazarus balked and
clenched his jaws, eyes widening. He expected Lance to say something, though
after three seconds he folded his wings and turned back ahead, this time to the
one portion of floor that lead elsewhere which was also marked by the end of
the chasm. Only then did he speak in a low, ominous tone that brokered no
argument, "Three nights in Greenwood, and nobody strays out of sight for more
than a few minutes. That's our limit. Once the three days are up, we're hitting
the road."
Armin frowned at that, and his horn glowed. He embraced Lazarus by the cranium
and forced his magic to turn him away from his superior. His voice flooded
Lazarus's mind seconds later, just as low and ominous as that of Lance's, "I
know that tone. Newbie, trust me, you do not want him using that tone."
Lazarus folded his ears back, frowning when Lance started trotting again,
directly next to the chasm at that. The others began following him again, this
time in a more tight formation of three rows all going shoulder-to-shoulder,
though Sarah came up to walk beside Lazarus. She averted her eyes to him, then
flicked them back to Anna before he could look at her. She opened her mouth to
speak, but took a second to process that Anna sighed before closing it again.
Matt, who'd stayed further back with everyone else, turned to Twilight and
asked, "Have you ever, at all, eaten meat? Just one time?"
Twilight turned to him and pursed her lips, prior to shaking her head. "Not
really, no. I mean, I can understand its advantages, but… in Equestria, there
was no need to do so, unless you were a gryphon or something," she answered
sincerely.
Matt frowned and turned away with a sigh. "Well…" His stomach growled. "I guess
we'll have to figure something out, then." Even as more crystals started coming
into view about a minute after he'd spoken, lining either side of the small
path the chasm hadn't touched, the cavern hung in a bout of thick tension. Some
crystals jutted inwards, though never far enough to scrape against passing
shoulders and legs unless one of those in the group were to come up and do that
deliberately, while other crystals jutted out into the chasm and thus out of
most physical reaches.
Even so, Matt and his little group made sure to not brush up against even the
slightest bit of colorful stalagmite. Fenrir snorted as he noticed Spike
looking at him, followed immediately by a gaze from Blueblood of all people.
Twilight, however, was eyeing the crystals with a spark of recognition that did
not escape Katie's notice. "You're eyeballing those things like they're
sentient. What the hell about them has caught your eye?" Katie asked in as flat
a voice as she could manage.
"This reminds me… of a network of caverns beneath Canterlot," Twilight
murmured, tilting her head when mana pulsed across one crystal threateningly.
"Although, there were no crystals left… and even if there were, I doubt they'd
have been glowing like this batch."
"Well, it was a good thing I didn't put any of these beauties in my mouth,"
Spike chirped, looking at the pulsing crystal even as Twilight passed it. He
did not take his eyes off of it until it ceased pulsing a few seconds later.
"I'd rather eat dull gems than ones that radiate light."
Matt snorted, though only when Spike actually turned away from the crystal in
question. "I see even dragons have taste," he chirped.
Spike waved Matt off with a dismissive hand, not even bothering to turn to face
him. "Oh hush you," he said.
Matt smiled back at Spike, before finally picking his pace up to go shoulder-
to-shoulder with Natalie, if only to get a better grasp of whatever lay ahead.
As he did, the cavern began to dim slightly as the group continued on their
trek. Dash decided to spread her wings, get airborne, and cut in line to hover
over the quartet, though she made sure not to smack anybody with her wings on
the way over. "So, Lance," she began, causing Lance to look up at her with a
brow raised, "how good a flier were you before your wings got messed up?"
Lance snorted and turned back ahead again. "Back then? Well… I didn't actually
fly that often because of ectoplasms and a few other issues. But when I did, I
guess you could say I was good," he answered.
Dash frowned and tilted her head, having not really expected such an answer.
"Was it because of how huge your wings were?" she asked.
Lance nodded. "Often caused more problems than helped," he answered. The cavern
continued to dim, and fewer and fewer crystals were lining the path the further
they went. His eyes narrowed at the growing darkness, and his head swiveled to
his immediate left to find an incoming gap in the crystals. When he stopped, he
made sure to stand next to the gap to peer out of it, revealing another few
rocky platforms at least a good forty yards away. They were visible only
because they had more orange crystals bathing those particular areas in their
light.
Even then, they were difficult to make out. He flared his wings as his eyes
trailed lower, only to be greeted with a solitary plank of wood nailed crudely
into the stone on which he stood and two broken rails of oak keeping it
balanced. The whole construct, or whatever was left of what it used to be, was
heavily charred and splintering. Parts of it were also slate grey, no doubt
having been turned to ash that had yet to be broken up and blown away. How it
stayed intact in such a state, Lance had no idea.
Dash saw it too, and crossed her forelegs with a huff at the very sight of it.
"Was that a shortcut?" she guessed.
Lance nodded and growled at the sole plank of wood, the sound more like a deep
rumble that reverberated in his throat than what he usually issued. "And it's
been broken all to hell," he hissed. Then he shrugged and turned ahead again.
"Oh well, that was just one route. I'm pretty sure whoever built the bridge
must've been notified by now." With that, they pressed on.
"Just one route? Are you insinuating that this cavern is only of a singular
path?" Fenrir piped up from farther back.
"Just one of many in this cave, and one of the safer ones at that," Lance
replied, not even bothering to turn his head and look at Fenrir. The crystals
grew fewer in number still, and in size too; it was only ten minutes after
passing the broken bridge that they ceased reaching any higher than his
pasterns. Matt lit up his horn and summoned a small, golden ball of light
before the crystals simply stopped at some point in the path altogether after a
few minutes. Once he did, the darkness ahead only seemed to deepen
considerably.
This, in turn, caused Rarity, Shining, and Blueblood to do likewise. The air
turned colder the deeper into the darkness they pressed, and everyone shivered
as a soft draft blew in to caress them. "Is it just me, or is it colder in here
than it is outside?" Shining asked, frowning as a shiver briefly wracked his
body.
It took several minutes for anyone to answer Shining's question, and by then,
the light of the crystals was but a distant speck behind the group. "It's not
just you, m'lord," Flash replied, his wings fluffing a bit as another chilly
draft touched him.
Maria, who was walking next to Fluttershy, whimpered as her feathers proceeded
to stand on end once the chill got to her. "The rock's not warm," she
complained, ears pricking as she heard a distinct splashing of liquid. Her eyes
turned to Fluttershy, who paused briefly to shake off a now-wet hoof before
going down to find a puddle of water and slush that rippled slightly.
"And it seems to be getting… wetter, too," Fluttershy murmured, turning to
Maria as she side-stepped around the puddle. Nodding and turning back ahead,
she caught sight of something glinting above Matt as he passed, his light only
barely catching the object in question.
Then, Twilight lit up her horn as she continued to follow, her light just
bright enough to reveal a clear, reflective icicle going down at a perfectly
straight 180 dribbling with small drops of an equally-clear substance. The drop
hung on for only a few seconds, and then moved once Rarity's light came next,
where it then let go, descended and landed squarely on the tip of her snout.
Rarity jumped back with a gasp, feeling a chill from where the drop had landed.
"O-oh my!" she exclaimed, looking at the offending bit of liquid cross-eyed.
"N-nobody informed me we'd need umbrellas in here!"
Matt turned up, revealing more dripping icicles in doing so, and he stopped in
his tracks to study them. "That's funny… the ice here isn't supposed to melt,"
he stated. "It wasn't like this when I trotted through here last time…"
"Then what is it supposed to do, just hang out?" Dash asked, flying up to
better inspect the melting icicles for a few seconds.
"Just about," Matt replied, turning back ahead before noticing that, once
again, Lance had stopped with wings flared a good twenty yards ahead, barely
illuminated by lights that sprung up from Anna and Natalie's horns.
He turned to his superior upon reaching him several minutes after, opening his
mouth to ask why he'd stopped this time, only to close it when he noticed Lance
looking straight down. Slowly, his eyes turned to whatever had caught Lance's
attention, only to find another steep chasm barring their path, marked by the
edge of the stone they were treading on. This, too, sported another sorry batch
of barely-holding-together, charred planks and support beams ending just a few
inches into a deep darkness.
Another draft blew in from the chasm's darkness and caressed them, though now
it was noticeably warmer than before. "Well, isn't that just great?" Lance
hissed, turning upwards to stare directly at the gloom that lay ahead. "This
bridge is out of order too…"
"So, what do we do now? Do we fly over the… where the bridge used to be?" Dash
asked in exasperation, frowning deeply at the lack of something to get over the
chasm with.
Lance sighed and turned to Dash with a frown, wings still spread. "Well… we're
gonna need a light to see, so… we may have to improvise," he answered in a low
voice. "And I may need to fly sooner than I thought… looks like we'll have to
tread carefully."
***** Chapter LXII, Part I- 'You're Telling Me!' *****
"Lance… are you sure about this?" Anna asked, turning to regard Lance with a
frown on her face.
Lance's face hardened. NoLegs, Angel, and Owlowiscious, perhaps sensing unease,
clambered off his back and made their way to Fluttershy. "About getting over
there? Yes. What's broken the bridges? No," he admitted as another warm draft
rose up from the gloom. "I don't know what has decided to make the caves here
its home, and frankly if it's big enough to make the ice melt, then I'd rather
not piss it off." His wings drooped slightly as he turned back to the remnants
of the bridge that lay at his hooves, his brow slanting and his gaze turning to
one of pity at the poor thing.
"For all I know, the source of the warm drafts could have burnt the bridges,"
he added as an aside upon looking up again.
Anna's frown deepened at that. She heard the sound of somepony further back
stomping the ground before raising on their back legs. This was followed by
Applejack indignantly shouting in a voice loud enough to echo everywhere at
once, "What's with this dang holdup? Don't tell me we gotta find another path
to Greenwood!"
Another warm draft blew in from the chasm once Applejack's voice ceased echoing
seconds later, followed by a deep growl that resonated through the very walls
of the caverns. Silence settled as soon as the growling died, broken only by
sound of Rainbow's still-beating wings. Anna and Lance exchanged looks, frowns
deepening some more as they took mere seconds to process what the presence of
that growl meant.
"... was that a dragon?" Anna murmured in a low whisper.
For a few seconds, Lance did not move a muscle. Then his eyes gravitated up,
catching sight of the melting icicles as yet another warm draft blew in from
the chasm. His gaze returned to Anna once the zephyr passed, and he sighed.
"That's the only thing large enough to do this," he murmured, lifting a hoof to
gesture to the remnants of the bridge that lay mere inches from them. "And fit
down there," he added, his hoof shifting to gesticulate at the chasm beyond.
Anna tensed. If a dragon had decided to turn this place into its residence…
"... what do we do?" she asked.
"If it is a dragon, we try not to wake it up. If it isn't, and it wakes up
anyway…" Lance turned his gaze to the gloom once more. He didn't speak for
another few seconds as he stood there, contemplating his options. Then, his
wings flapped and pushed a slight gust into the gloom, though only once. The
beat he produced, though, echoed for a few seconds before it gave way to
silence.
Whatever Lance suspected was slumbering in the chasm only replied with another
warm draft of air. No growling or rumbling came with the breeze—just that
draft, and nothing more. Lance flapped again, this time with a little more
force. Another draft answered him. At this, he turned to the still-hovering
Rainbow, who returned the look with both brows raised high. "Rainbow… could you
get Flash Sentry, Armin, and Alexander please?" Lance asked, making sure to
keep his voice at a low tone, mostly to keep whatever was asleep from waking
up.
Rainbow frowned, but turned around before spotting Flash and waving him over
with a hoof. Flash tilted his head, but with a magical nudge on the withers
from Shining, flared his wings and flew over. Then she spotted Armin and
Alexander, the former of whom conjuring a radio in his magic as she turned to
him. He muttered something into it before Dash waved them over, garnering small
frowns and a radio vanishing before they complied.
Lance nodded at their arrival, and motioned with his still-spread wings for
Anna, Matt, and Natalie to back up at least a few paces to let the airborne
quartet land. When they did, they made everyone else back up as well, though
now several whinnies of protest and a few squawks of indignance came as a
result.
To quell the small-scale riot before it could even begin, Anna embraced several
heads in her magic, with Matt and Natalie focusing on the ones she didn't grab.
The embrace lasted for a few seconds, just long enough for a triple-telepathic
utterance of "Keep it down, will you?! There might be a sleeping dragon in the
chasm!" to enter everyone's minds and stop the dissent then and there.
Though that didn't stop Spike from raising a claw and interjecting, "Uh, is it…
a big dragon?"
Anna shrugged and lifted a hoof to gesture to the melting icicles as another
draft blew in from the dark depths. "If it's big enough to do this, then we
really don't want to be noticed by it," she mouthed in reply. With that, she
turned to Lance as Rainbow and Flash landed on either side of him, watching as
all three pegasi huddled up with Armin and Alexander as they followed suit.
They began whispering amongst themselves, and fervently at that. Her ears
perked, and she started listening in on the murmurings.
"So… we carry…"
"Yeah, but we need to…"
"I'm not sure m'lord would approve of this…"
"And you said yesterday that…"
"Change in plans. Drastic times…"
"What about Maria? She can't…"
"Well, shit…"
"What do we do about Harry? He's not…"
Anna shrugged again and turned to the rest of the group, letting Lance mutter
with his huddlemates and inwardly hoping they could work something out. She
heard somepony audibly facehoof, but didn't know who it was until the owner of
the sound began speaking, keeping his voice just loud enough to be heard. "Why
didn't we bring chariots?" Blueblood scoffed.
Shining snarked in reply, "How would we have fit chariots in the airship?"
"We could've dismantled them first," Blueblood pointed out, turning to glare at
Shining.
"But that would've been a safety hazard," Shining retorted, his voice firm, but
his tone low. "And it would've taken too much time to even figure out how to
put them back together, had we gone through with it. Last I checked, we didn't
bring anypony who could reconstruct the blasted things. And I don't know if
Twilight could convert them to thaumic energy for transport, let alone how
many, so I decided I wouldn't take that chance. They're kinda hefty, you know."
Blueblood seethed and his ears flattened against his head, but he didn't utter
anything else in response. He instead settled his gaze on Lance specifically,
inwardly wondering what was taking him so long to break away from his huddle
formation and do something. He opened his mouth to make a proclamation, only to
be stopped when Anna, Matt, and Natalie looked at him in unison and shook their
heads as if to say "Hold up."
Blueblood closed his mouth and sighed. His eyes fell on Maria as she waded her
way over to the ongoing huddle session, which also seemed to catch Anna's
immediate attention. Her gaze alone stopped the filly before she could even get
halfway there. Maria returned the look with a sullen frown. "I wanna get to
Greenwood already," she complained.
Anna wilted a little and her shoulders sagged, but she did not avert her gaze
in the slightest. "Just wait. Lance's working on it," she stated, her voice
firm and yet faltering a little. "We'll get to Greenwood soon."
Maria raised a talon and stomped it like she would one of her back hooves, and
her frown twisted into a grimace. "No we won't, if daddy doesn't do something
now," she hissed, flaring her wings and puffing her chest for all it was worth,
which caused her feathers to stick out that much more.
Anna grimaced, ears flattening against her head again. Quickly seeing that
Maria wasn't buying it, she sighed and replied with an air of exasperation,
"Could you give him a few more minutes, please? I'm sure he'll figure out
something soon."
Maria, with the air of someone whose patience was beginning to wear, narrowed
her eyes. "Why not now?" she griped, stomping her talon again and flapping her
wings indignantly.
Anna's knees began to shake. She looked to Matt and Natalie, but they shook
their heads at her and mouthed "She's your foal. Not our jurisdiction," in
unison. "Just put your hoof down. Be firm, but gentle."
Anna balked at that. 'Firm, but gentle?' That was an oxymoron if she'd ever
seen one roll off the tongues of her colleagues. She took a deep breath and
turned to Maria again, only to blanch when she saw that the foal had decided
enough was enough and began walking towards the ongoing huddle session again,
this time with a noticeable stomp in her step.
Shining was watching the scene with interest, smiling a little when Anna began
trotting after Maria without using her magic to stall her. He leaned over to
whisper to Blueblood, "And so it begins."
"What begins?" Blueblood replied as Anna stopped Maria in her tracks by picking
her up as soon as she was in reach, whilst also sitting on her haunches
simultaneously.
"But I wanna go now!" Maria yelped, starting to flail in Anna's grasp.
Anna, who had turned her head away to avoid getting her eyes poked out by
flailing talons, groaned in annoyance. "If you keep this up, you're gonna be
grounded again before you even know it," she groused. "And I won't be able to
help you get out of it if you do."
"I can't fly anyway, so being grounded wouldn't do shit!" Maria cried, in turn
causing the huddle formation to finally break up and turn to her in unison.
Lance exchanged a look with Anna and sighed in exasperation. He marched over,
planted a front hoof on the top of Maria's head, and tilted her head before he
looked her in the eye without bending a second knee so much as an inch. He
narrowed his eyes slightly, and that caused her to cease her flailing. "Stop
whining this instant." His voice was firm and brokered no argument. Only when
she nodded did he drop his hoof.
Anna put Maria down and sighed. "And don't let me catch you swearing like that
again. Alright?" Lance continued, garnering another nod from Maria. He looked
at Anna and leaned over to whisper, "Next time she behaves like that, just do
what I did. Alright?"
Anna nodded, and smiled at Lance with a hopeful glint in her eyes when he
pulled away. "I take it you've got… the bridge issue squared away?" she asked.
Lance nodded back and trotted around Anna to look at everyone else, easing his
glare a little. He took a deep breath before speaking in his no-nonsense tone,
"I have a suggestion that should get everyone across the chasm if we can
cooperate and pull it off. However, we'll have to do this in a roundabout way:
self-levitators up front, please." Twilight, NoLegs, and Shining all stepped
forward.
Lance looked to Blueblood, who merely shook his head and mouthed "I can't self-
levitate." Then his gaze settled on Lazarus, who blinked before likewise
trotting forward. In doing so, only two lights were left within the group, and
the owners of those lights donned small frowns. Once the gaze of crimson turned
to Rarity, she balked and flinched before stepping up. At this, Lance smacked
his face with a wing, grumbling into his oversized feathers unintelligibly.
As soon as wing parted from face, Lance sighed again. "Well, this is a bit of a
conundrum…" he muttered, now seeing an issue of sorts: the disproportionate
number of fliers and self-levitators in comparison to those who could do
neither or were presently handicapped. He turned to Twilight and asked, "How
many times can you teleport before your horn gets red-hot?"
Twilight pursed her lips for a few seconds. "I'd say… by myself, up to three
dozen times if I have a direct line of sight," she answered. She turned to the
chasm of gloom that was still obstructing at least half the group. "Of course…
there's no light ahead…" She trailed off, seeing no need to finish.
Lance nodded and whirled around to face Anna. "Help Twilight and NoLegs get
everyone who can't fly or teleport to the other side, please. Consider this
your teleportation practice," he said. Anna turned back and nodded before
trotting up to Twilight. Then Lance turned to Natalie and trotted right back up
to the chasm's edge, never once taking his eyes off of her until he'd stopped.
"We'll gauge out an optimal route… you'll need to light a path before me."
"Lance…?" Natalie began in a low tone, only to balk when Lance took several
steps back before then galloping forward. Everyone's pupils shrank when he
jumped over the edge, wings spread as far as they could go. He plummeted
sharply and went out of sight, but when he did the sound of flapping wings,
flexing once-useless muscles frantically, filled in the void. It took several
seconds for Lance to re-emerge into sight, all four legs kicking frantically at
thin air as his wings struggled to simply balance him at the most basic of
hovering maneuvers.
"Great hairy teats, this is awkward!" Lance exclaimed, though his voice went no
higher than a standard utterance. A draft chose that moment to blow in from the
chasm, only serving to lift him higher and make him flail that much more. "I
feel like a bloody albatross fledgeling!"
"You're telling me!" Armin snarked, smiling at the sight of his own superior
making an utter fool of himself. He watched as Lance tumbled back to the edge
of the chasm and landed unsteadily, the feathers along his back and barrel
puffing out the moment his hooves touched stone.
Lance shook himself, flapping his wings without taking off a second time. He
turned to one of his feathered limbs to find red mana pulsing between the
feathers. He took a deep breath and willed just a tiny bit, feeling something
within him stop before seeing the mana cease pulsing. "Well, at least that was
some progress," he remarked. Releasing his mental hold, he saw the mana pulsing
anew and smiled.
With his confidence bolstered and an awkward grace more fitting of a dodo bird,
Lance took off again, this time without flailing his hooves in every
conceivable direction in the process. It made a noticeable difference; his
stance, while still on the warbly side, was more stable. Natalie sighed and
embraced herself in her magic before levitating next to him, eyeing her
superior with a critical gaze as he continued his second attempt at a basic
hover. "Wings hurt?" she asked.
Lance shook his head. "Not even sore yet," he replied. "Why?"
Natalie gave a small smile. "Alright then." Her light flared brighter, and into
the darkness she began to float. Lance clumsily followed after her, squinting
his eyes a little to minimize retina damage. As another draft blew from below,
Lance tilted dangerously to one side with a surprised squawk of all things
leaving his mouth when said draft managed to brush up against every part of his
body at once. Hastily reorienting himself and mentally seizing his legs before
they could start flailing again, he took some deep breaths and continued to
press onward.
Natalie flipped so she floated backwards, looking at Lance with a smug grin
forming on her face as she crossed her rear legs and lifted her front hooves to
hold her head up. "And you said I couldn't fly for shit?" Lance growled, an eye
twitching the moment he saw that smug smile.
"Certainly doing worse than before you were bound," Natalie chirped, seemingly
content to drift lazily ahead. "I mean, you could've ran out of mana and
plummeted by now," she unhelpfully added with a dismissive flick of her tail.
"And that's just the best-case scenario."
That got Lance's eye to cease twitching. As much as he'd have hated to admit
it, Natalie had a point. But that didn't mean she could make such a comment and
expect it to come true—even she had her limits, after all. "Don't yak like you
can predict the bloody future, you sparkling meteor wannabe," he snarked.
Natalie merely rolled her eyes and flicked her tail dismissively again,
continuing to float backwards as though she were lounging on a levitating
couch. This particular stance, though, only got her so far—roughly forty yards,
in fact, before a part of the back of her head that wasn't covered by her
hooves met with stone. Natalie yelped as hard, chilled rock scraped against her
scalp, though it didn't scrape hard enough to draw blood. She twisted around
and backed up from the obstruction for a bit, tilting her head when she saw
that the portion of stone to her immediate right caved inward.
She floated over to the caved-in part, only to smile as she found another
lengthy stone hallway, albeit one lined with ice cascading across the ceiling
and parts of the floor. Lance, for all of his clumsiness, managed to meander
over and landed rather gracefully onto the first five feet of the next hallway
without issue.
Only to then slip and faceplant when he set one hoof forward on an ice patch.
Natalie couldn't help but snicker at that even as she came in to land daintily
next to him, prior to feebly masking her bout of chuckles with a weak cough
when Lance turned to glare at her. Lance then smiled at her, though, before
getting up and brushing his legs with his wings. He turned and waved at the
lights on the other side of the chasm, noting he could barely see them—past
several star-shaped lanterns that were now dangling from various icicles and
dribbling with golden dust.
Huh. How'd that escape his notice? He turned to Natalie, who shrugged and
gesticulated to her horn. "Couldn't have one Lucky Star spell go back and
forth, could I?" she asked, turning to the several dangling stars and smiling
proudly. "Besides, this is less taxing."
"Whatever you say," Lance stated, turning to the other side of the chasm again.
He blinked when… no less than three lights began drifting closer, easily making
out a gold, a green, and a blue-turning-red-and-back in the gloom. He wasn't
sure if their owners had perhaps seen him wave with the distance at which both
halves of the party effectively stood, though he'd decided to save that
question for later.
It took a little under ten minutes for Matt, Anna, and Lazarus to reach the
two, though Lance raised both his brows when he saw they didn't come alone.
Harry and Fenrir, both of whom were curled up into balls with all three auras
lugging them along, and one with his ears pinned against his head and tail
tucked between the legs, floated over just behind them. Anna also had Maria
settled onto her back. With a thump the whole group landed on the second stone
platform, and Lance took a moment to look at Fenrir in his rather widening
eyes. "Don't like being levitated?" he guessed.
Fenrir fervently shook his head. "I-I loathe it entirely," he whimpered in
reply, his voice a good octave higher than it normally was. He lifted a paw and
gestured to Matt with it. "I-I'm not s-sure how he i-is perfectly c-content
with it!"
"If he doesn't like the thought of flying against his will, then I'd wager he's
not fond of teleportation, either…" Anna murmured, using her magic to lift
Maria off of her back before settling her down onto the stone. She turned to
the star-lanterns that were still dangling, noticing they were starting to dim.
"I'd say give him a few while we lug everybody else here before setting off
again." With that, she promptly vanished in a flash of light and reappeared on
the other side of the chasm.
"Why didn't you freak out on the airship, then?" Matt asked, turning to Fenrir
with an incredulous brow raised.
"I-it was enclosed! It seemed m-more like a cavern than an airborne v-vessel!"
Fenrir yelped in reply, his voice loud enough to echo for several seconds on
end.
"I'm going to go ahead and blame 'instinct' on that one," Lance groused,
turning to Maria with a slight frown on his face. He opened his mouth to speak
again, but closed it when another draft, this one much colder than the other
drafts, blew in from the chasm. He turned to the chasm, feathers along his back
and chest puffing out some more when another growl came from the darkness.
A growl that was, against all logic… oddly hollow, yet deep enough to still
cause the caverns to tremble. Lance's brow furrowed. He spread his wings and
started to frantically wave them, beckoning everyone else who was still on the
other side to come to his side at once. But before anyone could teleport with
Anna and Twilight's assistance, something rose from the blackness with another
guttural rumble.
At first, it was obscured by shadow, before some kind of deep red energy began
to gather around a jagged silhouette that was dribbling with a sickly greenish-
black liquid. The red energy crackled with what looked like black lightning,
and it tilted up towards the very stars that Natalie had set over the cavern's
chasm.
Before the whatever-it-was could unleash its energy, though, the stars
immediately homed in on it and struck it squarely where the red and black hues
had been gathering. The stars crashed into the energy and promptly shattered,
coating the creature in a fine golden dust that glimmered in the lights still
cast on the sides of the chasm whilst also dispelling the red and black energy
entirely. The dust highlighted sickly red scales, almost the color of blood,
that contrasted sharply with several nasty and blackening wounds which oozed
greenish blood that ran along the length of a serpentine neck.
A reptilian head, one bearing wounds severe enough to leave bits of flesh
hanging from a yellowed skull, roared deeply. As the sound issued from its
throat, it revealed jagged and cavity-riddled teeth that dribbled with the
greenish-black substance. It swiveled its head, further revealing broken horns
and black canvases where eyes should have been, housing pinprick golden orbs
that flickered ominously.
"... a lich-wyrm, just great," Lance hissed right as the creature turned to
him, narrowing its eyes ever so slightly. "Not a dragon, but close enough."
Lazarus summoned his spear without hesitation. He waved it in front of Lance
before he could do so much as flap his wings. "Wait…"
"Huh?" Lance balked, turning to Lazarus with a brow raised.
"Its face is peeling from its skull," Lazarus noted, his utterance causing the
lich-wyrm to turn its beady orbs onto him. He stared back, peering intently at
the few yellowed bits of bone he could see. "This one doesn't have much time
left."
The lich-wyrm huffed and turned to Lance again. "You…" it spoke in a hollow
baritone, an air of contempt in its sickly voice. "Come to mock me?"
Lance shook his head. "No. Just trying to get to Greenwood Village," he
replied. "Half of my group is behind you."
"I see... why do you have a bear?" the lich-wyrm asked, turning pointedly
towards Harry, who flinched under its gaze.
"He's… a pet of a friend," Lance replied, his wings twitching as he spoke.
"Said friend is behind you too."
For a few seconds, the lich-wyrm was silent, seemingly contemplating what it
had just heard. "If you lie, then I will not be… so kind much longer." The
lich-wyrm twisted to face Twilight's side of the chasm, its gaze causing
several to balk. It regarded them for a moment before its orbs settled onto
someone—who exactly, Lance couldn't tell. "Who owns the… bear?"
"I-I do… he's my friend," Fluttershy answered.
"Intriguing… and why would you go… to Greenwood? Do you… have a death wish?" it
asked.
"We're not going to Greenwood; I'd much rather go around it if I could," Anna
answered, her voice shaky and shrill.
The lich-wyrm shifted a muscle of some sort, and it would have been a silent
motion if not for the awful sound of tendon and sinew tearing loudly enough to
briefly echo. "I would stay… well away," it warned. "But it won't be… my fault
if you enter Greenwood anyway. Leave… before my mercy wanes. Make haste… you
would do well to stay out of… the villagers' path." With that, it dipped back
down into the chasm with another guttural growl leaving its decaying throat,
before one final and cavern-shaking thud resonated throughout the stone with
the force of a small earthquake that made everyone briefly stagger.
Nobody spoke until after the tremors ceased and everyone either flew,
teleported, or had to be manually carried over the chasm, the process of which
took several minutes to execute. Once everyone was safely over onto Lance's
side, Spike whispered with a deep frown etched onto both snout and brow, "I did
not know that dragons could become wraiths."
"That was a wyrm," Natalie corrected, her voice also kept to a whisper. "Let's
get going before he changes his mind and eats us." With that, she began
trotting into the hallway beyond, being meticulously mindful of frozen patches
of stone as she went. Hesitantly, everyone else followed, with another warm
draft trailing behind them as they trotted on, and that only made them trot
faster. Natalie dispelled her own light, and even started dragging her hooves,
almost as if silently asking the others to catch up to her despite the fact
that she was mere feet from them as she walked.
Silence held as the hallway kept stretching on and on after that, spanning for
several yards and minutes on end, the latter of which were all going uncounted
thanks to a lack of sunlight with which to keep track of time. Only the
scraping of claws and the clip-clop of hooves filled in the otherwise-silent
void. The caverns continued to grow colder and colder, and the ice seemed to
thicken considerably, almost to the point where it could bear solid reflections
of the passing group.
Fluttershy cantered over to Twilight, frowning deeply. "A… wyrm… that's…" she
trailed off, a look of wide-eyed and abject horror settling firmly onto her
face.
Spike reached over and patted Fluttershy on the withers with a claw. "What
worries me is that even he told us not to go to Greenwood…" he muttered. "Had
he seen something we didn't?"
Fluttershy pursed her lips and fluffed her wings. Her gaze flitted to Anna, who
was doing less trotting and more hoof-dragging even with Lance coming to start
trotting at her side. The more she looked at the two, the more they seemed
hesitant, and the more rigid their postures looked to become. "It's likely the
wyrm did see something," Fluttershy finally answered, keeping her tone low on
the off-chance that either Lance or Anna were doing more listening in their
reluctance. "But I don't know what…"
Spike spent another forty yards or so contemplating what Fluttershy relayed,
staring at her the whole time before he finally shrugged and turned ahead, just
in time to see Natalie trotting onto something rather rickety. He heard a noisy
creak as she went on, with whatever she was plodding along on protesting under
each step she took. She halted before she could stray much farther, whereupon
the sound of snapping wood reached everyone's ears. Natalie jumped back, looked
down, and shook her head.
"This bridge won't hold much longer. We gotta fly and teleport again," Natalie
reported before trotting back to the group with hasty steps. "I really hope the
bridge-builder's been informed…"
"I think the bridges are the least of our worries, and of whoever built the
damn things to begin with," Sarah piped up in a sibilant hiss, frowning so
deeply she seemed to be scowling.
***** Chapter LXII, Part II- Iced Apples *****
Nobody dared to question the process of flight-and-teleport once another sound
of wood snapping filled the caverns mere seconds after Natalie got off the
bridge. Although, they merely did it much faster in the event that another
lich-wyrm or potential dragon was resting in the second chasm beneath the third
now-broken bridge. In silence, descending deeper into the darkness that grew
colder and colder, the group trotted on after crossing the obstacle.
It went like this for several minutes on end as winding hall after winding hall
was traversed, each chillier and decidedly more ice-riddled than the last. It
felt like an eternity since anyone, or indeed anything, had last spoken, much
less saw the sun's light. Hours may well have passed them by in this cave, with
everyone being none the wiser to it.
Katie kept her ears upright and to attention, wondering what aside from
possible drakes and wyrms had everyone so tight-lipped all of a sudden. Fenrir
and his disdain for being levitated, she could very well understand, and she
couldn't exactly communicate with Harry, Angel, nor Owlowiscious. Yet everyone
else… at their silence she couldn't help but fidget her bound legs
uncomfortably as she was toted along. And in a way, their lack of vocalizing
whatever was on their minds had become almost deafening.
Their very silence was… unusual, to say the least. Wrong, even. The lich-wyrm's
warning did little to abate her growing concerns; if anything, that was just
more fuel for that particular fire. More wary glances were going to the walls
and floor now, and as more of the cavern floors became slick with sheets of
ice, that she could very well excuse. She was, however, beginning to understand
Maria's earlier reservations, albeit for a different reason.
So Katie did what came naturally for her: she broke the tense tranquility by
daring to speak, for it was all she could do then. "Alright, what has your
tongues this time?" she asked. She did not expect every single set of eyes to
fall on her followed by mute stares, although in a few seconds she'd received
her answer.
"I was thinking… is it really wise to even stay within Greenwood's… borders
once we got there?" Blueblood asked, his gaze averting to Lance rather
questioningly. "I mean, it's just some village… or possibly hovel, and nothing
more?"
"You would not believe me even if I told you," Anna murmured in response, her
voice as low and cold as the ice that surrounded the group. Her eyes flashed
crimson briefly, and her face twisted into a scowl, which only caused Katie's
ears to droop. She knew what that look meant, and it made her recently-
restarted stomach twist into several tight knots just registering its unspoken
meaning. "I'd rather... " she paused, turning to start trotting down the
seemingly-never-ending hall they'd found themselves in, "let it wither, to put
it lightly."
"Let Greenwood wither? Whatever has that town done to upset you?" Blueblood
asked, only garnering a slow shake of the head from Lance as he began to trot
after Anna again.
"A lot," Anna hissed, and she left it at that. The group's walk-trot began
anew, and the vocal silence once more settled in place and became its own
deafening din. Katie could not help but let her fidgety legs, bound as they
were, drop as much as they could. Her stomach twisted in on itself some more,
and her mind began to fill with a sense of clawing dread. She opened her mouth
to speak, to ask what was wrong, but her voice died in her throat before it
could leave with an empty exhale of air.
She gave the lich-wyrm's warning some more thought and shuddered when she saw
his unsavory implications clear as day. Did Greenwood, perhaps, pose some small
threat? Or would it be Frostbite Haven all over again? The way Lance and Anna
had been mum about it didn't help either; would they even keep the three-day
promise or bolt with everyone else in tow at the first chance they got?
Katie started mentally reviewing all that had happened since the group entered
the caverns and the night before, paying special heed to the bits of body
language she caught sight of. About Eve's warnings. Her eyes narrowed as her
stomach soon gathered the newfound determination to turn itself into an
unsavory pretzel. She turned to the ice that cascaded on the walls, glaring at
her own passing reflection as if it could convey anything other than what she
was presently doing.
She didn't pay attention to anything else for a few minutes, though her ears
remained fixed upright, trying to catch sounds that simply weren't being made.
At least, until Sarah bumbled into her immediate view and averted her gaze.
"How're you holding up?" Sarah asked.
Katie's ears drooped, and she took a few seconds to process the question.
"Meh," she answered tersely, hoping that was a good enough answer. "I think my
tail fell asleep."
Sarah nodded and turned her gaze onto Lance and Anna. "To be honest, I don't
want to go to Greenwood either," she murmured, the utterance low enough that
Katie had to lift her ears just to catch it. She spread her good wing and waved
for emphasis with an added, "Especially not like this."
Katie found herself nodding in agreement. She cocked her head when Blueblood
fell back to trot at Sarah's side, sporting a tight frown that marred his
muzzle. "How much longer until we exit these blasted caverns?" he groused, eyes
narrowing to tiny slivers.
Pinkie turned her head to the right, finding a very thick and oddly-shaped
portion of ice about to pass her. She stopped in her tracks and stared at it,
putting a hoof to her chin as her tail began to twitch violently. Buried in the
frost, she could make out clumps of stone that had glowing blue crystals
jutting outward, with some making claws and others making sharp spines for
reasons she couldn't glean. Two in particular were long, easily the length of
one of Lance's wings, yet they faced downward rather casually.
Spike flinched and whimpered as Twilight trotted past, eyes going wide and
round as dinner plates the very instant he saw the twitching tail. "Something's
gonna fall!" he yelled with an air of hysteria, in turn causing everyone else
to grind to a halt and turn to him on the spot.
"What the hell are you on about?" Lance asked, both brows raised high.
The portion of ice Pinkie was staring at shifted slightly, though this only
caused her to gasp and twitch her tail that much more. One of her knees began
to buckle in tandem with her tail-twitching, and once it did Applejack started
to pale. "It's your Pinkie Sense, ain't it?" she guessed.
Pinkie hastily nodded, and opened her mouth to say something when the portion
of ice pulsed with blackish-blue mana. One part of the ice then broke free,
swinging outwards with a mighty heave and dragging a pony-sized chunk of stone
with it, nearly catching Pinkie in the snout in doing so. Pinkie jumped back,
her tail going into twitching overdrive as another portion of frozen stone came
loose. Then, joints formed, made of stone slick with ice and about as large as
two ponies' heads by a fair margin.
Both parts of stone then crashed to the floor, cracking the ice beneath
themselves as with another tug, another part that was easily the size of
Princess Celestia came loose, supported by the fragments that came first. It
twisted around its middle, forming a fearsome set of jaws lined with icicles
for teeth.
Matt summoned Heaven's Gate with a snarl. "Oh goody, an ice golem," he hissed
as two more protrusions broke loose close to an approximation of where
shoulders would be, with both ending in wicked blades of ice that came swinging
towards Pinkie. Again, Pinkie backed away before sidestepping, narrowly missing
the twin swords by mere inches. "Who let this sadsack stay here?"
The golem in question turned its stony, frozen frame to Matt in a manner that
suggested it had heard him somehow. Matt leaned a little to one side, eyelids
drooping as a small frown cropped on his face. "Too many of us, only one of
you…"
With that, he stuck his sword in one of the golem's legs, wedging the very tip
just under the joint before tugging the handle down. The joint popped free, and
the sword levitated back as the golem promptly fell on its side with a low
groan and ceased pulsing with mana on the spot. The ice encasing it crushed as
it collapsed, before flaking off and leaving just the stone and crystals that
made up its body more or less intact.
However, it was still moving afterwards. It planted its crystal-blades down
into the stone floor and started to crawl to Matt, leaving the leg that got its
joint removed behind. "Nada," he stated as he retracted his sword with ease.
"Not gonna finish it off?" Anna asked, watching as the golem tried to crawl to
Matt with a pitifully slow pace, not helped by the fact that the ice on the
floor was breaking it up and further slowing it down.
"Nah, let it crawl." Matt trotted to, then around the golem before it could
even swipe at him. "It'll repair itself once we let it alone." He went
specifically for the golem-shaped hole that had just been made, and started
eying it up and down as soon as he stopped at Pinkie's side to better examine
the anomaly.
The hole, amazingly enough, led into yet another hallway, although another
hallway that had much less ice than the one they were presently standing in.
Matt squinted his eyes at it. "Huh." He trotted closer, sword hovering next to
him at the ready…
Nothing came out from the crevice. Pinkie looked at Matt, still frowning. "Is
the golem really gonna repair itself?" she asked.
Matt used his sword to gesture to the golem's severed leg. Pinkie turned to the
limb and gasped as, slowly, the leg began to move by itself, kicking at the
floor with all its might. Of course, the rest of the golem was farther away,
inching toward Lance and Anna who merely took to the air, one of which using
her magic to do so. The severed limb had little hope of successfully catching
up, regardless of how hard it was trying to.
"These caves seem larger than I remember…" Matt murmured, shrugging before he
trotted into the new hole.
Lance and Anna followed him, pausing only to actually land at the hole's
entrance. "Maybe ponies started mining them?" Pinkie suggested, hopping behind
Lance.
"I don't see anything suggesting such; no minecarts, rails, or scaffolding to
hold the rocky ceiling up," Lance replied with a shrug. "Let alone much of a
reason to mine these specific parts of the caves."
"Why not? There's plenty of crystals to go around," Pinkie retorted, only
causing Spike to snort as Twilight cantered up at her side. Pinkie turned to
Spike, a brow raised. Spike kept silent for several minutes on end as Anna,
Matt and Lance led the rest of the entourage down another winding hall or
three, oddly with less and less ice and crystals as they marched.
"Those crystals are volatile. They attack you if you so much as poke them,"
Spike replied solemnly, shaking his head.
Katie piped up from the back of the line, "I got to be a guinea pig last night!
Almost got set on fire and frozen simultaneously, with a side-order of
paralysis!"
"Something like that," Spike stated with a shrug.
Pinkie's frown deepened, and her ears fell back. "Is being frozen and burned at
the same time possible?" she queried.
"Yes, Pinkie, it is. So is being frozen and paralyzed," Twilight replied with a
shrug. "But being set on fire and frozen at once… that I find as likely as
something exploding twice, even when accounting for paralysis."
"Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that is indeed possible," Anna
interjected from up ahead. Twilight turned to look at her incredulously,
noticing an encroaching red light coming from a yawning hole up ahead. Anna
conjured three crystal arrows with a flash of light, making sure each was a
different color. "Freezing and setting things on fire, that is. I'll show you
one of these days, once I can find a suitable target."
Twilight ignored Anna's second utterance and sighed as she squinted her eyes to
better look at the source of the incoming light, noticing subtle oranges and
yellows permeating the predominate red that stemmed from something which jutted
upright from the floor. Noticing a deep brown hue upon the object, as well as
its square top from which the reds and oranges and yellows exploded and its
cylindrical body, she cocked her head. "A torch? Who put this here?" she asked.
Matt paused before he could pass the torch, and Anna and Lance slowed to a stop
behind him. All three turned to the torch and pursed their lips, opening their
mouths to answer before closing them, shrugging, and promptly continuing on
their way. Twilight's brow furrowed and she sighed in exasperation. So much for
that. After that, though, more torches cropped up as the group trotted. Some
were spaced mere feet from each other, while others had entire yards' worth of
space all to themselves, and others still were so close their flames actually
merged into one large ball that gave off more heat.
Yet again everyone went tight-lipped, passing each torch or two wordlessly with
gazes rigidly fixed ahead. Katie sighed after several more minutes of silence
came and went, her annoyance and boredom only growing because of it. She took
to twisting her head left and right, letting her tongue dart out to wrap around
her own muzzle just to see how tight she could hold it shut. As an added touch,
she tried looping it into a rather loose bow-shaped knot, but with no hooves to
move as hers were bound, all she could achieve was what could be best described
as a tangle.
Attempt after attempt only made the pale, prehensile tongue twist and turn with
all the grace of a shoddily-made trail, but she giggled when the tongue started
to form into ruder shapes, or at the least close approximations thereof. But
she retracted her tongue after the delicate act of making some questionably-
shaped protrusions with which to gesticulate at Lance failed to keep her
entertained for more than five minutes, so she settled on the next best thing.
"Are we there yet?" Katie asked.
"Does it look like we're there yet?" Lance hissed in irritation, not even
bothering to look over his shoulders. He fanned his wings out and gestured to
the stone around them, though the motions looked more like wild exasperated
flailing on his part. "Does it?!"
"No," Katie answered with a titter of amusement.
"Then keep that trap of yours shut," Lance hissed, folding his wings closed.
Katie rolled her orbs dismissively. She felt a prominent itch on her back, and
twisted her head to try and pinpoint whatever the irritant was, only to dim her
orbs as she spotted four little bulbous buds where her wings were. She turned
her head around again, making a mental note to eat meat that night.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The group had followed the torches diligently, all the way to the other side of
the cavern where a thick forest with a line of torches weaving through the
trees was the first thing to greet them, and by that point all their limbs were
sore and dragging hooves and claws tiredly. "Okay, those caves have gotten much
longer. Did the lich-wyrm dig burrows?" Matt groused.
Lance mutely shrugged and looked up as the sky came into view, scowling as he
spotted a navy backdrop housing numerous glittering stars. Everyone's stomach
growled, and some winced, now regretting their decision to not take at least
one biscuit with them on the go. Lance simply parked where he was, and turned
his attention back to the forest ahead. He immediately noticed barren branches,
illuminated only by the torchlight.
Everyone else had parked too, and all horns except for Twilight's were red-hot
and steaming. Katie wiggled her legs as Harry shifted to let her rest against
his chest. "Alright Smartass, what do we do?" she asked, orbs poised on Lance.
Lance let his wings slump against his sides. He turned to Twilight and asked,
"Did you bring any food with you? I overheard something about chariots earlier
and couldn't help but wonder."
Twilight nodded, and in several flashes of light conjured… apples. A lot of
apples. Enough apples to fill a crate snugly, in fact. "It's not much, and I
don't hunt for my food, so… bon apetit." With that, she handed everyone an
apple or two, except for Katie. Twilight turned to said wraith and sighed; her
lack of teeth meant she had to get a little more creative. "You want
applesauce?"
Katie's ears perked up at that. "Sauce? Apples can become sauce?" she asked, a
note of disbelieving in her voice.
Twilight resisted the urge to facehoof and nodded. "Yes, but only the pulp and
skin. So… you want applesauce?" she repeated.
Katie nodded. "Just don't stick a funnel in my throat and I'll chow," she
chirped.
Twilight nodded, and conjured a bowl of wood, a small knife forged of light, a
spoon, and a mortar. She set to work coring and grinding an apple into
something that Katie wouldn't have problems with, while everyone else bit into
their apples with relish.
Lazarus paused, looking at his freshly-bit apple wide-eyed in a manner that
suggested it somehow gained sentience and told him off. It took him a few
seconds to bite into it again, and that time a smile crept on his face. "Who
grew this sweet lil' nubbin?" he asked the moment he finished chewing and
swallowed. "Because this is a very good apple!"
Several hooves, in that moment, pointed at Applejack. The owners of the hooves
were smiling even as they polished off their snack. Lazarus turned to
Applejack, who merely smiled back and wolfed down her treat. "T'weren't
nothin'," she chirped. "Just brought these on the airship from Mythos 'case we
needed 'em. Made sure to have Twi work her magic on 'em for easy transport."
By that point, Twilight had finished up with the applesauce and hoofed the bowl
and spoon over to Katie to see how she'd tackle the issue with her legs tied.
She bit into her apple as that four-foot tongue undulated and gingerly wrapped
around the spoon's handle, lifting it up and down a few times as if testing its
weight.
"Should we stop her before she eats the spoon?" Sarah asked, watching the scene
intently.
Armin waved her off with a hoof, also watching. "I think she has a throat sac.
It'll be fine," he stated. Katie had taken her first scoop of sauce and crammed
the whole thing, spoon and all, into her throat, though not before tilting her
muzzle all the way up to spare everyone from seeing it actually go down the
gullet. It took a few seconds, but the spoon came back out still wrapped and
this time without applesauce stuck to it.
Lance flexed his wings and turned to look at the sky again, seeing nary a cloud
overhead. "Well, looks like we're in the clear. We'll just wait for Katie to
finish up her grub, and then…" He turned to the ground once more, noticing the
erratic line of dimming torches up ahead. "I don't remember those being here
either."
Twilight turned to the torches and frowned. "Maybe they lead to Greenwood?" she
suggested.
She saw Lance shaking his head in the corner of her eye, frowning rather
ruefully. "Likely, or to a place near it. And unless we started flying and
levitating again, we'll be stuck here for a week trying to scrounge for it on
ground," he hissed.
Twilight sighed, before several lightbulbs went off in her head when 'flying
and levitating again' left Lance's mouth. A thought hit her before the mental
gears could start to grind, and she paused just shy of opening her mouth.
Spike, however, was all too happy to ask something she'd only just now
considered, "Are there any lich-wyrms here, outside the caverns?"
Lance shrugged, still frowning. "Likely, and frankly I don't want to risk any
chances. All of us are running low on energy at this point, so something that
drastic wouldn't be wise," he hissed.
"Fair enough," Spike agreed with a nod. He turned to Katie, who had stopped
using the spoon entirely and simply took to slurping helpings of applesauce at
her leisure. He walked over to inspect her bowl, finding the spoon laying in a
very shallow pool of sauce at the bottom.
Katie slurped up the rest of the sauce and chittered, head bobbing up and down
fervently. "I'm full," she cooed.
Twilight turned to her and made the bowl and spoon vanish in light, and then
she got up and stretched her legs a bit. "Everyone ready?" she asked.
Blueblood stood up and snorted. "As ready as one can expect… to flop into the
nearest bed," he hissed sardonically.
Lance stood up and cricked his neck a little. "Same here." He turned to the
torches as everyone else rose, and he took a moment to see where they were
going. The torches veered sharply to the left, but past a few trees split into
two paths, both of which he could barely make out as their glow was dying. He
began trotting towards the one that veered farther to the left, and the group
fell in step behind him. "I wonder where this goes…"
Spike's eyelids drooped as he assessed the situation. "Okay… village full of
possibly dangerous folks of currently-unknown species, which Lance of all
ponies wants to avoid, and a trail into a forest on par with the Everfree…" he
mumbled in a dejected, sarcastic tone of voice. Then he threw his claws into
the air. "What could possibly go wrong?"
Katie turned to Spike and shrugged. "What, you're expecting nothing too bad
here?" she asked.
Spike shook his head. "Eh, nothing worse than flippin' Frostbite," he stated.
Katie rolled her orbs and flapped her regrowing wing-nubs. "Well, given
Brassballs's disposition, I'm inclined to think that it won't all be sunshine
and dandelions," she stated with another shrug. "Especially if he's not willing
to stick around for more than three days tops."
Spike turned to Katie and arched a brow. "So… have you run into a lich-wyrm
before today?" he asked.
Katie's orbs dimmed momentarily, and she stared for a few seconds prior to
nodding. "A couple of times, but none were as grouchy as the one in the caves.
Then again, we kinda did interrupt his nap and we kinda did attack him on top
of that. I'd be pretty pissed too, if that were to happen to me," she replied,
tilting her head. "It's like breaking into someone's house and then mailing the
victim with a return address weeks after—basically something that's just
begging for a good asskicking."
Spike nodded, seeing Katie's point. "Any lich-dragons?" he tried.
Katie shook her head. "Zilch," she stated tersely.
A low hum filled the air, and Katie snapped her gaze forward, ears straining to
make out just where the noise was coming from. She caught sight of Lance
looking up and tilting his head, so she followed suit to see what had managed
to catch his attention this time.
An airship sailed across the sky without warning, close to the treeline and
barely illuminated by dying torchlight as it went. Its thin, glittering wings
flapped just once, and from that airship came that hum. It vanished from sight
after a few dozen yards or so, but oddly enough through the act of dropping
beneath the treeline itself. Something shot from it as it descended, but moved
so quick she couldn't even catch it.
"Well then," Lance huffed, turning ahead again. "Looks like we got an airship
to catch. Again." He picked up his pace, to the point he started galloping.
This caused a chain reaction; everyone likewise began hurrying after him to see
where the airship landed and whatever the hell it was doing in the immediate
area. Before they could get more than a few feet from the torches, though, a
bright green light started glowing overhead. It grew brighter within seconds,
almost like a halo in of itself.
"General, sir, stooooooop!" a feminine voice screeched with an unearthly
reverb, and within seconds everyone looked up to see Sergeant Cassida homing in
on them with green fire encasing her, hooves outstretched and a sickly trail
being left in her wake. With surprised whinnies, squawks, and howls the group
ground to a halt and hid behind the nearest trees just before Cassida could
land on anybody, impacting the ground and snuffing out her flames in one
sitting.
Silence settled as Cassida lay there, crumpled on the ground, face-first in the
dirt with a massive scorch mark singing the area around her. Slowly, Lance
poked his head around from the tree he took shelter behind, his heart stopping
for just a moment as he studied the unmoving form that very nearly crashed into
his party. When he saw her chest shakily rise, he emerged and made a beeline
for her, kneeling down to better inspect his soldier.
He nudged her withers with a hoof, turning her over when he saw nothing more
than a few scrapes and bruises. He winced as his action revealed a snout
leaking blood and a pair of twisted forehooves beneath it. Yet her green eyes
were wide awake and looking at him. "S-sir, A-Armin sent w-word through his r-
radio t-telepathically… b-before you got f-far in the c-caves..." Cassida
stammered, wincing in pain with each word she spoke. "Going back… t-to
Greenwood… w-why?"
"I want to go around it, not to it," Lance clarified, internally facehoofing
but outwardly sighing. "But some of my charges…" He looked to Applejack as she
emerged and came over, "want to go into that village."
Cassida nodded with a groan, and shifted her now-bad hooves under her. Lance
lifted a hoof again and stopped her by planting it on her shoulder. "Good
Godcat, you've crumpled yourself up again. Don't move. I'll pick you up," Lance
ordered in a stern but gentle voice. He knelt down and used his wings to nudge
and guide her onto his back, being mindful of her new wounds. Applejack
silently helped her climb aboard, and made sure she was steady before Lance
rose to stand again.
"Th-thank you, s-sir…" Cassida murmured, before her brain caught up to the fact
that Lance had used his wings. "Y-you got… out of the…" she trailed off, her
voice riddled with disbelief.
"I had help, but yes, my wings are no longer tied," Lance replied, turning a
full circle to see everyone else coming out of hiding. "Just tell us where the
airship is, please. And leave it on the ground; we're dead-tired on our
hooves."
Cassida nodded again, this time smiling. She noticed that Applejack was still
staring at her. "R-relax… this i-isn't the first t-time I c-crashed," she
murmured.
"Well, it's just that…" Applejack trailed off when Cassida lifted a hoof to
gesticulate northwest.
"Th-that way, t-to the ship," Cassida chirped weakly, the limb shaking as she
struggled to hold it up through all the pain her body was undergoing. "Tw-
twelve miles… f-from h-here."
Lance nodded and started trotting in that direction again. "Did you and the
rest of Delta Unit find anything?" he asked.
"W-we did. I-it's on the sh-ship, s-sir, and we f-felt you'd n-need to see i-
it," Cassida answered with another nod. "I-it's wh-why we c-came here."
***** Chapter LXIII- 'I've A Feeling...' *****
The changelings of Delta Unit were scouting out a clearing in which their
rather large ship—comparable to even the likes of the Scylla—had landed, with
Rhinoc leading the entourage. Horns flashed with flickering lights, scanning
the barren trees for even the slightest signs of movement. For several minutes,
the only thing that was moving were the changelings themselves.
Rhinoc looked at the trees, frowning at the lack of leaves within the branches.
His frown deepened, almost to a scowl, when he saw nothing darting across the
branches either. He turned to another changeling who didn't have a trenchcoat,
but did possess a simple army helmet. "What's the status regarding the
surrounding Ashwood Forest?" he asked.
The helmeted changeling stiffened, struggling to keep his face from even
twitching slightly. But alas, his ears fell back, and he stammered out,
"There's… a l-line of torches, s-sir."
Rhinoc raised a brow. "Torches?"
The helmeted changeling nodded frantically. "Y-yes sir. It d-diverges a f-few
feet after the c-crystal caverns," he reported.
Rhinoc eased his frown. "Better than nothing, I suppose," he muttered as the
faint sounds of several sets of hooves filled the clearing, followed closely by
a constant scratching noise. "Secure the immediate area. I think we have
company."
The helmeted changeling nodded, and with his fellows started to encircle the
clearing. Once every inch of the makeshift circle had a changeling on it
looking out into the woods with their eyes and ears peeled, the hooves and
scratching only got louder. Everyling tensed, and all magically summoned forth
an array of weapons similar in shape and size to the Accelerator, with some
sporting extra clock hands and others missing a hoofgrip. The lightshow, brief
though it was, had an instantaneous effect in that it caused the hoofsteps to
become more frantic. Soon enough the ground began to shake slightly.
Rhinoc snorted. "Joy, we have a stampede on our hooves," he hissed. "If it's
Greenwood's villagers, I swear I'll—"
He stopped when Lance burst into the clearing from the side of the vessel with
his wings fanned out, legs splayed out in a pouncing stance the moment he
stopped, and eyes narrowed to slits. "Hold your fire, Godcat-dammit!" he
barked, causing the changelings to back up with surprised hisses and weapons
vanishing in several lights. Rhinoc himself recoiled from the sheer volume of
the cry, ears falling back.
"Sir, are you…" Rhinoc stopped, noticing the flared wings. His voice died in
his throat and his jaw dropped, and he barely registered Lance relaxing and
straightening his posture.
Cassida waved a twisted hoof. "H-he's fine," she replied.
Lance folded his wings and looked at Rhinoc, easing his glare somewhat. "Could
we… talk inside the ship?" he asked slowly as the rest of his group caught up.
"And speaking of ships, I'm glad you brought the largest one over."
Rhinoc nodded and turned to one of the changelings closest to Lance, this one
with a brown carapace and ribs. "Lower the gangplank and set up the beds in the
guest rooms," he ordered.
The brown-ribbed changeling Rhinoc ordered donned a frown. "Should I prep up
the master bedrooms?" he asked.
Rhinoc nodded. "That too."
The changeling who was ordered nodded again and promptly flared his wings
before taking off towards the ship's deck. Lance turned to the changeling as he
flew and called out, "And medical supplies, please! Cassida crashed again!"
Once the airborne soldier took the time to pause and nod, Lance turned back to
Rhinoc and sighed, his stomach rumbling again from exertion.
Maria waddled up to Lance's side, reared up, and tugged at one of his wing
feathers with a talon to get his attention. When he turned to her with a brow
raised, she asked, "What's inside the big ship?"
Lance sighed and draped Maria with the wing whose feather she'd tugged at. "I
think it'll be better to give you a tour. It's nothing like the Scylla," he
stated. "And no, we won't use this one to head back to Mythos, either."
Maria frowned, and opened her mouth to say something else when a thud briefly
shook the ground. She turned to the ship to find a lowered gangplank, and the
changeling who'd flown to the deck trotting out back to the group. "Bedrooms,
medical supplies, and the… the thing we found at Frostbite's general area are
prepped, sir," he reported.
Lance nodded to the brown-ribbed changeling. "Excellent." He folded his wing
and trotted to the gangplank, and his entourage followed him, with at least a
few muttering either complaints or wondering how the beds they were going to
spend the night in were bound to turn out. Their complains and musings died
when they entered the vessel.
The inside of the ship sported a few rooms joined by no more than four
windowless halls, all ending in platform lifts going both up and down rather
than ladders. The lifts were of a simple circular pattern and walling with a
sliding door, though it was only large enough to house about a half-dozen
ponies at any one time. To one side a panel laden with buttons stood, housing
simple up and down keys, with another outside the lift matching it.
To the immediate right and left were simple lounges sporting bolted-down
couches, chairs, tables, and a few ottomans here and there with bookshelves and
small dressers interspersed throughout. The ceilings were adorned with oil
lanterns and chandeliers, some of the arms housing bioluminescent goo in place
of candles for a bit of variety. The floor was carpeted, but the carpet itself
was a simple homely beige without any discernable patterns apart from a few
scuff marks, and the walls were painted a slightly darker hue. There was also a
gurney present, though it wasn't bolted down and rather stood in a leftmost
hall with two changelings sporting nurse hats attending to it.
Lance trotted to the gurney and helped Cassida onto it. Alexander came over as
well and nodded to the nurses, who mutely nodded back before all three filed to
the nearest lift. He then trotted to the rest of the group and sighed, seeing
tired faces with bloodshot eyes staring back at him expectantly. He spread his
right wing and gestured up with it. "Bedrooms are a floor up, close to the
deck." His wing shifted down. "Engines are that way." His left wing opened and
pointed up. "Kitchens and dining room is over there, and the medical bay is
downstairs. Knock yourselves out."
He closed his wings and trotted to a hall down on the right, though he paused
before the lift. One by one, the group moved to join him. "Um… do the rooms
have bathrooms?" Fluttershy asked.
Lance nodded without looking at her. "Yes, and the bathrooms have supplies," he
answered before trotting on the lift. Matt, Natalie, Maria, and Anna joined him
before he pushed the up key with a hoof. The lift shook, closed off the opening
and started to go up mere seconds after the button was pressed.
It took a few minutes for the lift to return after that, whereupon Blueblood,
Shining, and Flash Sentry boarded onto it. "They have sparsely decorated this
ship thus far…" Blueblood muttered as Zecora and Fenrir hopped on.
"Perhaps they have made the bedrooms lavish in exchange for the basic boarding
dock?" Fenrir suggested once Owlowiscious flew in and proceeded to perch on his
head. The door slid shut once Blueblood pressed the up key, and he looked at
the owl cross-eyed.
"Perhaps, though I was never one for the whole 'utility over form' mindset,"
Blueblood sighed. The platform began to rise with a tremble, and he looked down
to find a rather ornate and intricate pattern set onto it. From what he could
see of it, it boasted elegant swirls of gold touched up with slivers of green
resembling leaves. Some parts were brass-colored instead, giving the platform
an oddly wooden feel to it that reminded him a little of Canterlot.
"Understandable," Flash piped up, looking towards the roof of the platform to
find a similar pattern seemingly woven into its frame. Whether it was carved,
smelted, or painted on, he wasn't certain of. "Maybe this was a spare airship
that nobody knew what to do with, so they went hogwild."
The platform shook, stopped before another hall, and opened its door. Everyone
disembarked and the lift dropped back down as soon as they all got off, finding
several doors lining both sides of the hall, each one a simple wood-grain and
spaced about a meter apart. The floor between them was carpeted, though the
walls were ornately decorated by a subtle purple hue that boasted countless
colors and shades similar to that in a galaxy of stars. The ceiling and carpet
were decorated likewise.
Each door also had been marked by a simple bronze plaque, all but four of them
reading 'guest room.' One set of two doors that did not have 'guest room'
instead read 'master bedroom,' further set apart by four square-shaped marks
carved into the wood above, one set of which boasted four cutie marks in their
frames, and they were the doors farthest down the hall. The other two read
'soldier barracks' and were the second-farthest. Zecora trotted to one guest
room on the left whose door was ajar and opened it, her jaw dropping at what
was on the other side.
The room was very intricately decorated, more so than the lounges, sporting the
same pattern on the walls as that in the hall. The carpet was lavishly
patterned, red with golden edges and an array of sun and moon motifs set into
the cloth, the ceiling painted similarly to match it. Instead of one lantern or
several, a few standing lamps with thick wooden posts boasting more intricate
patterns lit up the room, made primarily of mahogany with a few nice touches of
oak for contrast.
There was a mirror-dresser to one side, its frame made up of mahogany and oak
with some touches of silver. One corner of the room had come with more raised
walls and an opaque door that housed a toilet, a sink, and a shower large
enough for Celestia herself with room to spare, a few bookshelves that were
repurposed for simple toiletries and soaps. A few cabinets, shelves housing
actual books, and nightstands littered the room, crafted of birch touched up
with gold that glittered in the light.
There were a few coffee tables and some chairs to go with it, both hewn of
sweet-smelling pine with cushions on the latter and a few knick-knack drawers
on the former. The centerpiece of the room was a massive, cherry-wood-born
king-sized bed with quilts and thick pillows with yet more suns and stars on
them, again large enough for Celestia to rest in comfortably. This was all
nicely topped off by a single large window overlooking the whole room from
behind the bed, and one with faintly visible latches and glowing runes at that.
Maria was also sitting on that bed, vibrating in a manner that suggested she
didn't know whether or not to bounce on the thing. She looked at Zecora and
grinned. "Daddy told me it was bedtime," she chirped. "This bed feels good."
Zecora smiled, mutely nodded, and closed the door. She turned to Blueblood,
noticing he was wide-eyed with a jaw that had dropped and his muzzle affixed
towards the room she'd left. "I think the Fantasians have not yet abandoned
lavish comfort. But I do wonder why into this vessel they put in so much
effort," she intoned. She turned to the room next to Maria's and trotted to it,
opened the door, and cantered right in.
Blueblood let himself assume a small smile. "I wonder what soaps and washes
they have in their repertoire… and if they could decorate the lounges with
better tastes," he mumbled as he took a room on the right and waltzed in with a
spring in his step. Before the door closed, Shining heard him add an
enthusiastic, "By Tartarus, this feels like Canterlot's diplomatic quarters,
and then some!"
Fenrir looked at Owlowiscious again. "Are you going to share a room with me… as
indecent as that sounded?" he asked. At that, Owlowiscious nodded in assent,
followed by hooting just once. Fenrir sighed and padded over to a room, opened
it, and walked in. He left the door open, allowing Owlowiscious to fly back out
and perch on the doorknob.
Flash moved to claim a room. "I wonder what the master bedrooms are like if
Blueblood likes the guest chambers…" he muttered.
The lift came back up again and Armin, NoLegs, Harry, Angel, and Katie came up
before stepping off. Shining turned to Armin and asked, "So… why's this ship
decked out like a mansion? I've seen the other one, and it's a desert compared
to this."
Armin flashed Shining a small smile. "In the event that diplomats from villages
and such Lance actually liked would have lavish transport, but until now we
never got to use the damn thing," he chirped. "And it seems the General was
right to invest in it."
Harry tenderly set Katie on Shining's back before spotting Owlowiscious, who
waved him over with a wing. Harry nodded and padded over with Angel and NoLegs
behind him. "You make it sound like he was crazy to have such a thing even
built," Shining pointed out, only causing Armin's grin to widen.
"Trust me, even Matt and Natz questioned it when they'd first heard of it. But
none of us accounted for the barrier breaking and running into decent ponies
after," Armin retorted, a hint of smug satisfaction in his tone. "I guess it
just means the General likes you enough to do business with, so to speak."
Shining smiled in return. "Sounds a teensy bit biased," he chirped.
Armin rolled his eyes at that. "Trust me, if you'd seen half the village elders
running around Fantasia that Lance gets the pleasure of meeting with, you'd be
a bit biased too," he stated rather matter-of-factly, with 'pleasure' rolling
off his tongue in a sardonic note. "And besides, you're getting all buddy-buddy
with him, so I told the rest of Delta to just bring this thing."
Katie proceeded to pipe up, "Do I have to be in the medical ward, or do I get a
bed?"
Armin shrugged. "Not up for me to decide." His horn glowed in a flickering,
faltering aura and he picked Katie up with it before settling her on his back.
"Alexander's gonna have to give you another preliminary."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Rhinoc waited until everyone was in a guest room doing something before he even
dared to bring in the rest of his troops back aboard the ship and close the
gangplank once everyling had been gathered. "I'll check on the General. You
guys watch the forest from the deck and make sure none of Greenwood's villagers
come here. If they do, cocoon their asses," he ordered.
The other changelings nodded, stiffened their legs, and gave a salute all at
once. "Sir yes sir," they replied in unison.
Rhinoc nodded and trotted to one of the lifts on the right before stepping
aboard, pressing the up key, and waiting for it to transport him upstairs. It
didn't take long for the lift to register that he was present before closing
the door and going up. He pursed his lips, wondering what Lance was getting up
to now that he had an actual bedroom or fifteen to use. Rhinoc sniggered as an
image of Lance trying and failing to preen his own recently-restored wings
formed in his mind.
Dear Godcat, that would be a sight worthy of bragging rights amongst his
retinue. Rhinoc continued to snicker to himself even as the lift shook,
stopped, and opened the door to let him canter to the hall of bedrooms. Rhinoc
had to stop himself from outright prancing through the hall, instead marching
in a sort of lockstep as though a few of his lesser-ranking changelings were
doing much the same behind him. He could faintly hear excited muttering and
soft snoring coming from some of the rooms as he trotted past them, and he
relaxed a little.
At least the guests were keeping themselves entertained somehow or other, if
the snorings and mutterings were anything to go by. Before he could reach the
end of the hall, his ears twitched when he heard a dull, metallic clang come
from up ahead. His smile faded and his brow arched sharply when he heard the
sound.
He waited for a few seconds, but then silence settled. Rhinoc shrugged and kept
going to the hall's end, figuring someone had dropped something and were either
picking it up now, or leaving it for later. When he reached the master
bedrooms, he turned first to the one on his left. No sound came from it, so he
then turned right and leaned a little.
He heard Lance ask, "Anna, why the hell did you drop your chastity belt on the
shower floor?"
Rhinoc's brow ascended to the top of his forehead. He heard Anna reply, "I'm
going to take a shower, and I figured I could clean the belt too. If you want
to join, then be my guest."
Rhinoc blinked, his eyes going round. What the hell did he just stumble upon?
He cleared his throat, raised a hoof, and knocked on the door. "Who is it, and
what do you want?" he heard Natalie call.
"Major Rhinoc, and I'd like to discuss the anomaly I found at Frostbite,"
Rhinoc replied, holding back a snort of amusement. He heard a click, and saw
the doorknob embraced in a blue glow before it swung inward. The first thing of
note was that the room wasn't all that different from the guest rooms, although
it sported a much larger bed that could house two Celestias with no issue, on
top of the shower being much larger. There were also weapon racks hanging from
the walls, holding various blasters, bows, swords and staves.
The second thing of note was that, once the door was opened, he saw Lance
standing in the toiletries' corner, looking at the shower stall wide-eyed and
rather red in the face. To the other side, Matt and Natalie sat on opposite
sides of a coffee table having a hoof-wrestling match, of which Matt won the
moment Natalie had turned away. A tan-green form was blurred beyond the shower
door, and the sound of running water filled the room, which left no doubt that
Anna was inside.
Rhinoc trotted inside and closed the door behind him with a flick of magic.
"Should I wait for a few minutes? You all look… a little busy," he asked
uneasily.
"It's fine," Natalie replied before turning to Matt to find him smirking at
her, as well as her hoof pinned to the table. She simply retracted her hoof and
smirked back before standing up and trotting over to Rhinoc. "Just tell me and
Matt what the anomaly is and we'll let Lance know whatever it is once he's
done…"
She heard a door sliding open, hooves hitting tile, and then the door closing
in that order. She turned to the toiletries' corner and asked, "You getting
clean, Lance?"
"No, I'm taking a slime bath! What's it look like to you?!" Lance cried in
exasperation.
"Alrighty then!" Natalie turned back to Rhinoc. "Yeah, you see what I mean?"
Rhinoc hastily nodded. "Just make sure they play nice," he mouthed before his
horn glowed and he conjured several books, all neatly stacked together, in a
flash of light. Then he conjured a massive bag of bits, which promptly fell to
the floor and spilled. He turned to Matt and added, "I believe the bag belongs
to one of you, so… and it was just sitting around in an igloo hut, so I figured
'why not take it?'"
Matt nodded with his horn glowing and made the bag, spilled bits and all,
vanish in another flash of light. "Thanks," he chirped, lifting a hoof and
gesticulating to the table he had yet to move from.
Rhinoc mutely nodded and levitated the stack of books over before plopping them
on the table. "We'll let you know what we find," Matt added, prior to Rhinoc
nodding again, saluting and exiting the room.
Silence held until the door opened and shut in swift order. Then Lance broke it
by asking, "Is he gone yet?"
Natalie sniggered even as she replied, "Yes, Lance, Rhinoc's left the room and
dropped off… books." She turned to the toiletries' corner, certain Lance was
now more than beet-red in the face. "What are you doing in there? Can I join
in?" she offered, garnering a surprised squawk from Lance and a guffaw from
Anna.
"Natz, it's not like he's gonna till my fields or anything!" Anna snorted with
a few giggles. "Especially with you and Matt not even, like, ten feet away from
the stall!"
"Then why'd you take off the belt?" Matt chimed in, sniggering when Anna gave a
startled squawk of her own.
"You two make it sound like I want to mount the barely-adult mare of the room!"
Lance yelled in indignation.
"You did have a wet dream about her," Natalie countered, a large grin spreading
on her muzzle. "And you did trot in despite the fact that she's in heat! I know
that bitter smell when it hits my nose, Lance; don't you dare fucking lie to
me!"
"Shut your cocksucking cakehole, you adoptive brother-diddler!" Lance shot
back, his voice several octaves higher now.
Natalie sniggered, but said nothing more. She trotted back to Matt and sat on
his side of the coffee table, taking a moment to let the growing giggle fit run
its course, but not before casting a barrier over herself, the table, and Matt
that kept her howling from reaching Lance's ears. It took a little under five
minutes for her laughter to die down, and by then the barrier had crumpled of
its own accord and her lungs burned slightly.
After that, she turned to a book as she regained her breath, pausing
momentarily to rest her head on Matt's shoulder and listen for anything other
than the sounds of rushing water and body scrubbing. Her ears perked when she
heard an oddly muted and muffled grunt, followed by the sound of a bone
popping. "Wings refusing to flex?" she asked.
"Nah, just popped a bone near one of my hocks," Lance replied. "And all I was
trying to do was reach a scrubbing brush."
"Ah." Nodding in understanding, Natalie turned her attention back to the books.
She picked up the topmost one in her magic and slid it off the stack before
plopping it in front of herself and Matt. Her brow immediately furrowed when
she saw strange runic characters on the cover. "A book… in ancient alicorn,"
she muttered.
Matt sighed and studied the book's title, but had his attention torn away from
it to the shower when Anna gave a surprised yelp. "You put the soap up there,
didn't you?!" she cried, which was followed immediately by a snicker from
Lance.
"Hey, I was just helping you wash a rear hock," Lance chirped in reply. "It
slipped out of my hoof."
"But soap doesn't go up my friggin' tailbone! That's for shampoo!" Anna
protested. "You want me to ram my horn up your ass?!"
Matt rolled his eyes. "Play nice, you two," he called before turning back to
the book. He heard Lance and Anna mutter for him to shut the hell up already,
but he paid it no heed. As long as neither got violent, he figured he could let
them sort out that issue however they deemed fit. His eyes scanned the cover of
the book, and they narrowed a bit. "How the utter fuck did this get into
Frostbite Haven?" he asked, which caused Natalie to turn to him.
"What's it say?" she asked, frowning.
Matt's horn glowed, the aura gold at first, before it embraced the book and
turned blood red with a violent crackle that caused the two to jump back. The
glow was hastily dispelled, though not prior to it giving an unsavory hiss like
a tea kettle. "Well then, damn thing's enchanted…" he hissed. Slowly,
carefully, he leaned back forward, giving the book the gimlet eye as he
continued to scan the cover. "Good thing I learned how to read this shit…" he
muttered.
His horn glowed again, and tenderly he flipped the cover open, finding
something that made him scowl. There, right off the bat, the very first page
boasted Lazarus's cutie mark. Hastily, Matt flipped several pages, finding
several runic scrawlings and notes. The notes ended when his cutie mark cropped
up about twenty pages in, so he skipped and then came across Natalie's mark.
The book slammed closed, and another was levitated and thunked atop of it.
The second book was crudely flung open, showing more cutie marks Matt wasn't
familiar with, all detailed in that same runic writing and overlaid with bright
red X's. A third and fourth book swiftly followed suit, before they too were
closed and Matt proceeded to slam his face into the coffee table. Natalie,
who'd looked on throughout the whole procedure with eyes widening the entire
time, blanched considerably. "N-no… it couldn't have been…" she stammered
weakly.
Matt rose up and turned to her with a scowl, but he eased the expression when
he saw the distress painted all over Natalie's face. "It… was. Those fuckers
had gotten the records on…" His voice dropped to a low, ominous hiss as he
finished, "How did the gryphs of Frostbite get their claws on the whole Royale
Catastrophe's catalogues…?"His pupils shrank as he recalled how they acted once
the barrier broke. "Is that why they..."
Natalie gulped and rested her head on Matt's shoulder again. He sighed when he
wrapped a foreleg around her in response. "But now the whole mess… on that is
in our hooves now. No wonder Delta Unit rushed here," she muttered ruefully.
She slumped a little. "Even though it's been wiped off the face of Fantasia, I
never thought it would have had records kept…"
They heard a door sliding open, and running water shutting off. Anna and Lance
trotted out of the small bathroom with towels slung over their backs and right
to Matt and Natalie, frowning when they saw the distress that lingered on their
faces. "What's wrong?" Lance asked, his own mouth forming a thin, tight line.
"The bastards at Frostbite got records of friggin'..." Matt paused long enough
to lift his free hoof and gesture to the books with it. "A hellhole that got
wiped off Fantasia, and it's written in ancient alicorn," he hissed.
Lance's eyes widened. "Records?"
Anna's pupils shrank. "In ancient alicorn?"
Both Matt and Natalie nodded dourly. "We were hoping to put the Royale
Catastrophe behind us," Natalie groused, eyes narrowing. "It seems we still
have a few… record-keepers to deal with."
Anna tilted her head. "The fuck are you two babbling on about?" she asked.
"Lazarus won't be happy when he sees this shit," Matt grumbled, his hoof
starting to rub at Natalie's withers reassuringly. "But why Frostbite of all
places? Why squirrel away the records there?"
Anna and Lance exchanged looks, then Lance turned back to Matt and answered,
"Well, we know those gryphs ate mares and fillies… who's to say they wouldn't
eat potential whistleblowers on top of that? Maybe that frozen hellhole just
didn't get that many visitors."
"Well, they did kidnap Spike…" Matt slowly nodded, at least seeing the logic of
that statement, though he still found himself questioning the moral sanity of
whoever made such a decision. Another thought hit him, and he asked, "And now
that I think about it, would that also apply to their fridges and cabinets and
whatnot?"
"Maybe they were bribed with the contraptions. The elder did say they couldn't
use the fridges that much, if at all," Anna pointed out, frowning as her eyes
gravitated up to the ceiling. "Kinda hard to use fridges when the whole house
is basically a giant fridge."
Natalie shrugged. "Dunno," she stated tersely. She lifted a hoof and motioned
for Anna and Lance to sit down, which they trotted over and did. Her gaze fell
onto Anna and she sighed. "You're lucky to have not known about the Royale
Catastrophe, and while I'd rather keep it that way…"
Matt shushed her by lifting his free hoof and putting it to her mouth. "Save it
for tomorrow, Natz. Laz'll need to know of the damned records Delta Unit
scrounged up too," he stated firmly. Natalie opened her mouth to protest the
moment his hoof parted from her lips, but Matt merely silenced her by kissing
her swiftly on the lips before she could object.
"Get a room you two," Lance piped up, causing the two to break apart and look
at him with sheepish grins.
"Says the stallion who shared a shower with a mare in heat not even ten minutes
ago," Natalie chirped in reply. "And besides, we already have a room. We're
just sharing."
Lance facehoofed at that, grumbling something about Natalie and wrong ideas.
Anna nudged him with a hoof to the shoulder, causing him to look at her. She
looked back and swished her tail just once. "Do you mind if… I sleep without
the belt tonight?" she asked.
Lance pursed his lips for a few seconds before he shook his head. "Whatever
floats your boat," he replied tersely. He turned to Matt and added, "You okay
with it?"
Matt nodded. "Yeah, I'm cool with it," he answered.
"On that note, you feeling better?" Natalie asked, looking at Anna with a
rather critical gaze, which was only betrayed by slightly narrowed eyes. "Like…
less hot and horny?"
Anna nodded. "A little," she answered, her tail swishing again. "And a lot less
angry."
Natalie nodded. She got up, stretched her legs, and trotted over to the massive
bed. Swishing her tail as she crawled in, she sighed as the bed and quilts
tried with all their might to hug her close. "You know… it's been a while since
a mess was made," she began, her tail still swishing.
Lance turned to Natalie, his still-drying wings fluffing as another heated
blush spread on his face. "What sort of mess are we talking here?" he asked.
"I've a feeling that Greenwood's gonna become another mausoleum… and I was
hoping to avoid that if we could," Natalie replied with a huff, her tail
stopping just shy of her rear legs.
Lance's blush faded, and he frowned as his wings relaxed. "So… it may have…"
Natalie nodded. "We don't know if it's too far gone already," she stated
matter-of-factly, cutting him off. "And part of me doesn't want to know if it
is, either."
"Well, Applejack wants to head to the damned place, and so does Blueblood. I
don't think they won't not tell us what they find, if they actually do manage
to get to it and then out as soon as they are able," Matt pointed out, standing
up before stretching his legs and trotting to the bed to flop on it. He wrapped
his forelegs around Natalie's barrel and pulled her close, pausing only when
Lance threw off his towel and rushed over to lay behind him. "Either way… we
got a long day ahead tomorrow."
Anna threw off her towel and trotted over to lay down and snuggle up against
Lance. Even so, she complained, "Damnit, I hate long days."
"I know. I didn't sign up for that shit either," Lance concurred, fluffing his
wings again. "But somebody's gotta shoulder that burden. I'd rather it be us
than some pea-brained foal-fucker."
***** Chapter LXIV- Morning Sluggishness *****
When the earliest hours of a grey morning came, all were very reluctant to
leave bed—except the soldiers, if only to start guarding the ship again and
magically producing pre-prepared bits of breakfast piled into bowls while they
were at it. The first few spoonfuls produced some sort of pink mush, which went
into their mouths and made them smile in relish. With it, came a nod of
approval from Rhinoc; a signal to officially begin their day. Some ate later
than others, though they all gathered upon the deck to let those who'd eaten
before chatter, make repairs on their blasters, or take turns playing a game of
red light, green light with the surrounding forest.
With a few of Delta's changelings on that deck, which was sporting a hatch
similar to the Valkyrie's, were Armin, Katie and Cassida, two of whom were
gurney-bound and being spoon-fed pink mush from small glass bowls as breakfast
hour came and went. One of the other changelings, namely the brown-ribbed one
who opened the gangplank the night before, was giving Katie an added dose of
hairy eyeball free of charge.
Fervor broke out between them once Katie and Cassida had polished off their
meals, and some of the other changelings were looking at the beginning
spectacle intently. "So, you're telling me the general actually recruited your
scrawny ass into the army force?" the brown-ribbed lad asked in a disbelieving
tone, an incredulous eyebrow already raised all the way to the base of his
horn.
"First time he even mentioned something like that, I almost thought he was
talking out his ass," Katie stated with a fervent not of her head. Her wing-
nubs, now swollen with liquid, buzzed with all the grace of wet newspaper.
"Second time? I swear to Godcat he looked like he shat a brick."
Cassida turned to Katie, eyes narrowed slightly. "What did you do to impress
him that much?" she asked, equally as incredulous as her compatriot.
Katie turned to Cassida and cocked her head. "Froze a buffed-up hippogryph
twenty times bigger than me, from head to hoof," she answered. "In only one
strike."
Cassida donned a rather scrupulous, twitching grin. "With what?"
"Horseshoes," Katie stated tersely.
Cassida's lips twitched, then she tossed her head back as uproarious laughter
started rattling out of her mouth. She barely managed to sputter out "Y-you're
kidding! You've got to be pulling my tail!" before all coherent thought went
out the window in lieu of insane howling. Some of the other changelings soon
followed suit and cracked up in unison, almost as though they'd never heard
anything more absurd in their lives. And in a bizarrely roundabout way, Katie
came to realize with a sigh of resignation, that seemed to be the case.
Armin, however, wasn't laughing. He merely waited patiently for the hooting and
hollering to die down before stating calmly, "I have seen her freeze her own
legs. She's not just any run-of-the-mill scrawny wraith."
All the other changelings, sans Katie, looked at him incredulously. Katie
herself merely rolled her orbs and muttered, "Oh, here we go."
Cassida raised both brows. "'Freeze her own legs?' Alright, Lieutenant, what
sort of drugs have you been snorting lately?" she asked disbelievingly.
"That's only in the domain of a pegasus who fully mastered his or her innate
magic. Devoid of love though she is, I haven't sensed anything else out of the
ordinary with her," Rhinoc stated matter-of-factly. "Even then, temperature
manipulation and frost-growing are impossible to do with the hooves." Several
heads bobbed up and down in unison at his statement. "Not even Lance could pull
something like that off."
Armin retorted, "With hooves by themselves, that is true. But you see… our
scrawny wraith's a mutant among changelings." Katie immediately stretched out
her tongue as far as it could possibly go to demonstrate Armin's point and used
it to give Rhinoc a finger-free wet willy. Rhinoc screeched and jumped into the
air as if the tongue had gone somewhere else, twisting to face Katie mid-air
with wings buzzing furiously.
"Alright, could you not do that again? Like, put that damn thing up before you
poke someling's eye out with it," Rhinoc barked, ears flattening against his
head. Katie did as she was asked, albeit inch by inch, just so the other
changelings could see that it was indeed that long and was somehow going back
into her gullet.
"See? Mutant," Armin stated tersely, grinning smugly even as Rhinoc landed,
turned to face him, and sent him a firm glare. His horn glowed, and his aura
embraced Katie without really doing anything for a few seconds. Armin grimaced
as a chilling sensation crept down his spine, which made his tail squirm and
his wings buzz with more rigidity than they should have possessed.
Rhinoc noticed that Armin's smug smile faded when his wings began flapping,
seemingly… slowing down in a manner that suggested either one of two things was
occurring: either the wings were going to fall off outright, or time itself was
being tampered with. Still, he watched with interest, right up until the moment
that Katie's horn gave one brief, blue spark when Armin launched a small bolt
of flame that connected with the protrusion in question.
Everyling flinched when Katie gave a displeased hiss before mana pulsed across
her body, blue at first before turning sickly green. She began twitching every
limb violently, wincing in apparent pain, eyes squinting so tightly it seemed
as though they were about to slip shut. The convulsing worsened, with her bound
knees colliding with the gurney's rails as each second ticked by. The hiss went
on unimpeded, before it rose to a shout, and then to a shrill scream.
"Hot! Hot hot hot hooooooot!" Katie wailed at the top of her lungs, wing-nubs
buzzing so much a few changelings wondered if they were going to detach from
her back. The magic bolt that went in reformed and flew right back to Armin,
and everyling shivered as the temperature dropped spontaneously when the
rebound scored a direct hit to Armin's barrel. It happened so fast and so
suddenly it was at that point they only noticed as ice started forming and
crawling down his legs and up his neck on top of that mere seconds later.
Armin dispelled his glow with a shudder, and he turned to Katie with his jaw
going slack for a few seconds. He waited until the ice melted before asking,
"Doesn't that prove my point?"
"Hooooooot…" Katie complained, orbs spinning in their canvases as the green
glow died from her body. "Need… ice cubes…"
"Anyway… as I was saying," Armin began, only to stop when Rhinoc turned to him
again and waved a hoof dismissively.
"Someling get the wraith ice cubes," Rhinoc snorted, shaking his head rather
grimly. "And I cannot believe that left my mouth just now." The brown-ribbed
changeling nodded and skedaddled from the group, making a beeline for the hatch
before throwing it open with his magic and jumping inside. When he vanished,
Rhinoc lifted a hoof and rubbed his temples with it. "So… she can use pegasus-
like magic." He gave Armin a flat stare. "Just not with her fucking hooves."
"How does she do that? Her horn's, like, just a bundle of jagged shards
sticking out her forehead," one soldier piped up, eying Katie with concern
flickering in his eyes. Several nods and questioning mumbles rose within
seconds, each one more curious than the last.
"Honestly, I have no fucking clue how she does it. She'd said something about
her magic rejecting other magics whenever a blast hits her horn-stump. I've
only seen it one other time too, and she broke through solid magic-grown
crystal with it like it was flawed porcelain," Armin replied with a shrug.
"So… she punched through a wall… is this what you're telling me?" Rhinoc asked,
a brow going up again. Armin nodded and his horn flashed before Rhinoc found
the aura embracing his head, and for a few seconds nothing really happened.
Then images formed in his mind as the aura faded. Several, in fact, almost
overrode his own thoughts. They came and went, culminating in the exact moment
an apricot-colored ball of energy smashed through similarly-colored crystal,
all because of one broken piece of equipment that apparently still worked
against all odds.
Rhinoc's already-grim look hardened a little, and his raised brow lowered. It
took him a few seconds to process what his mind had just gone through before he
took a deep breath through his nostrils and sighed. "Okay, so her credentials…
are there, substandard, but there. But how the utter fuck would she do in the
regiment? She's starved, frail-looking, apparently can't take a magical
beatdown too well… and cannot feed herself." He gave Armin a very flat stare.
"Undead though she is, she wouldn't survive even basic training," he groused.
"Alexander was looking her over left, right, and sideways last night," Cassida
interjected, causing Rhinoc to turn to her with his brow once more climbing
high.
"What all did he find, aside from the painstakingly obvious?" Rhinoc queried,
lips pressing in a thin, tight line as he awaited Cassida's answer.
"Well… rickets, muscles so shrunk he thinks they may have fused with her bones,
and internals no bigger than a standard box of soap bars," Cassida answered,
frowning herself. "That's each organ put together," she added as an aside.
"You'll have to see the x-rays he took to believe me."
Rhinoc sighed, sensing Cassida's unspoken 'I wish I was making this shit up'
before his brows leveled again. "Another case of vitamin deficiency… joy," he
hissed to himself, in so low a voice Katie barely heard him. By then, she'd
regained her senses and cleared her throat.
"Wait, so I'm not the first to be this twiggy?" Katie asked, causing Rhinoc to
jump and stare at her with widening eyes.
"Not twiggy. Lacking in nutrients," Rhinoc clarified, shaking his head. "You
need more meat on them bones, yes, but also more vitamins to get there."
Katie stared at Rhinoc for a full minute on end, and her only movement was
slowly cocking her head. "Do my vitamins need to be balanced or some shit like
that?" she queried.
"Exceedingly," Rhinoc answered tersely. "If you broke bones… which you probably
did, given your tied legs, Cassida could heal faster than you."
Katie looked to Cassida and eyed her head-shell with some measure of emotion.
"You have head growths. You look like a mushroom," she stated rather callously.
"How'd you get those?"
Cassida reared up slightly and puffed out her barrel, and closed her eyes as
she curled her forelegs under her chest, broken front hooves be damned. She
winced a little, but relaxed when a pink, suspiciously heart-shaped glow
started to build on her barrel. A tingling sensation resonated not just in
Katie, but throughout all of the changelings present and accounted for. Hard
faces melted into complacent masks, firm frowns molded into serene, fanged
smiles, and some of the other changelings' holey legs started growing more
flesh to close up their perforations. Or at least, the legs that were bared,
and chitin also grew to secure the regenerating flesh.
Katie herself felt some of her bones popping back into place, and some odd
sensation squirming in her pale gums that she couldn't place at first. Then,
she gave a gasp when painful prickles rose in her gums all at once, causing her
jaws to jitter uncontrollably as teeny tiny bits began oozing a vaguely-warm
fluid that tasted of rot and death the moment it touched her tongue.
Immediately, her tongue flicked all around her mouth, moving into every crevice
possible to discover hard, bony protrusions surging forth from the gums. Each
protrusion was sharp to a needle-like point, and countless times Katie found
herself regenerating each and every new hole her tongue had received. These
accoutrements stopped, but only about a centimeter or so when Cassida's heart-
glow-thing had receded and she opened her eyes. "How'd you get your sparkly new
teeth?" Cassida retorted, grinning smugly once Katie looked at her.
"I…" Wait. Katie experimentally clacked her jaws together, only to be greeted
with a dull thud as the new accoutrements fit into each others' gaps snugly.
She clacked again, getting the same result. Her orbs went wide. "I have
teeth?!" she exclaimed.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Twilight awoke only when sunlight started to shine directly upon her face, and
even then her brain struggled to register the meaning of blinding yellow
assailing her eyes despite said eyes being closed until a few seconds passed.
Begrudgingly, languidly, she sat up, eyes still closed as she took a solid
minute or two just to let her mental gears get up to regular processing speed.
The gears only got up to half-speed, though, thanks to the cobwebs of lingering
sleep. Once the cobwebs had been torn from those gears with a deep breath and
delayed realization that she was indeed awake, her eyes hesitantly opened.
She yawned lazily and turned to let her rear legs dangle from the side of the
ludicrously comfortable bed that Lance and his troops somehow got a hold of.
Yeesh, that stallion knew how to treat guests once he got over his
apprehensions, she had to admit. Twilight wryly wondered if he was repaying her
for her hospitality and giggled to herself as she let her hooves touch the
carpeted floor prior to stretching her legs. After feeling some bones pop and
blinking some more sleep out of her eyes, she headed right for the toiletries'
corner without an iota of hesitation.
It took her a few minutes to use the toilet, get a quick warm shower, and to
dry off in that order. By then, the sunlight had intensified a little and
angled slightly, and her brain finished jumpstarting the rest of the way. With
all of that done within the hour, Twilight trotted to the door of her temporary
room, shivering as her coat began to cool with each step, no doubt the result
of leftover and undried dampness lingering within her hairs.
She opened the door with a quick tug of her magic and peered out into the hall,
looking to the left before turning to the right, the silence therein almost
immediately noticeable. Huh. Nobody else was out yet. Twilight shrugged,
figuring some were sleeping in, showering, or struggling to get their own
mental cobwebs to come out of their noggins. She retracted, closed the door
behind her, and promptly trotted right back to bed before flopping on the
sheets and quills and conjuring the books she retrieved from the Crystal Empire
and all the notes she made about thereof.
Before conjuring the inkwell and quill, she picked up the notes and splayed
them out in front of her hooves, finding several sheets' worth of scribbles
that were half-filled with runic translations. Twilight set said translations
to one side, focusing her attention to the other half of her scrawlings.
Sighing, she conjured the book 'Bizarro Enchantments for the Everyday Lyrist'
and plopped it into the pile as well. "I am so glad Spike convinced me to take
the books I found in the library's underground chamber… thing," she muttered,
taking the time to dust the book off with a hoof, being delicate in case it
crumbled like some of its more unfortunate shelf-fellows.
She opened the book about enchantments for lyrists and the one about spells
supposedly credited to Starswirl simultaneously. She looked through the former
first, finding herself looking at a table of contents that by itself was meager
in comparison to her plethora of notes. Nothing really stuck out at her, let
alone dared to make itself known if there were possible juicy bits of intel
within.
A thought hit her when she considered a certain pony who was stipulated to have
aided in creating the since-broken barrier. Immediately, she conjured 'Early
Fantasian and Mythonian Relations' and threw its pages open the moment it
materialized and plopped on the bed. She sifted through entire bundles of pages
at a time, starting from the beginning, flipping right to the end, and then
swiveling left and right towards the middle.
Her magic grabbed the translations and tugged them close, and with them at her
side it didn't take Twilight long to find what she was looking for. In the
middle of the book, there was a weathered illustration of an airship with
several unicorns on the deck, one of which bore a hat and a cape bedecked in
stars. The unicorn in question also had a flowing white beard that sailed in
the wind.
Before she could dig in to the information that needed another round of
translating, she heard a burst of magic followed by a meow. Twilight turned to
glance over her shoulder, finding NoLegs not two feet behind her rear hooves,
who hopped over with a purr. "Need something?" she asked.
NoLegs shook his head, shrugged, and proceeded to nestle next to her forelegs,
well out of the reach of the inkwell and quill. Twilight smiled at NoLegs
before returning to the illustration. "How did I miss this?" she asked. She
felt NoLegs shrug again and started letting the loose parchment float alongside
the quill, if only to prepare herself for round two of translating and
scrounging the bloody pages for something of use. Or, barring that, at least
something to confirm or deny her suspicions.
Just as she made to dip the quill into the ink, someone knocked on her door.
Twilight tenderly set down the quill with a sigh, making the inkwell vanish in
a flash of light on the off-chance it could spill prior to turning to the door.
"Who is it?" she called.
"I'm hungry," a small voice replied. Twilight blinked and magically opened the
door to find Maria standing in the hall with a small frown on her muzzle.
Twilight blinked and made the books, quill, and notes vanish, but not before
marking her place with a blank sheet of paper resting between a page crammed
full of untranslated words and the illustration of the airship. Then she hopped
out of bed, and NoLegs jumped onto her back. "Do you know where the kitchen
is?" Twilight asked.
Maria shook her head. "I don't wanna break the kitchen," she replied.
Twilight winced, her mind conjuring an image of a wrecked kitchen complete with
a toppled fridge and foodstuffs thrown everywhere, with broken dishes and
ruined furniture just for flair. "Lemme guess… you don't know how to cook?"
Maria shook her head again. "No… but I wanna know how. Mommy makes it look
easy," she answered.
Twilight gave a small, consoling smile. "Tell you what, I am… unable to cook
meat. But I can cook some vegetable-related foodstuffs, or pancakes—"
Maria cut her off, wings flaring as she spoke, "What's pancakes?"
Twilight's smile widened. "Mhm. We'll just need to get Spike awake so he can
help us," she chirped. "Trust me, pancakes are delicious. Especially with
syrup."
Maria's eyes went round as saucers. "Syrup?" she parroted.
Twilight nodded. "Yep." She trotted up to Maria before peering out into the
hall again, seeing another pair of doors opened wide near the lift. In fact,
she saw it just as the door that was closer to her room opened, and out waddled
Spike who stretched his arms and yawned as he entered the hall. "Hey Spike,"
she chirped.
Spike lazily looked over to Twilight, smacked his lips, and then nodded.
"Mornin'," he greeted. Twilight and Maria came over to him, both at a brisk
trot, with Twilight using her magic to tenderly close all three open doors.
With that done, the group made their way to the lift to head downstairs. It
didn't take long for the button to be clicked, or for the door to close.
"Say, NoLegs, could you go to the kitchen and check the stock please?" Twilight
asked, turning to NoLegs as the lift began to descend. "We'll meet you there."
NoLegs nodded, and waited until the lift stopped moving and opened its door
before he promptly waved his tail. His magic aura flared to life, and he
vanished in a flash of light. Twilight trotted out of the lift, followed by
Maria and Spike, who looked around for another lift.
All they saw, at least right away, were the lounges closest to them, and the
furniture settled within. "So… what was it about pancakes?" Spike asked as he
began walking to the closest lounge, pausing only to stop in the doorway to let
Twilight and Maria catch up.
"Pancakes are good with syrup… whatever that is," Maria replied, which prompted
Spike to look at Twilight with one brow arched sharply.
"Well, she wanted breakfast, so I offered to make pancakes. With syrup,"
Twilight elaborated, smiling sheepishly.
Spike's eyes widened a considerable margin. Then he chuckled and smirked. "I'm
not sure Lance even has syrup in his food stock. And I'd really feel sorry for
him if that's the case; poor colt doesn't know what he's missing out on," he
stated in a matter-of-fact tone laced with underlying amusement that was
betrayed only by his smile.
Twilight rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Spike, who wouldn't have syrup in their
kitchen cabinets? Ten bits says at least a hoofful of Lance's troops, if not
the stallion himself, have a pretty big sweet tooth if you asked me," she
retorted.
Maria started jumping up and down in place. "Daddy likes syrup?!" she cried. "I
want some, I want some!"
Spike sniggered again. "Oh good, she's riled up. I can see it now…" He cleared
his throat and tried to imitate Lance, but somewhat failed when he raised his
voice a good inflection higher instead of lowering it. This resulted in his
voice squeaking as he spoke, "'Who the hell gave her sugar?! Now she's wound up
and bouncing off the walls!'"
Twilight nearly choked when she heard Spike's higher-pitched voice, and her
cheeks puffed out to hold in laughter that just wanted to shoot out of her
mouth then and there. "Mind you, he did let her have zap-apple chocolate cake,"
Spike added offhandedly, which caused Twilight to drop her head and shake with
barely-restrained giggles.
"Do syrup and cake taste good at the same time?" Maria asked, causing Spike to
turn to her, stare for a few seconds, and mutely shrug in that order.
"I dunno. I've never put syrup on cake before, but that's just me," he
answered.
Twilight stopped snickering, raised her head, and lifted a hoof to pat Spike on
the shoulder. "It depends on whether the cake has frosting or not, and what
type of syrup used. But I wouldn't recommend frosting and syrup in one
sitting," she chirped. She trotted into the nearest lounge after that, and went
on through the second one to find another set of lifts waiting for her, divided
only by a pair of hallways a measly ten feet in length. Both were marked by
signs, though oddly both of said signs sported 'kitchens and mess hall
upstairs, medical bay downstairs' on their frames.
Maria and Spike followed her, but stopped behind her tail when she started
looking from one hall to the next. "What's wrong?" Spike asked.
"I-I…" Then something clicked in Twilight's mind, and she simply relaxed before
taking the lift on the left. "Oooooh. I see what he did…"
"What did who do?" Maria asked, tilting her head as she and Spike waddled onto
the lift before Twilight raised a hoof and pressed the up button.
"Lance probably had this ship built so that the lifts closer to the starboard
would both lead to the same place," Twilight replied, smiling as the door slid
closed and the lift trembled before taking them up.
"That's a very generous assumption. Maybe they're packing multiple kitchens on
this baby," Spike stated, though the notion he'd posited was absurd enough to
make him tilt his own head when he gave it a few seconds of thought.
"Why not one kitchen, like in daddy's tank?" Maria queried, frowning when the
lift shuddered again before stopping and opening its door.
"Well… maybe the soldiers spread too much chitil all over one kitchen. I know I
wouldn't want to eat chitil," Spike answered in earnest, shrugging his
shoulders as another ten-foot-long hall greeted them, and one with a white
tiled floor at that. The group trotted out of the lift and down the hall,
seeing a large room up ahead, albeit one whose features were blurred by an
opaque door sporting a bronze plaque. Twilight stopped before the door when she
reached it, peering at the plaque before shrugging her shoulders.
"'Please wipe your hooves/paws/claws before eating.'" Twilight turned down to
find a piece of rug that read 'wipe here with enthusiasm' written on its
surface. "Makes sense." She started to wipe her hooves on the rug, scuffing
into the fibers as deep as she could possibly press her hooves.
With that done, she cast but a meager flick of magic and opened the door,
revealing a large room with several tables both round and rectangular dotting
its floor, all accompanied by stools. Chandeliers dangled over the whole thing,
making it glow with a soft orange light. The room was decorated with a more
homely appearance, or at least as homely as a mess hall could get, with wood
making up the furniture and a carpet laid out that depicted strange runic
symbols and prominent swirls of silver and gold.
At the far end and immediate right of the room were several booths, one of
which at said far end having been raised to tower over the others. Funnily
enough, it also came equipped with a megaphone bolted above the table, and more
lifts that would take whomever would even sit in such a seat to it. A few other
booths like it were dotting the area here and there, though they didn't have
megaphones, and were in fact decorated like the guest bedrooms.
To the left of the room were a few trash cans, shelves for condiments and
straws, and plates, bowls, and silverware aplenty. Oddly enough, the
condiments' section was empty, though Twilight had attributed that to being
still relatively early in the morning and whoever managing the kitchens not
wanting to do anything about it as of yet. A single door stood near the barren
concessions' area, built of dark wood.
Spike frowned at the mess hall. "Okay, this is a bit excessive," he commented.
"I'm not sure if Rarity would faint seeing this, or try to refurbish every
square inch of the mess hall first."
"I think she'd faint trying to refurbish it," Twilight remarked simply,
shrugging her shoulders and rolling her eyes as she saw Rarity working herself
half to death trying to fix every little detail of the mess hall in her mind.
She turned to the only other door of the room and cantered to it briskly, and
her stomach gurgled as she found a soft, aromatic smell wafting to her and
getting stronger as she came closer. At once, Maria and Spike ran to catch up
to her, and both noticed the smell right away.
"Why?" Maria queried, her face turning a slight tint of green as the aroma
wafted into her nose.
"That'd be Rarity being Rarity," Spike replied, waving a claw dismissively.
"And whatever is making that smell, it smells good."
Twilight reached the door and flung it open, finding a large kitchen stocked
with fridges, cupboards, stoves, and various other appliances dotting it. There
were more things like cabinets and racks with hanging pans and spatulas, and a
grill and brick oven for good measure. White boxes were interspersed
throughout, and the room was so massive there were at least two doors that were
visible in the mess leading elsewhere. Spike gave a low whistle at the number
of contraptions the kitchen contained. "What are these guys, packrats?" he
asked.
"I dunno." Twilight took a cursory glance around, quickly noticing the absence
of a certain someone, but the kitchen soon rattled with a crashing sound that
made her jump. "Where's NoLegs? He said he'd be here."
***** Chapter LXV- Frozen Stinger *****
Anna had taken some hours just to awaken in the master bedroom, but she did not
open her eyes even as her sleep-addled brain started kicking itself into gear.
Her ears managed to register the sound of running water and someone breathing
down her neck, though she didn't think anything of it, at least initially. She
felt a barrel press into her back, rather large and prominently fuzzy yet
slender of build, in addition to an equally-large object cradling her from the
side. Her tail swished, and whomever was pressing into her shifted to knee her
between the rear legs with enough force to make the top of her head lightly
collide with the bedframe.
Still, she did not open her eyes, figuring whomever it was happened to be
dreaming and deciding to let the issue alone for as long as she could stand.
She knew that she didn't want to be roused during her dreams save for waking
herself up; that particular side of the fence wasn't all that appealing,
nightmare or not. So she snuggled into her pillow, feeling it rise to hug her
head a little more, when the limb that wasn't her's shifted again and lightly
brushed against her teats and kept aimlessly moving for some twenty minutes
afterwards. In fact, she didn't respond until the knee shoved itself into her
folds again, this time hard enough to actually hurt and possibly leave a
bruise.
That did it, she decided, and opened her eyes before sitting up and turning to
the limb that intruded on her private bits. It protruded rather rudely from
under the now-crumpled quilt, and it was… cream-colored? Anna blinked and
lifted a hoof to rub at her eyes, slowly turning her head to the left to find
that both Matt and Lance were absent. Then she turned right to find Natalie
still sound asleep, head resting on a frumpled pillow and her scarlet mane
utterly tangled and askew. She was far too close for comfort, and had the nerve
to shift even closer until her hips were resting very snugly against Anna's
croup.
Natalie started to mumble in her sleep. "Ngh… mrgrgr… ginger… bad juju," she
managed to articulate before devolving into incomprehensible gibberish. For all
Anna knew, she may as well have started rattling off in ancient alicorn. Anna
muffled a groan by biting her lip when the intruding knee pressed in further,
its owner either unaware or unconcerned of where it was going. Anna lifted a
hoof and planted it on Natalie's ear before tugging sharply, with a little bit
of very translucent green mana that was nigh-invisible pulsing between them to
ensure that the ear was firmly grasped.
Natalie's head was lifted off the pillow, and for a few seconds Anna held it
there by the ear. She didn't stir until Anna gave another sharp yank, whereupon
her eyes snapped open, wide at first before narrowing into a glare. "The hell's
that for?" Natalie hissed. Anna merely lifted her other hoof and pointed toward
her stomach with it, watching as Natalie's eyes trailed to where the issue was.
"Get your knee out of my snatch and I'll let go," Anna stated, her voice
embarrassed yet firm. "Do we have ourselves a deal?" Natalie grumbled something
unintelligible, but removed her knee from Anna's groin nonetheless. Then, Anna
let go of Natalie's ear and dropped her hoof. She turned over and made to crawl
out of bed, but halted when the sound of running water cut off.
Then, hooves stepped on tile before being muffled by carpet. Anna's ears
twitched, folding back to catch the sound when flapping wings followed suit.
She twisted to find Lance and Matt trotting toward them, both sporting towels
hanging on their withers. The towels, though, did little to stop their bodies
from being damp and still dripping with fresh water in some places. "Didn't you
bathe last night?" Anna asked incredulously, looking pointedly at Lance.
Lance frowned, blushed, and folded his ears back simultaneously. "I… had to
take care of something," he stated.
Anna raised a brow at Lance's rather vague answer. "Huh?"
Matt snickered and grinned. "He slipped and fell face-first in the toilet," he
stated.
Anna winced, her ears folding back further. "Yikes."
"So I decided to be magnanimous and help him with his back and wings," Matt
chirped. His grin widened when Anna released a choking sound. "Besides, you
didn't wanna get up," he added smugly.
Anna relaxed and sighed, frowning. "I was a log again?" she asked.
Matt nodded. "Just about." He jerked his head in the direction of the
toiletries' corner. "Go ahead and take care of whatever business you may need
to. Me and Lance'll meet you at the mess hall." With that, Matt and Lance
trotted out, the former letting his horn flare to life to grasp the towels and
dry himself and the latter of vigorously on their way to the hall.
Anna and Natalie exchanged glances, shrugged to each other, and proceeded to
crawl out of bed; or finish doing so in the case of the former. They stretched
their legs, rolled their shoulders and hips, and popped whatever bones needed
popping the moment their hooves hit the carpet. "You take a horn up the baby
factory, and I get a knee at the front gates. What next, Matt's asshole being
invaded by ginger?" Anna asked as she finished stretching. Natalie shot her an
incredulous look once she started trotting to the toiletries' corner.
"Actually, Matt did take ginger up the ass once," Natalie stated, her remark
halting Anna in her tracks.
Anna turned to Natalie with a brow raised. "Wait, he did?"
Natalie slowly, gravely nodded. "He and I got drunk after Lance went 'fuck it'
and recruited your ass. I don't really remember who did what that night, but
the morning after I found no less than six bulbs of peeled ginger sticking out.
He couldn't trot for a week after," she replied. "He'd been adverse to it
since."
Anna's eyes went wide as she envisioned how Matt likely reacted to waking up
and finding an entire posse of intruders in his back door after a night of
drinking. "What… did you two drink that night?" she asked, her tone
exasperated.
Natalie shrugged, pursing her lips for a few seconds as her eyes narrowed a
little. "The strongest drinks the military had available. I think we chugged…
at least five glasses apiece. It was pretty strong stuff," she replied. "Didn't
take long for us to get smashed."
"And… that's why Lance has you two supervised whenever you drink?" Anna
queried, garnering another nod from Natalie.
"He bitched left and right until his lips threatened to turn purple once he'd
heard of it," Natalie stated, frowning slightly.
Anna sighed and turned to the door leading to the hall, staring at it for some
seconds as her mind painted the entire scenario from start to finish—or at
least what little of it Natalie elaborated on, and a lot of possible
explanations as to how the ginger got involved to begin with. "So if I started
drinking, I'd be monitored?" she asked.
She saw Natalie nod again out of the corner of her eye. "Doubly so, if you were
in heat doing it. I should know; he's breathed down my neck a couple of times
about that, figuratively of course," Natalie answered. "But I don't drink
often, so it was only once or twice."
Anna turned back to the toiletries' corner, her tail hiking up of its own
accord. "Hey, Natz, would you mind doing me a favor?" she asked, blushing as
she turned to Natalie.
Natalie tilted her head and sharply arched a brow, but nodded nonetheless. "I'm
listening…"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The brown-ribbed changeling found himself in a different compart of the kitchen
of all places, making disgruntled noises as he magically flung open boxes and
fridges in his search for ice cubes. "An ice changeling wraith… this day just
couldn't get any better," he hissed in displeasure, searching this ice box and
that to find no ice cubes whatsoever, though the boxes were filled with
foodstuffs that were categorized neatly. "What next, the general getting
hitched? Hippogryph alicorns?"
The changeling paused in his search to consider his own queries. He snorted and
clicked his tongue, shaking his head. "Nah, who the hell am I kidding?" he
tittered to nobody in particular. "The general can't get hitched outside of
politics, and hippogryph alicorns are as likely to become real as another
crystal pony getting into the army. Lieutenant-General Starcovert's bad
enough."
He resumed his search, throwing still more appliance doors open to find little
in the way of ice. "Gah, the ice cubes have to be in this clusterfuck
somewhere…" he grumbled as he began to fling out several items just to see if
the ice cubes were perhaps buried behind them. To say he had no luck would have
been a bit wrong; to be entirely fair, there were some ice cubes within sight
once he'd gotten the obstructions out of the way.
The problem was, they were less cubes and more marbles that were clumped
together and stuck in the corners of the ice boxes and freezers he'd thrown
open. The changeling hissed again and placed the foodstuffs back, pausing to
look beneath his hooves to make sure nothing snagged on his holey chitin on its
return trip. "Damnit, I still have nothing," he groaned sardonically.
The changeling marched to a shelf, turned his back to it, parked where he was
and crossed his forelegs. He started scowling and leaning back into the shelf,
glaring at a door that was a good twenty feet down from the shelf as though it
offended him. "He just had to recruit an ice wraith… fantastic! And I thought
that the entire fiascos with Akron, Godcat, and Lieutenant-General Windwood
were all ridiculous," he hissed petulantly. "I'm amazed he managed to find a
genuine diamond dog!"
His ears twitched when he heard the faint sound of hooves hitting tile,
followed by a door being flung open so suddenly the changeling jumped and
bumped his head on the shelf in surprise. Voices spilled out soon after, though
they were a little on the muffled side. Before he could glean anything, though,
he'd caught another sound—something sliding and then thunking rather
metallically onto the floor. He glanced around, trying to determine from where
exactly that something had landed, only to freeze when another object slid and
fell right on his head before bouncing off and landing on the floor next to
something at his rear hooves.
His eyes gravitated to the two objects, finding them to be dubiously-labeled
tin cans that had a few dents. Just as he started to register the fact that one
can smacked him upside the head on its way down, his ears pinned back as a
large and ominous creaking noise filled the air. The changeling barely had
enough time to spread his wings and flap away, and he did not move a moment too
late; he felt the reverberating impact of something crashing noisily through
the air, which only sent him off-kilter and back to the floor.
The changeling staggered upon landing, and he turned before his eyes grew round
at the sight he now beheld. The shelf had fallen over, and its particular
wares—several cans' worth of food—were now scattered on the floor. He mutely
stared at the mess, legs starting to shake, his tail tucking itself between his
rear legs as the sound of hooves on tile once again filled the area. His eyes
watered as a door opened from behind him, powerful and sudden enough to leave a
deafening thud that gave way to a pregnant silence.
He'd expected someone like Rhinoc or, worse yet, Lance himself to start
spinning up into a bitching conniption within a matter of seconds. He stared at
the shelf, now feeling that getting squished under it would have been the
better option. He waited, patiently, for the tirade to start, and he hoped for
a lenient punishment like scrubbing duty. The silence, though, seemed to judge
him with an air of dread, and he could feel eyes staring at him. How many,
though, he had yet to see; he didn't want to know who had stumbled upon him,
though he was sure he was going to find out anyway. His eyes screwed shut at
the thought.
Hoofsteps permeated the kitchen, slow at first before quickening to a brisk
trot whose echoes started to ring in his ears. It only took a minute for the
hooves to stop entirely, and the sorry soldier felt someone's breath brush up
against his shoulder in a sharp exhale. His bowels squirmed, his heart started
to race, and his chitin trembled as, for a few seconds that felt as though they
stretched to eternity, the only thing to confirm that someone was standing next
to him was a slow and steady breathing.
He expected bitching that would make his head hurt for hours to come, he
expected to be punished with derision and scorn; he did not expect a hoof to
plant itself on his withers. The lone changeling slowly opened his eyes and
craned his neck to look toward his shoulder, only to relax as he saw Twilight
standing next to him, staring with a worried frown and slanted brow on her
face. "Are you alright?" Twilight asked.
Slowly, hesitantly, the changeling nodded and took a breath to slow his
thudding heart before it could make an escape attempt up his esophagus. "I was
expecting one of my superiors to find…" He lifted a hoof and gestured to the
fallen shelf. Twilight turned to the shelf for a second, sighed, and then
turned back to the changeling.
"Just tell them it was an accident," Twilight replied. The changeling drew
another shaky breath as he heard claws and hooves scratching on the floor, and
craned his neck some more to spot Spike and Maria waddling up to them. "I'm
sure they'll understand."
"Nice changeling, I'm hungry," Maria complained, frowning herself. "Can I have
breakfast?"
The changeling sighed again and turned to the shelf, blinking as a lavender
aura embraced it, hefted it up, seamlessly returned it to its wall, and picked
up its cans before putting them back as well. "What all are you in the mood
for?" he asked.
"Syrupy pancakes," Twilight replied, her frown twitching up into a smile as the
changeling looked at her incredulously, just in time to see her horn cease
glowing.
The changeling reluctantly nodded, and his frown deepened. "I'll make you
breakfast if you help me find an ice cube stash," he stated. "Deal?"
"Why ice cubes, though?" Spike asked, his query causing the changeling's tail
to sink further between his rear legs.
The poor soldier sighed. "Lance went and recruited an ice wraith, and she had a
fire-related accident," he groused. Twilight's eyes widened, and she winced a
little.
"I… think I know who you're talking about," Twilight murmured, before her face
set in as neutral an expression as she could manage. She trotted to the nearest
ice box and opened it with a flash of her horn, cringing as she saw piles of
frozen meat contained within, each one wrapped individually with wax paper and
labeled with dates and what the meat even was written on said wrappings. "So…
what happened?" she queried as she closed the ice box.
"Major Rhinoc thought it impossible for her to be magically capable," the
soldier replied, shaking his head. "So Lieutenant Armin… launched a bolt of
fire at her horn, and… it caused a bit of a chain reaction. And I've checked
all of the boxes and freezers in this room already; the only ice available is
measly corner-bits."
Twilight turned to the solder, sharply arching a brow. "Is it impossible for
impaired changelings to use magic?" she asked.
The soldier shook his head. "Me and everyling else is magically capable… so I
wouldn't know a lot about impaired changelings," he replied, shrugging again.
"But she used her horn, despite it being broken. In her case, I'd wager 'yes'
under 'extenuating circumstance."
Twilight nodded and trotted to the soldier. "Could you show me around the
kitchens, then?" she asked. "Or at least, the rest of them?"
The soldier nodded and managed to form a small smile. "Sure thing," he chirped.
He turned to the door Twilight and her company came in from and trotted to it,
entering the compartment beyond. Twilight herself trotted after him, with Spike
and Maria falling into step behind her. Once they were in the first room of the
massive and hellishly cluttered kitchen, Twilight's horn glowed and her magic
grasped every box and fridge in the vicinity. With a swift flick and a nicker,
she threw them all open simultaneously, revealing even more frozen meats and
veggies in such obscene amounts it could keep Pinkie happy, were she to get
creative.
Twilight gave a low whistle. "I have to say, your food storage and amounts of
edible goods is impeccable," she murmured.
The soldier chittered, his smile widening. "We kinda tend to eat the foodstuffs
before they stay a week in the freezers, unless it's something nobody in the
military would think of touching," he chirped. He veered to one of the freezers
and started digging through it, while Twilight went to another and simply
levitated everything out of the frozen box effortlessly. When she found no ice
cubes, she simply put everything back, closed the freezer she'd dug into, and
trotted over to the next one to repeat the process.
"What's that?" Maria asked as the soldier pulled out a rather round, large
shape easily the size of the his barrel. It was covered in a few layers of
wrapping, which did a very good job of obscuring its features.
The soldier paused in his search and plucked the shape in his magic, slowly
spinning it around until he found its labeling. "Frozen purple wasp," he
answered.
"Do what now?" Twilight asked as she set down the second batch of foodstuffs,
since she had no luck finding ice cubes. She turned to the soldier, who turned
back and slowly, magically unwrapped the shape to reveal a filly-sized insect
curled up onto itself. It sported a black chitinous hide, large purple eyes as
big as her hooves, suspiciously-curled antennae and delicately-preserved
lavender wings sporting a faint luminescent sheen. "That… looks like a
butterfly," she remarked.
The soldier nodded, and used his magic to fiddle with the end of the bug's
abdomen, making sure to not damage its frozen flesh. With a few tender pushes,
a stinger as thick as her horn emerged. "I know, but trust me, it's a wasp," he
replied, slinging the bug onto his back, making sure it wouldn't sting him.
"It's gotta be eaten today; otherwise it'll go bad."
Twilight's stomach churned a little as she wondered who in their right mind
would eat giant wasps. "Um… did you manage to find any ice cubes?" she asked.
The soldier shook his head. "Nope, but I found some pancakes," he answered,
using his magic to reach into the freezer he was scouring to produce a frozen
stack of no less than three dozen fluffy, carefully-wrapped pancakes whose
bindings were as clear as crystal. "Hoof-made, and usually stored for later."
"Why store pancakes?" Spike asked, his brow arching at the incredulity of it
all.
The soldier turned to him and smiled. "Only a few in the military eat pancakes.
Lieutenant-General Bladerune's really, really big on them," he answered. "He
likes them with a side of tortoise bacon."
Spike's brow climbed higher. "Tortoise bacon?" he queried.
The soldier nodded. "Yeah. A hundred years ago, ponies and gryphs stopped
farming pigs and switched to tortoises, except maybe a few settlements here and
there that output pork products by the hundreds of thousands. The taste is
similar, so I was told," he answered. He saw Twilight cringe in the corner of
his eye and turned to her, his smile fading. "No, we don't farm pigs, but we do
eat them from time to time. I'm only going by what I heard."
Twilight relaxed a little and tilted her head. She trotted over to another
freezer and lifted everything within it via magic. "Do you keep ice in bags,
perchance?" she queried as the third box, too, turned up empty in the ice
department.
"Now that I think about it…" The soldier lifted a hoof and tapped his chin with
it, eyes gravitating up to the ceiling. "I don't think we had a need to…" He
turned to an opened freezer, magically closed the one he'd gotten the pancakes
and wasp from, trotted to that second freezer and peered inside. He spotted an
exposed blue crystal jutting from the backside via the wall, surrounded by
nothing but frost. Next to it was a yellow crystal that crackled faintly with
electricity, which in turn made the machine hum a little. "Jackpot."
Twilight closed the other boxes in that moment and cantered over to
investigate. "Is that what keeps the food chilled?" she queried, her eyes then
gravitating to the yellow crystal. "And does that power it?"
The soldier nodded. "Normally, both crystals are concealed by a layer of
aluminum though, because they work in tandem; each is the other's catalyst.
I'll notify Major Rhinoc that it needs that layer," he replied, magically
conjuring a wad of chitil before sticking it to the front of the machine. Then,
delicately, his magic seeped into the frost and wrenched it a little, causing
cracks to form.
A foal-sized piece immediately flaked away with a few more tugs, and it was
immediately wrapped in chitil, along with the pancakes and the wasp. In one
last flash of light all three items vanished before thawing and melting could
really set. The crystals dimmed after, though, and the soldier sighed. "Looks
like it needs recharging, too. Note to self: Notify Starcovert and Bladerune
after breakfast."
Before the box was closed, the crystals pulsed with mana that, when their paths
crossed, formed a dim green glow. The ice reformed; cracks sealed, the chunk
that was taken regrew, and within seconds it formed a seamless seal that caused
the crystals to dim further still. Twilight whistled again at the display. "Now
that's rather nifty. I wish Equestria found crystals like that and utilized
them like this machine does," she remarked.
"Equestria?" the soldier parroted.
Twilight turned to the soldier and gave a wan smile. "My home country in
Mythos," she replied.
"Can we eat now? I'm hungry," Maria complained, garnering the attention of her
current company, who all stared at her for a few seconds.
The soldier donned another smile. "With syrup, right?" he chirped. "Lemme get
the tortoise bacon, too. I think the mess hall's gonna need to operate in full
swing soon."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Matt and Lance, having both dried off, decided to groom themselves and don his
uniform in the case of the latter, even going so far as to make crude wing-
holes so as to spare the rest of the outfit from the awkwardness that was his
ludicrously huge-by-pegasus-standards wings. After that, they trotted through
the hall and knocked on a few doors, if only to get a move on waking everybody
else up. Some doors didn't budge, so on down the hall they trotted, knocking as
they went.
It took a good twenty or so minutes before a bloody door opened. Out trotted a
frazzled Flash Sentry, whose armor sat so askew on his withers it somehow fit
on backwards. His feathers were in disarray, his mane tangled, his horseshoes
were resting on his primaries, and for some reason that Matt and Lance did not
want to question, his helmet was resting on the southern end to his backside.
The only reason it didn't fall off was because his tail held it up and they
weren't even sure how he was able to keep the damn thing stable with the rest
of his suit on in a way that should not have been possible.
"Mommy, I didn't wet the bed," Flash grumbled tiredly, his eyes so unfocused
Matt and Lance were convinced he was staring through them.
Matt and Lance looked at each other for a second before turning back to the
evidently-dazed Flash. "Do you need a few more minutes…?" Lance ventured,
frowning in concern.
Flash cocked his head sluggishly, gaze still vacant. "I wanna be a royal
guardspony when I grow up, Mommy," he muttered.
Matt lifted a hoof and waved it in front of Flash Sentry's face. His eyes did
not gravitate after the hoof in the slightest. "Looks to me like he's dead on
his hooves," Matt remarked, retracting the hoof.
"Considering he's muttering about his mom, he may be sleep-trotting with eyes
wide open," Lance groused, his own wings ruffling slightly at the unnerving
sight of Flash Sentry seemingly staring into his soul.
Flash's ears fell back against his head, and his pupils dilated. "Mommy, what
are you doing? Where's Daddy?" he asked, an edge of curiosity and some other
emotion Lance and Matt couldn't place resonating in his otherwise-dead-tired
voice. "Mommy?"
Matt's horn lit up, and a golden dome of magic immediately encased Flash, who
didn't even register what was happening. Silently the two watched until Flash
flared his wings and began to flap for all it was worth, his mouth wide open
and his pupils shrinking as his knees trembled under threat of buckling.
Whatever noises he made did not bypass the barrier, however, though they did
manage to make it shake in tandem with his fast-liquefying legs.
It took him several minutes to calm down, though not before he threw his armor
off and fell down onto the floor in a fetal position. "Poor bastard," Lance
muttered, shaking his head in pity at the sight. "Looks to me like he may've
been hallucinating."
Matt nodded and dropped the barrier, and at once Flash Sentry turned into a
gibbering mess. "Mr. Guardspony, M-Mommy's dead…" That was the only coherent
thing Matt and Lance could get out of him; everything else tumbled over itself
so fast and haphazardly it almost sounded like he was going off in a Diamæntian
dialect. Lance knelt down to Flash's eye level and stared directly into his
bloodshot voids for some seconds, opening his mouth to say something, only to
have words die before they could form as Flash kept on rambling.
Matt sighed and magically embraced Flash's muzzle but made sure to leave his
nostrils untouched, which caused him to start flailing every which-way once
again. Lance quickly rose and backed off, but not fast enough to avoid getting
punched in the snout for his trouble. Flash tried to scream, but the magical
grip merely tightened enough to keep his jaws from parting. Then, the poor
guard was lifted onto his hooves and cemented in place by the golden aura,
whereupon its caster leaned in until they were perfectly eye level with one
another.
Firmly, but gently, Matt uttered a single command, "Wake up, and calm down."
Flash shook in place, even as he took a few scant breaths through his nostrils.
He continued to tremble as his mental cobwebs cleared with a few waves of fresh
air, and only when his legs stopped shaking every second did Matt release him.
His whole body felt like jelly, and he swallowed nervously. "You good now?"
Lance asked with a wince, raising a hoof to his snout to check for any
nosebleeds and bruises that either were underway or forming.
Flash shook his head. "Gonna need a few more minutes before I'm good," he
replied, his voice quivering a little. "H-have either of you been awake… b-but
we-were still d-dreaming?"
Both Lance and Matt nodded. "A few times," Matt admitted, his gaze averting for
a few seconds. "Anna has that particular issue the absolute worst out of all of
us, though."
Flash nodded slowly and shakily, feeling his body metaphorically return to a
more solid state. "H-how m-much sun is o-out?" he stammered.
"I looked out the window before hopping into the shower. The sun's
approximately at ten o'clock," Lance replied, staring at Flash with a critical
eye. "Do you need coffee today?"
Flash nodded again, this time hastily. "Th-that would b-be good. Extra s-
strong, no sugar," he answered.
Lance nodded back and turned to Matt. "Everybody else can wait. Let's get Flash
to the—"
Matt lifted his hoof and coughed into it, cutting Lance off. When Flash turned
to him with a raised brow, he used the same hoof to gesture to his discarded
armor. "You gonna trot in the free and easy, or in uniform?" he asked rather
awkwardly, his ears falling back at the implications.
Flash took a few seconds to process the question, then craned his neck in an
effort to follow Matt's raised hoof. When he saw the armor carelessly strewn
about, he frowned and let his wings droop a little. "Uh... I'll be right back,"
he murmured, spreading his wings and using them to scoop up the suit,
horseshoes and all. He backpedaled into his room after that, shutting the door
on his way in the moment he was behind it.
"Matt… I think the face-grabbing was a little bit uncalled for," Lance hissed,
eyes narrowing as Matt turned to him. "But, I am willing to let it slide this
time." His glare eased, and he sighed dejectedly. "I know full well how it
feels to silence a still-dreaming sod to keep everyone else from flipping their
shit, and I am not sure of how well Blueblood or Zecora would take being woken
up by someone else screaming."
Matt nodded. "Do I have to make it up to him later, though?" he queried.
Lance shook his head. "No, unless we're out of coffee," he replied with a
shrug. He turned to the lift at the end of the hall. "Maybe we should write a
note for the other sleepyheads to let them know we've gone to eat at the mess
hall."
At that moment, Matt's stomach gurgled. He smiled as the door before them
opened again to reveal Flash Sentry, this time with his armor on in the way it
was meant to go. "Mess hall?" he asked.
Lance nodded, still looking at the lift. "Sounds like a plan to me," he
chirped. He turned to Flash and leveled another critical gaze at him. "Serious
question… do you eat any meat at all?"
Flash actually nodded at that. "Did so when I was deployed in the Crystal
Empire, and I learned it was because Sombra drove their tilling fields so much
via the enslaved crystal ponies the fields dried up and the crops withered.
Supposedly, they had to hunt for their food whenever, wherever they could,
though now they're restoring their tilling fields so they won't have to do so
nearly as much. The local ponies there insisted I try some, and it was good.
Though… they cooked black birds," he answered. A smile formed on his face. "You
have any black birds?"
Lance smiled back. "I think we have a few birds," he replied.
"Before we get to the birds, though… I think we should fetch Lazzy," Matt
chimed in, turning to the assortment of doors that led to the lift. "But… which
room did he take?"
***** Chapter LXVI- Weshdoor Concerto *****
By the time everyone else in the guest chambers had woken up and gone to the
mess hall, it was not only early afternoon, but it was filled with a sort of
pregnant tension that could only be felt if one were to sit directly next to
its many living and breathing sources. For one reason or another, half the
Mythonian diplomats and a lot of their Fantasian military escorts could not,
would not sit still.
Tails swished, eyes darted this way and that, rear legs crossed and uncrossed
without rhyme nor reason. The soldiers of Delta Unit, who by that point came in
for lunch, chose to ignore it for the most part to their credit. A lot of the
food being eaten then took a while to prep, and the changelings busied
themselves with making and serving it. With the food came several rounds of
coffee and tea, and once the food was plopped on the various tables everyone
was well and wide awake at that point.
Applejack and Shining both ate a fresh helping of cooked vegetables slowly as
Flash sat across from them, helping himself to a small and chicken-shaped
animal that had been cooked until its skin was crispy brown. Two tails,
streaked blue and blond, swished, though not so suddenly they would hit the
pony that sat next to them. "Flash," Shining began in a calm voice, pausing to
take in a mouthful of cauliflower, "you do know that would be frowned upon in
many provinces in Equestria, right?"
Flash nodded, but simply ripped a wing off the cooked critter with delicate
tugs, and bit into it the moment wing parted from body. He did not speak until
he polished it to the tiny bones, "Try telling that to the crystal ponies back
home, Captain-Emperor. They haven't gotten the memo yet, and introduced me to
this." He gestured to the bird with a hoof for emphasis. That got him a very
reluctant sigh from his Captain-Emperor.
Shining blinked and took another sampling of his platter. Applejack, who
herself just swallowed another mouthful, was all too happy to fill in for him
on the matter of Flash eating meat. "Why'd they do it, if they did?" she asked,
her tone edging a little towards suspicion. Flash simply relayed to her what
he'd relayed to Matt and Lance, and when he finished her eyes widened. "Wait.
Sombra was that awful?"
Flash nodded again, biting into a piece of legmeat with relish. He spoke when
that went down the hatch, "Desperate times called for desperate measures, and…
have you seen the fields before the Crystal Heart was found?" When Applejack
nodded, albeit reluctantly, Flash extrapolated, "Not a lot of them could
remember how to farm effectively until that particular spell was broken. You
were lucky to find spare non-meat foodstuffs to even set up for the Crystal
Faire then."
Applejack shuddered, envisioning barren farming fields and despondent, starving
crystal ponies hunting for meager scraps of rabbit that were probably not
particularly willing to frolic to the Empire under Sombra's regime. "I take it
the Empire's back to square…" She racked her brain for a way to finish her
utterance, and it came up with a very rough estimate that she'd blurted out
before fully processing it, "one hundred on farming?"
Flash shook his head and beamed with a smile. "Square one thousand and fifty,
ever since trade's opened up between the Empire and the rest of Equestria the
day after Sombra was destroyed. The Empire's now on par with the rest of
Equestria technology-wise, and produce is skyrocketing now that its earth
ponies and weather pegasi can use their talents to the fullest extent. It could
probably go another two hundred at least, if Fantasia opens up on the trading
front," he chirped, pausing to tear into more bird flesh. "And this black bird
is good."
Shining nodded and bit into some more of his vegetables, smiling a little as
Flash was evidently having a good time with his meal. He turned to Applejack
and added, "I've… put into place some new regulations concerning the crystal
ponies' killing of animals for their meat, what was and wasn't alright to kill,
and to do so while making sure the animals involved don't feel any pain. I am
really glad I got that out of the way before the barrier broke."
Applejack nodded and relaxed a little, taking in another mouthful herself. "So
all the bunny rabbits and birds don't feel nothing?" she asked.
"Mhm," Shining hummed in reply, nodding again. He glanced around before his
eyes fell on a table to their left, upon which the purple wasp was laid on a
platter with bits of steam trailing away from its body and some meat-based
stuffing-type material heaped beneath it. The table the wasp was laid on
flashed in green light several times, and when the lightshow ended, it was
further topped by a myriad of plates and forks.
A few changelings, including the still-gurney-bound Cassida and Katie, were
gathered around it. Shining saw the barest sliver of drool leave through the
gaps in Katie's new teeth, her lower jaw quivering so minimally he had to blink
just to register the sight.
He turned back to the wasp and gawped when he realized just how big it was in
direct comparison to the changelings hungrily staring at it. "... has anypony
here seen an insect that huge in Equestria?" he asked, turning to Flash and
Applejack for confirmation. Both looked at Shining and shook their heads.
"I'll bet a parasprite swarm would have themselves a field day with that big
bug," Applejack remarked, her eyes widening when Katie lunged from the gurney
to the table and landed clumsily next to the freshly-plated wasp, gawping as
she realized her legs were still tied up in makeshift casts.
A soldier groaned as he grappled Katie with his hooves and planted her back on
the gurney in one deft motion. Katie merely jumped to the table again, eying
the wasp with a hungry glint in her orbs, only to shriek as she was removed and
replaced on the gurney yet again. When she jumped a third time, the soldier
trying to keep her planted in place groused in exasperation, "Yeesh, not even
being hogtied keeps her still. Are we gonna have to anchor the newbie's tail to
the ceiling to get her to stay put?!"
"I've seen her rotate her head a full 360 horizontally with no problems. I
wouldn't be surprised if she could backbend to pull her own tail out of a
knot," Armin remarked, chuckling as the complaining soldier once again
deposited Katie onto the blasted gurney. "And she has new molars. I'll bet she
could shear her own tail now anyway." Katie proceeded to jump ship yet again,
much to the other troops' growing frustration.
Finally, one soldier just gave up, applied chitil to the gurney, and planted
Katie on it before cementing her to the damned thing with said chitil. She
wiggled for a moment, growling in annoyance and jaws gnashing about, but the
chitil would not yield to her whims. Her attention turned to the gelatinous goo
and she started to bite at it, but it would not break and tear at all. It bent,
stretched, and flexed to comically ludicrous proportions, yes, but did not
break.
Katie opened her mouth and began to undulate her tongue, but a slap right to
the snout stopped her before it could even get an inch past her teeth. She
whimpered and lowered her head, ceasing her struggling on the spot. The soldier
who slapped her, a changeling with golden ribs and eyes, growled out in a
feminine voice riddled with exasperation, "We get that you're starving, but
can't you share even a little bit of wasp?"
"Haven't had purple wasp since I was a grub…" Katie lamented, looking at the
wasp longingly. "So tasty-looking… my tongue is itching..."
A rumble echoed through the room, followed by a low hum, causing everyone in
Delta Unit to look around in confusion. This culminated in a masculine voice
then coughing into the megaphone planted above one of the tables, and everyone
looked up to find Lance, his circle of right hoof ponies, and Maria sitting in
the tallest booth. They shook their heads in the changelings' direction, their
faces set in neutral, unreadable expressions. The megaphone in question hovered
in front of Lance via a mechanical arm, with the spot it was originally resting
at having parted in vertical halves to let said mechanical arm move it.
"Just carve it already; sooner you get it done, the less uppity a certain
someling amongst you will get," Lance stated in a flat voice. "And on that
note, I'm glad her appetite's finally kicked in."
The changelings obeyed, and the brown-ribbed soldier hummed a merry tune as he
conjured a carving knife and a fork in flashes of light. "Trust me, nooblet,
you haven't had purple wasp like this," he chirped, looking pointedly at Katie
as he started to grind the edge of the blade against the fork as though it were
a sharpener. "Tortoise bacon and tender stuffing usually reserved for fowl have
never gone so good with wasp."
Applejack and Shining turned away from the changelings and back to Flash, who
was now peeling away skin from the bird's breastmeat. "Y'know, this is the
first time I've seen a wraith get their tail in a twist over food," Applejack
remarked, smiling faintly at the prospect of Katie actively wanting food.
"Then again, I don't think any of us have seen wraith eating habits
extensively, either," Shining pointed out, deciding to take another mouthful of
his meal. "And she's getting something she enjoyed when she was a grub,
whatever that means. Honestly, that's a good thing if you asked for my input."
Flash nodded in agreement, moving the skin he tore off the breastmeat into his
mouth. He shifted the skin to one cheek before speaking, "I wonder if she's one
of the few… or perhaps the many wraiths who eat."
Applejack shrugged at that. "I guess we'll find out which o' the two she fits
into sooner or later." She turned up to look at Lance, who'd gone back to
eating some sort of meat-based thing she had trouble discerning from below his
perch. She also noticed Rainbow Dash from the corner of her eye, flying up to
said perch. "Oh boy," she muttered under her breath.
The moment Rainbow reached the perch was the same moment she more or less shot
her mouth clean off her muzzle. "So when will we be able to go into Greenwood
and see what the fuss is about?" she asked, crossing her forelegs impatiently.
Surprisingly, all she received from Lance and his group was a quartet of flat
looks, one perplexed face, one brow raising out of the whole lot, and complete
silence, broken only by the sounds of said group still biting and slicing at
their meals. It took a few seconds for someone to answer. "I dunno," Maria
replied with a shrug of her shoulders, her tone sincere and her face twisted
into an expression of confusion.
"Whenever they damn well feel like it," Armin called from his seat. That earned
him four nods from his superiors, and a groan of exasperation from Rainbow.
"Sadly, that about sums it up," Natalie stated rather dejectedly, her ears
folding back as a shiver ran down her spine.
"Perfectly," Matt added off-handedly, through a mouthful of meat no less.
"But if you want to go, I suppose we can't stop you," Lance sighed, closing his
eyes and shaking his head. "I would recommend taking some of my troops with
you, though, just to err on caution."
"Greenwood used to be nice until seven years ago…" Anna lamented in a low
voice, sighing despondently.
Rainbow frowned deeply at that. There was only one conclusion such a statement
lead to, and she'd have to be very simple-minded to not see it straight away.
"Something went down, and something major if you guys don't wanna go near it,"
she stated rather matter-of-factly.
"Very," Anna replied tersely.
"Mayhaps I should accompany you?" Blueblood proposed all the way from one of
the second-highest booths, looking at Rainbow with a flat gaze and a chin held
high. "I happen to know a thing or two about diplomacy; if anything, it would
be wise to tread cautiously."
That remark earned him several incredulous looks from Armin, Katie, and
Shining, all of whom rolled their eyes at him and muttered "Yeah, right" under
their breaths in unison, "Suuuuure you do." It also earned him a very
incredulous stare from Matt, which he balked a teensy bit under. Still, he
managed to keep his composure this time, which Matt found to be a commendable
feat.
"Perhaps I could trot along with you, too?" Flash piped up, having finished
stripping his bird to the bone. "Just in case we need to bolt."
"Only if I accompany you lot," Shining interjected.
"I wanna go too. Something's mighty fishy about this forest, and I ain't
stopping until I know what," Applejack stated, frowning firmly.
"Fine, fine, but we'll need to park the airship closer to Greenwood first.
Let's finish eating though; trotting there on an empty stomach is a bad idea,"
Lance barked through the megaphone, not even bothering to hide the exasperation
in his voice. With that, he tapped it with his hoof, pressing a button on the
side that Rainbow could not see until after his hoof retracted and it popped up
from the initial pressing. The mechanical arm vibrated a bit before it
retracted back into the wall, but the hole closed its sides and let the
megaphone rest as it was.
"Alright," the whole of Delta Unit replied in unison. Some of them spoke
through clenched teeth, while others only nodded dejectedly. Katie merely
folded her ears back and buzzed her swollen wing-nubs, an unpleasant shiver
trailing all the way to the base of her tailbone as she spoke alongside the
other changelings. At least one changeling was looking at Lance like he'd gone
crazy, though they kept their complaints to those incredulous stares.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The airship found another spot to park later that day, in a different part of
the woodland that honestly didn't look anything really different from the first
one save a ring of snuffed-out torches lining the clearing. By the time
Blueblood and his group of volunteers had disembarked the ship with Major
Rhinoc accompanying them, the sun was hanging at approximately 3 o'clock. The
first thing they noticed was a sweltering heat that seemed to have swept
throughout the forest, causing Rainbow and Flash to fan their wings to avoid
breaking out into a sweat.
"Yeesh, it feels like we trotted into a furnace!" Flash griped, sparing a
glance at the sky to find nary a cloud in its endless expanse of blue.
"No kidding!" Dash agreed, lifting a hoof to wipe the sweat already gathering
off of her brow. "And I haven't seen one leaf here at all! Why the hay did they
name this area 'Greenwood?!'"
"Actually, Greenwood's a little further away. We're in the surrounding wood
that is called Ashwood," Rhinoc corrected, getting incredulous stares from the
madly-flapping pegasi.
"Ashwood? Why's it called that?" Flash queried, both brows climbing up his
forehead.
Rhinoc responded by lifting a hoof and gesturing to the nearest tree with it.
Flash and Dash turned to it and frowned, finding its bark a hideous ashen color
that stretched from root to branch. Heck, now that they took a good look at the
branches, they saw that the entire lot was shriveled and withered beyond
anything they'd ever seen in Equestria. "That, my dignitaries, is what happens
when heat is allowed to rage through a wood unchecked," he stated grimly.
"Do they have earth ponies tending this wood?" Blueblood asked sincerely,
giving the tree Rhinoc pointed at a scrutinizing glare. "Or have the ponies
here let it wither as it did? Have they simply stopped caring about the
environment?"
Rhinoc shook his head. "Nopony has tended to this wood in some time now," he
replied. "Nopony."
"Not even earth ponies?" Blueblood asked, turning to Rhinoc with widening eyes
and a brow going up as its mate dropped down. Rhinoc shook his head again.
"Let's just get to Greenwood before my feathers burn off," Dash complained,
eyes narrowing as the air around her seemed to get hotter, thus forcing her to
flap her wings faster to compensate. Everyone nodded, and with that they
trotted into Ashwood, though not before Flash and Dash closed their wings just
so they could walk.
Passing the circle of torches, some more soldiers of Delta Unit flew behind
them from the airship, enveloping themselves in various colors of fire before
turning into rocks or barren trees, while Rhinoc threw purple flames around
himself to transform into a unicorn stallion sporting a murky, almost blackened
green mane and a birch blond coat. After doing that, he took point, and then
stopped before turning to his charges, in turn causing them to grind to a halt.
"Shining, do you know how to mass-teleport?" Rhinoc asked. "Or even yourself?"
Shining shook his head. "I can shield the entirety of Canterlot with one spell,
but teleportation isn't exactly my forte," he replied.
"Canter… oh. Lieutenant Armin told me of his little excursion there. Have you
ever tried to teleport before, then?" Rhinoc tried, only to grimace when
Shining nodded. "Did you succeed?" That time, Shining shook his head. "Not even
once?"
"I couldn't manage it. When I tried, I got distracted and turned my mother into
an orange on accident," Shining replied, ears folding back. "And I somehow gave
her a mustache in the process."
Rhinoc could've sworn he heard one of his fellow disguised changelings
snickering at that, though who exactly he couldn't tell since they decided to
transform into trees and stones. He made a mental note to have words with them
later, and sighed. "And since then you didn't?" he queried.
Shining nodded. "For an admittedly foalish fear of being tackled by my kid
sister," he replied. "Though we're grown now, and I may start practicing…
provided I don't get knocked off my hooves again."
Rhinoc nodded back. "Fair enough," he agreed. He turned around and started
trotting again, his steps harried but carefully calculated into the lockstep
march. He heard the others moving along behind him, hurriedly trotting to
escape the sweltering air as soon as possible. It took him several minutes of
trotting before he realized that he couldn't help but notice that another line
of torches had stretched at their side, probably stemming from the ones
circling the second clearing, and idly wondered whether or not they led to
Greenwood.
The hot air around them shifted, sometimes climbing to new heights of desert-
level heat, other times dipping to something a little more bearable. An hour of
wading through the forest passed by, with nobody daring to speak for fear that
the heated air may scorch their tongues, and Delta Unit stealthily moving
behind in their effort to play as part of a ruined environment. Blueblood took
the chance to look at the ground before finding a lot of it suspiciously
blackened, as though lightning or fire swept through the desolate Ashwood. He
turned to the trees and studied them as they passed, finding bits of slate gray
and bits of flaking ash.
"Just dreadful! Horrendously, simply dreadful beyond compare! Even the
abominable Everfree Forest is more lively in comparison!" Blueblood thought,
ears folding back when he heard a rather suspect bubbling of some sort of thick
liquid. He hesitated, his pace slowing, as his eyes darted about to find the
source of the liquid, if only to confirm what it was and whether or not it had
to do with the current state of Ashwood.
Rhinoc tensed as an ash-laden wind whistled through the trees. Everypony behind
him paused, looking about to see what had him agitated. Blueblood halted and
took another look at the trees. Oddly, one of them seemed to have sported… a
malformed face? He couldn't tell; it had lumps aplenty, and freakishly wide
holes on a trunk so thick it gave the lich-wyrm in the crystal caverns some
competition. Some of the bark had either peeled away or been ripped off,
revealing deathly pale… pulsating flesh beneath it?
And the damned thing seemed to have been grinning at him with a hole forming on
a crudely-muzzle-shaped lump, or he thought it did. He turned to Rhinoc,
opening his mouth to demand an explanation, when his voice died in his throat
at the sight of many trees turning their holes in the group's direction,
leering at them from empty voids betraying a whole myriad of expressions on the
suspect lumps littering their barks.
"... those the other changelings?" Shining asked, whereupon Rhinoc turned to
him and shook his head with a grimace.
"No. Cursed trees—some say they're ponies who fell under a horrific curse and
were transmogrified, but honestly I dunno how the hell that's possible.
Others've told me they're golems, given life yet without mobility. It's best to
let them be," Rhinoc replied, turning ahead and trotting on. The rest of his
entourage followed him, hastily trotting to escape the gaze of the trees.
"Cursed… trees?" Blueblood uttered, his face blanching as he turned to one of
the trees that were watching his every hoofstep. His jaw quivered upon seeing
its face; its mouth drooped down at the corners so sharply he wondered whether
or not it had been forcibly extended by cruel means. Its eyes were slanted
likewise, and some blackened substance dribbled from their corners in rivulets
of crude tears.
The tree, distended though its mouth was, managed to utter something. A fleshy
tongue flopped up and down, filled with rot-holes and spilling maggots with
each movement. The face twisted even further, resembling less a face and
something more eldritch in nature. Out came a single plea, gurgled and choked
and hollow to the point Blueblood could not place tone, inflection, nor
baritone or lack thereof. "Help… m-m-meeee…"
Blueblood felt shivers go down his spine. "Is… there anything we can…"
Rhinoc shook his head. "No. We'd have to find whoever cast the spell and kill
them, and I'll bet that bastard's long dead. Even cutting them down would not
alleviate their pain." He turned to another pleading tree, its mouth warped to
the point it could not speak, but instead waving its branches frantically.
"This is one of the reasons Lance doesn't like going through here."
Flash's wings ruffled and their feathers puffed out at the notion. "But what
if… whoever did this is still…"
"Well, in that case, we'll yank their horn clean off and cart them to
Lieutenant-General Windwood to deal with," Rhinoc replied. "Assuming, of
course, the caster's a unicorn and not a centaur or something."
Blueblood balked. "Why resort to such barbaric methods?!" he cried.
Rhinoc jerked his head to another cursed tree, pleading for help as they
passed. "If they, as in the caster, were heartless enough to do this, then they
deserve no more and no less. Treated as they have treated these poor souls," he
stated rather callously. "If they transmogrified ponies directly," he added as
an aside.
He frowned as they passed a felled tree that lay in several pieces, each
fragment bleeding profusely and writhing with decaying flesh beneath the bark.
Its multitude of bodyparts was riddled with a plethora of arrows made from a
whole array of various materials. What materials they were, though, were
obscured as moss and kudzu that were growing on the bark concealed most of the
arrows, leaving only their fletching untouched. Still, somehow, by a twisted
miracle, the fragmented tree was pitifully moaning for help.
Rhinoc's voice lowered, and his tone turned somber as he added, "Anna… tried to
help the trees here. The one we just passed…" He shook his head. "She broke
down crying trying to alleviate its pain three years ago, and it was already in
pieces before she even arrived." Everypony behind him winced, each turning to
the tree as it lay there, paling and grimacing when 'three years ago'
registered in their minds. "She just… snapped then. I couldn't blame her. We've
left Greenwood alone, and Ashwood too, until you guys insisted on trekking
through here."
"It's been like that for three years?! Just laying there, hurting, and in
pieces before then?!" Applejack screamed, tears beginning to prick at her eyes
the longer she stared at the broken tree, her ears starting a fit of ringing
the longer she heard it cry out for help that wouldn't come. "That's… words
can't even describe how awful it is!" She stamped her hoof and turned to
Rhinoc. "I'd buck whoever cast that spell from here straight to Frostbite!"
"May as well get in line," Rhinoc snorted with another shake of his head, "If
Anna could, she'd probably turn them into a tree first."
"Would the whole military use whatever spell turned these ponies into trees, if
Anna could turn that plothole who did this into a tree?" Dash asked.
Rhinoc nodded. "That bastard has been on Lance's shitlist ever since we found
out about the cursed trees," he answered. "And if we had the tree-spell on
hoof, that bastard would wind up suffering as these ponies have suffered.
However, Lance deemed that forbidden dark magic, and honestly I can see why."
Shining's brow furrowed at that, though he did agree with Rhinoc's utterance
nonetheless. "So… horn removal would be the next best option?" he asked.
Rhinoc nodded once more. "Just about." With that, the group trotted on, past
moaning trees and sweltering air that would not yield too much heat at all. A
good hour passed before they reached another clearing, also marked with torches
lining its edges.
Rhinoc's ears pricked when he noticed that a faint bubbling sound permeated the
air. He glanced around, trying to scan the surrounding area without looking
into the faces of any nearby cursed trees, and squinted his eyes when he
spotted a faint orange glow directly east by an immeasurable number of meters.
"We must be close to Greenwood," he murmured.
Blueblood looked at Rhinoc and narrowed his eyes again. "What are you
stipulating now? If we were close, we'd see a bloody house!" he pointed out in
an irate tone.
Rhinoc sighed and lifted a hoof to rub his temples with it, before he dropped
it and noticed a tree that had, against all logic, reason, and probability, had
a broken window in the back. The tree itself was as thick as ten ponies
standing side by side, and without hesitation he trotted right up to it. When
he reached the window, he reared up and peered inside, finding an open door on
the opposite wall greeting him, and past that a distant river of glowing orange
liquid.
"Welp, we found a house, but one in disuse. Definitely close now," Rhinoc
snorted, squinting his eyes to better see the insides of the tree house he'd
discovered. Whatever furniture there was had been broken beyond all
recognition, and caked in dust and moss on top of that. "I wonder who this
place belonged to."
***** Chapter LXVII- A Ceremony, Crudely Enshrined *****
Rhinoc and his group trotted around the house and veered due west from it, and
Blueblood scowled as more blackened ground came into view. "What would happen
to the cursed trees, were the pony or whatever had put them in such an abysmal
state ended up being horribly murdered?" he hissed sibilantly.
"They would very likely die off, if the caster was killed. But should the
caster die by natural means, they could remain in their current state," Rhinoc
answered, his own voice marred in anger that reflected in narrowing faux eyes
and a very firm frown to match it. "Not much is known about the spell and its
effects; all we know is that cursed trees simply cannot die."
"I take it study of such forbidden arts is… well…" Flash trailed off, his wings
ruffling as a cursed tree nudged him on the neck with a spindly, withered
branch. He hurried his pace before the branch could touch him again.
"Yes, study of forbidden arts is pretty much as illegal as actually casting the
spells themselves. Or at least, amongst us members of the First Unified Army,"
Rhinoc replied with a sigh of resignation. He noticed arching rocks up ahead,
scorched black and connected to the ground with thin threads of some twig-like
solid via their overhangs. He added, "Nobody knows what the hell the cursed
trees are made from, let alone how they're formed. It's very suspect, but there
isn't much we can do about that. Golem or transmogrified pony, it's all the
same no matter how you slice it; especially once you add the flesh under their
bark and their immortality into that equation."
Somehow, the second bit flew over one pony's head completely as her brain
settled on two particular words she'd never expected Rhinoc to utter together
in the same sentence. "... First Unified?" Dash repeated, pupils shrinking as
she stared at Rhinoc.
"Yeah. It… was a bit of a kerfuffle settling on the name, and the higher-ups
wanted something simple, so they picked that and rolled with it," Rhinoc
answered, this time with a note of amusement in his voice. "There was an Air
Force, but that one's troops been relegated to other duties when the airships
were scrounged up. One higher-up didn't want redundancy, and the ectoplasms
were growing out of hoof then."
Dash leaned towards Blueblood and whispered to him, "Yeah, something tells me
we're only pastern-deep in whatever Fantasia's problems are."
Blueblood found himself nodding in agreement at that, before turning his
attention to an arcing rock as he and the others hurriedly trotted under it,
narrowly dodging its meager threads of black, solidified gunk in the process.
He noticed several drop-like protrusions littering its suspiciously shiny
surface, frozen to their spots as though someone had perhaps glued them there.
"What happened here?" he asked.
"I heard a meteorite struck this area about half a decade ago, and apparently
it did so with a vengeance. We're in a patch of solid obsidian, and I'd
recommend letting it alone," Rhinoc replied, trotting on ahead. "Past here is
Greenwood. There should be a trail somewhere that we can follow." As they
passed another arching mound of obsidian, Blueblood caught sight of a small
puddle of boiling red, thick liquid that seemed to darken just a little as he
peered at it.
"Is that… lava?" Blueblood asked, flinching when the puddle popped and hissed
at his passing.
"Bona fide. It'll probably finish cooling into obsidian overnight," Rhinoc
answered, pausing for a moment when a small river of the stuff barred his path,
at least an entire pony's barrel in width. He deftly jumped over it with a
shrug, turned around, and gestured to it. "Watch your hooves. That shit can
still burn." Dash, Flash, and Shining crossed over the minor obstruction,
either by flaring their wings and flapping or by self-levitating. Applejack
backed up a few paces before surging forward in a gallop and jumping over to
land smoothly on the other side.
Blueblood sighed and backed up as well, before following Applejack's example.
His landing was a little clumsy, as his legs nearly buckled and came close to
making him faceplant, but a steadying hoof to the withers from Shining managed
to stop him in the nick of time. After taking a moment to straighten his
posture and nod his thanks to Shining, he turned to Rhinoc again. "Is that the
only flow of lava we must cross?" he queried.
Rhinoc nodded, that time with a smile forming on his face. "On this route,
yeah. I reckon it'll finish cooling by tonight, so we won't have to leap over
it again," he replied, his tone chipper.
Blueblood nodded back, but managed a groan nonetheless. "Oh, if the Day, Night,
and Crystal Courts hear of this when I get back home…" He shuddered, ears
folding back.
"They'll grill you like a black bird on a spit?" Flash offered.
Blueblood mulled the remark over for a moment before slowly nodding. "That, and
for eating food that isn't the… ahem, usual nobility's faire," he concluded.
"Nevermind for associating with admittedly-blunt Fantasians." He turned to
Rhinoc. "No offense."
"None taken," Rhinoc stated, his smile faltering a little. Then his brain
caught up to the fact that Blueblood mentioned Courts. "Wait… Day, Night, and…"
"One operating during daytime, one during night, and one back in the province
that I rule over in Mythos that goes on and off, depending if the members there
feel like it or not," Shining extrapolated, frowning a little. "When they all
get together, it's a Parliament. And it's less pleasant than it sounds."
Rhinoc sighed. "One of the perks of being in… their class?" he asked.
"In my case, above their class," Shining answered, nodding in assent. "They
were really vocal after your leader showed up and enlightened us to the fact
that we really, really should not get involved in Fantasian affairs. He showed
me his wings when they were still bound, just to prove his point."
Rhinoc's shoulders sagged at that. "And… he didn't stop you guys from coming
anyway?" he queried in exasperation.
"Listen, me and my friends already got involved at Frostbite, so I just think
Lance figured he wouldn't stop us from sticking our noses in a second time,"
Rainbow stated, sitting on her haunches to cross her forelegs over her barrel.
"And that's because the village elder over there foalnapped one of our own."
She gave Shining a grim, narrow-eyed look when he opened his mouth to ask what
in Tartarus that was about, and her expression was one that all but screamed 'I
will explain later.'
"Ah, one of those incidents," Rhinoc groused, now frowning deeply at that.
"Well, Windwood's twin is also involved… shame she couldn't accompany us."
"Her broken wing got in the way?" Shining guessed.
Rhinoc fervently nodded at that. "Alexander wanted to do check-ups the moment
she finished eating, just to make sure it's recovering smoothly," he clarified.
With that he turned and began trotting once more, with everypony filing into
step behind him. "Just a few more miles on hoof, and we should be there. We are
not spending the night in town, though."
With that, they trotted in silence for several minutes on end, which then
stretched to an hour. After the obsidian rocks fell a good ways behind them,
the group noticed that, slowly, whole portions of the surrounding wood started
becoming more vibrant. A bush sprung up here, a patch of yellow flowers filled
up a clearing they trotted through, and before too long the trees themselves
turned a much more healthy shade of brown and even sported leaves on their
branches. The cursed trees' numbers also declined drastically, filling the
forest with the usual ambience of bird calls and chirping crickets in their
place.
However, the leaves were a fiery orange in color, glistening in the sunlight
like roiling flames. Thirty minutes after seeing the first leaves on the trees,
they came across stone arches suspiciously shaped like gates. These gates were
framing a sloping hill lined with a flight of stone stairs that simply sported
gaps extending twenty, perhaps thirty, steps at a time.
Grass spilled from those gaps, and ivy crept up the stone gates, giving the
impression that the structure simply eroded with time and nature running their
courses, and the plants glimmered with a faint green aura. Both steps and gates
had cracks running through their structures, only furthering that impression.
It seemed the steps and gates were all that was left of whatever grandiose
monument was originally built here; meager remnants of a distant past.
"Is this… a shrine?" Dash asked, studying the steps closest to her.
"Used to be more elaborate than this, but yes," Rhinoc replied, shaking his
head rather pityingly at the sight. "It all went to hell around the same time
Anna joined the army." He gestured to the ivy with a hoof. "She grew those
vines to keep the gates together. Told me it was an important part of the
village's history." He turned south, towards the fragmented bottom of the stone
flight. "I am amazed the ivy is still even here."
"For all her talk about how horrendously Greenwood's galloping downhill,"
Blueblood mused, eyeing the ivy with a scrutiny that seemed to have been honed
by years of practice, "I am rather impressed she even found something of
sentimental value to attempt a preservation effort upon."
"You could say that again," Shining agreed with a hasty nod of his head. He
turned to Rhinoc, just as he began descending the worn-down flight. "Can we
head upstairs first? I want to see what this shrine holds."
Rhinoc stopped and glanced over his withers, a wry smirk playing at his lips.
"Well, I suppose I cannot stop you. Just don't make any sudden movements when
we reach the top, alright?" he asked.
Shining exchanged glances with everypony else who accompanied him, and they all
nodded back. It seemed like a simple request. Then, he turned to Rhinoc and
nodded as well. Rhinoc backed up a few paces and surged forward, pumping
strength into his legs to make a hell of a stunning leap over his charges
before landing smoothly behind them. They turned around and stared with
widening eyes, and he glanced over his withers to shoot them another smile.
"Some of us changelings can leap like grasshoppers. Only downside is I can't do
that too many times in a day," he chirped, evidently pleased with himself. "The
muscles for jumping are a little… damaged."
"Damaged?" Flash parroted, canting his head.
"Had an accident with Windwood once. She had a freak magic surge trying to work
with runes using an arrow of all things, and my legs haven't healed… fully as
of yet. It was only a couple of months before the barrier broke," Rhinoc
extrapolated with a sigh of resignation. "Amazingly, she got her cutie mark
from that accident."
Rainbow gave a low whistle at that. "How bad was the accident, all in all?"
Rhinoc gestured to the ivy again. "Turned one whole room of the base into a
greenhouse, but that was only temporary, and surprisingly easy to clean up," he
answered. He turned to the stairs ahead of him and began canting up them, being
careful to not step on the cracks or the ivy. He took great care in lowering
his hooves just a little more wherever necessary to step on the grass framing
the gaps or if the steps sagged a bit. Once more, Shining and his group
followed, heading in single file to avoid aggravating the steps too much in
their trot uphill.
They passed under three ivy-held gates within a matter of minutes, reaching the
top of the hill to discover a raised plateau lined with trees and rune-
inscribed stone henges, all surrounding a structure that stood dead center. The
structure stood on two legs as thick as two ponies standing side-by-side, the
body held up at least twice as wide and framed with a metal jaw. Arms hung
slack at its sides, one ending in a set of steel knuckles and the other in a
very thick spear that gleamed with a dull sheen. Hollowed-out eyes stared into
the middle distance, accentuating a flat top that made up its head.
Oddly, the structure had been primarily crafted of wood; organic and yet
artificial at the same time, and even stranger it did not have a torso but
rather its whole head was the torso. Rhinoc dropped his disguise in a flare of
purple flames, then he stalked forward before bowing towards the entity. "We
meet again, Mighty Oak," he chirped.
The thing he dubbed the Mighty Oak actually managed a slow nod, accompanied by
a pulse of mana across its body and a low groan of metal grating on wood. It
lifted the spear-tipped arm and gestured to the henge nearest the group of
visitors, and at once the runes on it flared to life in a brilliant green
light. Then, the light projected from the runes, forming odd letters none of
them could read.
Rhinoc stood up and turned to the visitors, and saw them turning to the runes.
"He's asking what you're doing here," he stated, lifting a hoof to gesture to
the Mighty Oak for emphasis. He turned to the Mighty Oak again and answered,
"Mythonian diplomats who wanted to see the shrine. A lot has… happened
recently."
Again, the Mighty Oak managed a nod. The runes stopped glowing, and the letters
projected from them vanished. Then, he lifted his spear-tipped arm and pulled
it toward himself several times, beckoning the diplomats to come forward. They
hesitated at first, but took slow steps after a few glances were exchanged.
They bowed once they stood behind Rhinoc, though only to avoid getting on the
Mighty Oak's bad side, if he had one.
Rhinoc stepped aside and turned to Shining. "I think you should do the honors
of enlightening our friend here," he chirped. Shining Armor nodded and
straightened his posture, and cleared his throat before he started explaining
to the somehow-sentient construct before him all that had happened.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
It took a whole hour for Shining to enlighten the Mighty Oak on recent
happenings, with Applejack and the others chipping in their two bits wherever
needed, save for the start of the whole thing, in which Applejack and Rainbow
did most of the speaking. They waited after that, faces tinged a slight shade
of blue—or a darker shade in Rainbow's case—as they awaited what the Mighty Oak
would say or do.
Finally, after a moment that seemed to stretch for an eternity, the Mighty Oak
gave his answer in the form of a slow, methodic nod. Another henge glowed in
light, and before him more of those strange letters appeared. Rhinoc studied
them for a second. "He's glad Sarah's been found and reunited with her sister,
but is concerned about their mental health," he translated.
Applejack turned to Rhinoc, an incredulous brow raised. "Where'd you learn to
read that?" she asked, lifting a hoof to gesture to the glowing letters.
"And what language is it?" Flash added. "It's nothing like I've seen; not even
Pre-Unification Equestrian compares."
"Oh, that's something the higher-ups refer to as 'ancient alicorn,' but only
because they don't know what language it is either," Rhinoc replied with an
earnest shrug. "It's been around for about as long as a changeling dialect I've
heard only one changeling even use anymore, and sparingly at that, according to
Lieutenant Armin."
"Spindly red mane, thin as a twig, broke horn?" Applejack guessed. "I heard her
rattling off in what she called Swarm dialect once."
Rhinoc nodded again. "Yeah, that one." He turned to the Mighty Oak. "Thank you
for your time. We'll be on our way." The Mighty Oak groaned and nodded, and
with that they trotted away from him and down the haggard steps leading to his
enshrined plateau.
"So… nobody speaks in Swarm anymore?" Rainbow asked, frowning.
Rhinoc nodded slowly and glumly as he assumed his unicorn guise again. "It's
practically a dead language at this point. Only one speaker left to use it, and
she doesn't use it that much." He sighed pityingly and ruefully. "I wonder if
she can read and write in that tongue. Would be a waste if she couldn't. We
found so few records written in Swarm that Armin's the only one who studied it
extensively, but even he can't speak it fluently."
Applejack leaned toward Rainbow, but only enough to whisper to her without
risking her own balance in the process. "Sounds to me Armin's gonna be their
go-to changeling whenever Katie lapses in that Swarm o' hers," she muttered.
Rainbow nodded. "Remind me to ask her if she can write in it," she stated.
"Blueblood… are you the modest type of pony?" Rhinoc asked, waiting until he
passed the final gate before sparing a glance over his shoulder. When Blueblood
nodded, he turned back to the rest of the staircase that awaited them. With a
flash of light he conjured several buckets, each one polished so thoroughly
they reflected the bits of sunlight that filtered through the leaves. "You guys
may need these for when we reach Greenwood." He gave each of his charges a
bucket, and set aside a triad by resting them on his back.
"Is it anything like hippogryphs ripping a full-grown stallion to shreds?"
Rainbow queried, her utterance causing Blueblood's cheeks to puff out and a
green tint to bud on his face.
"Well… on a scale of horrendous to let-us-never-speak-of-this-ever-again,
nowhere near it. But still disgusting in its own right," Rhinoc answered with a
sigh. As they descended the flight, Shining noticed that he could faintly hear
some kind of commotion coming from the trees ahead. The noises were rather
joyous, but over what he couldn't discern. Perhaps there was a celebration of
some sort?
Well, whatever the case, he took a few deep breaths to steel himself. He held
the bucket that was hoofed to him in his magic, and sighed through his nose. He
saw Blueblood doing the same, and Flash and Rainbow using their primaries to
hold theirs. Applejack simply carried hers precariously upon her back.
Amusingly, some of the trees surrounding them, and the pebbles at their roots,
were now also equipped with an array of buckets of their own. The instruments
of liquid-juggling were either tucked away in branches or resting upon the
pebbles.
Shining frowned. Delta Unit was preparing for whatever horrendous thing lay in
Greenwood, too? His stomach began twisting into knots, and he started getting
the niggling feeling that maybe the changelings could sense things he couldn't;
that would very well explain their affinity for love-draining, now that he
thought about it. The joyous noises grew louder as they trotted off the
staircase and headed straight south, and Shining shuddered as one of the cursed
trees, intermingled with the trees full of leaves, managed to look at him.
"Stay… away from Greenwood," it pleaded, its voice taking on a desperate note
that reflected in its haphazardly-swaying branches. "Otherwise… you'll end up…"
It did not get to finish its utterance as, tragically, Shining already vanished
deeper into the forest with his group at that point.
Speaking of, his frown twisted further, and several alarm bells were going off
in his head. The trees were now telling him to stay away too? Just what sort of
madness had befallen this place? He swore if he spent a minute longer in town
than was necessary, he might come out with a few loose screws that would need a
thorough application of brain bleach at a later time. It wasn't until several
minutes after departing from the steps of the shrine, when an old dirt trail
weaved through the forest caught their eye, was the silence that settled
broken.
Rainbow, tired of the silence, decided to blurt something out. "Laz told me
that Anna's crazy. Did Greenwood drive her nuts?" she asked.
Rhinoc paused to consider the statement, before he reluctantly shrugged. "She
got crazy enough to get therapy for a full year before joining the army, in
fact, but I don't know if the town itself was responsible. She was, mentally
and metaphorically speaking, a train wreck," he answered, his voice low and
grim. "I don't know the full details; you'd have to ask either Lance or
Alexander. They know the extent of her nuttiness."
"She… had a therapist?" Flash asked, his jaw hanging open after he made the
utterance.
Rhinoc nodded again. "Most I know is physical therapy, on top of mental
exercises that didn't involve the use of her magic," he answered. "And a few
classes for the most basic of spells."
"She had to be taught basic spells?!" Blueblood exclaimed, pupils shrinking to
pinpricks as that, and Rhinoc's confirmation that one of his higher-ups was
tutti-frutti registered in his mind with the force of an airship colliding with
a mountainside. "What barbarians kept one unicorn from reaching her potential
before she joined the military?!"
"Good news is she was a very fast learner. Only downside was having to explain
the basics to her, but even that was simple," Rhinoc answered, nodding again.
"As for who didn't teach her… dunno." His ears folded back as the sounds grew
louder still, and enough that many different masculine voices could be made out
with ease. "Oh great, the villagers are partying…" he groused.
"Is that a bad thing?" Applejack asked, frowning deeply at that.
"I take it you have yet to see how hard some villages party? Sometimes it
crosses so many disgusting thresholds it makes me ashamed to have been born on
the same planet as the partygoers," Rhinoc groaned, slowing his pace just a
little bit. "Frostbite should've been your first clue."
Applejack winced, a clawing sense of dread and trepidation growing
uncontrollably within the very depths of her soul. Some hamlets considered
cannibalism cause for celebration? She found herself breathing a sigh of relief
over the fact she didn't bring Apple Bloom and the other Crusaders along for
the diplomatic ride, though she did make a mental note to consult Luna to let
them see her in the dreamworld at a later time.
Dear Faust, some morbidly fascinated part of her wondered what other horrors
local Fantasians got themselves giddy over. Applejack tried shaking the
thoughts from her head, but such curious musings would not so easily be
banished. This only made her shudder as her dread increased, causing her pupils
to shrink and her frown to deepen further into a scowl. She noticed that the
voices ahead that were celebrating were also… moaning? Over what?
Then, amidst all of the voices, a single feminine voice managed to pierce
through the fog, though only barely. "I-I'll be a g-good f-filly… a g-good b-
blank f-flanked filly," the owner uttered, in something trying to be anything
else other than a half-gurgled choke. Applejack tensed, and her ears fell back
as she remembered Maria's plea the day one of her tormentors met his gruesome
end at Rarity's hooves.
Her stomach twisted as the possibility of Greenwood turning into another
Frostbite presented itself to her with the utterance of the half-choked voice,
and something seemed to click in place. She turned to Rainbow and asked, "Didja
hear that?"
Rainbow looked back and nodded solemnly. "Heard the 'good filly' part loud and
clear. Remind you of anypony?" she queried, her voice slightly cracking.
Applejack nodded back, just as gravely. "Anygryph, rather, but yeah. I think we
should prepare to kick some flank in case—" She bumped into an errant torch and
staggered before she had the chance to turn ahead and stop herself, but she did
not topple over or even drop her bucket. Instead, she merely backed up a few
trots, turned forward, then went around the torch when a sign right next to it
caught her eye. "Hey, what's this here say?" she asked, brow furrowing when she
saw the same strange letters the Mighty Oak had used on the piece of wood.
"Oh?" Rhinoc lifted a hoof to halt the expedition party before cantering around
them and to the sign to study it. His face paled considerably as he read it.
"W-wedding c-ceremony… t-today u-until m-midnight…" He gulped and backed away
from the sign, and returned to take point and continue on his way, his knees a
lot more weak and wobbly than before. "R-ready the b-buckets…"
Applejack felt her stomach rumbling and pang repeatedly in pain, as though it
were re-enacting the petrification of Discord. While a wedding ceremony in
itself didn't sound terribly bad, if the moaning and the whole 'I'll be a good
filly' bit were anything to go by, then somehow something was going wrong. But
she didn't know for certain; maybe the moaners had wounded themselves somehow,
and perhaps the 'I'll be good' was the standard equivalent of 'I do' in these
parts of Fantasia. That revelation did little to ebb her concerns, though.
A village gate came into view twenty minutes after they trotted from the sign,
laden with red roses interlaced with poison ivy of all things. In fact, were it
not for the roses, she'd not have noticed at all. "That the entrance to
Greenwood?" she asked, her voice a little weak as bile started climbing up
their throat.
Rhinoc hastily nodded. "A-are your b-buckets r-ready?" he stammered weakly. He
glanced over his shoulder to receive five nods, though not before Applejack
lifted a foreleg to grasp her bucket, lift it off her back and grapple the thin
wiry handle in her mouth. Then, he lifted one of the buckets on his back and
put it in his mouth before turning ahead and striding forward.
Once the group entered Greenwood proper, the moaning only intensified into a
deafening din. However, where the incessant noises were coming from were a bit
muddled, largely in part because they basically strode into another clearing
peppered with leafless trees, some as thick at the trunk of Fluttershy's
cottage, with windows to frame the upper floors and doors to serve as the
entrances. Anything to suggest marital festivities, though, were bereft from
the surrounding landscape. In fact, not even the ground itself held any clues
as to what was going on.
Stranger still, the villagers were nowhere to be found; not one piece of hide
nor mane lingered. Despite the lack of visible life that wasn't tree and
ground, the group pressed on, weaving between several trees until they came
upon a trail consisting of several sets of hoofprints. Wordlessly, they
followed the trail, heading into a secondary clearing with rows of ponies
watching a podium of some sort, all within in a matter of minutes. On the
podium, one young mare in a white gown was…
Applejack and her companions promptly did a double-take, shaking their heads
and rapidly blinking their eyes to confirm what they were seeing. The young
mare on the podium was being mounted by a stallion in a tuxedo, and if the
strangeness didn't skyrocket from there, then the line of yet more stallions in
similar outfits and sporting fifth legs behind the one having his turn did.
Behind the publicly-mating couple, an elderly unicorn stallion with a faded
brown coat and a greying green mane watched on with an expression so utterly
devoid of emotion he almost seemed to be staring into the middle distance. His
eyes were as dull as his coat, and his pupils seemed to have blended into the
pools of green, which did not at all help matters in the slightest, let alone
his vacant expression.
Rhinoc and his charges' faces promptly twisted into expressions of pure
disgust. They backpedaled slowly, partly to avoid drawing attention to
themselves and partly to avoid bumping into each other in their ignominious
exit from an even more horrendous display. They halted, however, when the
elderly stallion shifted his distant gaze ever so slightly toward them, and
cleared his throat loudly enough to get the bride and… groom? Best stallion?
Whomever it was, his sharp "ahem" ground the proceedings to an immediate halt.
They looked to him, and he nodded in the direction of the unexpected guests.
"Come sit with us… stay for the festivities," the elderly stallion intoned, his
tone surprisingly sharp and authoritative for somepony so dead-faced the cursed
trees were given a run for their bits. "You needn't mount the bride, though;
only those born into Greenwood are afforded that privilege."
In that moment, the stomachs of Applejack and her companions clenched so hard
they felt the bile squeezing out into their throats. They proceeded to ready
the buckets to receive their payload, but not before turning around and
witnessing a vibrant green shield encompassing all of Greenwood.
***** Chapter LXVIII- Jinxed Constellations *****
It took almost thirty minutes for the proceedings, including the one or two
minutes the newly-arrived group spent emptying their stomachs into their
buckets, to conclude. After that, everypony in the crowd dispersed, save for
the elderly stallion with the vacant gaze. He watched as the bride, who
amazingly enough had the strength left to do so, wobbled home with one of the
tuxedo-clad stallions. "I understand not everyone is… accustomed to such a
sight, and I sincerely wish it could be avoided," he groused in a remorseful
voice, turning to his uninvited guests. "But you must understand; we ponies of
Greenwood are… cursed."
Blueblood, whose face had turned to a shade of darkened verdant, lurched a bit
as more bile tried to force itself out of his throat. He swallowed it with a
great deal of willpower, and then turned to glower at the stallion. "Wh…
whatever are you blabbering about?" he hissed, his voice pained.
"And… what did you mean by… 'those only born in Greenwood?'" Rhinoc groaned,
clutching his aching stomach with a hoof.
The elder sighed, but his face did not shift in any way save for a flaring of
nostrils. "Come to my abode. We will discuss it there." He turned and cantered
off the podium on wobbly legs, with his gait favoring his left side, enabling
his guests to see that he did not possess a cutie mark. Bit by bit he trudged
to the main clearing that marked Greenwood, and slowly his guests got up and
followed him in silence, though not before Rhinoc made the buckets vanish in
light. They noticed that the path between the clearings was relatively short,
perhaps twenty yards, and that some houses sported signs that had boards nailed
over them.
The few ponies left out and about watched as they trudged to a withered tree
whose door was barely holding together, with some sets of eyes flashing red at
their passing. These glaring ponies, too, were blank-flanked, and three of them
were a band of dark grey unicorn stallions clustered near one house, all with
moss green manes streaked with silver stripes.
"Outsiders," one of them muttered.
"It's like that blasted harpy all over again," another hissed.
"What next? Will Akron himself grace us with his presence?" the third groused,
audibly facehoofing soon after his utterance.
The elder paid the muttering villagers no heed and lifted a shaking hoof to
open the door, ambling inside while being gracious enough to leave it wide
open. Rhinoc shivered and stepped in, as did the rest of his entourage. The
inside of the house was decorated with more wooden furniture, most of it carved
from the rich brown oakwood. There were rocking chairs, small tables and
nightstands, and even an ottoman and a fireplace outlined by stone. A door was
at the back of the room, currently closed at the moment. The elder sat in one
of the rocking chairs and gestured for his visitors to sit, and Flash shut the
door before everyone parked in front of him.
"What brings you to our… hamlet?" the elder asked, his face as stoic as ever.
"We… heard moans, and… they were loud enough we could hear it from the Mighty
Oak's shrine," Rainbow answered, lifting a hoof to rub at the back of her neck.
The elder raised a brow. "The Mighty Oak, you say? Nopony, outsider and
villager alike, has visited him in some five years at the least. Tell me… is
his shrine alright?"
Shining nodded. "As alright as it could be." He frowned. "I saw some of the
villagers' eyes glowing crimson… and given how you handled the wedding
procession, I would like to know what that's all about. Does it have to do with
your being 'cursed?'"
The elder nodded and his face, for perhaps the first time since they arrived,
donned a thin frown and he let his eyes slant ever so slightly. His voice took
on a somber note as he replied, "We do not wish for our curse to spread—a curse
that some say Faust herself laid upon our ancestors before she and Godcat were
sealed away." His lip quivered, and his ears flattened. "Mares in heat must
breed incessantly, lest they never conceive a foal. Stallions here… have to
oblige them. Otherwise, we'd not be here."
Shining's eyes grew wide. "You mean… you have to do… all of that just to ensure
your survival?" he muttered, his voice tinged with a note of pity.
The elder glumly nodded. "One stupid fool… brought home an outsider, about
nineteen years ago. He very likely spread the curse. We're not even sure if his
foals suffer from it…" he muttered. "When one of them was informed of it at the
tender age of eleven, she fled… the other requested time alone in Ashwood two
years after that. Neither was heard from since. We had to..." The elder looked
away, clenched his eyes shut, and actually shed a tear. His voice cracked; he
sounded ashamed as he uttered in a voice barely above a choked whisper, "If
they're still alive, I cannot imagine what Hell those young ones must be going
through right now…"
Shining frowned. "What… happens if a mare isn't indulged, or a stallion isn't
obliged in…" He didn't get the chance to finish as the elder turned to him and
snapped open his eyes, which then started to glow a bright ruby red. His horn
flashed the same color, and at once his guests flinched back. The elder
abruptly stood up and let his eyes narrow to thin slits.
His voice started to echo as he spoke in a tone that shook the house to its
roots, "The curse expresses itself! Corrupts our magic! Twists our minds and
bends our souls to its whim! It causes the very blood in our veins to boil when
it is ignored! None can hope to tame it, to break free of its horrendous
manacles!" He stopped when he saw the worried looks that formed on the faces of
his guests, and he closed his eyes and let his magic dim. "I-I'm sorry… I
should have…"
He shuddered and grit his teeth, fighting back tears as he slowly sat back
down. "But I am an old soul. I can no longer sate the hex… e-even now, it's…
it's starting to get to me. The symptoms of this horrid enchantment have been
worsening for us all these past twenty years; it used to be a mare only needed
to be mounted by two or three stallions, and now practically the whole village
is in on it. I fear… I fear it may have grown stronger..."
"What was that… we heard the bride utter something about being a blank flank,"
Rainbow interjected, garnering a tired sigh from the elder.
"Should we obtain our marks, the curse will inevitably twist them too. Some
villagers choose not to get them, for fear that whatever potential talents they
gain would then… be used for malcontent purposes," the elder replied, his voice
still solemn. "Should the curse twist the mark such that it bonds to an item,
it must be used… otherwise… terrible things may transpire." His eyes slowly
opened, glistening with forming tears and regret. "I learned this… long ago,
when I was still a youthful colt…"
"What's with the shield outside?" Applejack asked, lifting a hoof to remove her
hat and hold it to her barrel.
The elder lowered his head and shook it pityingly. "It goes up every evening,
always before sunset; keeping the villagers in and the outsiders away. It is…
our prison, but it also keeps the curse from transitioning any further under
its dome. The foolish stallion who wed an outsider… the shield was his very
last spell." He looked at Applejack, and another tear streaked his cheek. "What
have our ancestors done wrong? Why must we suffer for whatever sins Faust or
whomever saw fit to curse them for their follies?"
For a while, the guests were stone silent. "What does the curse do to you, if…
if you let it be for too long?" Flash piped up.
He found himself wishing he hadn't asked, for when the elder answered his
pupils shrank. "They become one of the cursed trees, doomed to forever live… in
another tailor-made prison, if one were to trot outside of the shield." The
elder lowered his head again. "I may croak soon… but even if I were chopped
into pieces, I'd still be transmogrified anyway. There's no escaping the curse…
countless others have tried. Countless others have inevitably failed—even those
who gained cutie marks." He lifted his head again. "That fool's children may
have already transformed, and are pleading for death as we speak."
Rhinoc shuddered, his body aching with all of the horrendous negative emotion
pouring from the elder. But, if what he said was true, then it may well have
been tragically understandable for him to be feeling that way. "A-are cursed
trees… also wraiths?" Blueblood asked, paling considerably.
The elder shook his head. "No, for they never truly die to begin with. Death
itself cannot touch them. As far as I am concerned, my brethren trotted to
Hell… fully alive and conscious," he stated somberly. "It is a most terrifying
fate that I would not wish on anypony." His head dropped again. "I'm not sure
which evil is worse: the current stagnation of Greenwood, or what happens to us
just before we can die…"
"Is there anything you know about the ponies who tried breaking the curse?"
Flash asked, his wings ruffling a bit. "Or at least, their methods?"
The elder sighed. "I do not, sadly. The ancestors deemed their efforts and
musings null and void; I suspect they didn't keep records. And why would
they—when you are granted hellish immortality anyway?" he rebuked. "I doubt you
could extract anything from them in their current state; their minds have very
likely broken down by this point. I honestly have yet to find a tree who could
even manage a coherent utterance as of late..."
"Actually, we passed one who told us to stay away," Blueblood interjected,
having the decency to look away and frown in shame. But he saw the elder wave a
hoof out of the corner of his eye.
"Eh, as long as you lot don't conceive foals with the villagers, the curse
won't spread anymore, so I suppose you can spend the night. And… I saw your
buckets, by the way. I about had that same reaction when I acted as priest for
my first wedding," the elder stated, with a hint of empathy buried somewhere
deep in his sorrowful tone. "Let me tell you, those days were awful."
Shining lifted a hoof and tapped his chin with it. "Say, do you know anything
about the ancient alicorns, who vanished when Faust and Godcat were sealed?" he
asked.
The elder shook his head. "Not one lick of information there. Sorry," he
replied.
Blueblood nodded and stood up. "I think that settles it for tonight; the only
issue now is finding out where we can sleep, now that we're trapped here," he
muttered, garnering no less than five nods of agreement.
The elder sighed and rose from his rocking chair, craning his neck towards the
door in the back of the room. "I have a guest room upstairs. It's not much, but
I hope it helps you alleviate… your discomfort at seeing that grotesque
display," he muttered. "And those ceremonies only last for a day. I'm grateful
they only happen once yearly."
The visitors stood up, and nodded to the elder. They started trotting to the
closed door in the back, but a raised hoof stopped them. "I just noticed one of
you… is very…" The elder clicked his tongue, searching for the right word as he
pointedly stared at Rainbow. "Prismatic? Yes, that's the word. Tell me… why is
that so?"
Rainbow turned to the elder and frowned a bit, seeing a spark of curiosity
alight in his dull eyes. "Well, I was born like this… my dad had the rainbow
mane too," she replied. "Oh, by the way… did you see the barrier between
Fantasia and Mythos break?"
The elder's eyes widened. "Y-yes, I have…" he answered.
"Well, that's a long story I think we should save for tomorrow. I ain't got the
stomach to sit for some more hours and rattle my tongue faster than a lightning
bolt," Applejack groaned, putting her hat back on her head.
The elder nodded in understanding. "I see. Just be sure to let me know the full
details, whenever you're ready…" he said. The group nodded and headed for the
door, opening it and trotting up a flight of stairs that lay beyond. As they
vanished from sight, the elder's face twisted in sorrow again, but now there
was a hopeful glint in his eyes. "Maybe… the barrier breaking… is that a sign?"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The guest room in the elder's abode was pitifully small; only one bed, window
and nightstand to its name, and bereft of anything else except four measly
meters in both length and width. Shining and his group were forced to sit in
the floor, sighing as the silver light of the moon started poking through the
window. The light was tinted a slight shade of green thanks to the barrier over
Greenwood. "That bit about ponies becoming trees seems dubious…" he muttered,
brow furrowing as he mentally tried to work out the logistics of how ponies
turned into trees.
"Something just plain don't add up," Applejack agreed with a nod. "But that
poor stallion needs help, that much I know." Five heads bobbed in unison. "He
seemed very sincere with what he was rantin' and ravin' about. If I had to go
through all that, then I'd be pretty miffed m'self."
"But if what he said is true, then how can we help?" Blueblood questioned,
scowling. "He said so himself; the curse cannot be broken. If, indeed, he and
his folk are well and truly cursed."
"Hrm…" Rainbow put a hoof to her chin and tapped at it idly. "I guess we could
try asking the cursed trees tomorrow… only problem is finding the ones that can
still talk."
"I think the one who told us to stay away would be a start; that's the closest
one on the route we took to get here," Flash added.
"A logical start, yes, but I don't know if the tree in question would want to
converse," Rhinoc interjected, closing his eyes and lifting a hoof to rub his
temples. "We trotted right past him… her… it, when it warned us. But now we
know what the fuss is about, at least." He turned away and muttered under his
breath, "It may tell us to fuck off for all I know."
Rainbow's eyes narrowed a bit, and her face hardened. "Now that I think about
it… I saw Anna's eyes glow red," she muttered. She turned to Shining and asked,
"Do you think she's got the same curse the elder stallion does?"
Shining mulled it over, tilting his head as gears started to grind in his mind.
"It's very possible, and she did tell me she was cursed. And if that's the
case… then why is she in Lance's army force," he queried, though his tone was
low enough it sounded more like a statement. "And if she does… with what the
elder said about the hex, that may mean she's unstable… not to mention her high
risk of kicking the bucket, given her line of work."
"But there's the possibility she could be cursed with something completely
different. I mean, her sister had that wicked-loud harp that could destroy
eardrums," Rainbow pointed out. She, Applejack, and Shining all cringed at the
mention of the harp. "And I am no egghead, but maybe there are many curses that
make the eyes go red and drives ponies nuts."
"Yes, but it could still affect her negatively regardless of what type of curse
it is," Shining retorted, frowning. "You have a point, Rainbow; Anna's curse
may not correlate to whatever has befallen Greenwood, though I am beginning to
suspect the two are linked somehow. Either way… if it has the same mental
effects on her, she could become unstable, assuming she isn't already."
"Definitely unstable," Rhinoc answered, frowning when Shining turned to him
with a raised brow. "Magically speaking, that is. She usually lets it all out
at once, peters herself out, and ends up grouchy at the end of the day. Hell,
that accident that got her the cutie mark she now has wasn't the last time I've
seen her metaphorically blow up."
"Letting it all out? Wouldn't that strain her magical capabilities?" Blueblood
asked. "Or at least turning her horn red-hot and increase the risk of horn-
related trauma?"
Rhinoc nodded. "Try telling her that after she torches somebody with a hail of
arrows," he stated, his tone callous. "I've seen her do it before, and I heard
she went and did it in Whitefall this past couple of days. And she's not
usually magically strained after the effort."
"Yeah, I saw the aftermath of that. Some stallion became literal trotting
crystal," Rainbow groaned, spreading her wings and smacking her own face with
them. "I mean, jeez, isn't that overkill?"
"Not when the uncouth pony in question was already a wraith to begin with,"
Blueblood snorted, shaking his head. "I am amazed he trotted out of that whole
affair with his legs still intact."
"Even better." Rhinoc threw his forehooves into the air and groaned in
exasperation. "She accelerated a wraith's defensive… formation… thing…" His
head dropped as words failed him.
"Are you sayin'... that wraiths mutate?" Applejack asked, raising an
incredulous brow at the notion. That got Rhinoc to lower his hooves and raise
his head to nod in her direction.
"Yeah; their magic goes all over the damn place if something catastrophic
happens to their bodies, unless they were decapitated. It's like cutting the
head off the snake, but you don't know which of those snakes could be hydras,
if you get the drift," Rhinoc answered, his face hardening. "If there's one
thing about wraiths that I respect but still don't fully understand, it's that
they can adapt."
"Everything settled for tonight, then?" Shining asked, garnering five nods.
With that, he curled his legs under himself and lowered his body to rest on the
floor. He closed his eyes… only to jolt back up when Rhinoc's horn flashed and
several sleeping bags, a few blocks of leather-wrapped foam that could only
feasibly be called mattresses, and a few pillows came forth from several
blinking lights.
"Good thing I brought these with me," Rhinoc chirped, opening one sleeping bag
after positioning it on leather-wrapped foam. He made to climb into it, but
halted when Applejack coughed.
"Do you an' yourn always come this prepared?" Applejack asked, rather
incredulously at that.
Rhinoc nodded, donning a small smile. "Let's just say somepony would tear into
me if I didn't, and not somepony currently with us at this time," he answered.
With that, he crawled into his sleeping bag and zipped it shut around himself
in his magic, finishing up the whole affair by resting a pillow beneath his
head. "And yes, they're clean."
Applejack sighed and made to claim a sleeping bag, a pillow, and foam mattress.
Given that she couldn't do much now that the course of action come morning was
decided, she inhaled deeply. Setting up the crude bed, she saw Rainbow doing
likewise, using her wings to juggle the pillow as she fumbled with the bag.
"Applejack?" Rainbow asked, apprehensively turning her head to her friend.
"Yeah?" Applejack replied with a tired sigh.
"I hope we don't have to use the Elements of Harmony on this whole town… like,
I really, really hope that we don't," Rainbow groused, her mouth forming a thin
line. "I'm not sure how the villagers would take it."
Applejack nodded, her mind painting a picture of panicking ponies as the
Elements were activated. Hopefully, it wouldn't be dire enough to come to that.
"I get ya," she muttered. "I think we should have one o' them…" she paused,
turning to eye the door warily, as if expecting eavesdroppers. "One o' them
outside the field get Twi tomorrow, if we have to," she finished after a few
seconds, turning back to making her makeshift bed.
Rainbow put her pillow down on her foam mattress. Wordlessly, she crawled into
her sleeping bag without zipping it shut and closed her eyes, sighing deeply
before falling fast asleep. It did not take her long to dream; mere minutes
after drifting off, she found herself in a glittering starscape.
A glittering starscape filled with the echo of someone's very pained voice.
"Help… meeeeeeee," the voice uttered, distant and yet… sounding as though the
source was so close by.
Rainbow glanced around, spinning about, craning her neck this way and that,
even taking to the air to get a better vantage point to see where the source
was. "Wh-who's there?" she asked.
"Help… meeeeee," the voice repeated, now more faint. Rainbow strained her ears,
hoping to find the source, but alas not one peep flitted through the starscape
to let her know where it was coming from. The world, save for her beating
wings, had fallen as still and silent as a grave. She glanced around again, and
noticed that several stars seemed to dull considerably, with some turning an
ugly shade of rusted mahogany.
Spinning around mid-air as though on a diagonal and slanted axis, while a
relatively easy feat, did nothing to earn Rainbow so much as a fleeting glimpse
of the pleading speaker. All she saw was stars as far as the eye could possibly
see. "Hello?" she tried again, still clinging to the hope that whoever was
pleading would show themselves—making the assumption that, of course, they were
able to.
Silence fell upon the glimmering starscape again, and slowly Rainbow descended
down to… she looked down and realized she did not know where the floor even was
in this place, and frowned at that. Stopping her descent, she heard the
sorrowful "Help… meeeeee…" permeate the area once again, and this time whirled
around.
The source still eluded her, though. Who the hay would be calling for help, yet
refuse to be seen, and why? Some part of Rainbow was calling shenanigans.
Still, she decided that she needed to fly through the starscape, and hovering
in one spot wasn't going to cut it. So she flew, albeit slowly, hoping to
ascertain where in the hell the source of the pleas was.
Hours passed, and on she flew, but still Rainbow found nothing to indicate
where the owner was. The starscape did not even change in the slightest, for it
seemed endless. She stopped to hover again and snorted, brow furrowing as her
blood began to boil. "Okay, really… how am I supposed to help you if I don't
know where…" She stopped rambling, but only as a bright light began to shine
brilliantly above Rainbow. She glanced up to find that a full moon had
mysteriously cropped up, from which emerged a blue alicorn whose appearance
made her break out into a brilliant smile and relax her brow. "Hey Princess!"
she greeted.
Luna descended to Rainbow and nodded in response. "Sorry I had not arrived
sooner. Discord has enlightened me to a lot of… Fantasia's ongoing anomalies,"
she sighed. "But I am afraid me, Celestia, and Cadence cannot interfere in
their affairs." She donned a forlorn frown.
Rainbow's smile fell. "Whaddya mean?" she asked.
Luna's lips formed a thin line. She sighed deeply before answering, "There is
simply too much going on; Day and Night Courts are in a fuss, with the nobles
growing more paranoid by the day. The delegates from the other nations are
refusing to come over and chip in, and the Fantasians whom you're now
accompanying are still blocking me from their dreams, no matter what I do. Only
one has yet to do so, but Discord frightened him, so I wouldn't be surprised if
he followed suit."
Rainbow's brow furrowed a little. "And what about the rest of Fantasia?" she
pressed.
Luna shook her head. "Some may see it as an invasion if my sister and I
intervened, and I highly doubt any of the Fantasians, save Lance and his group,
would listen to even a smidgen of our reasoning. There's not much we can do;
whatever Fantasia's problems may be, they are ones the Fantasians will have to
fix." Her ears fell flat against her head, and her brow slanted. Even her mane
and tail drooped a smidgen as she stated in a solemn tone, "Mostly… on their
own."
She lifted a hoof and gently pressed Rainbow's barrel with it. "But Lance and
his crew are not alone; they have you, your friends, and Blueblood to help them
set things right. I have confidence you will aid them, somehow or another."
Luna's eyes twinkled a little, and her frown deepened still. "I just wish… I
could tell them that."
Rainbow nodded, an inkling of what Luna was suggesting starting to dawn on her.
"So… I help them fix whatever's going on, maybe use the Elements if things are
that bad, but only Lance's army is getting that help. This what I am hearing?"
Luna nodded. "Yes, but… anything outside of the army would be best left alone,"
she stated. "Unless the army is getting involved with it, whatever it may be."
Rainbow managed a small smile at that. "Well… Lance got the wind back under his
wings, but it's gonna be a bit before he can get good at flying," she chirped.
Spreading out her forehooves, she made a vague indication of their length as
best as she was able. "They rival your wings; that's how big they are. I reckon
that, if he were any taller, he'd probably compete with Celestia. But to him,
that just means he's more awkward a flier."
Luna's frown faded, and her ears perked upright in the blink of an eye.
"Really?" she queried.
Rainbow nodded affirmatively. "Yep. And the mood of his troops got a little
better when they heard the news. Heck, his right hoof ponies saw it for
themselves," she chirped, dropping her forehooves. "I heard something about a
certain somepony preening him sideways the night before that, but that was when
I just hit the bed, so I dunno how true that is."
Luna chuckled at that. "Ah, yes, yon feather fondling. I believe I have an idea
as to who the somepony in question was," she said, her cheeks puffing a little
as she started trying her best to keep from breaking out laughing. When
Rainbow's brows went up, Luna extrapolated with amusement in her tone, "This
somepony trotted up to me and asked if she could feel my wings, and her eyes
were wide as mine hooves. She looked as though she thought that I couldn't have
possibly been an alicorn, but my presence and the feeling of my feathers
dispelled that notion."
Rainbow started cracking up as she imagined that particular fiasco. Luna waved
a hoof dismissively and added, "In front of all of the gathered nobles of
Canterlot, no less. I had to shoo her away, lest she accidentally prod at mine
joints."
Rainbow started guffawing, shifting her hooves to clutch her stomach as she
envisioned snobby nobles gawking at Luna's wings being fondled by a complete,
very forward stranger. "D-did you get… t-the looks on their f-faces?!" she
howled before falling flat on her back, still flapping her wings madly, trying
and failing to rein herself under control now that that mental image affixed
itself to her mind.
Luna smiled at that. "Oh yes, they raised quite a fuss about that after the
Fantasians departed on their airship. They called the fondler in question a,
and I quote, 'stuck-up lower class hooligan with no respect for decency or
proper decorum,'" she answered. "Of course, we have nary an idea of what the
Fantasians consider decency and decorum, so…"
Rainbow shot up, stopped laughing, and looked at Luna with very wide eyes.
"Wait. You're saying a Fantasian fondled your wing?" she asked.
Luna nodded again, still smiling. "Green mane, brownish coat, a bit too young
to be in the military," she answered.
Rainbow's eyes widened further than Luna thought possible, before she fell back
and started laughing all over again. "Th-that's even worse!" she exclaimed
between giggle-snorts, her wings flapping even harder than before.
Luna patiently waited until Rainbow's fit of gut-busting chortles ran out of
steam before magically, and tenderly, helping her back on her hooves. Rainbow
lifted a wing and used one of her primaries to brush off a tear that had formed
in her eye. "Th-thanks Luna. I-I needed that after what I-I saw today," Rainbow
chirped, though her voice cracked nonetheless. She took some needed deep
breaths, noticing Luna's brow quirking up quizzically.
Rainbow then extrapolated what had happened earlier that day, from the trees
all the way to the elder's outburst. Luna's eyes slowly widened as she heard
every little word that spilled off Rainbow's tongue, and her ears fell flat
against her head again the more she absorbed it. "They have to do what just to
conceive a foal?!" she cried, loud enough to knock Rainbow clean off her hooves
and send her quite a few feet away.
Rainbow landed unsteadily, but flared her wings and flew back to Luna before
telling her again, this time slowly, "Every stallion in Greenwood who can has
to mount a mare in heat. Every. One. I heard it used to be just two or three,
but…"
Luna's legs trembled, threatening to buckle. "That's… that's absurd!" she
cried, her voice laced with a disbelief so thick one could slice it with a
knife. "That's a curse that ceased to exist in Equestria when the tribes
unified… h-how is this still prevalent in Fantasia?!"
Rainbow shrugged in earnest. "I have no idea, but I'll find out what's going on
one way or another." Her face set in a firm, grim look with a furrowed brow and
eyes narrowed to slits. "I may need to ask the villagers, but not until after I
ask the cursed trees just what the hay is wrong with the place." A thought hit
her, and she assumed a deep frown the moment it did. "I think I'll ask Anna
about it too; Shining told me she was cursed."
"With what?" Luna pressed, eyes narrowing,
"Dunno, but I do know she doesn't want to go to Greenwood. Maybe the two are
tied…" Another thought hit her, and her glare eased. "You said when the tribes
unified, a curse was broken… what was it?"
Luna sighed. "Ponies had to breed indiscriminately like rabbits just to bear a
foal, before the Windigoes arrived and brought the threat of endless winter on
their ethereal tails," she replied. "There was a stallion named Bruce, who grew
infamous for having many illegitimate foals, though I know not much else about
him; only one record survived, and even then in the confines of the lone record
of the years before Pre-Unification. From then on, the curse was known
henceforth as 'Bruce's Jinx.'"
Rainbow crossed her forelegs over her barrel. "Bruce's Jinx… hrm… sounds
fishy," she muttered.
"Very dubious, indeed," Luna agreed with a nod. "And not only that, but it was
only limited to breeding; none of this nonsense where ponies' eyes turn red,
they go berserk, or they become still-living trees when they should die
instead. Yet you say, from the lips of somepony else, that Faust herself cast
this blight upon Greenwood?"
Rainbow nodded. "Which just makes it even more fishy," she stated, tilting her
head to the side. "What would it take for the spell to be broken, if an alicorn
who helped shape Mythos and Fantasia cast it?"
Luna shook her head. "Another alicorn would have to do so, and maybe they'd
have to be at least as strong as one fourth of Faust's power, but how… I do not
know in the slightest," she answered grimly. "And there are no alicorns in
Fantasia, as far as I know… Discord looked high and low, and all he could get
was an old Fantasian mare's tale, passed by word of mouth. He magically checked
a lot of the populace too; no alicorns to be seen or heard."
Rainbow proceeded to separate her forelegs and facehoof. "Jeez…" she groused.
"Well, this just got a lot worse than I thought…" She felt a hoof on her
shoulder and lowered her forelegs to find Luna looking at her solemnly.
"Mayhaps… but you still need to help those poor ponies of Greenwood. Drag Lance
into it, physically if you must, but…" Luna was silenced when Rainbow nodded.
"I'll do what I can," Rainbow said, her tone one of finality. At that, Luna
smiled a little and nodded back, her horn flaring to life in a brilliant, moon-
white light.
"Then I wish you the safest of travels, Rainbow Dash," Luna said in a soothing,
motherly tone just seconds before the light enveloped Rainbow, whereupon she
woke up.
***** Chapter LXIX- Venomous Despar *****
When Rainbow's eyes opened, she averted them to her present company one body at
a time, finding them all still sound asleep despite the fact that a faint ray
of sunlight had managed to cast itself upon all of their faces. She frowned and
shrugged, opting to just lay there and wait for somebody else to wake up, yet
nobody moved for twenty minutes straight. She noticed that the sunlight was
tinged in green, but as she stared, the green hue faded and faded until only
pure golden rays remained behind. She turned to the window, finding a hue of
purple-scarlet, with a layer of darkened green at the edge of its bottom.
Rainbow got up, stretched her wings and cantered lightly to the window, her
steps silent and swift. Peering out, she saw clouds parting of their own
accord, with the rising sun coming up into the sky to greet Greenwood's side of
Fantasia. Sighing through her nostrils, she started gazing down at the ground,
seeing a few villagers trot out of their houses, mostly unicorns with bows and
quivers slung over their withers in addition to standard saddlebags, with a
hoofful of earth ponies lugging around axes, shovels, and hoes. All of them
were stallions, a little wobbly-legged from the wedding procession the day
prior, and strangely enough not one pegasus was to be found amongst them.
Rainbow fluffed her wings a bit and watched as the mares trotted out after the
stallions, many with greying coats and manes. The few young mares out and about
were either pregnant, or watching their pregnant fellows as if wondering when
they'd have their baby. Like the stallions, there were a few earth ponies in
the lot, but most were unicorns toting saddlebags around. The pregnant mares
and those with greying bodies carried smaller bags, though none lit up their
horns even once to better bear their loads.
A few foals emerged after the mares, and when they did they stuck with the
pregnant ones like glue, bouncing up and down with mouths moving rapidly.
Nopony seemed to even realize they had visitors yet, and honestly Rainbow
wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not, given the intrusion upon their
wedding ceremony. She cringed when she realized that, sooner or later, the
whole of Greenwood would find out, and her brow furrowed when she also realized
that there was no telling how they'd react to that news once they caught on.
Some part of her hoped the welcoming committee would be friendly, though
another part of her honestly doubted that being the outcome.
Caught up in her observations of the situation, seeing the trio of dark grey
stallions with greying manes pausing to glare at the elder's house—ignoring the
window, with muzzles seemingly affixed to the front door instead—she did not
notice as a soft beating of hooves filled the area. She did look away when a
rustling of cloth hit her ears, and craned her neck to find Shining Armor
turning and opening his eyes lazily. "Mornin'," Rainbow greeted.
"Ey," Shining replied with a sluggish nod and a titanic yawn leaving his mouth.
Slowly, on legs that were visibly stiff, he rose to stand and stretch as much
as his limbs would allow. His ears caught the beating of hooves and he turned
to the door leading to the stairs, his brow raising a substantial margin as he
realized the noise came in a steady rhythm.
"H-hello?" he and Rainbow heard the elder call out. "A-are you awake?"
Shining cantered to the door and gently opened it, finding the elder beyond on
a winding staircase with a small platform that let him stand before the guest
room. "Only two of us are up. You're gonna have to wait a few," he answered.
The elder nodded and donned a small smile. "I'll make you some breakfast, then,
before you head out," he offered. "Would fish be alright with you?"
Shining mulled it over in his head. "Um… only with some vegetables on the
side," he answered after a few seconds.
The elder nodded again. "Would carrots, cabbage, and broccoli suffice?"
Shining nodded again and donned a smile. "Heaps of it, if you can," he replied.
"Only one of us is really… comfortable with the idea of eating meat."
The elder's smile fell. "Eh? Why's that?" he prodded, tilting his head as his
eyes went wide.
"We… come from Mythos, and in a specific country that farms so effectively that
eating meat is, more or less, reserved only for wildlife and the occasional
gryphon visitor," Shining explained with a tired sigh leaving his mouth.
The elder blinked, taking a few seconds to process what he'd just heard. Then
he nodded again, and his smile returned. "Oh, some villagers here have taken to
farming. I understand ye completely; not many would want to eat meat in these
parts either, though it's still necessary…" he muttered, his smile faltering.
"But only because not a lot of the land is arable here, ever since that meteor
fell…"
Shining didn't say anything to that, figuring the meteor that fell five-odd
years ago must have done quite a number on Greenwood's livelihood. Instead, he
opted to change the subject, "Did you get any other visitors last week?"
The elder nodded. "A lilac mare from Whitefall came on her lonesome, hunting
for game animals to feed the guards and replenish her stocks," he answered, his
tone a bit chipper. "She didn't mingle with us too much, just asked to help her
hunt. Last I seen of her, she was very badly spooked by the cursed trees, but
otherwise she made it out of the trip alright."
"Well, she told us about an elder with bound wings in this area… it's why I
asked," Shining replied, frowning as he found himself with a mental image of
Eve getting a very bad, very understandable case of the heebie-jeebies.
The elder's smile fell again, and he looked away. "The… winged 'elder' you
speak of wasn't actually an elder, really, but she did look the part; her mane
and coat were already grey, and she wasn't even fifty years old yet. She… died
the day after the lilac visitor left for Whitefall, so some of the other
villagers told me," he muttered, his tone just as solemn and downcast. "How… I
haven't the foggiest."
"Did she turn into a tree?" Shining prodded, his ears folding back.
The elder's ears drooped. "Nay, she didn't… or if she did, her body up and
vanished," he replied. "Hadn't been able to find her since."
"Her wings?" Shining pressed.
The elder shook his head. "No clue in the slightest. She went out of her way to
avoid the other villagers before vanishing," he answered. "Tried looking for
her, but these old bones can barely keep up with the younger folk…"
Shining nodded and changed the subject again, seeing that the current topic
wasn't getting him anywhere, "Want me to wake my companions up?"
The elder nodded. "They will need to be up to get breakfast," he answered, and
with that he backed up to canter on downstairs to start making food. Shining
retreated back into the guest room and made a beeline for Rainbow with a tight
frown forming on his face.
"Did you catch all of that?" Shining asked, garnering an immediate nod from
Rainbow.
"How couldn't I? You stood there with the door open," Rainbow grumbled,
continuing to watch the scene outside with interest. Shining had the decency to
blush a little from the admonishment.
"Anything out there of note?" Shining queried.
"Lots of elderly ponies, most unicorns with some earth ponies, and a couple of
pregnant mares. Not one pegasus, at all," Rainbow answered, her tone sullen. "I
get the feeling we're in a bee's nest just waiting to be kicked."
Shining's brow went up again. "Anyone with bound wings, then?" he tried.
Rainbow's head shook again. "Zero, zilch, nada," she stated tersely. "I don't
even know how the elder-not-really's wings are tied."
Shining's face hardened a little. "Maybe the cursed trees would have something
to say…" he muttered.
"Maybe," Rainbow agreed with a nod.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
It took some two hours for the elder to prepare breakfast, feed his guests, and
gather them to then sit down in his rocking chair with them surrounding him in
the living room and listen to a few interesting tidbits they had to share.
Though, unbeknownst to the elder, said guests made sure to leave out quite a
few important things of note, including the fact that Delta Unit was hovering
on Greenwood's outskirts. "So… somepony told you not to come to Fantasia?" he
asked.
Shining nodded. "We did anyway," he answered simply. "And we would like to help
you… with your curse, or at the very least ease your pain."
The elder brightened up, and his eyes gleamed hopefully. "Y-you will?" he
stammered.
Shining nodded, his face hardening slightly. He said in a tone of finality, "If
nopony else will, then by Faust, we will." His companions nodded in agreement.
"But we'll have to start small."
The elder nodded, and a small smile formed on his face. "Maybe the trees will
understand," he mused, his tone resonating with just a smidgen of hope. A small
smile crossed his muzzle. "Stay here for a few minutes. I will need to inform
the villagers; and to also tell the newlyweds to stay indoors." He sighed and
made for the door after rising from the rocking chair, but paused before the
splintering frame to crane his neck. "Oh, by the way… have you heard of the
Veil of Shadows?" he asked.
"No, we haven't. What is it?" Rainbow queried, both brows going up as her brain
tried to process the name.
The elder sighed. "The Veil… has only appeared in recent years, about… eight or
nine. I have heard of outsiders talk about it in Whitefall and Goldenbrick,
whenever the need arose for me to go to either town to get supplies and
furniture," he began, frowning a little. "Some have told me it is comprised of
many beings who only appear at night, and are numerous enough to block the
moon's light in any given area if they were of a mind to."
Rainbow's brows rose higher. "Do the things of the Veil fly?" she pressed.
"Yes, so I've been told. They signal their arrival with roars and a low humming
noise, if the Veil is made up of many beings," the elder replied with a shrug.
"Others've said it's a single living shadow, only following those who are able
to tame it, which are very few but very powerful. Honestly, I don't know which
of those descriptors to believe. I think it's all just a load of bollocks."
Applejack donned a skeptical look, eyes going half-lidded and a thin frown
framing her muzzle. "Then why'd you tell us if you think it's a load of
manure?" she asked flatly.
"Well, you did say you spent some nights in Whitefall, which is why I asked,"
the elder replied, shrugging in earnest. "I thought maybe you might've heard of
it, but oh well, one cannot have everything in Fantasia..."
"What does the Veil do if you're under it?" Blueblood asked, frowning.
"Nopony knows, really. Some have told me you'd get eaten, others have said
you'd simply lose a few of your limbs, but make it out of the ordeal alive. I
have even heard the supposed individuals of the Veil use magic to conjure
shadows," the elder replied, that time sighing. "But, personally, I have yet to
see the Veil with my own eyes, so until I do see it, I'll still be of the mind
that it's just a bunch of poppycock. All of it sounds like nothing more than a
foal's tale that was recently invented." With that, he turned to open the door
and trot out into Greenwood, closing it on his way out and leaving his visitors
to ruminate over what he'd told them.
"The Veil, huh? Sounds mighty suspicious," Applejack mused, frowning as she put
a hoof to her chin.
"Could that be what broke the barrier between the worlds?" Blueblood asked,
tilting his head.
"Well, Laz did say the barrier was made by several unicorns, around the time
the sun and moon went to Celestia and Luna's control…" Flash put a hoof to his
chin and rubbed it, his brow furrowing. "The Veil, if it exists, could have
very well broken it."
"But that's not likely, since he said Starswirl took part in that little
project," Shining rebuked, shaking his head. "And he was a pony who knew what
he was doing. Heck, Twilight found some things in that book she overlooked,
which she showed me after lunch yesterday." He waved a hoof dismissively.
"Which either means the Veil is obscenely powerful, or something else broke the
spell."
"Well, at least we have one potential candidate to look into. I suggest
focusing on that," Blueblood interjected, before he noticed someone amongst
their little gathering was oddly silent. He turned to the lone soul who wasn't
chipping in and asked, "Are you well?"
Rhinoc looked very pale, an impressive feat considering that he was in his
disguise, and some rather large beads of sweat started trailing down his
forehead as his horn gave a soft glow. A hoof trailed to his stomach again, and
he muttered, "Oooo… not at all… there's… barely any love in this place."
"Barely any love? Then what are you picking up on instead?" Shining asked,
turning to Rhinoc with a worried frown on his face.
Rhinoc lurched, clutching his stomach tighter. "D-despair…" he hissed in pain,
his utterance more akin to a screeching whine that was barely kept in check.
"A-and… hatred…"
"What do despair and hatred do to you?" Flash asked, grimacing as Rhinoc's horn
ceased glowing, whereupon he slumped to the floor.
"W-weakens us… p-prolonged exposure makes o-our chitin and b-bones brittle… p-
poisons us…" Rhinoc groaned, the hiss in his voice becoming far more
pronounced. "Y-you guys a-are the o-only s-source of love h-here…"
"You gonna be okay?" Rainbow prodded, scooting closer to pat Rhinoc on his
withers, her ears twitching as she caught a distant sound that sounded like a
shout. She paid it no mind, as her attention was currently focused elsewhere.
Rhinoc slowly nodded. "A-as long as I-I don't eat a-any…" he murmured, the hiss
in his voice starting to fade. "J-just s-sensing it… makes me w-woozy…"
Rainbow stopped patting Rhinoc and nodded, pulling her hoof away. "Now that I
think about it, you had a pained look when…"
Rhinoc looked up, took a few breaths to collect himself, lurched up and looked
Rainbow squarely in the eye. "The n-nooblet wraith o-only had teeny t-traces of
despair and h-hatred. I-it wasn't enough t-to make m-me sick, b-but enough to
c-cause pain," he stammered with a wince. "Th… this," he continued, lifting a
hoof to gesticulate about the room for emphasis, "is a-a thousand t-times
worse."
"And if it makes you a'n yourn sick…" Applejack paled as realization dawned,
and her pupils shrank. "So… the rest…"
Rhinoc nodded, cutting her off. "Th-they can't come a-any closer. I-I can
barely t-tolerate it my-myself," he answered grimly. "W-we need to r-report
back t-tonight…"
Applejack nodded glumly, and she could only imagine the look on Lance's face
once Rhinoc gave his report. She shuddered, mentally wondering if she should
even mention the wedding to him when that time came, before something clicked
into her head and caused all other trains of thought to stop then and there.
"Do the trees, uh…"
"Ooze despair like blood?" Flash offered.
Applejack nodded. "Yeah, what he said."
Rhinoc nodded hastily. "L-lots of it," he groaned, sounding just a little
better.
"Do they give off hatred?" Blueblood tried. He could've sworn he heard several
ponies faintly yelling, though about what eluded him, and the noise grew in
addition to the sound of several sets of beating hooves.
Again, Rhinoc nodded, though that time more languidly. "N-not a l-lot of them
d-do," he answered. "A-and those that d-do don't h-have a lot."
At that moment, the door reopened, and the elder trotted in with a sullen frown
on his face. Behind him, shrilly coming from outside, was a myriad of
protesting voices, each one tumbling over itself and its companions until only
little bits and pieces of words could be made out amidst a cacophonous
orchestra. His guests shuddered and turned to him, seeing that a mob had
gathered just outside the front door, and the few they could see through the
doorframe were armed and narrow-eyed.
"—burn the outsiders—"
"—sharpen the pitchforks—"
"—ready the bows—"
"—flay them alive—"
"—turn their hides into brand new rugs—"
The elder lifted a back hoof and kicked the door shut with it, instantly
dampening the myriad of angry clamors, though it wasn't enough to drown them
out entirely. "Unfortunately, the rest of the community is not so eager…" he
groused, shaking his head. "It's just like the last outsider who came here last
week, really."
"Did they calm down when she said she wanted supplies?" Shining asked.
The elder nodded. "Oh, that they did, since it meant not putting up with her
for very long," he answered. "But the outsider who married into the village?
Oh, that poor dear got so much grief over the years… her foals fared no better,
I'm afraid."
"Did you tell them about us wanting to help with their curse?" Rainbow pressed.
The elder frantically nodded, his frown deepening. "Unfortunately, they've
accepted that the curse will follow them to the ends of time." His head stopped
moving, and his eyes glimmered faintly. "They do not want help."
Shining's face twisted first into a grimace, then a hardened look that caused
Flash to bolt up with legs perfectly straight under him and made his wings
tense. "So… they're a stubborn lot?" Shining pressed slowly, his voice low.
The elder, again, nodded. "They've been hoof-fed the same thing I was in my
earliest years, and they follow it like dogma. 'The curse always wins in the
end, and breed while you can,' and other such rabble like that," he replied,
lifting a hoof to wave it dismissively, giving Shining the impression he was
chasing something away. "And look where it's gotten me." His hoof fell and he
sighed sullenly. "Once the end of time happens, I'm pretty certain I'm going to
get an earful from Godcat."
Shining exchanged glances with Blueblood, whose face had likewise hardened.
They then turned to the elder in unison and stood up. Even with the door tuning
out most of their ongoing tantrum, the villagers continued to get louder and
more riled up by the second. "Such impertinence…" Blueblood hissed, turning to
Shining with a nod. "Could you quell them?"
"Only if he lets me," Shining responded, staring at the elder with a determined
look. "Will you?" When the elder nodded and stepped aside, he watched intently
as his guest strode to the door with his chest puffing out. A magenta aura
grasped the door and tenderly opened it up, before morphing to seize the door
frame and create a shield to keep the shrieking villagers from entering the
abode and running everybody over.
With his magical construct Shining forced his way out of the house, and right
into a crowd consisting mostly of older stallions and mares that were armed to
the teeth. Shining idly noted that the pregnant mares, children, and any other
young-looking ponies were not part of the mob, which he'd attributed to said
mob being a more vocal bunch. He formed a dome over the elder's house, then
used it force the mob back before he calmly stepped out of it with a ripple
forming in his wake, almost as though he went through a vertically-placed pool
of water.
His own magic then gripped his throat, and as he took a deep breath, he felt it
flowing towards his vocal chords and its surrounding muscles. The very moment
the crowd stilled and all eyes turned to him was the same moment Shining
exhaled, and only then did he speak in a voice so magically amplified in volume
the mobsters found themselves flinching, dropping all weapons, and covering
their ears under its might. "You will not sway me or my friends to change our
decision; we only want to help you break your curse, and nothing more. Stop
this foalishness this instant, or we may be forced to act in self-defense,"
Shining droned, his voice as clear and loud as the sharp clanging of a bell.
"There is an awful lot I can do with a dome like this, so you had best not test
my patience again."
One member at the front of the mob, an entirely grey unicorn stallion whose
eyes flashed red, looked at Shining with a wince and his eyes narrowing. "Y-you
fool!" he stammered bravely, though Shining idly noted that he genuinely
sounded worried beneath his anger. "S-suppose the c-curse breaks… th-then
what?" At this, murmurs swept through the crowd "W-we already h-had to send a-
another fool a-away after sh-she told us sh-she'd break th-the curse!"
Shining turned to the grey unicorn, a bemused brow skyrocketing to the top of
his forehead. That was the only movement he made for several long moments, as
he stood there contemplating what he'd just heard. The glow around his throat
died as he finished processing the villager's statement. "So…" he began icily,
his brow dipping back down as he spoke, "you're telling me that you banished
somepony?"
The villager nodded frantically, and swallowed nervously before daring to
continue, sounding much more certain of himself as he spoke, "That damned f-
fool d-deserved it. Sh-she probably t-turned into a t-tree by now."
Shining's eyes narrowed by the tiniest margin. "She?" he pressed.
"A th-thirteen year o-old filly," the villager confirmed. For another long
moment Shining simply stared at him, the corners of his mouth twitching in
tandem with his left eye. The villager merely stared back, waiting for the
moment in which he thought Shining would back down.
That moment never came. In its stead, Shining marched right up to the villager
and lowered his head just enough to stare deep into his eyes. "You mean to tell
me," Shining hissed, his voice frigid with scorn, "that you sent a child to
die?" When the villager nodded, Shining began to outright scowl at him, his
magic crackling dangerously as his anger surged through his veins. For just a
second, he could've sworn that the air grew so hot he thought his mane and tail
would catch fire. Despite himself, Shining restrained the urge, and the teeny
voice in the back of his mind baying for blood.
"And all she did was simply state her desire to break the particular befoulment
that I heard has fallen here...?" Shining pressed in a low, ominous tone that
caused the villager before him to immediately wilt under his withering glare.
"Had she committed murder? Theft?" The villager's knees buckled, and he fell to
his haunches with his ears folding back. "Well?" The villager shook his head.
Shining retracted and backed up a few paces, if only to turn his very irked
glare towards the rest of the mob. "You all are a disgrace to everything that
is holy. Godcat would be ashamed of you."
"Y-you don't know Godcat like we d-do, you uptight jackass!" a brave mobster,
this one an earth pony, called out. He stood up on his back legs on the
outskirts of the crowd, revealing a dulled sea green coat and lime green mane.
With forehooves shooting up to the air, he declared with an accusatory gesture
directed at Shining, "We were simply doing Her bidding! That filly had the
desire to usurp the impossible! If she got a cutie mark, it would be much the
same! She had to go!"
Shining turned to the earth pony and gravely shook his head, his withering
glare not faltering in the slightest. He stood for another minute before posing
a question that caused the second brave soul to flinch, "Would you banish
yourself from the premises, had you gotten your mark?"
All eyes turned to the earth pony, who now started to sweat bullets. "I-I-uh…"
he stammered.
Seeing he had an advantage, Shining decided to press it, "Would you banish your
friends? Family? What if they got their marks?"
The earth pony slowly, haltingly, shook his head.
"And you said it would be the same, had the banished filly gotten her mark…"
Shining concluded, his voice grim. "Aren't you quite the hypocrite?"
The earth pony promptly wheeled around and started galloping in the opposite
direction. "I-I'm telling the village leaders!" he declared, tail tucked
between his flailing rear legs as he raced to get as far away from Shining
Armor as he possibly could. The rest of the mobsters had the same idea, and
also turned tail to beat a hasty retreat, each uttering a dark promise to
tattle on Shining.
Only when there was complete silence that settled once the sounds of many
beating hooves faded did Shining drop his barrier, turn around, and trot back
into the elder's house. His face eased, and he heaved a sigh. "Hardasses, the
lot of them," he muttered. Turning to the elder, he added, "Who are your
village leaders?"
The elder frowned. "Three stallions, a band of brothers you see. They took
over…" The elder's eyes trailed up to the ceiling momentarily before he
finished, "twenty years ago."
Shining's brow rose. "Twenty?"
The elder nodded. "Somepony has to lead us whenever the previous leader becomes
a tree," he pointed out. Shining nodded, understanding that train of logic.
"They did not take the previous outsiders well. I doubt they would put up with
you for no more than a few minutes at best." His frown deepened. "Please… let
me accompany you whenever you feel ready to take the burden of asking the
cursed trees."
"Why?" Applejack asked, causing the elder to look at her.
"The leaders will chew me out if they discover you are here in my abode. I
wouldn't be surprised if they banished me. Besides…" The elder sighed. "I need
to hunt to gather more meat. If they see me carry home a black bird…"
"... then you'd be in the clear," Flash finished for the elder, who promptly
nodded and turned to the door. Exchanging glances with his companions, he found
them nodding.
"Well? What are we waiting for?" Blueblood asked, trotting to the door. "We
have a whole forest's worth of trees to query, so we might as well get on with
it!"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
On the outskirts of Greenwood, watching the elder and his guests leave the
village proper as the sun continued to climb higher in the sky, Delta Unit sat
in disguised wait, all concealed eyes watching intently for any signs of
trouble. They easily picked up on the group's unease, particularly that which
came from Rhinoc, but stayed their hidden hooves with the knowledge that there
wasn't really anything they could do unless ordered otherwise.
So they merely opted to continue with their little charade, silently hoping to
high heaven that something interesting would grace them soon, with or without
the risk of it blowing their collective cover. Armin's voice echoed through
their heads after a disguised horn glowed, "Situational protocols all green.
Let Major Rhinoc deal with the old colt. We tail them once they get twenty
meters away from town."
The disguised changelings shook their false branches in confirmation, though
only in a manner that resembled a slight swaying, giving the impression of a
passing breeze. Armin swayed his a half-second later, and then everyling
stilled, their eyes glued to Rhinoc and his entourage-plus-one as they trotted
deeper into the thicket. Shining took point, and Rhinoc oddly lagged behind the
elder whose limping gait did not escape the hidden soldiers' eyes.
One soldier decided to spark up a telepathic conversation, her branches briefly
flashing in gold as she asked, "So, has anyling gotten on General Hardass's bad
side this year?"
"I have, on the trip to Mythos," Armin replied, his branches drooping. "Told
Windwood's sister, to her face, to peddle her little ass to the kitchen. Next
thing I know, the General smacked me square in the jaw."
"How bad?" another soldier asked. Armin briefly lifted his branches up and
down, which he figured was a tree's equivalent to shrugging.
"Knocked a few teeth out and sent me to the floor. Told me not to do it again,
since Windwood was present and having a Godcat-damned coronary," Armin replied.
"And the nooblet… also got on his bad side. Before he actually considered
dragging her into the army, mind you. She up and punched him, then played keep-
away until he grappled her neck and pinned her to the floor."
One of the disguised changelings drooped his branches, and telepathically
groaned. "Self-defense?" he guessed.
"And to teach her not to bite off more than she could chew," Armin confirmed.
"And she started calling him Brassballs. I am dead serious." The other
changelings shook their branches for a few seconds before he heard the whole
lot of them telepathically laughing their asses off.
The laughter died when one changeling noticed that she could no longer see
Shining or his group. Her branches glowed briefly, a brilliant gold that was
then overtaken by a bright purple. "We need to move our asses. Major Rhinoc's
headed towards Mighty Oak," she reported, and her words triggered a chain
reaction amongst her fellow troops; flames engulfed a lot of the trees, and
where the trees were stood… nothing.
Or so it seemed, had anypony from Greenwood been present to see the anomaly. If
one villager were to closely examine where the false trees used to be, and if
they had eyesight sharp enough, they could see a sort of raised space that was
moving; a trotting pool of transparent liquid seemingly given life. The moving
changelings, using this invisibility to their advantage, filed away from
Greenwood in hasty but silent steps, heading to the Mighty Oak's shrine with
the pace of somepony tiptoeing around a bear's den.
Noling spoke until they reached the shrine at approximately noon, when the sun
was at the peak of the sky, causing the temperature to skyrocket thanks to the
closeness of Ashwood's proximity in direct relation to the shrine. "Alright,
who wants to bet the nooblet would fry out here if we left her too long?" one
soldier telepathically queried, his utterance causing the other soldiers to
telepathically murmur and muse about.
"No idea, and I wouldn't risk it. General Hardass would chew our wings off if
we did that and he heard of it," another soldier stated in a flat tone that
brokered no argument. Several minutes passed before the same soldier asked,
"Wait… where are they?"
Another waved false branches, rather dismissively at that. "Either we beat them
to the punch, they got sidetracked, or they already left," she answered.
Several minutes passed after she'd spoken, and all disguised eyes darted this
way and that, searching for their charges.
It did not take them long to arrive; fifteen minutes after the silence fell,
the sound of hooves snapping grass and twigs permeated the area. Ten after
that, Shining and his group emerged onto the steps from the side of one of the
gates, and immediately veered to the other side of the steps to vanish into the
forest again.
"... he's going past the shrine? What is he doing?" Armin asked, and at once a
few disguised changelings shrugged their branches.
"No clue, Lieutenant," another soldier said in earnest. "May as well ask why
the General hasn't formed a herd yet."
"You do realize he'd wring your neck if he heard you talking about his lack of
a herd, right?" Armin snarked, venom dripping from his telepathic voice.
"Well, excuse me, but if you've been trotting with him, you'd figure out he's
pretty pent up! Seriously, Lieutenant, how the utter fuck did you not notice?!"
the soldier snapped back, her tone marred in surprise and anger.
"I get the point," Armin sighed, groaning in exasperation, "but the thing is,
he has yet to let himself indulge in even the basest of urges. I will bet ten
bits and a wasp's stinger that he's probably facehoofing by now, wondering why
the utter fuck he let Mythonians convince him to come back to this ironically-
named hellhole."
The soldiers fell silent for a moment, their fake branches swaying with
uncertainty. After a few seconds, a soldier decided to answer with a rather
grandiose and borderline bizarre train of logic, "Maybe he did it to get them
off his ass about it. 'Let them see the shitshow for themselves, and leave it
at that. Maybe they'll get tired of it,' that sort of thing."
Armin shuddered before a branch lowered and he smacked it against a hollow hole
in the bark with a telepathic groan. "Dude, seriously, what the fuck?" he
hissed. "You know Lieutenant-General Windwood would fucking ride his ass with a
sharpened arrow pointing at his nuts for that, right?"
The soldier with the bizarre train of logic shrugged his faux branches. "He'd
just clamp a magic inhibitor on her and leave it at that," he pointed out.
"Mare still has earth pony magic at her disposal. That point is moot," Armin
groused, shaking his branches grimly. A low buzz filled the air, and Armin
twisted about, causing his disguise to act as though a tree was being sent
through a wringer. "Wh-what the…"
A radio materialized in a flash of light in someling else's branches, and from
it droned a very familiar voice that had the no-nonsense tone they were
accustomed to. "Delta Unit, fall back immediately. I repeat, fall back
immediately."
"F-fall back?" Armin stammered, that time without the aid of telepathy. "S-sir,
wh-why?"
A tired sigh left the radio. "Shining telepathically messaged me a few moments
ago, and told me about the worst wedding he'd ever attended." Lance paused for
a moment and added, "And of critical levels of despair emanating from
Greenwood. Get out, lest you get sick with emotional poisoning."
"E-emotional…" Armin faltered. "Is it…"
"Yes. According to Rhinoc, who also messaged me by telepathy, the situation has
gotten much worse. It's as I feared; we've got another fast track to Frostbite
on our hooves," Lance replied, his voice a little strained. "We'll have to
think of something else once you come in and report." He paused again, that
time for a full minute. "I expect you lot to be back by sundown. I've heard
some of the villagers are suspicious already, and we do not want to rile them
any further than needed."
With resignation, the entirety of Delta Unit shed their disguises in fire,
turned invisible, made the radio vanish, and took to the air as one. As they
flew, the beating of their wings gave off multiple buzzes that sounded more
like a singular, ominous hum.
***** Chapter LXX, Part I- Stained Ivory *****
Lance sat on the bed of the master bedroom, holding a radio in his hoof that
emitted a low hum. He sighed dejectedly, his ears pinning back with the
revelation that, had his troops stayed out there just a day longer, they could
have gotten sick or possibly worse. He was silently thankful that Rhinoc
alerted him when he did, though now another pressing matter presented itself:
facing his three right-hoof ponies and attempting to come up with another plan,
hopefully without sparks flying.
Speaking of his right-hoof ponies, he began to wonder what they were getting up
to now. He hopped off of the bed, tossing the radio over his withers to hear it
plomf on the quilts before trotting out into the hall. Sparing a glance to the
other doors, he found all of them shut, and suppressed a groan of exasperation.
He made a beeline for the lift, pressed the down button the moment he boarded,
and waited for it to escort him down, figuring the other doors were all locked.
"A wedding… I just had to arrive on a damned wedding..." Lance grumbled as the
lift shook, closed its door, and started descending. He resisted the urge to
facehoof. "Anna's probably gonna pluck my wings and make a brand new feather
duster when she hears this…" He wanted to will the lift to go faster, but held
his breath as it continued on its way; no sense trying to get the thing to
hurry up, as the last thing he needed was a broken lift. After a few minutes,
it stopped, shuddered, and opened the door, revealing the exact trio of
unicorns he was going to fetch standing just outside of it. Lance blinked and
went wide-eyed, taking in their expectant looks. "Where were you?"
Anna frowned, and her ears fell back. "We were going to get you, actually," she
muttered. Her face hardened, and her voice rose, "Armin telepathically told me
what he knew. Th-the whole of Delta could've gotten sick! Why did you send them
out?!"
"Yep. I'm getting plucked," Lance thought with a sigh. Regardless, he figured
he'd best explain himself before any hooves touched so much as a pin feather,
"To get Applejack and her friends out as swiftly as possible, should things
turn south."
"And?" Natalie pressed, a brow raising.
"I told them to pull out as soon as Rhinoc telepathically notified me," Lance
answered. "He's probably going to convince Applejack and her expedition party
to return, if he hasn't already."
Matt nodded at that, a small but satisfied smirk forming on his muzzle. "So…
what do we do?" he asked.
Lance sighed. "Wait for them to come back, check everybody over, and all of
that happy horseshit before we even try anything else. Shining may want to toss
in sixteen bits instead of the usual two, and an earful about decorum on top of
that," he answered, figuring that was as good an answer as any.
Anna's expression eased, and her ears perked up a bit. Then her tail hiked
straight up and swished, which caught Lance's attention. He turned to her and
frowned. "If you're still in heat, could you not do that? I really do not want
my fifth leg to poke out," he groused.
"The closer I am to that hellhole," Anna hissed with a furious blush forming on
her face and her eyes flashing red as she wasted no time lifting a hoof before
jutting it out towards an approximated direction of Greenwood, "the worse my
heat burns my crotch."
Lance's wings drooped. "So… you can't go near it either…" he murmured. Anna
gravely nodded and dropped her hoof. "At least… not until you decide to go
towards that step… or until your heat ends unimpeded..."
Anna's tail dropped back down, tucking itself between her rear legs. "Still not
keen on getting mounted," she muttered. "And… I don't want anybody to be
accused of pulling rank…"
Lance sighed dejectedly, silently admitting that Anna had a rather tragic
point. He decided to switch to another topic, "Should we wait on the deck, or
go back up?"
Matt and Natalie exchanged glances, then turned back to Lance and shrugged in
unison. Anna decided to answer for them, "Let's head back upstairs. I need to
do something about this…" Her tail swished as she finished, "problem."
In that moment, her three colleagues turned red as tomatoes at the implication,
and it certainly didn't help that a bitter scent had now wafted its way to all
of their noses. Wordlessly, they boarded the lift, pressed a key, and waited
for it to take them back to the bedrooms. They remained silent as the lift
ascended, stopped at their destination, and opened the door. The very second
said door slid open, though, Anna teleported to the other side of the hall and
ran into the master bedroom as though her hooves had caught fire, leaving Lance
and the others to catch up.
Natalie groaned and turned to Matt before burying her face into his shoulder.
"Doesn't even move a damn hoof out the door before teleporting… nooooo, she
just couldn't wait," she grumbled, her voice muffled.
Matt nodded and turned to Lance. "Want us to soundproof the shower again?" he
queried.
Lance hastily nodded, his face now turning a few shades darker, until it was as
red as his mane. "And get to it, before she starts her caterwauling. I don't
want anybody coming into the room and asking if she's alright," he grumbled in
reply. Matt and Natalie did not need to be told twice; before Lance even took
one step forward, they darted down the hall in a frenzied gallop to get to the
master bedroom as fast as their legs could carry them. Their movements were so
sudden and swift his mane and feathers fluffed up as their tails brushed right
past him.
Lance disembarked the lift, perking his ears to listen for any sound other than
Matt and Natalie galloping as they reached and then veered into the master
bedroom, and apart from the low hum of horns glowing and the sounds of cloth
rustling and water running, he caught nothing. He waited for a few seconds,
hesitant to return to the room, wings twitching nervously as he struggled to
make the decision whether or not to join them already.
"Lance, she's in a soundproof double-wrapped bubble!" Natalie called, an air of
exasperation in her voice. "And she pulled out my box of goodies from under the
bed and raided it again!"
Lance spread a wing and slapped himself in the face with it before cantering to
the master bedroom, muttering about how the 'box of goodies' was Natalie's
problem to deal with and not his. His pace was a lot slower than that of his
compatriots, with the teleportation factored in, though he did not drag his
hooves one little bit. He could not afford to dally, as there was a very
pressing matter to attend to.
As a result, and much to his chagrin and consternation, he arrived just fast
enough to see Natalie juggling an ordinary brown, hock-high box with holes in
its sides as she slipped in a small stick-like object through one of said
holes. The object in question being bright pink with mottled spots on it, and a
golden crystal cemented into a very flat foot gave him a clue as to why Anna
supposedly pulled the box out. He also saw a dome of orange, sparkling with
flecks of red and gold, encasing the toiletries' corner.
Natalie blushed and slid the box back under the bed and turned to Lance,
finding him leveling a withering glare in her direction, somehow made even
worse by the fact that he was blushing so furiously it was a wonder his face
hadn't turned a shade of brown yet given his coat color. "You do realize that,
if you converted your little toy stash and its container into thaumic energy,
she wouldn't pillage it, right?" he hissed, his voice so level and blunt that,
were it a more physical force, it would have knocked her onto her haunches.
Natalie's ears fell back, and she blushed from the admonishment. "I would, if I
didn't use crystals to power some of them…" she groused.
Lance's brows straightened so rigidly one could have balanced a pencil on them
with no trouble whatsoever. "Anna does that with all of the crystal arrows that
don't end up stuffed into her quiver," he pointed out blithely, "what the fuck
is stopping you from doing likewise?"
Natalie shuddered and blurted out a statement before she could even start
processing it, "R-remember the time sh-she tried to romance a-a doorknob while
she w-was sleeptrotting?"
Lance's wings immediately spread to half-mast, and his rear legs shuffled,
resulting in his body swinging as though his forehooves had been anchored to a
pivot point. "Y-yes… what does that have to do with anything?" he tried, his
voice cracking and straining a little.
Natalie's pupils shrank when she realized what had ended up leaving her mouth
before she engaged her brain. Her knees wobbled, threatening to buckle. "N-
nothing?" she answered, her voice a little weaker than she'd have liked.
"Exactly," Lance hissed, eyes narrowing so slightly the only clue Natalie had
in regards to their movement was the twitch that followed immediately after. He
stopped pivoting in place, maroon to the torn tips of his ears—whether in
embarrassment, or anger, she could not tell which of the two it was, nor if
these emotions were both warring for precedence. "We'll continue this little
discussion… later tonight, preferably after Delta Unit and Shining's group
return. Do I make myself clear?" he said.
Natalie gulped audibly and nodded hastily. Lance nodded back just once, turning
to Matt and leaving his now-nervous subordinate to ruminate on how, exactly,
he'd continue the discussion he'd just postponed with her. Matt, impressively,
managed a stiff pose with only a small frown betraying any emotion he may have
been feeling up to that point. "Yes?" Matt asked.
Lance retracted his wings and huffed through flared nostrils. "Let's wait for
Anna to finish up first before we start attempting to cobble together plans."
He glanced very briefly at the dome-covered toiletries' corner, seeing a very
faint silhouette moving in a gyrating manner.
Matt, too, looked at the toiletries' corner and heaved a sigh of relief. "I
think I see why you wanted private shower stalls…" he muttered, seeing Lance
nod out of the corner of his eye. He could've sworn he heard a faint hum, but
chose to keep his lips zipped on the off chance that it was his imagination.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Sunset had graced Greenwood as the hours began to wane toward night, and the
barrier had gone up—which really, really annoyed Shining Armor to no end, as he
stood at its edge with his group. Everyone on both sides of the barrier watched
as the elder pounded upon the shield with his hooves, but alas his efforts were
fruitless. The villagers glared at him as though of one mind, and at their head
was the band of dark grey unicorn stallions. "You mingled with outsiders, you
coot," one of the dark unicorns hissed, his voice somehow coming through
crystal clear despite the barrier.
"You are hereby exiled. Go, and never return," scolded the second.
The third sneered, the expression twisting his face to a manner that was
disconcerting. "It's a shame, really, but then again… you were always a
hopeless bastard," he mocked, his tone rather smug. "Just like that little
thirteen-year-old filly, and everypony else who came before her… her fate,
their fate; now yours. Enjoy your last days."
The elder found himself embraced in three identically-green magical auras that
came from the dark unicorns' horns, and before he could even register it, was
sent flying into Shining Armor with enough force to send them both sprawling to
the ground. As the two landed and then scrambled to get up, with the aid of
Flash and Rhinoc's helping hooves, the villagers turned from the barrier and
trotted into the village to attend to other business.
"You sexually-depraved monsters!" the elder shrieked with narrowed eyes, trying
to run back to the barrier even though Flash Sentry moved to grapple him by the
barrel. "One day, your ovens and batter-makers won't work anymore if you keep
this hopeless charade up! What will you do then?!" The villagers vanished into
Greenwood, ignoring him with huffs and snorts as they went.
"Calm down!" Flash ordered, spreading and flapping his wings as the elder's
eyes turned red. With all of his might, even though his bones were old, the
elder determinedly took a few steps forward, only to halt when he felt wings
pushing on the air and driving him back. For a few seconds, the poor stallion
stood there, glaring at Greenwood for all it was worth, before his eyes turned
green and he fell to his haunches.
"Th-they'll breed themselves into oblivion…" the elder muttered, his glare
easing into a look of pity. "Who will they turn to when that day comes?"
"Those ponies are as stubborn as a pack of mules," Applejack snorted, shaking
her head. "I say we leave them alone right now, and give 'em time to cool off."
The elder turned to her and frowned solemnly, and she returned the expression.
"Hey, we know a place where you could stay the night at."
Rhinoc turned to Applejack and paled considerably at her unspoken meaning.
"You're seriously not suggesting…"
Applejack nodded without even looking at Rhinoc, cutting him off instantly.
"Only other place would be Ashwood itself, I'm afraid," she pointed out.
Rhinoc's shoulders sagged a little at that. "I… guess we could make an
exception," he muttered under his breath. "Though I can still hear it now:
'really, why?'"
"We'll deal with his hootenanny later," Applejack snorted, flicking her tail
dismissively. She smiled at the elder, but her eyes slanted and her muzzle
warbled a little. "We'll keep ya safe until we get to the other safe place."
The elder's jaw quivered, and his eyes began to water as a wobbling smile
framed his muzzle. "Y-you will?" he stammered, his tone laced in disbelief,
though his eyes began to glisten with hope.
"You let us spend the night in your place and even made food for us. I think
it's time we returned the favor," Applejack extrapolated, her smile widening a
little. She lifted a hoof and wedged it between Flash and the elder, patting
the latter on his withers with a gentle motion. She turned to Flash and nodded
to him, and slowly he lifted his forelegs and flew off of the ex-villager. "And
besides, you're the only friendly pony in this messed-up area, and I wouldn't
forgive myself if I left ya hangin' out here."
The elder's smile had, likewise, widened. "Y-you really…" He stopped rambling
as he saw Shining nod.
"Those ponies in that shield…" Shining lifted a hoof and gestured to Greenwood
as he spoke, "are some of the worst I have seen. If they are heartless enough
to boot out foals and the elderly, then I wonder what that says about them." He
dropped his hoof and looked the elder in the eye, and his voice softened as he
added, "But you're different; you still have a heart, and one of gold at that.
We'll make sure the curse is lifted, while you're there to see it."
Blueblood also nodded to the elder, a small smile creeping at his lips when he
saw the elder beaming at his words. "While this promise is one we intend to
keep, we mustn't dally," he interjected, turning to the northeast. "We must get
back to… the other safe haven."
"He's right," Rainbow agreed with a nod, spreading her wings. "Want me to go on
ahead?"
Shining looked at Rainbow and shook his head. "No; at least, not until we get
away from the barrier," he stated. His horn began glowing as the sky started to
darken, and everyone fell into step behind him. He craned his neck to look at
the elder one more time. "Stick close. I don't know what comes out of these
woods at night, and frankly I want to avoid that sort of trouble if we can."
When the elder nodded, he turned ahead and started heading towards Ashwood with
a slightly hurried pace.
Taking roughly the same path they used to get to Greenwood the night prior,
Shining made sure everyone else was in tow behind him, going slow for the sake
of the elder now with them. Night fully fell within an hour or so, and the only
detour the group took was to drop by the Mighty Oak and enlighten him to much
more recent happenings, though even he could not do anything about it, thanks
to the shield. The elder, after seeing the Oak, had a slight spring in his step
that made even the ever-wary, insanely prepared Rhinoc crack a small smile.
On the way, as the light of the moon started sending its silver tendrils
through the branches of the desolate place, they stopped at the abandoned house
past the obsidian patch. "What's in there?" Rainbow asked, tilting her head.
Rhinoc strode to the front doorframe, his horn aglow. "It's what I want to
know. This house has been bugging me since yesterday, and I don't know why," he
muttered. The room was, as the elder's guest room, pitifully small; the blasted
place did not even have a flight of stairs that he could see. Curiously, the
window of the place had been recently smashed to pieces, its dusted fragments
only barely managing to reflect his and the moon's light. Trotting deeper into
the abode, something else caught his eye—a dresser that was missing its drawers
had a rumpled, dirtied gown that was not there yesterday. Coming closer still
to inspect the anomaly, Rhinoc found his stomach twisting into knots.
It was snowy white, of that there was no doubt. But it was stained and torn in
places with only tiny patches of pure and unblemished white here and there, and
sleeves that could only support small forelegs. The sleeves were maybe large
enough that Maria could fit her tarsi into them, but no bigger than that, while
the rest of the contours were frayed and hole-riddled. A large, glaringly
crimson splotch was set into the piece where the rump would meet with the
fabric, forming dried rivulets trailing all the way down to a filthy golden
trim.
This large red spot was accompanied and accentuated by several smaller blots
that were scattered willy-nilly across the entirety of the outfit. A hole had
been torn in the red spot, and a thin, reflective membrane of some sort clung
to the inside of the gown. This membrane's origins, though, were something
Rhinoc knew not, nor did he want to beg the question of what it had been
previously attached to.
With the outfit was a tiny veil, fragmented into noodle-like filaments that
sported ends so frayed he could see the individual threads and count them with
perfect accuracy if he were of a mind to. A little crestband finished the
piece, studded with cracked and flaking gems of a very faded green. Like the
gown itself, it too had been tarnished by a red hue. The crestband was dented,
and what parts of it that weren't red were a tarnished silver instead.
Both were topped off by meager shards of glass that stuck out of the outfit
like crude nails. Rhinoc lurched again and turned to the floor, seeing more
dried stains leading up to the window forming little hoofprints, with some of
the glass shards sullied in a crimson hue he did not notice until now. With
them were little golden horseshoes, warped and scratched beyond compare, also
soaked with red.
He felt a twang of sorrow, coming to the conclusion that whomever was wearing
this dress had met a very grisly end, but tried to leave in their last
moments—to no avail. He turned and left the house, and the last shred of
physical evidence that suggested that an unfortunate soul was there, paling
once more as he came face to face with Shining Armor. "Tattered and bloodied
wedding outfit in there, and the window's broken. Somepony was inside that
house," Rhinoc muttered.
Shining's face hardened. "Would it be possible to find whoever was in the
outfit?" he asked, trying to keep his voice from coming out as a sibilant hiss.
Rhinoc pursed his lips and contemplated the question, before grimly shaking his
head. "We'd need the whole military contingent to scour the area, and we've
already gotten on Greenwood's bad side. The bloodstains were large enough to
let me know that, whomever it was, they very likely did not get far." His ears
fell back. "And if the pony turned into a tree… a pretty big if, considering
the amount of blood I saw in there..."
Shining frowned, sensing where Rhinoc was going with his train of logic. The
elder came over, went inside to inspect the grim scene, and trotted out with a
sullen frown just seconds later. "Poor dear…" he muttered solemnly. "To be
attacked on a wedding day…" Rhinoc nodded, sensing his understandable unease.
For a moment, the group stood in somber silence, contemplating what to do next
when a distant, shrill scream rent the tranquil night air. Rainbow responded by
spreading her wings, flying over, and seizing Blueblood within the span of
three seconds.
"H-hey!" Blueblood protested, struggling to get out of Rainbow's already-
tightening grip. It was no use; within five seconds after the initial grab, he
was forced to stand on his back legs, his forehooves flailing with all of the
grace of windswept wet newspaper.
"Sorry guys, but I'm afraid I gotta fly ahead," Rainbow explained before
lifting Blueblood and taking off at terminal velocity, and the only thing she
left in her wake was two sets of hoofprints and a few shed feathers that fell
after she had left. Blueblood shrieked in surprise as he was spirited away, but
soon his cries faded with distance.
"I have a feeling he's gonna need another puke bucket whenever he lands…" Flash
groused, flaring his wings. He looked to Shining. "Want me to tail her?"
Shining nodded. "Please do, Flash. I've heard about her recklessness when she
first arrived here…" he muttered dismally. "We'll catch up." With that, Flash
took to the air and tried his best to fly after and find the hapless Blueblood
and the once-again reckless Rainbow Dash.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Blueblood's stomach had turned upside-down and back again as Rainbow went
careening through the night, the whistling of the wind and the hooves carrying
him doing their utter damnedest to make him lose his lunch. He barely heard the
source of the scream as blood rushed to his head and pounded at the walls of
his veins and arteries in an attempt to carve its way out, but he held his
tongue, fearing that would fly out as well were he to open his mouth in these
circumstances.
Rainbow, he decided, didn't seem to personally care either way. She heard the
screaming, engaged body before brain, and before he knew it a decent chunk of
Ashwood Forest passed right under their hooves. Still more of the desolate wood
flitted by at such speeds he couldn't tell which shade of brown belonged to
what, even with the moon's light illuminating the area. They went in circles,
up and down, and every few seconds Rainbow glanced down to find out what the
source of the sound was, but she caught nothing. This dragged on for several
nauseatingly long minutes, during which Blueblood's stomach found that it did
not know which way to start cartwheeling. Then, just as suddenly as they'd
lifted off, Rainbow stopped on a dime, glancing around this way and that as she
heard several low and distant hums.
Blueblood squeezed his lips shut as bile rushed up to fill his mouth. He forced
himself to swallow, already green in the face and wondering what in Tartarus
his usher got distracted by. Wearily, he glanced around, finding several dark
forms descending onto Ashwood. They were massive things, bigger than the
Valkyrie Tank, but other than that he could not discern what in Faust's name
they were, let alone ascertain their purpose. Not even the light of the moon
gave their appearances away; only their darkened forms and their distance did
so in its stead, though soon they vanished from sight.
He looked up at Rainbow, who looked down at him and shrugged to the best of her
ability. "I dunno either," she admitted. Her mouth opened to utter something
else, when another scream, this one much more shrill and loud, pierced the air,
giving Blueblood barely enough time to collect himself. Instantly, the two
darted their eyes madly about, looking under themselves for even the slightest
trace of a source when, a couple of miles away, a tree swayed in the moonlight
all by its lonesome.
Suspiciously, its branches drooped down when none of the other trees
surrounding it even moved so much as a leaf, and a second, even higher-pitched
scream, joined the first and dragged on for much longer. Rainbow strained her
ears, trying to gauge what was wailing and where exactly it was coming from.
The second source gurgled for a bit before resuming their shrieking. Her heart
sank, and she raced towards the moving tree as she heard the thunderous sound
of something massive stomping its way over. Within seconds, the sources' cries
rose to chilling screams, with the gurgling one actually managing to give them
both a slight headache as it reached a crescendo.
Rainbow wasted no time; she flew over, dragging Blueblood with, to the one tree
that had moved. In seconds, she found a clearing that beheld a horrifying
sight: a massive… entity seemingly made of black stones ambled to a cursed tree
that was using its branches to shield a small foal, who was in turn cradling
something between its forelegs. The tree tried to bat away the oncoming
creature with its branches, but it only caused its spindly limbs to snap into
pieces upon impact as the creature came closer and closer to the foal. Larger
branches came in and seized the creature and firmly pushed, sending it back a
few paces before it stopped.
"Hang in there, kid, we're coming!" Rainbow declared, rushing to the scene and
right to the creature, getting between the entity and the tree as well as
putting Blueblood on the forest floor to catch his breath. In the moon's light,
she saw a massive four-legged creature as big as a standard house's bedroom,
but did not get a good look at its features. Instead she ascended a few meters,
descended again, twisted around and bucked the creature head-on with both back
hooves, earning a pained cry as the attack sent it staggering further
backwards.
Rainbow briefly turned to Blueblood. "Take care of the kid! I'll deal with… the
whatever-this-is!" she cried, and when Blueblood shakily nodded, she
immediately twisted back to face her adversary as it righted itself and glared
at her with beady eyes. She found herself staring down a tortoise of all
things, its scales black as coal with a shell seemingly hewn of obsidian, with
one bladed horn jutting out of its forehead and two Celestia-sized stalagmites
sticking out of its shell to form a wicked crescent shape. Quickly, she glanced
at both back hooves and sighed in relief when she did not spot a single trickle
of blood, or a bleeding gash, before once again facing the massive tortoise.
Blueblood turned away from the spectacle as Rainbow flew to the behemoth to
whale on it some more, ignoring its earthshaking stomps, and instead lit up his
horn to conjure a light to better illuminate the area. His eyes widened when he
saw a small filly with widened eyes, barely bigger than Scootaloo, huddling at
the cursed tree's roots. Her light green mane and tail were in tangles, and her
grey coat had been stained by dried blood in a myriad of places and an equal
number of scabbed-over wounds. Disturbingly, where the blood had gathered most
was her very stained rump. In her forelegs was a much smaller, pale green foal
with a dried umbilical cord still attached, kicking and screaming for all it
was worth. He instantly trotted over, only for the cursed tree to start trying
to bat him away, too.
"Leave… alone…!" the tree hissed, turning a horrifically-twisted scowl towards
Blueblood.
Blueblood shook his head. "We're here to help the children!" he protested,
using his magic to seize the branches and shove them away before he came closer
to the wounded filly, who immediately scooted back to the tree. "They need
shelter, and medical care, and you will not impede me from taking them to where
it's available!"
He opened his mouth to speak some more, but the filly started screaming at him,
"N-not g-going to b-bad place! Y-you can't make me!"
"Leave… now…" the tree protested, deciding to fold some more branches over in
an effort to get Blueblood to trot elsewhere. However, he wouldn't back down;
he instead sent the branches back with more force, that time outright snapping
some of them. The tree retaliated, now bringing out a branch as thick as his
barrel, ending in smaller branches that made it seem more like a clawed hand.
With this large branch, it seized Blueblood by his left foreleg and gripped
tightly before lifting him up and bringing him to its face. "You no… help
foals! You… hurt them! You just like… bad ponies of Greenwood!" the tree
declared, bringing forth another branch even thicker than the one it was using
to hold Blueblood, seizing his right foreleg before it began to pull in
opposite directions.
"I am most certainly not anything even remotely close to what those degenerates
are!" Blueblood shouted back, seizing the larger branches in his magic and
pushing them toward himself to keep the tree from ripping his forelegs out of
their sockets. He felt a slight strain just beneath his horn, and one in each
foreleg as the tree tried with all of its might to resist his spell and rip him
in half. "I require assistance!" he cried, but blinked when he realized Rainbow
didn't immediately come to help him get out of the tree's grip.
"I-I can't help right now!" Rainbow cried. Curious as to what was keeping her,
Blueblood turned to Rainbow, finding that she now had some difficulty of her
own with the tortoise. It had her pinned under its body with a massive foot,
and she was using all four hooves to keep it from turning her into pulp, wings
straining as she used them to push herself up from the ground without flapping
them.
The tree's mouth formed into a twisted smirk, hanging slightly agape as its
face tilted. A dark substance leaked from its eyes, staining its bark as it
stared at Blueblood with an expression of malice. "Outsiders… weak…" it cooed
darkly, the barest hint of a feminine tone lining its voice. "Outsiders… no
help foals…"
Blueblood turned back and glared at the tree, though a shiver ran down his
spine at the rather disconcerting expression it wore on its visage. He did the
only thing available to him then; he lifted his rear legs, swung back before
bringing his hindquarters forward and bucking with every ounce of strength in
his body. The tree screamed as hooves landed solidly against its face, causing
the bark to break and the flesh beneath to cave in with a sickening squelch
thanks to the aid of momentum. Its branches released their hold on him, and he
dropped to the forest floor on his side, grinning as the tree brought its
misshapen branches to its face with a wail of pain.
Scrambling up, he turned to the filly and the baby before scooping them up in
his magic. "Sincere apologies, but this must be done!" he stated as the filly
opened her mouth to protest. Blueblood brought them close to his barrel and
backpedaled sharply, just as the tree dropped its massive clawed branches to
glare at him with a broken face that leaked dark fluids like a running faucet.
He launched a bolt of magic at the tree, who deflected it with a branch,
sending it into the sky to explode harmlessly above Ashwood Forest.
"Foal defiler!" the tree yelled, its roots shifting violently beneath the
ground, forming cracks and upwellings of dirt from where it was cemented in
place. "Foal needs proper stallion! Not outsider weakling!"
"Just what are you going on about?!" Blueblood demanded, turning to the filly
to find her looking at him with stiff legs and pinprick pupils. The baby was
looking at him with a similar expression, having stopped crying for the moment.
He took a better look at them both, finding countable ribs and jutting hipbones
on the filly's frame, while curiously the baby had a rather healthy amount of
pudge. "And have you eaten at all?" he asked the filly, in a low voice. She
shook her head.
"N-no trust you," the filly muttered. She, the baby, and Blueblood all shrieked
in surprise as the earth heaved and massive tendrils erupted from the ground,
sending dust and small pebbles everywhere. Rainbow and the tortoise yelped as
well, and before anyone could move the tendrils wrapped around all of their
legs, save those of the filly and baby. The tortoise shrieked as it was flipped
away from Rainbow and onto its back, its pointed shell spearing the soil and
cementing it in place with a terrible snap.
"Give me the children!" the tree bellowed as the tendrils yanked Blueblood from
the ground once more, splaying his legs as far apart as possible. He looked
down, seeing the tendrils end at the tree's trunk, and the tree's roots moving
in an unnatural manner, with some even forming sharp thorns through the act of
twisting about, thus creating splinters.
"I would rather face the wrath of my aunties than to leave starving foals in
this accursed forest!" Blueblood shouted, once more glaring at the tree for all
it was worth. The tree hissed, the sound akin to a screeching whine, when an
orange blur shot past it, and then weaved its way through the tendrils. It
snatched the foals from Blueblood's magic as it passed him and shot to the sky
like a rocket, hovering just over the branches' edges.
Blueblood and Rainbow looked up, seeing a frowning Flash Sentry hovering above,
the filly clinging to his armor and the baby in his forelegs. "Like hay you're
getting the kids!" Flash yelled, shaking his head disapprovingly at the tree,
who turned up to hiss at him animalistically. A low hum filled the air, and a
few darkened forms carrying glistening, clock-shaped objects hovered at the
edge of the clearing in his wake.
Past these new arrivals, though, something both intriguing and highly alarming
caught Flash's eyes. More trees started swaying their branches erratically in
the distance, and with their movements a chorus of anguished, enraged moans
filled the air. This new cacophony almost drowned out the hum the new arrivals
had brought with them.
***** Chapter LXX, Part II- Rune-Wrought Twilight *****
Rainbow struggled as the tendrils wrapped around her legs tightened, wings
madly flailing beneath her as she tried to get out of their ground-born grasp
now that the tortoise had been flipped over. But slipping out of flailing,
nature-made ropes proved difficult, especially when she realized that these
things had their own unique brand of tricks up their multitudes of earth-
wrought sleeves. One seized both wings by the very joint to which they
connected her back with the moment both sets of primaries touched each other,
effectively rendering them stiff and useless… or so the tendrils that seized
them thought, anyway. All she thought of it was something along the lines of
'just a cheap shot.' "Oh come on!" she cried in exasperation.
With every ounce of strength she could pump into her wings, she pushed against
the tendrils, though she was careful to not go overboard in case the blasted
things decided to take the next and more logical step of breaking her bones.
Her blood began to boil when she saw more tendrils shooting towards Flash
Sentry, who had the sensibility to ascend higher, keeping both himself and the
poor foals that got caught up in this mess out of harm's way.
One of the new arrivals dove in to help, and she instantly caught sight of his
triangular dog-tags. But she didn't have the time to gawk, not when there was
the threat of being maimed by dirtied tentacles. She strained her wings again,
gaining another few inches of open air between them, feeling mana pulsing
between the feathers as her innate magic kicked into gear. The tendrils began
tightening, however, and soon an impasse was reached. Rainbow had to be careful
to keep a wing from slipping out, knowing full well her own ability to fly
would be seriously compromised if only one wing hung at her side.
Magic gripped her, and chitil started growing on her body with multiple flashes
of light. "What the?!" She struggled some more, wondering where this stuff was
coming from and why it was growing on her. She turned to the arrivals that dove
toward her, and stopped for just a second when she saw fangs and hole-riddled
legs. "Oh…" But that momentary lapse in her concentration was enough for the
tendrils to push her wings back together, though not before chitil covered them
down to the joints. The chitil cushioned her wings snugly, and then her legs,
and then the rest of her body, even as more tendrils slipped in to try and
squeeze the life out of her.
The new tendrils never got the chance. Rainbow's eyes widened as she heard the
cursed tree screaming, and saw dozens of bolts of emerald fire erupt right in
front of and all around her. Even as the tendrils were struck and started
burning away, she did not feel an iota of heat so much as touch a covered hair
on her body. Past the flames, albeit barely, she could see Blueblood undergoing
the same treatment; a pyre surrounded him, and he was coated horn to hoof in
chitil. Not one singed hair was to be seen on his coat or mane.
Oddly, she began to smell something that had a bitter twang, and immediately
her brain surged with a fresh wave of anger. She began to struggle once more,
and though the chitil would not yield, it did help her wriggle out of the
tendrils' collective grasp that much easier; the same was true for Blueblood.
She turned to the cursed tree, who was now trying to knock several black and
airborne forms away with its branches, but the effort was rendered moot when
these forms retaliated with bolts of fire. Soon it was reduced to thrashing and
screaming as bits of bark turned to ash, and the flesh beneath them was
smoldering black as the fires ate it up.
Armin's voice echoed in their heads, "Don't mind the goo; it's fireproof."
Rainbow nodded, slipped out of the tendrils, twisted about and landed on her
hooves in one motion, albeit unsteadily thanks to their extra layer of slime.
As she landed, some of the chitil began to slide off without pulling at any of
her hairs or feathers, leaving her dry and untouched as it started pooling at
her hooves. Blueblood took a few seconds more just to wiggle free, but he too
landed without trouble the moment his legs squirmed out of the tendrils
harmlessly.
Rainbow turned her attention to the screaming tree once again, and her eyes
widened when she saw it was still standing! Parts fell away in the verdant
blaze; whole branches, parts of its face, even sizeable chunks of flesh, and
yet it kept on trying to bat the changelings surrounding it with branches that
simply could not withstand the inferno. She turned to Flash, who looked down at
her as the filly shifted to cling to his backside. "Take the kids to the ship!
They don't need to be here!" she barked.
Flash nodded and turned to soar away, a few changelings turning to accompany
him. When they vanished from sight, Rainbow ruffled her wings and took to the
air again, shooting up to the top of the clearing. Her heart sank when moving
branches started getting closer to the edge, and worse still she could now hear
the ground shaking. She turned to where Flash was heading, seeing some branches
closing in on him and the changelings with him. "Look out!" she cried, hoping
to Faust that they'd hear her.
A branch swiped at the trio, and for a heart-stopping moment, Rainbow heard the
filly and the baby cry out. Flash Sentry was quicker than the oncoming branch,
however, and rose a few feet higher into the air to dodge it. One of the
changelings wasn't as lucky, as though the branch had missed its initial
target, it managed to snag itself onto a hole-riddled leg, pulling him down
with a startled screech. Seconds after that changeling was downed, a flare of
emerald light erupted from the spot where the branch snagged him, and another
terrible shriek filled the air.
All around, flashes of light erupted in various places, all from the ground of
Ashwood Forest. Screams continued to rend the air, adding another terrible note
to the already-ongoing horrid cacophony. She twisted to look down, finding the
current batch of tendrils now laying askew all over the clearing, smoldering
and lifeless. The tree, however, continued to writhe and twist, its cry now a
strangled gurgle as the flames continued to eat at its body. Even as it fell to
the ground, its trunk snapping in two, it continued to thrash mightily.
Rainbow dove to pick up Blueblood, who did not struggle as her hooves locked
tight around his barrel and she launched herself into the sky with him in tow.
A few changelings accompanied them, and all hovered in place for a minute or
so. "What should we do?!" Rainbow cried, panic starting to grip her as a
tendril shot towards Flash, barely missing him by a few inches as he banked
hard to the side.
Armin glanced around, seeing a few more shadows dive into the trees, either of
their own volition or with the aid of a stray tendril or branch. He turned back
to Flash, who was now reeling back as another tendril tried to snatch him, only
barely grazing his tail. He flew over as fast as his wings could carry him, and
at once the changelings with Rainbow followed him. Rainbow herself frowned, but
flew behind him nonetheless.
"This day just keeps getting better!" Blueblood shrieked, glancing around as
Rainbow zipped past oncoming tendrils with laughable ease. "I can see why Lance
didn't want us to come here!"
"You said it!" Rainbow agreed with a nod as she passed by the changelings,
heading straight towards Flash Sentry. She saw clouds gathering in the sky,
forming rapidly as though a weather team were managing them, and her fellow
pegasus rising into the air slowly in his bid to keep the foals safe. Her heart
skipped a beat when she heard the distinct crackle of thunder, and saw
lightning striking in wicked arcs from the forming clouds a few miles away.
"Ectoplasms! Flash, you're going too high!"
Flash was too busy ducking away and ascending to flee the tendrils to really
notice, though the booming of distant thunder did not escape him. He looked up,
seeing the sky rapidly clouding up and concealing the moon, and each forming
cloud sported a little yellow blot that seemed to steam the moisture around it
into angry black splotches. His pupils shrank, and instantly he turned down to
start descending. Tendrils raced up to meet him head-on, eager to ground him,
and it was only thanks to a lightning strike that arced just behind him that he
could even see them.
Flash folded his wings sharply against his sides, picking up momentum, seeing
the tendrils open up to embrace him. Before he could touch them, however, his
wings snapped open and he darted to the side with one flap, steering himself
and the foals clear out of harm's way. He swerved and ascended again, though
not high enough to draw the ectoplasms' collective attention to him.
He looked below as a flash of pink exploded from the ground, still dodging the
tendrils with urgency, finding Shining conjuring a glowing shield with the
elder and Applejack at his side, and Rhinoc launching bolts of flame through
the field toward any wayward cursed trees that started striking at the dome.
Rhinoc had also shed his disguise, and hissed animalistically as the trees kept
trying to press whatever advantage they thought they had, throwing themselves
at the dome as fire began to consume them.
The elder was chipping in too, launching bolts that sank into the ground before
conjuring vines of ivy that exploded from the soil to grapple the trees and
send them back, even though the friendly fire was eating that as well.
Applejack merely stood there, mana pulsing through the ground with an orange
glow beneath her hooves, eyes closed in concentration.
"What in Faust's teats set these guys off?!" Shining cried, his shield starting
to flex as more trees piled onto their burning brethren. The barrier dented
momentarily before springing back to a perfectly round shape, knocking its
current wave of aggressors back.
"Damned if I know!" Rhinoc yelled, his horn starting to turn red-hot at its tip
as he launched more bolts of fire in a frenzied fervor to carve out a path of
fallen trees. Yet no matter how many he felled, those that were taken out of
the fight still had gusto left in their blackening branches, and so clawed
feebly at the barrier as though the pathetic movements could damage it. Worse
still, more swarmed all around, and the body count was piling quick. He spared
a glance up and paled as he saw Flash dancing in the sky with the tendrils,
performing a very precarious series of pirouettes with the foals clinging to
him. "Hey, Tangerine! Get your shiny metal armor-plated ass down here!" he
called.
Flash needed no second invitation. He dove for the barrier, which opened up a
hole at its top to admit him and his young charges. Before it could close,
however, Rainbow and Blueblood came careening in as well, and all three landed
rather clumsily. Flash righted himself, spreading his wings for balance as he
rose onto his hind legs, and turned to check on the baby. The little one looked
up at him with a reddened face, sniffling and huffing with ears pinned back.
"Hey, it's gonna be okay," he cooed gently, but that only caused the young one
to shiver and press its forelegs tightly against its chest.
Shining turned to Flash as he heard him coo to the child, and the moment he saw
the baby and the battered filly his jaw fell open and stayed that way. He just
could not process the sight, but then shook his head and decided he'd have time
to gawk later, especially since a baby had now been dragged into the fray. He
turned his attention to the dome to find that still more trees swarmed its
edge, banging against it and eyeing the lot within with hungry gazes that
reminded Shining of ravenous vultures.
Even the trees that fell to pieces still made an effort to break his spell. He
had to give credit where it was due; these things were persistent as hell.
Their fervor only increased tenfold when they paused just long enough to see
Flash cradling the baby, with the filly still clinging to his back. "Foal
defilers!" the trees cried in a collective roar, their outburst echoing with
enough distortion to sound as though it came from a particularly large,
particularly peeved dragon.
The dome began to crack with the repeated strikes, now fueled by a hellishly
renewed vigor. Shining flexed it to lessen the damage, but the little chinks
told the trees all they needed to know, and so they continued to strike. Worse
yet, both the elder and Rhinoc slumped to the ground, both panting and with
steam rising from the tips of their red-hot horns. Blueblood gawked as he saw
steam rising from Shining's horn as well, and sweat beading on his brow. His
own horn glowed, and ribbons of blue lanced out to the cracks, sealing them
shut in a manner reminiscent of cement.
But, the moment he did that was the same moment the trees simply wised up and
shifted to other, untouched parts of the barrier and started chipping away in
those spots. Blueblood responded by using his magic to reinforce those areas
too, all the while tossing his forehooves into the air and crying out in
exasperation, "You have got to be joking!"
Dash looked up to the sky and strained her eyes as lightning bolts danced
above, illuminating several airborne forms that were massive and oddly balloon-
shaped. Her eyes widened when she saw the changelings and other shadowy forms
retreating to them, squawking and hissing in displeasure. "Guys! Look!" She
thrust a hoof out towards the sight, and everyone save the elder, Rhinoc, and
Applejack spared a glance up.
The filly promptly buried her face into the crook of Flash's neck with a
shiver, right beneath his helmet. "Sc-scary… monsters…" she mumbled, closing
her eyes tight.
Applejack's eyes snapped open, and a fiery ember burned within them as they
narrowed. "Something tells me…" She paused and lifted a hoof and scraped at the
dirt with it with a firm stomp that sent a small tremor through the earth. The
trees felt the tremor and turned to her, just in time to see her stomp and
scrape again. "That these stubborn mules are gonna need a good bucking or two."
She snorted, her tail twitching and her legs tensing with the urge to kick the
trees' faces in. "Don't give us one lick o' info, and this is how they act?"
Her voice dripped with disdain and anger in equal amounts, and the trees
recoiled a bit at her tone.
"Outsiders know nothing! Outsiders can understand nothing!" a particularly
foolish tree barked as it punched a hole through the shield with a massive
clawed branch that reached out to seize Shining by his horn. In a blur of
motion, Applejack jumped to the tree, whirled around, lifted her back legs and
bucked as hard as she could. The limb snapped into several pieces the instant
her hooves connected, and the tree shrieked and withdrew as Blueblood worked to
seal the hole.
"Nice shot, Applejack!" Rainbow cheered, before hearing another tree puncture
the shield from behind. She spun around and raced to the offender, grappling
its limb with all four hooves and using her wings to add momentum. In seconds,
she jerked the branch up and snapped it clean off, earning a cry of pain from a
second tree who also pulled back. Before Blueblood could start mending that
hole, a third tree poked its head in, only to get a faceful of severed limb-
bark that Rainbow thrust down with the force of a sledgehammer. More splinters
went askew and flew in many directions as a result of the impact, and the tree
was left with half of its face torn from a skull that was somehow buried in the
bark.
A burst of purple light from above caught Flash's eye, and he looked up in time
to see it fade from one of the airborne figures that now circled the roiling
skies overhead. He flinched when a part of the dome cracked over him, and a
tree tried to crawl inside with a whole myriad of branches and tendrils
stretching out to grip him. He ducked and shifted as Rainbow promptly flew over
to start kicking its face in, while another that managed to punch through the
shield crawled toward Blueblood only to wind up meeting with the business end
of Applejack's hooves.
The shield began breaking into larger chunks. Shining's legs wobbled with the
strain, threatening to give out, and he was sweating bullets as his horn
gradually turned an unhealthy shade of crimson. The trees started to gain
ground, howling and shrieking with delight as Applejack and Rainbow rushed
around to try and keep them at bay, while Blueblood's own horn started to steam
and heat up. Even with one's speed and the other's thorough experience with
tree-bucking, there were only two ponies actively trying to fight the oncoming
tide. It was only a matter of attrition now. The trees knew it and assumed
twisted grins as victory seemed at hoof.
But a golden light flashed overhead, just once before turning blood red. An
ominous light then shined its rays onto the immediate area. Everything ground
to a halt, and Rhinoc and the elder lurched to their hooves before looking up
at the light. Slowly, Shining and the rest of his group, as well as the cursed
trees that had them surrounded, did the same. Runes framed the light, dancing
about between a golden ring and the red light, and they did so in a slow
pirouette that almost seemed to hold their breath.
"What… is that?" Shining asked, swallowing heavily as he eyed the crimson light
with an air of suspicion.
The elder paled considerably at the sight. Rhinoc shivered as he uttered one
word in a hushed whisper to answer Shining, who had to strain his ears to hear
it. The word was one that burned at the Major's throat, stole his breath, made
his heart freeze for a split-second and sent his mind into a fritz. One word
that sent tremors down his wings with enough force to rattle them, and a
creeping chill swept his bones through his chitin and the bones of everyone
else gathered. Merely uttering it caused his eyes to dilate in alarm and fear
to grip his entire being. That word consisted of but three syllables, and it
was, "Ragnarok…"
"Ragnarok…?" Shining paused to let the word sit in his mouth, before his pupils
dilated when he realized what the Major had just uttered. His magic sputtered,
and the shield shook as if in agreement. Just having heard it was enough for
jolts of lightning to run through him, and his legs were suddenly filled with
the urge to gallop to the nearest cavern for shelter. "Y-you can't possibly
mean…!"
Rhinoc nodded gravely as dark shapes started emerging from the light. "We must
leave," he muttered darkly.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Matt stood on the deck of the largest airship currently circling the skies
above Ashwood, his horn aglow with a crackling aura as he eyed a tiny pink
speck down below, surrounded by a myriad of green glowing dots that now
perforated the forest. With him was Twilight, who fidgeted in place as she
charged her horn. "If I can just teleport down there… I could…" A raised, fuzzy
hoof obstructing her barrel stopped her.
"Don't. It's suicide at this height," Matt muttered grimly as Twilight's horn
gave off a pop of light without doing much else. He heard the hatch open, and
turned to it to find Anna poking her head out. "What's the report?"
Anna's muzzle twisted into a solemn frown, and her head shook gravely.
"Shining's surrounded on all sides, and the trees know it. His shield can't
hold forever, and all other changelings have decided to haul ass, leaving
Rhinoc with him. If we don't do something…" she trailed off, letting her
ominous, unspoken meaning hang in the thundering air. Matt nodded and turned
back to the scene below, using his raised hoof to beckon Anna to come closer.
She jumped out of the hatch, closed it behind her, and cantered over to peer
past the railing. "Shit… we'd have to go down there, and now that the cursed
trees are throwing a tantrum…"
Matt groaned and conjured a thick, leather-bound book emblazoned with his cutie
mark on the cover in a flash of light. "I never thought I'd have to pull this
thing out in a million years…" he hissed, backing away from the railing to
levitate the book in front of his muzzle. He flipped it open, revealing messy
writing in ancient alicorn of all things dotting the pages. He searched the
pages, speed-reading up and down with eyes quickly narrowing. "C'mon, there's
gotta be something in this dusty thing…" He searched and searched, brow
furrowing as various equations, explanations both simple and unbelievably
complex for what the spells within did, and even sloppy illustrations of the
spells in action passed.
He flipped by one illustration three-quarters into the spellbook, one wherein a
pony conjured a myriad of ethereal swords simultaneously, grumbling in his
haste to find something to help Shining and his group somehow or another from
the sky. A firm frown twisted his muzzle as he reached the end of the book,
then promptly flipped back to the spell depicting the myriad of swords. "Fuck…"
he groused, turning to Anna as her pupils widened. "What do you see?"
Anna's frown deepened. "The trees are gaining an advantage," she reported
glumly.
Twilight turned to Anna and raised an incredulous brow. "How do you know that
without a telescope?" she asked. "No normal pony can see that far!"
Anna snorted dismissively, not even bothering to return the look. "You forget
that I am not normal," she scoffed before pausing to bare her teeth, revealing
that half of her back row was pointed and blunt along with canines that not
many ponies would possess. Her tail swished as she added, "The only reason I
can even see your brother right now is because his shield is glowing."
Lightning danced, and a particularly bright bolt arced around the airship once,
shining right in their faces. Anna slammed her eyes shut and recoiled alongside
Matt and Twilight, and she answered to the lightning not with words, but
instead with a bestial, lion-like roar of displeasure leaving her throat. When
the light faded, she blinked her eyes open and shook her head to get the spots
out of her vision.
Matt and Twilight were seconds behind her, shaking their heads to gather their
bearings. Doing a second read-through of the tome he conjured, Matt facehoofed.
"Of all the spells I know, this one is the only long-distance one I've got…" He
trotted to the railing after reading through the tome a third time, just to be
extra certain in case his eyes were playing tricks on him. Making the tome
vanish after that, he searched for the lone pink spot and almost immediately
zeroed in on it.
Twilight turned to Matt and her pupils shrank. "Only one long-range spell?!"
she cried, panic starting to grip her as he nodded once.
"And it's one that doesn't use the ground, which is all the way down there,"
Matt grumbled, his horn starting to glow brighter. "Anna, tell Lance that I'm
on the last resort." Anna shuddered, pupils dilating and ears pinning back.
"B-but I could—" Anna gabled before Matt turned to her and shook his head.
"Lightning could blind you. It's not worth the risk. Tell Lance now," Matt
stated in an authoritative tone that brokered no argument. Anna's mouth snapped
shut and she nodded before trotting to the hatch, flipping it open, and jumping
in. Seconds after she began her descent, the hatch slammed shut of its own
accord, and Matt turned back to the scene below. Channeling more mana into his
horn, golden filaments lanced out to the sky and started dancing about in twin
circles that could rival Canterlot in size. One ring was larger than the other,
by several feet at that, with the smaller of the pair within the confines of
the larger. Twilight wondered what he was casting.
Twilight did not have to wait long before the spell itself answered for her
first with a ripple, then, between the circles, the filaments lashed out and
weaved until they formed runic writing that glowed crimson the moment they were
completed. Twilight's heart froze in her chest as a pentagram formed in the
middle of the twin circles before the portion of sky they held was ripped by a
red energy, giving way to a hellish portal that had countless vermillion clouds
dancing within, circling some glow whose source she could not hope to discern.
She turned to Matt and paled, seeing his magic aura shift abruptly from gold to
crimson dotted with shadowy wisps that drifted away in ribbons and flecks. As
the aura cradled it, his horn lengthened by a good foot as gold dust fell off
of it, revealing a long and curved tapering quality about it that she could've
sworn was not there before. His mane's braids broke free of their intricate
three-way hold, before they with the rest of the golden locks, in addition to
his leg fur and tail. All three of those traits began dancing as though whipped
by wind, parts of all turning black and mist-like, almost seeming to become
tangled masses of concentrated darkness. To top this off, a shadowy mist
started pooling from his eyes like writhing embers, purple at first before
turning black.
His sclera turned an unhealthy shade of sable, and his irises contorted until
they were less spheroid and more hexagonal in shape, and their pupils did
likewise with a jagged point more reminiscent of a pair of splinters. The pools
of blue turned the same color as that of the runes he was conjuring. "Wh-what
are you doing?!" she cried, her voice an octave higher as she realized she
recognized the wisps dancing about his eyes. "Wh-what's happening to you?!"
Twilight wished she had not asked. Matt answered, though his gruff voice was
now distorted by an otherworldly, echoing reverb that was almost wraith-like,
"I am using all of my magic, mostly the Umbrum sort. I was always like this…
but I never let many ponies see me in this state. This… is the true me,
Twilight."
"U-Umbrum?! Wh-what's an Umbrum?!" Twilight cried, turning to the hellish
portal to find a myriad of darkened shadows now descending out of it, each one
the size of a mountain and tapered to a wickedly sharp point or three.
Lightning struck, illuminating an axehead amongst one of the things that were
now being called forth.
"A unicorn who used dark magic until it corrupted their bodies. This… is a
spell Lance allows to be cast, but only under dire circumstances. But it is not
dark magic. Only I can cast it," Matt answered, lifting a hoof and waving it
towards the portal for emphasis. "Mom's an Umbrum… but she doesn't like to
admit it."
Twilight gulped and turned to Matt, shivering as she saw his horn turn black as
pitch from the halfway point all the way to the tip. He stood, still channeling
the spell, watching as a myriad of impossibly huge weapons descended from the
portal, cast in the ominous red glow that he beckoned onto the surface of
Fantasia. Twilight found that, despite the light shrouding them, they were as
dark and dismal as the shadows emanating from Matt's body. With a fresh wave of
horror clawing at her mind, she realized that what she had just witnessed was
an illusion breaking. And if just channeling this spell that rent a hole in the
sky broke it… his reassurance that 'this isn't dark magic' did next to nothing
to abate her rapidly-skyrocketing concerns.
Another thought hit her. If this was the real Matt, instead of some fanciful
veneer crafted by way of illusions and cloaks, than just what in Tartarus was
the military in these parts hiding? Natalie being a crystal pony, that she
could excuse on some level, given that she was adopted; this was another kettle
of fish entirely. She forced herself to ignore these musings for the time
being, and focused on the more immediate and pressing matter of the gate that
was called forth and the weapons in the process of emerging from it.
"H-how… are those things coming from Tartarus itself?!" she screamed, half of
her mind going into a panicked fritz while the other was trying to work out how
such weapons could even be conjured in the first place. "And why isn't it
classified as dark magic?!"
"The weapons might as well be, and this spell does not derive its power from
hatred. If it did, the changelings in the army would drop dead this night,"
Matt answered with a shake of his head, turning back to the lone pink dot down
below. He studied it for a moment, then turned back to the weapons that hung
just outside of the portal, waiting to strike. Realizing his hoof was still
raised, he held it there for a few seconds before dropping it. "I think it's
time to send the cursed trees of Greenwood a little warning."
"Stop! Shining's down there!" Twilight cried, but alas it was of little use;
her outburst might as well have fallen upon deaf ears. At once the weapons
descended from the portal, screaming through the air with enough force to rock
the airships on their way down. Twilight wanted to look away from where Shining
was trying to hold out, but horror gripped her so tightly she could not even
bring herself to blink.
At terminal velocity, the weapons homed in. There was nothing she could do; the
weapons were too big and too fast for her to move with her magic, and worse
still the first wave was in multiples. She wanted to scream, but could not will
her mouth to move, could not will her lungs to take in air, could not even
twitch her ears in the slightest. Time may as well have frozen her and her
alone to the spot.
Twilight watched on, silently, helplessly, and in despair, as the first weapon
made contact with the ground. There was nothing she could do—nothing she could
do but watch with anguish clawing at her being, and tears pricking at her eyes.
Soundlessly, she stared as the first of many dust clouds formed, obscuring the
flickering green lights as well as Shining's barrier.
And him and those who trotted alongside him that night with it.
Matt watched with an impassive gaze, almost as cold and distant as that of a
wraith's as the massive weapons slammed into Ashwood all around the miniscule
barrier, each impact splitting and shaking the ground in places with enough
force to uproot even the oldest and mightiest of trees. The dust from the first
strike settled, revealing that the barrier was still there—though whether it
was intact or not, he had no way of knowing.
It stubbornly stayed as more weapons hammered themselves into the forest in
single, fluid motions, scattering more soil and trees everywhere as the ground
was ripped asunder. It took ten minutes and a few large blades before he saw
two distant forms flying from the barrier, and a third lagging behind as the
the pink dome finally fell in wave after relentless wave of dust and bark. The
weapons missed the airborne forms entirely as they ascended with all due haste
to the airship, though whether by skill or a miracle could not be discerned
easily, as they were still just barely above the treeline.
The spell kept going, churning out more weapons to rain down upon the forest
and scatter its uprooted fragments with a vengeance to match their sheer size.
Again and again the weapons from Tartarus struck, cementing themselves deep
into the earth, turning Ashwood into a hellscape of splinters, loose soil and
strewn bark. Some struck so deep magma welled up from the forming chasms like
blood gushing from a wound, further painting the scene below in yet another
series of ghastly lights. Yet more weapons—spears, swords, axes, halberds of
every conceivable shape—came forth without showing signs of stopping, all
gaining speed and momentum with which to destroy the already-desolate wood.
The ground below shook again and again with each fresh injury, the lightning
continued to perform its frantic dance, with some bolts striking upon the
weapons to little avail,, cursed trees screamed in alarm as they were blown
clean off their roots, and the thunder cried out in an effort to drown out all
of the ongoing pandemonium. Yet the onslaught from Tartarus did not stop for
even a second. Distantly, barely audible amidst the ministrations and outbursts
of Mother Nature herself, both Twilight and Matt heard Rainbow Dash scream, her
voice tinged with panic and dripping with desperation.
"Whoever is doing that, cut it out already! We got foals and an old pony on
board!" was all they could hear before another blade slammed home just a few
miles from the airborne group, its landing drowning her voice out. For a
moment, dust obscured the airborne forms, and a scream wedged itself halfway up
Twilight's throat. Seconds later, the trio emerged, rapidly gaining height in
an act of both desperation and sheer defiance even as the dust and strewn bark
kept trying to swallow them time and time again.
Ascending further still gave just a little more clarity to the colors of the
group, and both could see that one of them was wrangling four ponies packed
tightly into a cluster with just two hooves. They heard Applejack screech, her
voice tinged with displeasure as much as panic and terror, "Knock it off before
I pound you and wear y'all like boots!" Twilight heaved an immense sigh of
relief, but still the panic that settled in remained as Shining and his group
had yet to get to safety, even though they had just managed to flee Ashwood.
They were barely able to evade the weapons that kept on pouring down.
Such a terrible sight seemed destined to last for minutes, hours, perhaps even
days as what she could only describe as a spell-wrought apocalypse blanketed
Ashwood. Idly, Twilight wondered how Matt even had the power to cast this
blight, and from where he'd obtained it. He did not look the part of a capable-
enough mage, yet here he was laying waste to the cursed wood from above without
even moving from the deck to do so. Time slowed to a crawl as, for the barest
of instants, the portal faltered and warbled, warping and losing its crimson
glow. Out of the corner of her eye, Matt's stiff posture faltered, and he
swayed unsteadily on his hooves.
Just then, she heard a crackle, a pop, a fizz, and the fading hum of an aura
that ceased being cast. She turned to Matt to find his horn no longer glowing,
though still his body did not change back to what it was just moments ago, in
regards to his now-elongated horn. Little changed save for his eyes as the
wisps faded and his pools turned back to a cold blue in color, though the
irises and pupils still maintained their hexagonal shape. His sclera turned
white, and he shook his head. It took just a second after, but then he slumped
upon the deck, legs finally giving out and sprawling from beneath his body as
steam started building from his horn.
"I hate having to do that," Matt growled dismally, the shadows in his mane and
tail fading away as he laid there. The shadows on his legs took a second longer
to flicker away into nothingness, though they too left without issue.
Another series of crackles and pops rang through the air in a tumultuous,
thunderous crash as Dash and her group came closer to the ship. Twilight turned
to the scene of the carnage and found that the portal had now mended itself
shut, before the circles and runes forming it simply faded out of existence
with a few glimmers of gold falling away. The weapons summoned forth had done
likewise, but instead of glimmers, they erupted into weak embers and simply
burnt away without harming Ashwood anymore. The only trace of their existence
to be had were massive gashes carved into the earth and the felled trees
littering those gashes. The weapons that had almost touched down from the
portal burnt up mid-air, giving way to an unsettling silence broken up only by
the boom of thunder.
It did not take longer than twenty minutes after that before Rainbow and her
group boarded the airship's deck, with every single arrival wide-eyed and in a
state of shocked stupor now that they had achieved safety. The minute they
landed, half of the group slumped, while Flash was content to sit on his
haunches to cradle the baby, who started screaming all over again. "What the
hay happened up there?" Flash asked, using a shaking wing to gesture to where
the portal had been for emphasis.
Twilight was beside herself in complete disbelief. She opened her mouth to
answer, but words were not forthcoming after what she bore witness to. There
was simply no way to even describe it as her brain refused to process the
destruction she saw, but she knew deep in her heart that there was no denying
it. Not when the evidence was laid bare before and beneath her. Below the
ships, Ashwood fell deathly silent as magma pooled from some of its recent
wounds, looking less like natural chasms and more like winding, steep paths
leading into Hell itself.
***** Chapter LXXI- 'She WHAT?!' *****
Flash and his group gathered in one of the guest rooms, with Twilight and Matt
there as well. All eyes, however, were focused on the young filly and the baby;
the former was currently munching on a stack of no less than a dozen syruped
pancakes taller than she was, while the latter was sleeping in a makeshift crib
constructed from the sturdiest, softest chitil and inlaid with the smallest
plush blanket available. Both had also been thoroughly scrubbed head to hoof,
and now their coats and manes gleamed almost as though they were crystal
ponies. However, the lack of blood on the filly revealed a despairingly painful
lack of a cutie mark as well.
Blueblood was busy facehoofing at the utter incredulity of the situation,
though inwardly he was grateful he'd lived to see the end of tonight's
particular brand of insanity. "I can just hear the Courts jeering when they
learn I had to form a rhomboid shape with three other ponies to dodge airborne
swords," he groused, his voice laced with just enough disbelief amidst his
anger that Twilight got the impression he couldn't believe what he was saying.
She didn't find the heart to blame him for it, either.
The elder turned to him and frowned. "The trees of Ashwood… have never gotten
into such a big uproar before. Until now, I thought them… unable to even move
from their rooted areas," he muttered, ears folding back. "If I had known… I
wouldn't have left Greenwood. I wouldn't have dragged you into it," he added
rather apologetically.
Blueblood ceased facehoofing and turned to the elder before shaking his head.
"We couldn't have known they'd get that rambunctious, either," he pointed out.
"We were just as blindsided as you were." He turned to the children present and
sighed ruefully. "And these two… I dare not imagine what terrible fate would
have befallen them had we not acted." He shuddered at the thought.
Shining nodded, his eyes briefly averting to Matt, who returned the look rather
warily. As his illusion still had yet to be recast, everyone could plainly see
his now-curved horn and the bizarre shape of his irises and pupils. Every now
and then, flecks of shadowy wisps would dance around his legs, mane, and tail,
though they were miniscule enough to not really do anything other than that.
They both glanced back at the filly, who had finished half of her stack and was
working her way down the remainder with just her mouth.
Applejack smiled as the filly finished her meal in a matter of two minutes,
cantering over to inspect her closely. The poor thing's stomach ballooned out,
looking as though she swallowed an entire watermelon whole with no trouble
whatsoever, though this also caused her ribs to stand out a little more starkly
than she'd have liked. "How was that for grub?" she asked.
The filly smiled weakly. "G-good," she chirped, before she burped and blushed a
little. She turned to the chitil crib. "B-baby gonna l-like it," she added.
Applejack's brow went to the line of her forelock within a millisecond. "Why's
the baby gonna like the food? He ain't old enough to chew solids yet," she
pointed out, tilting her head.
The filly snickered at Applejack's befuddled reaction. "B-baby safe. No trees
to h-hurt," she answered.
Applejack nodded at that, also turning to the crib. She trotted to it to peer
at the little one, who was sleeping on his side, revealing that he had two
little wings spread out. Part of her wondered how such obvious limbs had gone
ignored until now, while the other blamed the trees and giant weapons. "A
little pegasus colt… a mighty tough one too, given what he went through," she
muttered. The foal moved a hoof to start sucking on it, and she barely resisted
the urge to awwwww at the sight. She turned back to the filly. "So why'd ya
take him outta Greenwood?" she asked. "If ya even left the town at all?"
The filly's smile fell. "Bad ponies… have bad place," she muttered. "Almost
took b-baby… to b-bad place… l-left G-Greenwood… to k-keep b-baby safe..."
Applejack frowned at the vague answer. Greenwood had a bad place? As far as she
was concerned, the entire village was something beyond rotten. She smiled
again. "Well, you and the colt are safe now. Ain't neither of y'all going to
the 'bad place,'" she stated, her tone firm yet soothing. She tapped the floor
for emphasis as she added, "Greenwood's folk are gonna have to learn how to fly
first before they can even get here."
"And me and my fellow troops will shred them when they do," Rhinoc added,
donning a small but pleased smile.
Rainbow snorted and rolled her eyes. "Assuming, of course, I don't kick their
faces in first," she stated, her cheeks puffing as she resisted the urge to
laugh her ass off. She cooled off before adding, "Greenwood's ponies flying?
That'll be the day their little shield gives up and stops covering their
tails."
Shining snickered as that image formed into his mind, complete with gryphons
and changelings sending the callous villagers right to their deaths. Or at
least, to the beginnings of their new lives as trees. Or, barring all of that,
the ectoplasms getting to those knuckleheads first, while the army cracked out
the popcorn bowls to watch. That would be a good sight indeed, the morbid part
of his brain chirped. He turned to Rhinoc and asked, "So, is your superior
aware of all of this?"
Rhinoc turned to Shining and nodded, still grinning. "Yep. But he told me he'd
leave the new kid and baby alone for a few days, just so they could get used to
being on an airship," he replied. "He also said we're gonna be hovering above
Green and Ashwoods for the next few days, since the trees threw a hissyfit."
Shining nodded. That sounded reasonable enough. "And him?" he asked, lifting a
hoof to gesture to Matt for emphasis.
"He's a hybrid, Shining. Nothing Lance can do about that," Rhinoc muttered with
a shrug.
Shining slumped at that. "Well… I asked because something about it bothered
me," he stated. When Rhinoc lifted a hoof to spin it in a circle, Shining
elaborated, "My ponies back home told me the Crystal Heart repelled Umbrum
unicorns, even destroying them during the Crystal Faires, days after King
Sombra kicked the bucket." Shining lifted his hoof again and gesticulated to
Matt with it. "But… he attended a Faire and a Crystalling, and all that
happened to him was him getting the same sparkly aftereffect as everybody else
within the Empire."
Rhinoc shrugged at that. "Dunno what to say, really," he stated dourly.
"I dunno…" Twilight's eyes darted between Shining and Matt with uncertainty as
she spoke. "Maybe his earth pony magic negated the negative effects the Crystal
Heart would have otherwise had on him?" she suggested. "I mean, the Empire
consists mostly of earth ponies…"
Shining mulled it over and then nodded with a shrug. That seemed as good an
explanation as any, though he wondered why Matt neglected to inform him of his
half-Umbrum nature. The answer came unbidden as Blueblood coughed into his hoof
and said it for him, "I think the Courts would have had a field day if he
showed up without illusions covering him up."
"Politics," Matt muttered under his breath. Twilight noticed the reverb and
echo that was in his voice earlier were now gone.
Blueblood heard the utterance. "Just about," he stated ruefully.
Shining's shoulders sagged as he realized Blueblood was right, with his
utterance just about summing the whole thing up. The Courts back home would
surely spin all sorts of rumors if this were to reach their ears. He found
himself thankful he wasn't in Canterlot right now. "So… what now?" he asked.
Rainbow folded her forelegs over her barrel. "I say we just take it easy for
now. The ectoplasms are here, the changelings can't go near Ashwood, and unless
Lance gets creative with his gryphons, we're gonna end up doing jack squat,"
she stated flatly. She turned to the crib and added, "'sides, I'm pretty sure
the ponies of Greenwood saw the giant weapons by now and have pooped themselves
so badly they won't be able to trot for a week."
"And we need to re-gather our strength after tonight's scuffle in the
meantime," Rhinoc added with a nod, turning to the filly as she made to canter
on to bed. "Hey, kid," he said, stopping her in her tracks. When she turned to
him with a raised brow, he asked, "do you need earmuffs?"
"What… earmuffs?" the filly asked, canting her head as a confused frown wormed
its way onto her muzzle.
Rhinoc's wings fluttered nervously, and for a moment he fidgeted in place.
"Well… they go over your ears to make a room go quiet," he said after a few
seconds of hesitation, an awkward frown skewing his muzzle to make it look a
little lopsided.
The filly mulled it over for a few seconds before shaking her head. "What i-if
baby c-cries?" she retorted. Rhinoc's shoulders sagged.
"Weeeeeell," Twilight interjected, rocking on her hooves a little as the filly
turned to her. Her voice took on a slight sing-song tone as she added, "I just
happen to know somepony who knows a thing or two about handling babies hooves-
on, and she's real sweet and gentleeee."
Matt turned to look at Twilight, both brows shooting up. Twilight returned the
look and gave a knowing smile. "Well… there's a bit of a problem with that,"
Matt began, his brows lowering as a serious edge crept into his tone. When
Twilight's smile faltered, he stated, "We don't know who gave birth to the
little guy, and it takes a lot of stimulation for a non-nursing mare to make
milk." His face hardened and he added, "So… where would Pinkie get the milk?"
Silence fell upon the room, and slowly, all eyes gravitated to Twilight as the
question sank in. "Maybe one of your coworkers would provide it?" Twilight
suggested, causing Matt to blush, sputter, and facehoof at the response.
"Neither of them could do it," Matt growled the moment he got his bearings
together, embarrassment creeping into his tone. "One's in heat, and would
sooner kick faces in, and the other is… not keen on getting milked."
"Why not?" Twilight asked, tilting her head.
"Ran into a Beholder once. It milked her senseless, and she couldn't move for a
month after," Matt groused, rubbing his temples with the hoof that hit his
face. "She had to be detoxified."
Twilight's smile fell, and her shoulders sagged. "So…"
"I-I have m-milkies," the filly interjected, causing all eyes in the room to
snap to her and bulge out of their sockets. Seconds passed before one brain
could process the utterance, and its owner dropped his fanged jaw when he
realized what he'd just heard.
"I-I… what?" Rhinoc gabled, his mental gears having ground to a halt as he
spoke. Hastily he turned to Twilight. "C-could you ch-check?!" he queried,
squirming uncomfortably as he spoke.
Twilight turned to Rhinoc, her muzzle twisting into a grimacing frown. "Why
me?!" she protested, ears flattening against her head.
Rhinoc crossed his forelegs and huffed. "General doesn't like us touching foals
in certain spots, unless your name is Alexander and you have a tumor in said
certain spots or something," he scoffed. "And you sound like you know the signs
of a nursing pony, and all I'm asking is for you to look, damnit."
Twilight's grimace contorted to a slightly disconcerting degree. Her stomach
churned, and she shook her head. "I… can't make a filly show me…" she muttered.
Rhinoc deflated and dropped his forelegs. "Nor can we," he muttered. He stood
up with a tired sigh. "I'll get Alexander, and maybe some medical equipment
here too." With that he turned tail and left the room in a hurried trot, wings
sagging as he went. "Baby will need an incubator soon," he added as he strode
out the door.
Applejack's ears fell back. "Well, this just got mighty awkward," she muttered.
"If the filly truly does lactate," Blueblood began, anger and skepticism
warring in his tone, "then I wonder how far Fantasia has really fallen down the
rabbit hole."
Matt slumped. "Sometimes I find myself afraid to ask," he hissed. "And I have
seen a lot of shit in necks of the woods lately."
The crib started to rock erratically as Blueblood opened his mouth to ask what
Matt had meant by that, and it was immediately followed by a series of sniffles
that then gave way to a shrill cry. The filly's tail puffed out in alarm, and
she darted to the crib, rearing onto unsteady hind legs to peer at the baby to
see what the fuss was about. The baby had woken up, kicking and screeching and
flapping his little wings frantically. Applejack rushed over and used one
foreleg to scoop the child up, holding him to her chest. She turned to the
filly, who glanced back with a small but very tight frown.
Applejack handed the filly the baby and said in a stern voice, "If you really
do make milk, then I'll be an alicorn's uncle." The filly nodded and took the
child in her forelegs, then sat on her haunches before parking him between her
rear hooves. The colt stopped wailing for long enough to get a decent view,
before he crawled over and latched on. The wet, quite unmistakeable sound of a
young mouth suckling on something filled the room, and all eyes fell onto the
filly again as she blushed and looked down in shame.
Then Applejack followed her gaze and her heart stopped. The filly had teats,
and they were quite the engorged pair at that. The colt was latched very firmly
on one of them, and the other was oozing milk in a steady trickle. "Sweet
Celestia…" she breathed, her face draining of its color as she watched the baby
nurse.
Matt promptly growled and facehooved, ears flattening against his head. "How
old is she, exactly?" he hissed.
The nursing filly fumbled with her hooves for a bit, then looked over her front
pair three times and the rear ones only twice. "T-ten…" she mumbled once she
finished glancing at her hooves.
"T-ten?!" Shining and Blueblood cried in unison, manes and tails standing right
on their ends as a hideous realization set in. The filly gravely nodded.
"Had… first h-heat… last year," she mumbled, her voice tinged with shame.
"Didn't want… b-bad ponies around b-baby… got o-out…"
"And the window…" the elder stopped his musing, eyes going wide and alert in
realization. "The village leaders n-never told me th-they let a pregnant filly
leave the village!" he gabled, shuddering with enough force he could've sworn
he heard a bone or two pop.
Twilight's mane started frizzing up, and she turned to Shining for an
explanation. Shining took a few deep breaths to collect himself before looking
at her and shaking his head. "The whole town of Greenwood seems like it has
something to hide…" He lifted a hoof and gestured to the nursing filly. "They
abandoned a pregnant foal who got out, and then kicked out an elder! A pregnant
foal!"
Twilight's stomach flipped, apparently discontent with what her ears were
hearing. She found herself wishing she had the option to deny to no end what
she was listening to, but that was impossible since her eyes were witnessing a
very different scene play out before her.
"Lance is gonna bitch to no end… and the sad thing is there's next to nothing
he can do about it," Matt hissed, shuddering to the point his teeth briefly
chattered. Twilight glanced at him, wondering what he was harping on about, and
Matt lifted his other hoof to gesture to the crib.
"Well, if he's gonna go off, at least the baby should be asleep before he
does," Applejack groused, still watching as the filly moved to pick up the
baby, heft him over her shoulder, and pat him on the back a few times before he
burped. Then she plucked him from the filly's hooves and put him back into the
crib. Almost instantly, the little one fell back asleep. She sighed heavily.
"At least they're outta Ashwood now…"
"And more importantly, away from whoever decided it would be a swell idea to
steal a young filly's foalhood by impregnating her," Blueblood added, though
his voice had been brought down to a whisper that still carried its weight
throughout the room. As he said that, he heard the sound of muffled hooves
beating on carpet, followed by a muffled shuffling noise. Seconds after, Rhinoc
and Alexander strode into the room, with the latter toting saddlebags by the
straps in his beak.
"You guys take care of the baby and the filly…" Twilight muttered, her horn
lighting up. Matt found himself lifted up into the air, by his tail no less.
"Mister, you're coming with me. We're going to have a looooong talk with your
superior…" Matt whimpered, but did nothing to struggle in her magical grip as
she cantered out of the room, levitating his sorry ass with her.
Alexander handed the saddlebags to Rhinoc and watched Twilight leave. After
they left, he stared at the door for some seconds. "He did it again, didn't
he?" he asked blithely. Rhinoc nodded once with a frown etched onto his face,
and Alexander groaned in exasperation. "That would explain why the ship shook…
and why Pinkie Pie was twitching her tail so damn much…"
Rainbow winced at that. "You mean… you saw her tail…" Alexander's nod cut her
off.
"Harped on and on about things falling…" Alexander muttered, and he left it at
that. He collected himself and turned to the filly, then let his gaze settle
onto Applejack. "Anything happen with the newest charges yet?"
Applejack nodded. "Uh, yeah… she nursed the baby," she answered, grimacing at
the thought, which on all accounts just felt plain wrong to even think about,
let alone speak of.
Alexander rose a brow and cantered over to the crib, finding the little one
fast asleep and sucking on his hoof again. He took a close look, making sure to
avoid waking the wee colt. "A few days old at best… and relatively healthy and
hale-looking… I'll need to double-check when…"
"He," Rhinoc interjected.
"Yes, when he wakes up," Alexander finished with a roll of his eyes before
turning to the filly, who cringed under his gaze. "Does the baby have a name
yet?" he asked, keeping his voice low and soft. The filly shook her head. "Tell
me… what is your name?"
"N-no hurt me?" the filly squeaked. Alexander shook his head.
"I wouldn't even think of it. You have my word," Alexander replied in a
soothing voice, trying his best to sound as fatherly as possible. "Note to
self," he thought as the filly fidgeted in place, "get makeshift diapers for
the baby."
"H-Heather…" the filly mumbled.
"Tell me, Heather, does anything hurt at the moment?" Alexander asked. Heather
shook her head again.
"O-other than m-my hoofsies, b-but th-they're g-good," Heather muttered.
Alexander knelt to Heather's eye level. "Show me your hooves, one at a time,
please," he said gently. "I need to make sure they're good."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Anna and Sarah were in the master bedroom alongside Lance and Natalie, parked
around the table. All were engaged in a game of cards. "So… your wing finished
healing?" Anna asked, noticing Sarah's wing was no longer bound in its cast or
even wrapped up in bandages.
Sarah nodded. "Yeah, but I was told to give it another week or two before I can
start flying again. Alexander said something about avoiding the risk of
aggravating the muscles or whatever, and that I was lucky I didn't suffer any
more damage to my critical nerves and joints than just a few broken bones and
fractures that healed fast thanks to magical aid," she answered, stretching her
wing slowly for emphasis. "But, little movements here and there are encouraged,
and so far nothing's going wrong. Anyone have a king?" Three heads shook
negatively, and she plucked a card from the deck.
"That's very good. I take it you learned the hard way not to take unicorns
head-on?" Lance asked. Sarah nodded.
"After seeing your wings? I'd just leave tackling unicorns to the changelings,"
Sarah answered, garnering a roll of the eyes from her sister. "Chanson Cheval's
hooves were surprisingly weak for somepony lugging around a guitar."
Anna lifted a cardless hoof and waved dismissively. "That was probably the
first serious fight he's been in. Let's face it, the only Canterlot noble who
had balls was Blueblood," she scoffed, garnering nods of agreement. "Anyone
have a jack?" Again, three heads shook. She drew a card with a sigh.
"It takes balls to come here after being told and shown a myriad of reasons not
to go. Gotta admit, I respect him for the fact that he was the only noble even
willing to drop by," Lance stated matter-of-factly, followed by a shrug of his
shoulders. "And Chanson's testes were probably as big as his brain." Here, he
spread his wings and furled them upward until his primaries rested just an inch
apart, whereupon Sarah snickered. Lance closed his wings and asked, "Anyone
have an ace?"
Natalie lifted a card from her hoof and forked it over to him. Lance took it
with a hoof and plopped the ace he had on top of it. "Anyone have a queen?"
Lance tried. That time, heads shook. Another card went from the deck to his
hoof in short order.
"So when did you earn your cutie mark?" Natalie asked, looking pointedly at
Sarah's hip to get a good view of her wind-and-halberd mark.
"Last year, and Fenrir helped me do it," Sarah replied with a shrug. When the
gaze on her hip shifted expectantly to her face, she elaborated, "Had the harp
since I was little, but didn't get the enchanted halberd until I was stupid
enough to raid a guard's armory in a village near Glacier Valley. Fenrir bailed
my ass out, and… after tying the things together and using the harxe for the
first time, that's when I got it. We've been trekking together since."
Natalie's brow rose. "So you and Fen are travel buddies?" she queried.
Sarah nodded. "More like friends," she chirped. "I learned not to steal after
that."
Natalie smiled at that. "Anyone have a seven?" Immediately, she got three
shaking heads.
Anna looked incredulously at Sarah, eyes narrowing. "You stole your halberd?"
she hissed.
Sarah nodded. "And plenty of other things before that, mostly food and clothing
for when the weather turned for the worse. Hey, I've been on my own for a
while, and I had to make a living somehow, markless as I was. Not many towns
tolerated hippogryphs, let alone one who was a thief," she pointed out. "I
stopped after I got my mark. Fenrir chewed me out sideways over that shit."
Anna sighed dejectedly, though inwardly she was glad for Sarah. "Are there
bounties on your head?" she asked worriedly.
Sarah shook her head again. "Fenrir dragged me to pay off the stolen goods by
various community services. After that, the bounties were taken down," she
answered. "And once the last debt was paid off, I was pretty much pardoned.
Anyone have a five?" Heads shook, and the deck found itself one card shorter.
"So, you were a thief…" Lance muttered with a frown. "At least you got your
shit together."
Sarah nodded. "Trust me, I needed to be chewed out," she chirped.
Anna snickered at that. "Then again, I'm basically a teen soldier," she stated,
her tone bubbling with amusement.
"At least you get paid for that shit," Sarah snarked. Anna rolled her eyes
again.
"You should've seen me when I was trying to find my cutie mark between all the
assignments I got," Anna snarked back, smiling just a little bit. "Anyone have
three's?" A trio of cards were forked to her, and once she deposited the fourth
onto the pile, she followed that up with, "Jacks?" Heads once more shook, but
before the next card could be drawn, the door to the room burst open, and
Twilight trotted in with Matt floating behind her.
"If this is about the giant swords that I saw from the window, can it wait?"
Lance asked, turning to the new arrivals with eyes narrowed.
"Why should it wait?" Twilight shot back, eyes also narrowing dangerously low.
"Matt almost killed Shining!"
Lance sighed. "Park him on the bed." Twilight flung Matt onto the bed, who gave
a startled yelp when he landed. He nodded and kept his gaze on Twilight. "Are
you going to file another complaint?" he asked expectantly, and Twilight
noticed that his flat tone and still-narrowed eyes screamed 'this isn't the
first time I had to deal with this.'
Twilight shook her head. "Uh, no… the filly, uh… she feeds the baby," she
muttered awkwardly, her stomach twisting once more with the utterance. She
winced as it started cramping; by Faust, that felt just insanely wrong to say.
Lance's brow shot up. "Elaborate," he said tersely.
Twilight fell onto her haunches and threw her forehooves to the air. "She makes
milk! I saw her put the colt between her rear legs!" she screamed. "And she
said she was only ten years old!"
Lance's wings ruffled, and his feathers bristled. His eyes narrowed until they
were meager slits. A deep, guttural, almost leonine growl rose from his throat.
"If what you say is true… then I will find whoever did that to her and have
that bastard drawn and quartered. And then I will probably have him fed to the
lich-wyrm in the crystal caverns," he hissed. "But not before I give somepony a
loooong talking to."
Twilight nodded and shivered, swallowing nervously. "Isn't having a pony drawn
and quartered… a bit extreme?" she tried.
Lance shook his head. "For stealing a filly's foalhood by thrusting an adult
responsibility onto her withers? Perhaps. But I am going to go that extra mile
and guess that she didn't want to, but got that particular package anyway," he
muttered grimly. "Is somepony watching her?"
Twilight nodded. "Several, including an elder from Greenwood… who Shining told
me got exiled. Alexander trotted in to check on her when I dragged Matt out of
the room she's in," she answered. "And the colt's asleep."
Lance sighed, and his feathers relaxed a little. "Just great, Greenwood's
turning more and more like Frostbite the more I hear of it…" he grumbled
indignantly. "How well are they acclimated?"
"A little. Applejack made the filly a big stack of a dozen or so pancakes,"
Twilight answered with a shrug. "Not sure if it's healthy for a starving filly
to eat that many in one sitting…"
Lance lifted a card-free hoof and waved dismissively. "Eh, she'll need the
carbs as much as the nutrients. But the sweets should be toned down a little.
Maybe give her… I dunno…" His free hoof moved to tap his chin thoughtfully.
"Eggs and ham?" Anna suggested.
Lance nodded. "Sounds good enough, but maybe with a side of biscuits," he
chirped. "And please make sure to tell the cooks to not make the eggs and ham
green."
"Oh, and another thing," Twilight interjected, garnering no less than five
expectant looks. "Is it alright for Pinkie to help the filly with the colt?"
Twilight winced when she realized what she'd just uttered. Good gravy, that
sounded a lot better in her head than it did coming out of her mouth, and
profoundly less awkward to boot.
Anna and Natalie exchanged glances, then turned to Twilight and shrugged in
unison. "She has the experience," Anna mumbled.
"I don't see why not. Babies aren't our forte," Natalie added with a
sympathetic wince. "But I say… hold that off until tomorrow, after Alexander
gives the initial once-over and his diagnosis."
Lance nodded. "Pinkie's… exuberance may scare the new kids. Would she be
alright with toning it down by twenty-five percent, just for their sake?" he
asked rather uneasily, his brow slanting and his mouth faltering to form a
slight frown. Twilight got the impression that he was mentally picturing the
foals scared senseless, and if such was the case, she couldn't blame him.
Twilight nodded back. "I'll see what I can do. I'll go tell her now," she
answered.
Lance nodded again, donning a small smile. "Thanks," he chirped, before his
smile fell. "How well would she take… the news of a filly being a…"
Twilight shuddered as he trailed off, knowing full well what he was asking. "I
don't think she'd… take it well. She hates it when ponies make other ponies
frown, and forcing a filly to become a mother is the best way to do just that,"
she mumbled. "I think she'd try pounding whoever did that into a pulp…"
Anna and Natalie exchanged glances again, brows slanting that time. Anna turned
back to Twilight first, her gaze one of uncertainty. "In that case, tell her
Lance has dibs on the bastard, and we'd have to find him first," she stated.
"She does know to wait in line, right?"
Twilight nodded. "Can do," she said. With that, she trotted out of the room and
closed the door behind her gently.
Lance sighed and turned to Sarah. "Want to finish this round first, before I
tear Matt a new asshole?" he asked.
Sarah nodded, eyes narrowing as a fire sparked within. "You're on," she
challenged. "As long as I spend time with Anna, I'm game."
Anna nodded to her sister as she donned a small yet wicked smirk, eyes flitting
to Matt for the barest of instants. "Two rounds," she proposed. "And during
round two… we make him don a maid uniform."
Matt paled and gulped audibly. "Nah, since he almost killed Shining…" Lance
began with a malicious edge in his voice that wasn't there before, "I say we
horncap him… and cocoon him for a day."
Natalie giggled. "Pshaaaw, that's still a pansy punishment meant only for the
corporals," she snorted. "I say we stick him on a unicycle and make him play
the accordion."
Anna turned to Natalie and snickered. "In a maid uniform, horncapped," she
chirped.
"Make him sing something stupid," Sarah added with a chortle. "Like, 'grated
dick cheese' or something."
Lance donned another grin. "Loser of round one has to fetch Armin. I bet he
still has his maid uniform…" he muttered darkly. "But, we'll have to be at the
base first, or in a town, just so the airship doesn't get destroyed. Agreed?"
A moment of hesitation passed, and then a chorus of "You're on!" from his card-
mates answered him eagerly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Matt's tail
tuck itself between his rear legs.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
The window of a guest room shook as thunder boomed, the door opened and slammed
into the wall outside, and the furniture rattled violently with the force of an
earthquake as Pinkie shouted on a level of volume surpassed only by Princess
Luna, "The filly had what happen to her?!"
Twilight shakily nodded, sweat beading her brow as a manic look of pure,
narrow-eyed hatred crossed Pinkie's face. Her eyes, once a clear blue, now
gleamed dangerously gold in color. "A-and we don't know who did that to her…"
she muttered in reply. "We have to find the pony first, and… and Lance already
wants him drawn and quartered for it."
Pinkie shuddered for a moment, and then as fast as it had come, the look of
rage passed into a solemn stare framed by a slanted brow and a very deep frown.
Her eyes stopped gleaming, and her ears drooped and her mane and tail fell flat
and straight as a ruler. "Wh-who would… do that… to a filly?" she mumbled, her
voice now shaky and quiet. Twilight winced and frowned, shaking her head and
shrugging her shoulders.
"A purely heartless pony?" Twilight suggested, but her voice was weak and
shaky. Pinkie started shedding tears, and Twilight lifted both forehooves
before planting them onto her friend's withers. "But the filly managed to take
her foal out of Greenwood, and now she's with us. She and the baby are safe. If
anything, they can start to heal now that they're around sane ponies." A weak
smile crossed Twilight's muzzle. "She can get the help she desperately needs,
and Alexander is already looking at her to make sure she can pull through."
Pinkie slowly nodded, and lifted a hoof to wipe away her tears. "B-but what if
w-we don't find th-the pony who…"
Twilight lifted a hoof from Pinkie's withers and held it over her lips,
shushing her on the spot. "Then we make sure he can't get to the foals. We have
multiple sets of eyes aboard this ship, more airships all around with even more
pairs, and at least a pair of eyes that can see very far away. She's safe,
trust me," she muttered in reply. "While we don't know who did it, I'm
confident that he will rat himself out. 'Guilty dog barks loudest,' after all."
Pinkie nodded again, and her mane started frizzing up. "And her baby…?"
Twilight's smile widened. "Well… he and his mom will probably be adopted into a
loving home," she answered. "Buuuut the baby might grow up believing his mom is
his sister, at least for a little while. It would certainly ease her burden."
Her smile grew a little more, and her eyes twinkled. "All we have to do is let
her decide who her new mommy and daddy will be."
Pinkie's mane began curling more and more at that, her eyes brightening. "And
they could help her get better…" she finished.
Twilight nodded firmly. "Just… let's let her rest for tonight. Once she has
breakfast and Alexander finishes looking her and the colt over, we'll take it
from there. But please please please don't go overboard. She's already been
scared enough," she stated, her voice firm but gentle at the same time. "And
then you could start teaching her how to giggle at the ghosties, but it may
take her a while to get it and consider it seriously. She already has a lot on
her plate, much more than any filly her age should have."
Pinkie nodded in understanding, and her mane's re-curling hastened by a
considerable margin. "Can I help her with the baby?" she asked.
Twilight nodded. "That's why I came to you actually, so we could work out how
to help the filly," she answered. "Now, aside from teaching her to giggle at
the ghosties, I wanted to know what you'd recommend. You're the baby expert,
after all. Except for the filly to get more food than usual; already got that
down, since I confirmed she is lactating."
"Hrrrrrmmmmmm…." Pinkie lifted a hoof and tapped her chin, frowning and letting
her brow furrow in thought. Her mane and tail finished poofing up, and for a
moment she did nothing but hum and tap. When her hoof parted from her chin, she
gave a smile and answered, "Maybe have the changelings make some toys out of
that goo stuff they use, and then have her play with them. Heck, we could get
Maria in there too; she knows a thing or two about what fillies shouldn't know,
and they could become friends."
Twilight's eyes widened. "Playmates…" she murmured.
Pinkie nodded vigorously at that. "And Spike, too," she added. "And I could
watch the baby while they all play! Isn't that wonderful?!"
Twilight beamed and nodded once. "As good an idea as any other," she answered.
"Although Spike may object."
"That could get all three of them to get better faster, and do something about
their boredom. And then they'll be super-duper happy, and they'll giggle at the
ghosties before we know it!" Pinkie shrieked, ignoring Twilight's second
utterance as she began bubbling with enthusiasm that could not be contained.
"And then they will be happy as can be! So happy I don't think even Lance could
frown at such joy!"
Twilight giggled, mentally picturing Lance amidst a bunch of happy,
rambunctious foals. "Unless the foals did something they weren't supposed to,
but that'll be his prerogative to deal with. I don't think Maria would do
anything bad though," she chirped. "Spike certainly wouldn't. I think he'd help
them be good."
"And if things go sour, we could have Fenrir break the foals up. He's big and
mean when he needs to be, but around kids he's harmless as a fly," Pinkie
added, her smile widening tenfold. "And we could get Harry, Angel and NoLegs in
there too, as more playmates!"
Twilight nodded at that. "Well, we'll have to get started tomorrow. I think
we'll need to sleep soon," she pointed out.
Pinkie kept on smiling. "Okie-dokie-lokie," she chirped.
"And maybe… the filly will get her cutie mark," Twilight added, eyes still
twinkling.
Pinkie gasped, and her mane and tail stood straight on end. "She… she's a blank
flank?!" she cried, pupils shrinking to pinpricks.
Twilight nodded, yet her smile remained. "Maria is also a blank flank…" she
trailed off, letting her unspoken meaning hang in the air. It took a second for
it to click into Pinkie's head, but when it did she nodded vigorously.
"Maybe we could get Applejack or Rarity to help them earn their marks, or even
Rainbow Dash," Pinkie chimed, and she began shaking in place, giving Twilight
the impression she was envisioning tomorrow's shenanigans on some level.
"Mhm. But I would recommend trying to keep them out of the more dangerous
activities, since there's a baby and all," Twilight pointed out. "Think you can
do that?"
Pinkie stiffened suddenly, then gave a salute with a hoof. "Yes sir ma'am sir,"
she stated in a slightly more serious tone, as though she were speaking to an
army's commanding officer.
***** Chapter LXXII- Mark of Shame *****
The night parted for the dawn after some long, grueling hours, yet the only
sign that it even arrived was the clouds in the sky brightening considerably
from black to dark grey. The ectoplasms still hung in the air, crackling and
releasing lightning intermittently, seemingly waiting for something other than
the airships to take flight. Yet all life in Ashwood remained absolutely still;
even the cooling magma did not bubble or pop with its usual flair, nor did the
tendrils, still smouldering and smoking from last night's activities, lift so
much as a flake of ash. The wind itself failed to come and stir the branches,
almost as though it were avoiding the area entirely, or perhaps holding its
bated breath.
Greenwood's barrier dropped, but that was the only sign of movement from the
forest village in question. Nopony dared to leave their houses, of which the
number was an impressive eighty that could be easily counted from above, and
not even the Mighty Oak dared move from his shrine, no doubt as rattled as the
villagers by the rain of weapons that came and went. This was good, now that
the airships' myriad of eyes were trained on the town, some with telescopes
handy. Rhinoc was one of those who held a telescope, with his magic no less.
He watched from the deck of his vessel, his telescope trained on a small and
unguarded stump in the town. The stump was adorned with tattered paper
talismans and a single, leaf-shaped jewel of viridian with golden veins all
connected to a thin stem. "Maybe they set up the barrier so they wouldn't have
to watch the jewel, on top of keeping the trees out…" Rhinoc muttered, shaking
his head at the sight. "Bunch of lazy asses. Their houses are made of trees;
bastards don't know what irony is..."
As he continued to mull and mutter about how Greenwood's ponies were stupid in
one capacity or another, the hatch slowly and rather fitfully flopped for a few
minutes, before it finally opened with a groan of protest. From the hatch,
someone emerged with a small grunt of exertion. Whoever it was pattered over to
Rhinoc with very light steps and gently tapped his front knee to get his
attention with a rather thin digit once they reached him. Rhinoc lowered the
telescope and looked down at his legs, finding Maria looking back up at him
with a talon raised. "Yes?" he asked.
"You have to get inside," Maria said, frowning. Her voice was tinged with a
note of urgency.
Rhinoc's brow raised. "Listen, kid, I don't have to get inside. You can't—"
"But daddy said so," Maria replied, preemptively cutting Rhinoc off before he
could finish. "He wants you inside right now."
Rhinoc's mouth shut, and he sighed through his nostrils before making the
telescope vanish in a flare of light. "Well played, Lance. Well played," he
thought with a nod of resignation. Maria dropped her talon, turned tail, and
made a beeline for the hatch before jumping down. Rhinoc followed her, but not
prior to waiting for a few seconds so she could gain a bit of distance from
him, making sure to close the hatch on his way down to see what the hell his
superior wanted. "Now we have another military foal… at least this one's more
metaphorical, in that sense…"
Maria led him down to a massive, linear room that had a lift opposite of the
ladder, spanning some impressive eighty yards and started trotting to the lift.
Machines whirred to life and worked tirelessly, turning gears and pulling
chains and pumping with glowing lines and runes that dotted every surface
brightly. The runes were surrounding several crystals, and all but a few were
either green, blue, or gold in color. The few that weren't were bright red
instead, and gave of a bit of concentrated darkness that collected around the
ceiling. Large copper pipes interlocked the machines, further interspersed with
clear glass windows that gave a good view of some kind of blackened substance
flowing within.
Wires splayed out across a bolted tile floor rather haphazardly, though none
were cut open, and these too further connected the machines. To one side, there
was a sight that caused Maria and Rhinoc to stop: four panels stood between a
gap in the machines halfway down the hall, with a screen that displayed small
green bars in one corner and some sort of ancient, archaic language Maria had
trouble deciphering. The panels also sported crystal-studded helmets with holes
drilled into the forehead and two holes in the sides for some purpose and,
bizarrely, bolted-in shoes for hooves and mechanical arms that held up body-
shaped slots which were bolted into them.
The slots and shoes also had crystals embedded into their frames, and runes
surrounding them as well, though both were outside instead of inside the shoes
and slots, probably to avoid actually agitating the hooves and sections when
applied. The panels were currently in disuse, having gathered a thin layer of
dust that would need to be removed before its next operation. Strangely, these
panels were color-coded; in order from left to right, one was red, the next
blue, the third gold, and the last a vivid green.
The crystals on the leftmost panel did not exude darkness the way the others
did, instead flickering very weakly with a fading light, and stranger still
they framed two extra holes on the sides of the helmet, large and round as
small ramekins. The other crystals glittered with a brightness that would have
made very decent portable lanterns, if actually treated as such.
"What's all this stuff?" Maria asked, lifting a talon to gesture to all of the
machinery.
"We're in the engine room, kid. Over there's the charging panels," Rhinoc
answered, nodding to the panels in question. "We convert raw magic to
electrical energy, with a bit of hydraulics thrown in to stabilize it.
Unfortunately, ponies have to cast to charge it."
Maria blinked, turned to Rhinoc, and canted her head at him. She recalled
hearing Lance mutter something about charging objects and asked, "Why?"
"These crystals were mined from the nearby caverns, and they'll need a regular
charge. Otherwise, the airship will drop," Rhinoc muttered with a sigh. "And
they only react positively to a pony's magic. Lance used to help charge the
things with his wings, until he got grounded…"
Maria turned to the panels again and took a better look at the oddly-shaped
slots before noticing that one particular set was larger than the others,
indicating that the pony who would use it simply had a bigger body, or perhaps
extra limbs that would need to be tucked away. The panel with blue crystals
shared this feature as well, strangely enough. "So that's why mommy hurt before
we went to Mythos?" she queried.
"Well, now that you mention it… she hurt with Matt and Natz every time these
things were charged. Maybe they needed to compensate by giving it more energy,"
Rhinoc mused, then he shrugged. "Don't step on the wires. You did say your
daddy needed me?"
Maria jolted at the reminder, wide-eyed before she nodded and rushed the rest
of the way to the lift, though she was careful to avoid tripping over and
accidentally cutting into the wires with her talons in the process. Rhinoc
snorted and followed after her, pressing the button once they boarded on and
simply letting the lift do the rest.
She led him specifically to the master room, in an ascent and then a walk that
lasted for no more than fifteen minutes, accounting for a second lift ride
after they'd reached the lounging area. When they strode in, the door already
suspiciously open, Rhinoc found three of his superiors wide awake and in tip-
top shape… and one of them seemingly half-asleep, whose legs were threatening
to buckle. Anna's face was flushed to hell, her mane hanging to her front knees
without the baubles to support it, tangled into large knots that covered her
right eye and framed her left. She stared vacantly at him, or perhaps at a
point past him; her exposed eye was bloodshot and puffy.
Rhinoc frowned. "Is she alright?" he asked, looking pointedly at Anna. It took
her a few seconds, but she shook her head at his query.
"Nightmares… getting… worse," Anna muttered, her voice dry and raspy.
Lance spared Anna a very worried look, his brow slanting briefly before he
turned to Rhinoc and his expression became neutral. That lapse was impossible
to miss; Rhinoc could see the concern glimmering in his crimson eyes. "You
summoned me… via your filly, sir?" Rhinoc tried.
Lance nodded, then turned to Maria. "You may head back to your room now," he
muttered. Maria nodded and trotted off, making sure to close the door behind
her. Anna fell to her haunches the second the door met with its frame, front
legs straining to hold her front quarters now that the back legs had slipped.
"First off… is the jewel still there?"
Rhinoc nodded. "Nopony came out, though. Rainbow was right; the villagers have
probably shat bricks by now," he answered. "And your adopted one asked me about
the engine room. I made sure she didn't fuck with anything, but I did answer
her queries as best as I could." He paused. "Sir, you may need to revitalize
one of the panels downstairs sooner or later for this vessel," he added. "Its
crystals are very dim, and your wings are now in peak condition again."
"And speaking of vessels, the villagers have probably noticed the ones in the
sky by now," Natalie added, wearing a tight frown on her face. "But, unless
they suddenly sprout wings or learn to self-levitate in the course of twenty-
four hours, we have nothing to worry about there."
"There's plenty to worry about!" Anna suddenly shrieked with enough force to
make everyone else stagger briefly, ears flattening against her head as her
front legs gave out. "What if they do manage to fly in that time frame?!"
"And the fireworks started…" Matt muttered, frowning. Lance sighed, trotted to
Anna, laid down next to her and draped a wing over her backside. Anna bristled
for a moment, before relaxing and lowering her head between her forelegs. All
the while, he kept his gaze firmly anchored onto Rhinoc.
"Yeaaaaaah… somepony needs a nap," Lance stated in a low, gentle whisper. He
used his wing to shake Anna's withers a bit, and her head jerked up. "Did you
get anything, new passengers aside?"
"Information-wise, no. Most of the trees told us to fuck off, and the ones that
didn't either told us to stay away, or were simply unable to speak," Rhinoc
replied, his shoulders sagging. He glanced at Anna, half-expecting her to have
another outburst of some sort, though it seemed that having a wing draped over
her calmed her down a little. "Only one was polite about it."
"Well, that was a bust," Natalie groused, lifting a hoof to rub her temples.
"Wouldn't be surprised if the trees started diddling kids too on top of that."
"I saw a tree fuck a foal once! That foal's one of them now!" Anna cried again,
pupils shrinking as she lowered her head again. "One of them…" she repeated in
a weak whisper.
Rhinoc shuddered at that mental imagery. He decided he needed to change the
topic again, lest Anna continue losing her marbles on her current train of
thought. "So… any change in plans?" he asked.
Lance lifted a hoof and tapped at his temples for a moment, his frown
contorting a little at the corners like it could not decide whether or not to
widen. "Love makes Katie heal, but also makes her act high as a kite…" he
muttered.
"Come again?" Rhinoc asked, canting his head.
"Found her in a frozen hellhole…" Lance continued, seemingly lost in thought.
"Babbly babbly fuck fuck?" Natalie snarked, turning to Lance with a bemused
brow raised.
Lance dropped his hoof, and his head tilted a little. He blinked before
focusing on Rhinoc again. "You think our nooblet would handle despair easily?
It's not like she could sense it, with her horn being out of commission," he
queried, though it came out more like a statement since it was spoken in that
no-nonsense tone.
Rhinoc's wings jolted upright and buzzed fervently in surprise, his eyes
widening at the question. "S-sir, are you certain about this? H-her wings a-
are…"
Lance nodded, a smirk forming on his muzzle that was so slight it came off more
as a pursing of his lips. "There is a way we could get her to heal faster," he
retorted firmly. "We just have to make sure a very peculiar, vital ingredient
has been converted to thaumic energy and brought aboard…"
Matt and Natalie's pupils shrank and they exchanged glances. "What's he on
about?" Matt asked. Natalie shrugged.
Anna answered, though not before taking a few seconds to let her sleep-deprived
brain process the question, "Poison joke…"
Lance nodded. "But if poison joke hasn't been brought for the ride…" He turned
to Matt and Natalie before asking, "Does Lazarus know any invisibility spells?"
When they shrugged at him, he sighed. "Well, send him a telepathic message and
ask."
Matt sighed, his horn lighting up for a few seconds before the aura dimmed.
Everyone waited for several minutes, during which Anna nestled her head between
her forelegs and started dozing, when a blue-red glow embraced Matt's head and
he jolted in place.
"No, he does not," Matt reported glumly. "And he's cranky because my message
got to him after a nightmare woke him up."
Lance frowned. "So much for that," he grumbled.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Lazarus was in a very sour mood, his mane frazzled and narrowed eyes gleaming
red and bloodshot to the point it was difficult to tell where the iris ended
and the sclera began. His coat was matted, his crystalline sheen sporadic and
flickering as though many sources of light were turning on and off around him
without rhyme nor reason. Right now he simply sat in bed with his forelegs
crossed, snorting like a petulant foal. With him were Fenrir and Sarah, who
kept their distance by sitting in a triad of chairs at a table, both leaving
one seat empty and eyeing him warily. All three held their breath, seemingly
waiting for something to disrupt their stillness, for minutes on end.
Eventually, Fenrir could no longer take the silence anymore. "Do you have plans
to go back to sleep anytime soon?" he asked.
Lazarus shook his head. "No; that… goat-faced fucker would've otherwise just
come back and dropped an entire continent on my ass in the dream world just for
shits and giggles," he growled, his voice raspy. "And that crazy moon-marked
pony claiming she's a princess in the sister world. Well, if she's princess,
then I'm king of the wasps!"
Fenrir frowned at that. He opened his mouth to say something else, when Sarah
lifted her talon and clamped his mouth shut with it, before angling his head
down to let him see her shaking her head in disapproval. "I reckon he's only
thinking it's his imagination. Just let him vent," she mouthed. She released
her hold on Fenrir's muzzle and watched him nod and sigh in resignation. At
that moment, Lazarus uncrossed his forelegs and stretched them before he
clambered out of bed and trotted unsteadily to the toiletries' corner.
As soon as the sound of running water graced their ears, Sarah snorted rather
disdainfully. "Just you wait until he sees the Mythonians' giant flying fish of
an airship," she scoffed.
Fenrir nodded. "He may still believe himself to be going insane," he remarked
rather matter-of-factly. With tactful consideration, he added, "Yet then again,
during our stay in Mythos, I have gleaned that Discord does indeed cause
madness with his mere presence. Perhaps that is why Lazarus is… more snappish
as of late."
Sarah couldn't argue with that. She decided to switch to another topic before
Lazarus could start eavesdropping, "Do you think Lance will let me join the
military?"
Fenrir's brow arched sharply at that. "Perhaps. However, he may not, or if he
should, then the soldiers may well regard him as if he truly lost it," he
muttered in reply. When Sarah canted her head, he elaborated, "As it stands,
they may see your inclusion, should you join, as a sort of favoritism on
Lance's behalf. Your sister is one of his right-hoof ponies, for Godcat's sake.
How could it be anything but, in the eyes of the lesser troops who worked their
wings off?"
Sarah paused, having not really considered that point until now. "Damned if I
do, damned if I don't, huh?" she asked.
Fenrir hastily nodded. "You may as well be balancing upon a rope between two
steep cliffs, wings bound or worse and upon the tip of your snout," he stated
firmly. "And he has already lit a pyre under his own arse by recruiting Katie.
Lazarus, I could well understand."
Sarah pursed her lips, seeing where Fenrir was going. "Sounds fishy to me too,
unless…" She lifted a talon and put it to her chin, tapping idly. "He thinks it
could help her somehow?"
"As sound an explanation as any… in the realm of what is strictly a
hypothesis," Fenrir stated, his tone edging toward incredulousness. "Be that as
it may, he is pleased to see her eating… so there is credence to your guess, I
must admit."
Sarah dropped her talon and assumed a tiny smirk. Her ear twitched when the
water shut off, and she craned her neck to find Lazarus trotting out of the
toiletries' corner, soaking wet and with a towel resting askew upon his back.
"Did that shower help you any?" she asked sincerely.
Lazarus turned to her and nodded sluggishly, and Sarah noticed his eyes were
less bloodshot and narrowed. Still, that irritated frown of his clung to his
muzzle like glue, though it too had receded a bit with his recent shower. "A
little... " His horn lit up, and his magic grabbed the towel before he willed
it to wipe away the excess water. "I'm still gonna need coffee today, though… I
wonder if there's any left."
"I gotta admit, they have some good brews in their stocks," Sarah chirped,
purring a little at the thought of a fresh mug of Joe. "If they don't grow it,
then they import the shit like no tomorrow."
"Making the vast assumption, of course, that this military is also somehow its
own province," Fenrir snarked, smiling a little at that rather absurd thought.
"Although… I can't help but wonder how they make their money. My sister does
get paid; she showed me her last six months' payment bags last night. They're
hefty things too; a good ten thousand bits per bag at the least," Sarah
muttered. At that, Fenrir gave a low whistle.
"Ten thousand bits?" Lazarus echoed, trotting over to the two, still rubbing
his body with the towel in an effort to finish drying off. "What the hell did
she do to earn that much per month, invent a new form of magic or something?"
"I dunno. She didn't tell me," Sarah replied with a shrug of earnest. "Now I
kinda envy her."
"Well, whatever the reason, if it's ten thousand every month… she must have
done something admirable enough to warrant it," Fenrir chimed in, his smirk
widening a little.
"Eh, we shouldn't worry about it much," Lazarus interjected with a shrug, his
tone dripping with sarcasm.
Sarah turned to Lazarus with a brow quirked. "Shouldn't? Why?" she asked.
Lazarus shook his head, his voice turning serious and grim as he answered, "You
probably wouldn't be admitted into the army. Only reason Red Eyes recruited me
was Matt's big mouth, and he just… had this creepy grin glued to his fucking
facehole."
"You speak like Lance is a demon of the apocalypse or something," Sarah
murmured, though she did not miss Lazarus's shudder and teeth clenching when
'creepy grin' left his mouth. "Truth be told, he's not all that bad, just…
quirky."
"He smiled like a fucking demon of the apocalypse, I swear to the fates!
Godcat's my witness!" Lazarus hissed through grit teeth, ears folding back as
that grin came to the forefront of his thoughts for a moment.
"Well, you did give him a week to acclimate before you could let him order you
around," Sarah stated firmly, causing Lazarus's mouth to snap shut before he
could utter so much as another syllable. "And that week has barely even started
and shit's hit the fan, so Lance may extend that wait behind your back just to
sort it out."
"And besides, he has yet to give you an assignment of any sort, let alone
having you go through a gauntlet of vetting processes," Fenrir added, folding
his arms over his chest. Cocking his head and tapping a bicep with a digit, he
continued, "So you do not have any rank as of the present. What he knows of you
is from word of mouth, and whose lips… you have already clarified for me." He
leaned toward Lazarus, not once blinking. "You'd best prepare yourself. I don't
know if whatever training regiments he may have are grueling or not, but I
think it's better to be safe and sure than sorry and sore."
Lazarus mulled it over for a few seconds, before he shrugged and nodded at
that. "And as for that 'grin' of his? I have yet to see Lance smile beyond
'slightly curved thin line' during my tenure in this mess, and it sounds to me
as if he had perhaps forced himself to grin in such a manner. He's as stone-
cold as they come, Lazarus," Fenrir finished.
"Cold to everyone except the diplomats and his right-hoof ponies," Sarah stated
matter-of-factly, leaning back into her seat. "And Maria," she added.
"And you, by extension," Fenrir chimed in, garnering a snort from Sarah.
"It's as you said; only because of my sister," Sarah snarked with a roll of her
eyes. "But I think she may have had something to do with it." When she got a
pair of incredulous looks, she proceeded to spin up a rather insane, improbable
train of reasoning behind it, "She may've convinced Lance to bring me with to
see how competent in the battlefield I am, which compared to her, isn't a whole
lot. I may be part of some cock-measuring contest that only they know about."
Fenrir and Lazarus shared a glance, then turned back to Sarah with both brows
raised. "But… he hasn't seen you fight at all," Fenrir pointed out, frowning.
"Only the aftermath, which resulted in a broken wing."
Sarah leaned forward with a sigh. "Eh. Chanson Cheval was a puss anyway," she
scoffed. "And so were the old coots who dared call themselves his parents."
"Who the fuck would name their foal Chanson Cheval?" Lazarus interjected,
garnering a flat stare from Sarah. "And who is he?"
"A dickpickle who thought it would be a great idea to lift my tail, whom I
promptly challenged to an instrumental play-off… with a cursed harp, that then
got the mother of all headaches. And he got arrested, broke out of jail, and
broke my wing a few weeks after the fact," Sarah summarized with a huff.
"Elitist, racist unicorn who was part of an orchestral band."
Lazarus frowned at that, and he noticed Sarah's lack of a wing-cast. "So…
that's why your wing…"
Sarah nodded. "Yep. And he had a cousin who told me that I was in the wrong for
acting in self-defense. Shining Armor got to see two-thirds of just about all
three confrontations," she added.
Lazarus grimaced at that. "Was the family high, polite society…?"
Sarah nodded again. "Damn straight they were, fancily dressed and everything,"
she affirmed. Lifting a talon, she gestured to the empty chair and curled her
claws, beckoning Lazarus to take a seat. He obliged, though not before putting
the now-soaked towel back in the toiletries' corner to avoid dampening the
seat. "So, how'd you get your cutie mark?" she asked, looking at Lazarus's
bird-and-spear mark the moment he sat down.
Lazarus frowned and averted his gaze briefly. "Well… a lot of ponies were being
rounded up to participate in a tournament, about nine-ish years ago. Me, Matt
and Natz were barely teens; Natz was only twelve, and me and Matt about a year
older than her. A cutie mark boom happened, and none of us earned our marks
yet, but we were dragged into it too," he began dourly.
Fenrir rose a brow. "A tournament?" he echoed.
Lazarus nodded. "Yeah. We were put into a sort of arena like a gladiator's
ring. Those who weren't participating were kept in small cages until they were
called on and dragged into the ring." He swallowed heavily. "My frenemyship was
just forming with Matt and Natz, but never once had I wanted to kill them."
"Kill?" Sarah queried, leaning toward Lazarus a bit when the word left her
mouth.
Lazarus nodded, his frown deepening. His voice turned grim as he continued, "It
got to the point where it was just us three in the ring. All the other ponies
who were dragged into it killed each other, well before us. In fact, we were
the last three to be dragged into that ring. It was a three-way fight; winner-
takes-all yadda yadda. But we… snapped when the ponies running that ring said
that two of us had to die."
"What… transpired after they made that declaration?" Fenrir prodded, his ears
folding back at what he was hearing.
"We all had a magic surge, simultaneously. Matt… summoned giant swords out of
this fucking portal and tore the area up. Natalie… somehow pulled a giant
meteor from that same portal down, broke it into several chunks with the
swords, and rained a shit ton of fiery rocks. At the same time as that, her
body was glowing white-hot all over. Matt's mane and tail turned to shadow, and
hers just… I don't know what happened; I don't really recall what went with her
or all I did that well, but I know the spear the asshats forked to me to kill
Matt and Natz with had something to do with it," Lazarus answered with a
shiver.
"I passed out within two minutes of the surge, and when I woke up Matt and Natz
were carting me away from… a giant scorched pile of rubble bigger than this
ship. The shadows and lights that came from their bodies were gone. But their
eyes… their eyes were blood red, and I swear Natalie was pale as the fucking
moon. It took them a whole day to return to normal fully."
Both sets of eyes went wide at that. "... so you're saying that place was
leveled?" Sarah muttered, a hint of awe and fright present in her tone.
Lazarus nodded hesitantly. "We were the only ponies who left that area alive as
far as I am aware, and if I recall it's still there, somewhere far to the south
in a deep chasm. And when we found out we got cutie marks because of it, we all
fucking panicked," he concluded somberly. "We only later learned that arena was
dubbed the Royale Hall of Brawls… stupid name, I know. Its destruction was
hence dubbed the Royale Catastrophe. Have you heard of the Catastrophe before?"
Fenrir and Sarah slowly nodded.
"We have, but… not many details came out," Sarah muttered. "Only its aftermath,
and that Brawls stopped being held after its destruction."
He turned to his mark and sighed bitterly. "Since then, I've hidden my mark
under layers of cloth. As well as the rest of my body, just so ponies wouldn't
recognize me. I thought that business was over and done with… but nooooo, Matt
and Natz showed me a heaping stack of books found in a frozen hellhole before I
went to bed…"
"What were the books about?" Fenrir queried, his face contorting to a scowl at
what he'd just heard. Lazarus responded by conjuring a book in a flash of light
and sliding it to him across the table. Fenrir opened the book and flipped
through it, finding several cutie marks illustrated within the pages, though
each one beared a bright red X crudely drawn over top. Another few books were
summoned in short order, and he took a few minutes to deftly leaf through the
whole lot one at a time. Only Lazarus, Matt, and Natalie's marks remained
unblemished by those X's.
Only as he closed the last book twenty minutes after the first speed-reading
did Fenrir look back at Lazarus. "Are these… records?" he asked incredulously.
Once more, Lazarus nodded, this time with his brow slanting and his tail
quivering. "Of the fighters," he muttered tersely. "What I don't understand is…
how our marks got into those books after the Catastrophe."
Fenrir's scowl deepened. "Someone likely saw their marks, but you kept yours
covered… this is a very curious thing, indeed," he hissed sibilantly.
"Which is why Matt and Natz showed me those books to begin with," Lazarus
agreed, his voice taking on a rueful note.
"And why did they round you and all those other ponies up?" Sarah queried, eyes
narrowing dangerously low. "Why pit you in fights to the death? For what gain?"
Lazarus swallowed heavily before he answered, "Honestly, I don't remember… and
I don't want to remember why."
***** Chapter LXXIII- Venomous Outbreak *****
Alexander had his talons full. He sat in a recliner in one of the lounges,
Heather sat on a couch before him, and her colt was taking his first steps
across the carpet with shaky legs while the changeling nurses and the elder
unicorn watched his every move. The baby, clad in a small suit of chitil with
extra padding on his rear end, was learning with increasing speed the layout of
the room.
That included where he could and could not crawl under. The two changeling
nurses always barred potential hiding holes with their legs, but once they did
the infant lost interest and tottered off to try and squirm under another piece
of furniture. Every so often, he stopped and repeatedly reared on his back legs
and stomped his front hooves, burbling with eyes of soft teal gleaming in
delight.
Heather, for her part, did next to nothing to help. She did not even attempt to
corral her baby, but then again she hadn't really needed to, when two
changelings did so in her stead. The elder sat next to her, worryingly looking
at a small wheeled stand with hooks which held IV bags that were anchored to
her forelegs. "So you had him yesterday?" the elder asked with a sigh.
Heather nodded. "Bad ponies tried making me live in bad house. Put me in bad
dress," she muttered, ears folding back. "Ran away. Tore bad dress up, but not
before baby cried and hurt my tummy really bad."
The elder grimaced at that, and turned to the colt as he started galloping in
circles around one of the nurse's legs, little wings buzzing with fervor. "And
then… nice ponies came. Nice white pony scared me a lot, but… but he wasn't
like bad ponies," Heather added, smiling a little.
"Sounds to me she's mentally… stunted," Alexander murmured, frowning when the
elder and Heather turned to him.
"Stunted?" the elder parroted.
Alexander gravely nodded. "Either through a birth defect, or was simply kept as
ignorant as possible," he answered, his tail swishing a little. "Or she
suffered a concussion too many."
The elder's frown deepened. He crossed his forelegs. "There's a lot the other
villagers wouldn't tell me…" he muttered. "Such as what became of the stallion
who forged the shield…"
"No offense," one of the nurses began as the colt managed to latch onto her
tail with his mouth and started pulling with all his might, "but they might've
thought you were going senile, or something."
"Psssh," the elder hissed dismissively, parting his hooves and rearing one up
to make a flicking motion, "I'm the only old soul down there who hasn't started
gettin' cobwebs up in my head."
The nurses shared looks, then the one who was getting her tail pulled hiked
hers straight up, in turn sending the colt through the air… and causing him to
land on her back without issue. The baby burbled some more, waving his little
legs as if asking to do it again. "Strange…" Alexander muttered, brow furrowing
thoughtfully.
"Our sentiments exactly," the changeling nurses piped up at the same time. The
baby burbled and kept flailing his little legs eagerly, still pumping energy
into his beating wings almost as if he were expecting to launch back into the
air at some point.
Alexander turned back to Heather. "Have you decided on a name for your foal
yet?" he queried.
Heather's smile fell. "Dunno what to name baby," she answered earnestly, eyes
gravitating to the ceiling as a hoof rose to tap her chin. "He has wingies… one
of only wingie babies to leave bad place…"
Alexander's gaze snapped to the elder, eyes narrowing by a smidgen. "Is this
true?" he asked.
The elder shook his head. "No, another winged child left Greenwood years ago,"
he answered. Gesturing to the colt, who was now being settled down onto the
floor by the nurses' magic, he added, "He's the second winged child to have
left… on a technicality."
Alexander's brow rose. "And the first?" he pressed.
The elder shook his head again, slowly and grimly. "Hadn't seen hide nor hair
of that child since," he stated somberly.
Alexander nodded and turned to look at the feet of his recliner as the baby
cantered up to him and reared on his hind legs. He leaned over until his beak
was just inches from the little one's muzzle, and softly queried, "Yeeees?" The
baby burbled, lifted a tiny hoof, and proceeded to boop him on the beak with a
flap of his little wings. He couldn't help but chuckle as the baby then dropped
to all fours and started galloping circles around the nurses again.
"I think it's safe to say the tyke has a clean bill of health," one of the
nurses chirped, spinning in place just to keep her eyes affixed to the child.
"Not to mention that he's obscenely lucky," chimed the other nurse with a small
grin. "I think the little guy would make Lance melt," she added as the baby
tripped and landed on his stomach, burbling as he looked at her with a curious
gaze.
"Who is this Lance fellow?" the elder asked, tilting his head.
The nurses exchanged glances, before one of them picked up the foal with her
forehooves. "Our boss," she answered tersely, pausing to nuzzle the child who
then booped her on the snout with all four hooves.
"He's got a bit of a soft spot for kids; hell, if he were able, he'd do his
utter damnedest to keep every single foal on Fantasia safe and away from the
foal-diddlers," the second added, chortling as her companion snickered in the
process of getting multiple boops to the snout in rapid succession. "I'm
surprised it took him this long to adopt one. I heard the foal he has is a real
hoofful."
The elder nodded with an "Aaaah" of understanding, and proceeded to light up
his horn. His magic tenderly grasped the colt and plucked him from the nurse's
forelegs before levitating him to Heather. "I think he needs to eat," he said,
to which the nurses nodded with no objection on their part. The moment the colt
crawled between her rear legs and started suckling, his aura dimmed as he
ceased casting. "This is… the youngest mother I've seen yet."
"I cannot help but agree there," Alexander muttered ruefully, looking at the
elder intently.
The elder looked back at Alexander and sighed. "Normally, ponies in Greenwood
would wait until the mare was at least eight years older than this filly," he
grumbled, lifting a hoof to gesture to Heather for emphasis. "Unless…" That
same hoof went to rub his temples as mental gears started turning. "They're
hiding more than they normally would?"
"Well, whatever the reason, we needn't worry about it too much ourselves,"
Alexander sighed, smiling a bit. "Lance is already working on something to send
some of the others down to Greenwood, without involving you or the foals. He
has enough hooves on this ship and the other ships that he can afford to do
something like that."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Twilight was in her guest room, reading the books she'd brought over, though
she lifted her eyes from the pages every few seconds to watch as Zecora and
Katie mulled about. The former had gotten a few cooking pots into the room,
filled with a deep blue liquid. All of those pots were suspended in a lavender
aura, and had searing white flames just beneath them, heating that liquid to a
boil.
The latter was busying herself by hopping from corner to corner, occasionally
using her tongue to do meager things such as scratching her own back or retying
her casts, both made obscenely easy by the simple virtue of being able to
rotate her head full circle. Around all three, arranged very carefully onto the
various tables and dressers and further glued down with chitil, were several
potted blue flowers with dark purple stamens, all bearing six sharply pointed
petals and sickly navy stems. There were other pots that held a variety of
different herbs and plants, but they were much bigger and had to be stationed
on the floor simply due to how many there were.
"I can't believe poison joke can be converted to thaumic energy," Twilight
muttered, turning back to her book.
"Verily, but I am glad we brought a small crop abroad. We must be careful, so
it doesn't affect any poor sods," Zecora agreed with a nod. She peered at the
various pots, waiting for the liquid to do something other than boil. Katie
jumped over, hearing the liquid pop and steam with fervor.
"What're you gonna do with that? Make me drink it?" Katie asked, causing Zecora
to turn to her very briefly and shake her head.
"Yeah, now that you mention it…" Twilight pried her eyes out of the book again
and sighed. "We're going to need a funnel sooner or later."
Zecora shook her head. "Nay; the application needs to be direct. In
concentrated poison joke she must be bedecked," she replied. "I was told it
heals her wounds. Whether or not it does, we'll find out soon." Twilight's
brows shot up at that.
"Come again?" Twilight queried, dumbfounded.
Katie answered before Zecora could utter another word, "She needs to soak me in
it, head to hoof, before I can trot again. It's why my legs don't got holes
anymore."
"Let me get this straight… someone told you that poison joke of all things
helps with…" Twilight could not scrounge her brain for the words with which to
finish the question, eyes widening at the utter ludicrousness of Zecora's
utterance. Her brain simply refused to even acknowledge it. She managed to
ignore Katie's answer, at least for a few seconds before it clicked in and she
turned to the wraith in question. She gathered herself before stating matter-
of-factly, "Katie, don't be ridiculous. Poison joke only pranks ponies with
small but annoying afflictions. It doesn't heal wounds."
"But it's true!" Katie exclaimed in exasperation, swollen wing-nubs buzzing as
she jumped in place with legs helplessly flailing. "Rainbow saw it! You can ask
her about it!"
Twilight sighed, knelt to Katie's level when she landed on the floor, and
donned a firm frown of disapproval. "There's no evidence poison joke affects
changelings, and to be frank, there's no records of it affecting wraiths as far
as I am aware of. I have read every single book in Canterlot and in Ponyville,
some of which I think are hooey, and none of them touched the topic of poison
joke in little beyond either a passing mention or what it does to ponies at
best," she lectured.
Katie's eyes narrowed. "But that's not every single book in Equestria, recent
or ancient," she dourly pointed out. When Twilight grimaced, she turned to
Zecora. "Is it ready yet?" she queried. Zecora turned to the several brews
boiling at once, and smiled a little as they congealed slightly.
"The poison joke brew is finished at last. We must drench you, and fast,"
Zecora intoned. Her smile fell as she turned to Twilight. "But, how will we go
about with the process of drenching her? This airship has no tubs or pots large
enough, of that I am sure."
Twilight sighed and magically lifted Katie into the air, tenderly taking off
her casts in the process before wrapping her in an airtight bubble similar to
Shining's shield. The pots then ascended until they were above the bubble,
whereupon a small hole formed at the very top, lined with a funneled rim.
Precariously, Twilight poured the liquid into the field through that funnel,
making sure some actually splattered on Katie on its way down. "If this mends
her legs, or does something similar to that, then I'll reconsider my concerns,"
Twilight muttered as the bubble shrank once the last of the brew was poured in,
forming a makeshift tub that ensured Katie would get thoroughly drenched in.
Before long, her ears and mane were dripping blue liquid as though it were
raining, and Katie started barrel rolling to further soak herself. As she spun,
blue spots formed on her body, and the liquid pulsed with mana before the blue
color drained out and was seemingly absorbed by its occupant, leaving a small
pool of water as clear as any well-kept bath. This left Katie so blue that even
her wing-nubs took on that tint. "This is most bizarre, second to finding
Fantasia full of strife. I have not seen poison joke react like this in my
entire life," Zecora murmured, her eyes widening in tandem with Twilight's at
the now-blue Katie.
Twilight herself was taken aback. This, however, sparked something in her
brain, and she conjured an inkwell, a quill, and a sheet of paper. "Well now…
this calls for a bit of research," she murmured. Before she could start writing
down notes, a series of sickening snaps filled the air, and she turned to
Katie. Dyed legs twisted and bent unnaturally, pulsing with mana, doing
everything from spinning in their sockets to bending as far back as possible
until they rested with their owner in a crouching stance that reminded the two
observers of a grasshopper waiting to jump.
Wing-nubs then swelled twice, thrice their size, absorbing the liquid trapped
therein and forming an entirely new network of veins and arteries with which to
pump blood. Gossamer membranes grew between those veins, stretching until all
four nubs had become once-more functional wings that were almost moth-like.
With a grunt, Katie heaved and stretched her legs until they were back under
her body once more, popping them one final time with the effort. Buzzing her
dripping wings, she managed to kick up the liquid in the bubble a little and
simultaneously dry them off before the blue tint faded from her entire body
with one last pulse of mana.
Katie turned to regard Twilight with a smug glint in her orbs and a joyous
fervor in her buzzing as she made the water and the bubble vanish in light, in
tandem with the myriad of pots that held the brew before. Once more airborne
and free from her confines, she asked, "You were saying?"
Twilight's jaw had dropped at that point, as had Zecora's. Not one moment ago,
the wraith before them was helplessly hopping about on the floor, and now she
was flying as if nothing had even happened. But now that she thought about it,
she did see mana at work… Twilight started jotting down notes, eying Katie with
a very critical gaze. "Subject absorbed properties of poison joke by way of
mana… healed fully… yet to determine if innate mana or external…" she muttered.
"Hrmm?" Katie hummed, prior to flying closer to Twilight to see what the deal
was. She noticed that her flying was much smoother than it was when her wings
were tatters, but no more faster than the average hover at best.
"Tell me… have you ran into poison joke before?" Twilight asked, enunciating
each word slowly to make sure her meaning wasn't lost on Katie even as she
continued to jot down notes.
"I have not, at least on Fantasia," Katie muttered in reply, tilting her head.
Twilight frowned. "Not once?"
Katie shook her head. "Nope. My memory is only as good as the week is long. If
I have, I either forgot I did, or just didn't actually come into contact with
it," she answered with a shrug of indifference. "One of the things nobody tells
ya about being immortal; you have to write things down, otherwise it's lost to
time. And even that doesn't help one bit."
Twilight raised a skeptical brow. "So… your memory is bad?" she translated.
Katie shook her head. "Only limited, actually, not bad per se. A few
interesting things that really stick out from what I've seen either happened
ages ago, or very recently. Everything else is a fog as thick as the moon," she
answered. "And suffice to say, until I woke up in Lance's tank, hardly anything
interesting happened, aside from becoming a wraith." She leaned back and
crossed her forelegs under her head and her rear legs rather strategically over
her pelvis in a lazy, hovering lounge and added, "I mean, you're Celestia's
student. Haven't you seen her cheat sheets whenever she has to listen to the
nobles of the Courts bitch and moan?"
Twilight hazily recalled a few Court sessions in her foalhood that she didn't
actively participate in, but did notice that more than once Celestia had papers
seemingly on hoof in every instance within her memory. "... vaguely?" she
murmured. "I was only there when Mom and Dad were on vacation, Shining was in
school, Cadence was unavailable, and I was out of school for the day…" Still,
if what Katie said was true, it would have explained a little more about her
antics as of late.
And speaking of not remembering things, a thought crossed Twilight's mind in
that moment. "Do you remember what life was like before you attained
immortality?" she queried.
"Not much, though most of what I can recall is from my grubhood. I still
remember the moment I hatched, and saw my hivemates for the first time," Katie
replied, her tone taking on a solemn, reminiscing note. Her orbs wavered
briefly. "Used to have purple wasps every day, until I had my third molt and
became a nymph."
"Nymph?" Twilight echoed, her raised brow climbing higher.
"Basically, a changeling's equivalent to a filly or a colt," Katie replied with
a shrug. She lifted a hoof from behind her head and gestured at herself as she
added, "I could not become a full-fledged mutant drone. I did not know it at
the time, but before my tenth molt could even be reached—a changeling's
equivalent to a birthday party—the hive I was a part of was soon to be
decimated."
Twilight's jaw dropped at that. "You're an undead foal?!" she screamed.
Katie glumly nodded. "Over the years… of which I have lost count, it must be
said, I learned to stop thinking like a foal and start thinking like a grown
mare," she stated. Her tone lowered ominously, and the solemn note became more
prominent as she continued, "Only reason I let Lance make me into one of his
lackeys is because I want to know what the hell destroyed my hivemates, and why
the barrier broke." She paused, eying Twilight with a serious glint in her
still-wavering orbs. "Futile it may seem, given the possibility the records of
the first shitshow and the barrier are few and far in between, or possibly even
nonexistent for that matter, I am still willing to take the risk."
The bottom dropped out of Twilight's stomach at what Katie said next, orbs
averting before dimming entirely, her tone taking on a bitter, hateful note
tinged with the slightest margin of despair and desperation. The words were
uttered in a cacophonous symphony of all-encompassing dismay, each undernote
impossible to miss unless she were deaf, and each note roiling about as though
multiple wraiths spoke at once, "Nobody else was willing to give me answers
over the years. They all cast me out and never looked back."
Twilight looked at Katie with eyes widening all over again, comprehension
dawning. The skeptic in her wanted to deny, deny, deny what she'd heard. The
realist in her, however, pointed out that, if Katie really did die so young,
then her small size could not have come from emaciation alone. Bones became
brittle over time, yes, but did not shrink the way skin and muscle could unless
a serious defect was involved. Her mannerisms when they first met, her tendency
to piggyback on somepony's back, her utter refusal to filter her words in a way
that would spare everypony a lot of embarrassment, her tendency to charge first
and ask later…
These things were the hallmarks of a foal. A foal who should not have had to
endure endless hunger, seemingly-inescapable loneliness and scorn, and pains
both physical and mental for years on end, yet did. A foal whose wounds time
did not heal, whose wounds refused to heal until recently. A foal who, somehow,
persevered in spite of all of that, all for the sake of finding someone, anyone
who'd help her with her dilemma. A foal who sounded desperate above all else.
Zecora spoke for them both, "There are answers you seek, answers you want but
have not yet found. You will not rest until you obtain them, whether by old
text or spoken sound?"
Katie turned to Zecora and stared for some seconds before shaking her head. "I
cannot die," she muttered wearily. Bitterly, she added, "Even if I get my
answers… then what? It's not like Fantasia could magically become a better
world overnight."
Twilight's brow furrowed at that. The realist within her agreed with the
sentiment, and her eye twitched wholeheartedly. She'd seen her fair share of
things getting worse before they got better, so she wasn't even all that
surprised that such a comment left Katie's mouth. "Well, if you got your
answers, you could tell other changelings about your tale years down the line
so what happened to your hive doesn't repeat," Twilight muttered.
Katie's orbs glowed again and then widened, and for a second her jaw fell
slack. Her voice fell to a whisper as she said, "Those who cannot remember the
past… are condemned to repeat it…"
Twilight nodded, smiling as Katie started to see what she was getting at. "If
anything, you could start with Lance's other changelings and work your way from
there, to the gryphons and minotaurs and everybody else in between all of
that," she stated firmly. "Of course, they might not take you seriously at
first, especially if what you'd just said is true. But, some could on the first
try. You never know what sort of reception you'll get, so keep your torn mouth
running until somebody's willing to listen."
Katie's face hardened, her split mouth's tears twitching knowingly. "Right
now?" she queried, a note of hope in her tone.
Twilight shook her head. "Not yet. I'd say wait until we leave Greenwood before
you let your gums start flapping," she stated. At this, Katie sagged a little.
"The soldiers are busying themselves with other things at the moment, and Lance
is trying to avoid doing something scatterbrained in the meantime. Things will
need to settle first."
Katie nodded in understanding, and dropped to the floor in a clumsy, four-
hoofed landing. She righted her posture before folding her wings, and she
trotted a few laps around Twilight and Zecora, chirping in delight when she
found her legs could now adequately support her meager weight. This went on for
a few minutes before stopping as Katie turned to the door of the room. "So,
what should we do in the meantime?" she asked.
Twilight lifted Katie up in her magic and planted her onto her own backside.
"Now, we give Lance a little Tartarus until he gives up the ghost and tells us
if he formulated a plan or not," she stated, unable to keep the slight smirk
off of her face.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Unfortunately, Lance was already on the receiving end of being hoofed a platter
full of Tartarus, with a screech of terror thrown in for free. Anna had gone
into full-out panic mode, cowering in the shower stall with a pale face and
eyes wide. He was in there with her, trying to cradle her with his wings, only
to repeatedly be kicked and magically pushed to the wall, one time receiving a
large series of cuts across the barrel from such a strike that should not have
been able to even produce the wounds in question. Matt and Natalie were outside
the stall, horns aglow, using their magic to keep her pinned to one corner of
the stall in an effort to avoid harming herself. Concern dotted their faces,
giving way to wide eyes and firm frowns.
It was easy to see why. One of her forelegs had grown a swath of bark that tore
through skin and muscle, forming a hellish four-digit claw where her hoof was,
each digit tipped with Lance's blood. Her blood seeped from the bark profusely,
and that wasn't the only thing that decided she was good enough to become
fertilizer. Ivy and kudzu worked in tandem, weaving angry webs beneath her skin
before breaking out in a myriad of places, even meeting with the bark just
behind her withers, forming an elaborate and crude mockery of two pairs of
pegasus wings that flapped and flopped without doing anything more than making
her scream in pain. One of her back legs was undergoing a similar treatment,
the bark on it forming plates that were less plant-like and more armor-like.
"Hold still so we can start removing the bark!" Natalie pleaded, trying her
best to magically seize Anna's faux wings, pumping more mana to compensate for
Matt's relatively weak glow.
"It hurts! Make it stop!" Anna wailed, unable to hold still for even a second
before another plate of bark tore its way through the skin of her haunch,
almost obscuring her cutie mark in blood.
"We're trying!" Matt grumbled, feeling his horn heat up as he managed to seize
hold of the flailing giant leafy bark that dared call itself sets of wings
before pinning them to the wall.
Lance got off of the wall and ambled over, the large gashes dotting his barrel
still dripping blood as he tried once more to soothe his subordinate. "Hey,
it's gonna be alright," he muttered as he knelt to her level and clasped her
with his forelegs, wrapping them around her withers to pull her close. She
nestled her muzzle to his shoulder and bit him, hard, muffling another scream
as a chunk of bark was forcefully parted from her back leg, taking with it a
tiny chunk of flesh. As more bark was worked free, the kudzu and ivy raced over
beneath her skin to try and keep the wound off-limits, but those too were torn
out before a soft white glow covered it and started mending the exposed flesh.
Lance lifted a hoof slightly and began rubbing at Anna's withers, causing her
to relax a little at the sensation. He heard a door slam open not even a second
after, the sound causing Anna to tense and bristle, but he kept rubbing even as
another chunk of bark and some more plant vines had been magically evicted from
her back leg. "Oi, Lance, we need… the fuck?" he heard Katie mumble.
Just great, prying eyes and ears arrived when everypony in the shower least
wanted them to. "You're gonna have to wait! We have an emergency on our
hooves!" Natalie called, furiously peeling bark and vines away from the
entirety of Anna's hind leg, revealing angry red flesh that she then worked on
healing at the same time. They heard muffled hoofsteps approaching, and out of
the corner of his eye, Lance saw Twilight and Zecora emerge into the stall
uninvited, with the former having Katie on her back. All three turned to the
sight and sharply gasped in unison.
"What's going on here?!" Twilight demanded, trying to force her way between
Matt and Natalie to see what the fuss was about in more detail, only to
magically be pushed to the toilet by Anna before she could get very far.
"Anna's turning into a fucking timberpony over here, and last thing we need is
to be thrown off our hooves!" Matt barked, turning to the faux wings as soon as
the last of the vines and bark were torn out of the hind leg, and started to
work on removing the wings when Twilight yet again came over, though that time
without trying to wedge herself into the already-crowded stall.
Twilight gaped when a wing was ripped out with a sickening snap of timber,
which immediately caused Anna to scream and kick out with her back legs as the
remaining three wings beat furiously at the fresh wave of pain being sent
through her nerves. Her claw-tipped hoof grappled Lance's foreleg and pierced
his flesh once more, though he barely gave a wince as he kept trying to calm
her down. "D-did she get parasitized?!" she queried, her horn glowing when she
saw still-unhealed wounds dotting Anna's back leg that Natalie was trying to
patch up.
"No, it was like this when she got her cutie mark," Lance answered, focusing
all of his energy in keeping Anna from flailing as much as he could. "Her
magic's always been this haywire!"
Twilight groaned and started conjuring a soft white light of her own, healing
the back leg of its wounds and freeing Natalie up a little to get rid of more
vines and bark. Another sickening crunch rent the air, followed by another
muffled shriek as another false wing had been parted from its host, and the
other two wings swiftly followed it on its way out. Working to heal the new
perforations in Anna's back, she eyed the clawed foreleg digging into Lance's
flesh with only the barest of restraint to keep it from trailing any lower to
his exposed stomach. That leg was parted from his own, before in one fell swoop
the bark covering it was removed with the last of the vines.
Twilight worked to heal the leg, but Natalie was already on it. Matt proceeded
to gather the bark and vines in a faltering glow, before he trotted outside of
the stall with them in tow. The group heard a creak like a door being opened,
followed by the boom of thunder and the crackle of flames. Zecora rushed out of
the stall, leaving Natalie and Twilight to finish healing Anna, to find Matt
torching the plants. He made sure they were outside of the airship by simply
opening the window. Lightning struck again and again at the plants, before Matt
magically pushed them further from the ship and let them drop to the ground
below. The window slammed shut in a golden glow after that. Wordlessly, Matt
trotted back into the toiletries' corner, finding Twilight magically turning
Anna over in a bubble to check and see if there was anymore trouble spots of a
bark outbreak.
Fortunately, there was no more bark and vines to be had, and even better,
somepony had the decency to heal Lance in the process. Wounds healed, but pain
still lingering, all Anna could do was whimper as tears fell freely. "We can
barely control her when she's like this," Lance sighed, looking at his now-
levitating subordinate with concern marring his face. "Since a lot of magic is
fueled by emotion and thought… whenever she panics enough, this happens…"
Twilight gently lowered Anna to the floor of the stall, and turned on the water
to help her wash the blood off. "Is this… why she can't…"
Lance nodded, cutting Twilight off. "It's like the madness of the trees… does
something to her… pheromones, telepathy, or just their looks, I honestly don't
know what… it's like a virus. A virus we can only keep her away from," he
stated grimly. Anna scrabbled back to him and clutched him in her forelegs,
sniffling and crying like a lost foal, burying her face in his barrel.
"Don't… wanna go back…" Anna huffed, ears folding back against her head.
Matt grabbed Twilight, Katie, and Zecora in his magic before lifting them and
trotting out of the room with them in tow, leaving Natalie to watch in case
another bark outbreak were to occur. He parked them on the floor of the hall
and shut the door behind himself. He wore a solemn, deep frown. "What is it
that you wanted?" he queried.
Twilight was more dumbfounded than ever. She could've sworn Anna was fine not
even last night, but to have bark and vines growing out of her flesh this
morning? She could very well understand the slight panic that filled her
colleagues, yet once more could not express her concern with mere words. Zecora
and Katie were, likewise, stunned into silence now that the crisis had been
averted.
It took them several long minutes before any could answer Matt's question.
***** Chapter LXXIV- 'Line Up, Legs Straight!' *****
"Is she gonna be okay?" Katie asked with utmost sincerity, brow slanted and
ears flat against her head as the question left her mouth. Matt mulled the
query over for a moment before he slowly nodded.
"She could grow more bark tomorrow… but if she does, we'll just pry it off of
her again," Matt stated in a flat voice. "And normally, it only happens once
per heat. Even so, we don't take chances with that."
Katie grimaced. "Why'd she sprout wings?" she pressed, genuinely concerned.
Matt's frown deepened. "We have no idea. They always sprout whenever the curse
she's under decides to express itself," he muttered grimly, shaking his head.
"And this started months ago."
Twilight's brow slanted. "She's hexed?"
Again, Matt nodded. "Has been, ever since she underwent therapy. She's only
just started growing bark in the past few months; before that, her eyes would
turn red and her mood would swing straight to hell," he stated. "I'd wager she
was cursed sometime before we trotted into her." At the questioning brow that
Twilight rose, he elaborated, "A year before Lance recruited her, she was
banged up enough to undergo physical therapy. All four legs had bad fractures
in them… and that's not even getting into her state of mind back then."
"You're saying that she's…" Twilight began, only to stop when Matt nodded for a
third time, his frown deepening still.
"She thought we were there to finish her off, when we wanted to do the
opposite," Matt said in a tight voice, and he left it at that.
Katie's eyes narrowed at what she'd just heard. "So… what should we do?" she
pressed. "Anna's on the fritz, prone to becoming plant fodder… and I can trot
and fly again." Her wings buzzed, albeit much slower than they usually would,
producing a soft hum that lasted mere seconds.
Matt sighed and shrugged. "You three wait. I'm gonna talk with Lance for a
bit…" he said, and with that he opened the door behind him, trotted inside… and
didn't bother to even close the door behind him. Twilight poked her head in and
found a dripping Lance and Anna on the bed, with Natalie rubbing them both
using a blanket held in her magic. Anna was slumped, eyes closed as a soft
purring sound left her mouth. Lance kept her cradled under one wing, though he
was alert and awake and looking at Twilight. With a nod, he turned to Matt.
"She's content, and asleep," Lance whispered, glancing at Anna for a moment for
emphasis. With a hoof, he beckoned Twilight over, and she walked in, keeping
her steps silent. "Whatever you want, keep it down. We don't need her freaking
out again." Twilight nodded in understanding, and for a moment held quiet to
better hear Anna's purr. It was honestly serene as her expression; something,
in her case, that was delicate and needed to be approached with care.
"I can fly and trot again," Katie whispered, leaning over a little to stare
Lance in the eye.
Lance nodded and donned a small smile. "Good. I need to ask you something," he
muttered in reply. When Katie's ears perked up, he took that as his cue to
shoot in the dark, "Can you withstand the levels of despair emanating from
Greenwood?"
Katie's ears drooped a little, and she slid her tongue out to tap her chin and
rub her temples simultaneously in lieu of her hoof as she thought the question
over. For a few seconds, her brow furrowed, and then her tongue retracted. "How
bad is it?" she pressed.
"Very. Virtually none of the other changelings in this ship can stand it for
more than a few hours," Lance clarified, his smile fading. "The reason I ask is
because of where we found you specifically. Are you up to it?"
Katie hesitated, getting the feeling Lance was about to drop something gigantic
onto her withers regardless of her answer. She eventually settled onto an
answer, though not before swishing her tail a little. "It depends on the cause
of that despair," she muttered in reply. "If it's temporary, like say a broken
leg, then I'll handle that just fine."
"The trees have eyes," Natalie stated, her tone soft yet carrying an
unmistakeable weight nonetheless. "They're nothing like wraiths."
Katie's ears sagged down at that. "I can handle despair, but… but only because
I usually ignore it," she muttered, her voice weak. "But… sometimes it
overwhelms me like it does anyling…"
Lance's frown deepened at that. He turned to Twilight for a moment. "Any luck
on that enchanted paper?" he asked.
Twilight shook her head. "No dice so far," she answered.
Lance's ears drooped slightly. "Well then…" He turned back to Katie. "Ugh… it's
time to get creative…" He sighed ruefully at that prospect. "Would you be
willing to investigate Ashwood a little, with a retinue of my gryphons and
NoLegs to accompany you?"
Katie nodded without hesitation. "But, I'll need something more than just my
horseshoes to get me by. Say… do you have that spear with the odd slots in its
shaft?" she queried.
Lance canted his head a little. "Why?"
"I could use my tongue to hold it, since with my shoes on it'll be clumsy
otherwise," Katie elaborated. That caused Matt and Natalie to share a glance,
both mulling that over for a second or two which gave her the impression that
they were mentally picturing the art of spearmanship via tongue somehow going
awry.
Lance shook his head at that. "It could work, yes… but you haven't the
experience necessary to properly use one. That much became clear to me when you
first held it," he muttered.
Katie sighed, but nodded as she had no hope of contesting with him there.
"Which is where your gryphons come in," she muttered.
Lance nodded, and smiled again. "Yes. But we're also going to need a way to get
you lot by without the ectoplasms noticing…"
"Illusions?" Matt suggested. Slowly, he turned to Twilight. "Are you able to
cast them?"
Twilight pursed her lips, before nodding eagerly. "I was able to replicate a
flame spell, a healing spell, and your light-sword spell more directly… I've
seen my fair share of illusions. Sounds like something that should be easy
enough," she answered. "All we need now are your gryphons…"
Lance's smile widened, and he nodded. Turning to Natalie, he gave a curt order,
"Conjure a radio and ask for Jeremy, Nathan, and Quicksilver to meet up on the
deck of this vessel. If they ask, tell them they're getting an assignment. If
they ask for me specifically, tell them I'm unavailable at the moment."
"Hold up," Katie interjected, raising her hoof. When Lance turned to her, she
asked, "What are we supposed to do in Ashwood once we get down?"
"Simple," Lance began, his eyes gleaming and his ears lifting up to full
alertness, "Check out the vicinity around Greenwood, starting from the Mighty
Oak's shrine outward. And if you can, make friends with the Mighty Oak. He will
help you tremendously. I want things pertaining to why ponies become trees,
first and foremost. The source, any bodies that haven't turned if you can
procure them, and anything that may have been hidden by an illusion."
"That last one's gonna be hard to find…" Katie muttered, her hoof lowering.
Lance nodded in agreement. "Which is where NoLegs comes in," he stated tersely,
garnering Natalie and Matt's attention with that utterance. He rubbed Anna's
back with his wing when she shifted to rub her head against his shoulder,
mumbling about salmon in her sleep. "He knows to watch for such spells."
Matt's eyes widened as Lance said that. "Of course…" he muttered, seeing
Twilight's brow quirk out of the corner of his eye. He turned to her and
elaborated, "He was the one who taught me how to use illusions effectively."
Twilight frowned. "I see," she muttered tersely as Natalie lit up her horn and
conjured a radio in a small flash of light that she made sure was behind Anna
so as to not rouse her.
"And while you're at it… could you summon Sarah and Lazarus?" Lance asked. "I
need to inform one of them about the emergency, and the other… I'm going to
need to query a bit and prepare future arrangements for…"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
An hour passed before Nathan, Jeremy, and Quicksilver found themselves on the
deck of the largest vessel, all coats slightly singed to the wingtips and
smoking in places. Twilight was there as well, fussing over them with Katie on
her back to make sure they'd be alright, though it was honestly harder for her
to tell in what spots Jeremy had been singed. As a result, she'd been forced to
rely on the smoke emanating from whatever trouble spots that he had.
NoLegs was present too, the oversized spear with the two slots held aloft in
his magic until it would be needed. With the three gryphons having been briefed
during the check-up that they'd be put to work, they couldn't help but wonder
the moment that Twilight healed them with a flick of her horn and gave them the
all-clear. At this point, Katie had been given her shoes again, and it did not
take long for the gryphons to voice their concerns.
"So… what's the assignment?" Jeremy queried, his brow quirked.
"Beyond the whole 'find suspect activity and dead bodies,' I got nothing,"
Katie answered in earnest, shrugging her shoulders. "He may as well have asked
me to summon Godcat." She paused, eying the gryphons critically. "I'm amazed
you three dodged lightning bolts with nothing more than some burn marks to show
for it."
"I'm amazed you can still speak," Quicksilver quipped back.
"Shut your piehole, you lead-chewing blowhard," Katie snarked, eyes narrowing a
little as she said that. "I'll bet you bathe in the stuff."
"Oh, you can go eat an entire bag of the fattest dicks Fantasia has to offer,"
Nathan hissed, narrowing his eyes at Katie. The display did not make her flinch
in the slightest.
"Is that a challenge?" Katie hissed, opening her mouth extra-wide so he could
see all of her new sharp and pointy teeth.
Twilight sighed as they continued to argue over whether or not this 'bag of the
fattest dicks' was actually a challenge of some sort or an insult. It lasted
for a good hour and a half, only halting when the hatch flung itself open and
both participants of the conversation turned to it as Natalie emerged.
Now, though, she had donned a dress that seemed black at first glance, but was
really a deep navy with a violet trim that was so faded it almost seemed like a
shade of grey. The dress had the backside cut out to expose her midsection a
little, as well as her withers and croup. Belts framed her hind quarters.
So too did a sash whose tails ended in white, bleached skulls shaped like the
heads of ponies with the sash in question tied through the sockets of each. A
pair of dark purple baubles were there to hold up her mane in a singular
ponytail, one on her scalp and one near the end of her mane. She sported a
necklace holding up a five-pointed gold star and an eight-pointed silver star
that bashed each other and jingled as she trotted over. Both charms were
accompanied by another gold necklace in the shape of a pentagram, circle and
all.
Her hooves were clad with tight-knit boots that ended in dark metal horseshoes
that clanked in her wake, and sleeves of deep navy ending in frills shrouded
her forelegs up to the shoes themselves like a robe. On the barrel of the
outfit rested a hoofful of small medals, all neatly stowed to the left in three
rows. Twilight noticed that one of those medals was a dove white as snow, and
the one next to it was a lavender heart. Her crystal sheen had come full force,
even encompassing the outfit itself to make it seem like patches of it were
darker than black. Wrapped around her neck was a scarf with its ends tucked in,
forming a bulky mass accentuated by a small, silver cross at the front.
All turned to Natalie's face, which bore a neutral expression so flat it seemed
to scream 'officialese' with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The gryphons
promptly saluted her with their wings and talons. Katie herself jumped off
Twilight's back, got her ass in line, and did the same with a hoof and wings
buzzing just to maintain her balance. Only then did Natalie speak, her voice as
flat as her expression and with an air of professionalism about it, "At ease. I
believe you have been briefed on the situation?"
Twilight stared at Natalie in what could only be described as a state of wide-
eyed awe as the assembled soldiers dropped claw, hoof and wing at her command.
Sweet merciful Godcat, she had to admit that Natalie was one-hundred and ten
percent the part of a lieutenant-general right now, and every bit as serious as
they came.
"Barely briefed, actually. Permission to speak?" Nathan piped up. Natalie
turned to him quick as a whip, eyes narrowing slightly before she gave a nod.
"The newest recruit did not elaborate much, if anything at all." Natalie's gaze
flicked to Katie right then, and she gave a shaky nod of confirmation. She
turned back to Nathan, silently asking him something with her gaze alone. He
was happy to elaborate, "I quote, 'suspect activity and dead bodies.'"
Natalie donned a very small, very tight frown. "Anything regarding the events
of last night?" she asked, her voice slightly clipped. At this, Nathan nodded.
"Ragnarok, a foal with a baby, an old geezer… and the trees down below engaging
in violence," Nathan answered. Natalie nodded back and her frown faded,
evidently satisfied with what he relayed. "All things considered, we have been
informed of a few… other tidbits."
"Understood." Natalie saw Twilight's questioning glint in her eyes and turned
to address her and her alone, "The giant swords and portal is what we call
Ragnarok, by the way." She turned back to her troops and gave them the briefing
that Lance had hoofed Katie in a clipped, professional tone, "What we're
looking for is unusual activity, and evidence pointing either toward or against
any wrongdoing Greenwood's villagers may have partaken in as of late.
Investigate the cursed trees if you have to—how they form, how fast, what time
of day and why. The only shred pointing to is the small pegasus colt now aboard
this vessel."
Quicksilver's eyes widened. "Pegasus colt?" he repeated.
Natalie nodded. "Alexander's confirmed his little wings work and everything,"
she stated. "I personally checked on him before trotting up here. He's bona
fide."
Quicksilver nodded and let his eyes narrow into a neutral gaze. He nodded for
her to continue. "As it stands, Ashwood Forest is more of a wreck than the last
time we had to go through it, partly because of Ragnarok and partly because
Greenwood's ponies simply stopped giving two shits about it. If you find any
unnatural upwellings of magma, you know why. Just fly over them, but do not go
too high." She lifted a hoof and gestured to the clouds overhead. "The sky's
currently filled to the brim, and volatile right now. Report when you find
sufficient evidence, however you deem it. If need be, have NoLegs convert it to
thaumic energy for easier transport. Oh, and if you find a winged elder with
bound wings, bring her up too—a little birdie told me she'd died a week prior
to our arrival, but honestly I wouldn't believe a word of it if Lance hadn't
had his wings tied."
Jeremy spoke up, flinching when Natalie turned to him in the process, "Will
that be all, ma'am?"
Natalie donned a small, dry smirk and she shook her head. "No, that's not all,"
she stated tersely. That caused chills to run down the spines of everyone else,
save NoLegs as he turned to grin at them rather smugly. "You see…" She took a
few steps closer and leaned towards the assembled troops, eyes narrowing
dangerously low. Twilight shivered when, briefly, they flickered red. "Figuring
out how the trees grow from ponies is going to take a little priority."
The gryphons broke out in a cold sweat when 'priority' left Natalie's mouth.
"Wh-why?" they asked in unison.
"Because this is the third time a certain somepony sprouted leafy wings. If she
panics a fourth time…" Natalie trailed off, letting her unspoken meaning hang
in the air. "And Lance declared enough was enough. Once you find out how the
trees… infect ponies, shall we say, one of our own is going under the knife to
remove it, should it be a physical entity. If it's not a physical entity…"
The gryphons gulped in unison. "Is-is that all?" Quicksilver stammered, his
feathers slowly puffing out as the implications sank in.
Natalie, yet again, shook her head, and rather grimly at that. "There is one
last thing you guys need to take notice of." She lifted a hoof to gesture at
Katie. "I'm sure you three have noticed by now, the wraith with us…" Again, she
trailed off, letting the trio avert their gaze to Katie for a few seconds
before turning their attention, once more, on their second-in-command. "She's
going to be accompanying you. One of two new recruits, in fact. I've heard her
ears are unnaturally sharp, so it is vital you keep her from getting
concussed."
Twilight looked down at Natalie's shadow when she felt something soft and
rounded brush up against the tip of her snout, accompanied by the unmistakeable
sound of bone popping. Part of her blamed the wind, yet it still did not blow,
so that left… Twilight's eyes widened as she saw that Natalie's shadow had
gained what looked like a bit of rotundness so profound it seemed like she'd
ingested a foal-sized swimming pool somehow and her stomach stretched to
accommodate its shape. One blink was all it took for the shadow to revert to
normal as Twilight tried to do a double-take.
She looked back at Natalie, and aside from her new getup, was the same as she
was. Twilight could not simply dismiss the change as the dress itself, as it
clung tightly to her body, for the most part. Perhaps the gryphons popped a
joint, and perhaps Katie exercised a bit of her magic to produce the feeling of
something just barely touching her in the process.
Perhaps being the key word. Twilight looked back at the soldiers. Unless they
asked a question, none of them dared to move or channel mana as Natalie spoke
to them, rattling off a list of assignments and things to do and to report back
when all was said and done with a 'please and thank you' tone. For a second,
just a second Natalie's coat turned stark white, the skulls adorning her sash
oozed neon-red liquid from their orifices, and her mane whipped about as if in
a living wind. Another blink, the skulls ceased to ooze liquid and she was once
again cream-colored and her mane was still.
Twilight shivered, and lifted a hoof to rub one eye. Finally, a soldier took
notice, and turned to her., but whoever it was had been something Twilight
didn't notice as her other hoof rose to join the first. She fell to her
haunches, fervently rubbing, hoping to both Faust and Godcat that she was just
hallucinating like crazy right now.
She heard somepony trot to her, and felt a metal-clad hoof come to rest on her
withers. She ceased rubbing to find Natalie staring at her, concern glimmering
in her eyes. For just a moment, the hard and collected look melted. "You okay?"
Natalie asked, her tone soft.
Twilight nodded uneasily. "Just… seeing things is all," she muttered.
"Did you sleep much last night?" Natalie pressed.
Twilight shook her head. "No, I've stayed up all night studying the books I
brought over, and was woken up on short notice to use poison joke…" she
answered.
Natalie nodded. "After this, I'll let you sleep in," she chirped, then dropped
her hoof and whirled around to the troops before they could even think to ask
what was going on. Once more, she marched to them in lockstep, eyes narrowing
slightly in a withering glare. "Line up, single file, legs straight and wings
fanned," she stated in a calm tone with a distinct authoritative note to it. At
once, the gryphons and Katie shifted into single file and then went rigid,
wings fanning out in seconds. Nathan, Jeremy, and Quicksilver spread theirs at
the same time, though Katie was a millisecond late. Legs straightened until
they were stiff as planks of wood. Natalie turned to Katie, who tried her best
to keep her orbs locked dead forward.
Then, Natalie's gaze flicked to assess the rest of the troops. NoLegs went to
clamber on Nathan's back, making his spear vanish in a flare of light. "Do I
make myself clear?" she pressed.
The troops, that time with NoLegs included, gave a salute. "Yes, ma'am," they
said in unison, in tandem with a meow.
Natalie gave a wan smile at that. "Excellent," she replied tersely, then turned
to face the sky. Her horn glowed, her aura lancing out to an expanse above the
airship. Meager ribbons at first, her magic formed a perimeter and trailed down
to encompass the vessel, and drifted rather lazily compared to Matt's magic
when he cast Ragnarok the night before. In fact, this magic didn't seem
bothered at all, as though its owner did not sense a need of urgency. It wasn't
until an elaborate web, criss-crossing over itself had been formed that crystal
shards, tinted red, started growing like weeds.
Slowly, gradually, a shield formed over the airship. Meticulously, delicately,
it formed between the filaments almost like a well-cared for plant would for
its tender. "Twilight," Natalie said tersely as the barrier took on a dome-like
shape made seemingly of crystalline honeycombs.
"Yeah?" Twilight asked. Already, she could hear the boom of thunder, strong
enough to very briefly rattle the ship.
"You may want to set up that illusion now…" Natalie trailed off once the shield
completed itself. The ectoplasms started throwing their bolts at the shield,
but it held stubbornly, and more effectively at that; the honeycomb formation
caused the bolts to dance entirely around the airship when they struck.
Twilight was not sure if it was the angle at which the bolts struck, or if
perhaps it was effectively too large to be hit in any other manner.
"How is the lightning doing that?" Twilight asked as she started letting her
horn glow, focusing on the troops that were assembled.
"Oh, Lance gave me that weather control book he borrowed, and I did a bit of
scrounging for similar books at the Crystal Empire… I found that if I amplify
my shield with negatively-charged particles, the lightning will do this,"
Natalie answered with a shrug of indifference. "Of course, it doesn't keep the
lightning from striking it at all, and there's plenty of positively-charged
particles to go around…" She smirked at Twilight. "You guys have your weather
down to a science."
"That's what you guys get for relying more on magic-fueled machines…" Twilight
muttered as her aura lanced out to embrace the soldiers, first coating them in
lavender before it faded and, with it, they seemingly melted away to leave
transparant pools of liquid in the shape of their silhouettes.
"The proper term is magitek, for your information," Natalie snorted, keeping
her gaze focused on her shield even as she rolled her eyes. "Flaming
hypocrite," she muttered under her breath in so low a whisper Twilight didn't
hear it.
The soldiers took off, jumping over the railing of the deck, though not before
Twilight trotted to said railing to watch them on their way down. She tagged
all five with a bit of lavender on the ends of their tails, so small she
doubted the ectoplasms could see it. All except Katie descended with the grace
of expert fliers; predators well within their element, whose wings, magic and
tail moved and flicked with precision timing. Katie's wings buzzed, though more
as a form of cruise control than anything else. She kept all four legs tucked
in close to her body, further wrapping them with her insanely long tongue and
freezing herself partially to keep the horseshoes from slipping away. The ice
she made pulsed with a blue glow for a second, before Twilight's spell spread
to it and rendered it invisible as well.
"Are you sure it's a good idea?" Twilight asked, frowning as she spotted a few
cursed trees moving about here and there, congregating around the upwellings of
magma.
"I'm positive," Natalie answered, frowning when Twilight turned to her with a
skeptical brow raised. "They can take care of themselves, and all of them can
fly. If things get really bad, NoLegs can teleport them out of immediate
danger. It's not like Matt's gonna cast Ragnarok again; that spell usually
drains him so badly the most he can manage is telepathy for two whole days
after."
"Whatever you say." Twilight heaved a sigh as her eyes trailed to Natalie's
shadow again, and nothing seemed different about it. Idly, she entertained the
notion that, if something was truly off about her, than Natalie may have caught
on and started putting on a facade of normalcy to deflect suspicion.
Yet that was presently doing her no favors whatsoever. Twilight had already
seen Lance's wings before she undid their bindings, Matt's true self, and Anna
very nearly becoming one with nature in the most literal sense possible. Given
these skeletons, she wagered that whatever Natalie was hiding, if she was
indeed hiding something, would be no less surprising than those secrets of her
compatriots. Which begged the question: why did her eyes briefly flicker red?
***** Chapter LXXV- Miasmic Embers *****
The second expedition party landed smoothly, without incident… save for Katie,
who once again found herself meeting up face-first with a loose patch of soil
that had a felled tree laying askew next to it. The momentum only aided her in
getting buried up to her croup, though the dirt was loose enough for her wings
to stick out without any injury to their delicate frames. NoLegs meowed in
frustration and waved his tail before Katie was magically yanked out of the
dirt by her tail, and his eyes narrowed when he found half her body was still
frozen solid.
It took a few minutes after that, longer than usual, for the ice to thaw as
dirt clung to it like it had been glued on upon impact. Once that had been
done, Katie stretched her legs in the magical grip and retracted her tongue and
turned to NoLegs. "Thanks a bunch," she chirped sincerely, before he nodded and
released his magical hold on her to let her drop back to the ground again.
Katie landed on all fours clumsily, but quickly got her bearings together and
made sure to back away from the loose soil onto sturdier ground.
NoLegs then magically conjured a triad of coats, each with holes for wings to
slide through. All three were adorned with a small medal or two on the left
breast and paired with an army helmet adorned with a crest of a lion and an
eagle circling one another, one pouncing from above and the other swooping down
low with wings flared wide. Both front paws and talons were locked together,
perhaps in a dance of some sort. The troops hastily got dressed, making sure
the coats were on just right and that their helmets would not slide off anytime
soon.
Once they finished adjusting their outfits, NoLegs conjured a set of spears and
gave them to the soldiers, who readily took them in their claws. Finally, he
himself landed on the ground and conjured a pony-sized construct a few paces
away from the quartet, one stationed on metallic wheels secured in a cage-frame
brace and carved of wood. In fact, it was a literal wooden horse with googly
eyes tacked on the face where eyes would normally be, with what seemed like a
cornucopia tied loosely around its neck and special doors with tiny knobs built
into the stomach and barrel.
On its wooden muzzle was a set of tacks, intricately decorated with gold,
brass, silver, and a touch of platinum with fine leather-woven straps that gave
the impression that such a garment was only something a complete whorse would
wear. These tactfully garish tacks were connected to a similarly-crafted
harness with reins and adorned with a fine leather and silken saddle on its
back that was a little on the plump side. NoLegs trudged to the wooden horse
and jumped on its saddle with a pleased mew as he sank slightly in it when it
hugged his bottom, turning to the troops who turned to him.
Katie canted her head at the anomaly. "Where'd you get that toy?" she asked.
"Can I have one?"
NoLegs waved his tail and answered telepathically, "You have to be small like
me, and to obtain the rank of Colonel before you can get one of these."
Katie nodded, staring at the wooden horse with her orbs gleaming in wonder,
amusement, and a slight sense of awe over the fact that NoLegs had that
particular toy tucked away until just now. She started pondering over how he
was able to carry such a thing in his thaumic energy, before she turned to
Nathan to find him and the other two gryphons tucking their spears tightly
beneath their wings. She snickered at the choice of facial decoration the faux
beast had, silently admitting that the googly eyes made it all the more
ridiculous.
NoLegs telepathically chortled, knowing full well the look he was getting from
those small and beady orbs. His lips twitched up in a toothy, knowing grin. His
magic seized the reins and tugged, making sure both that and the tacks were
secured tight, before using his tail to beckon Katie over with a few flicks in
a 'come hither' gesture. Katie cantered over to look at the wooden beast more
closely, circling its wheeled hooves a few times to observe it from every
ground-bound angle. Her wings beat once she ceased circling, and she ascended
up to the false muzzle before swooping in a quarter-circle to stare Nolegs in
the eye. "Yes?" she asked, crossing her forelegs.
NoLegs thumped his tail against the saddle, and scooted to its front to make
some room. Perplexed, and tilting her head, Katie flew and landed on the saddle
barrel-first, finding it made of leather stuffed to the brim with what felt
like water that displaced slightly to hug her body. "Yikes," she exclaimed,
flying right back up and looking down at the saddle as the wrinkles she left
simply smoothed themselves out with no magical assistance whatsoever. "The hell
did you do to get the saddle like that?"
NoLegs turned and sent her a coy, smug grin of shit-eating satisfaction.
Katie's brow furrowed when he failed to answer, but ultimately she just
shrugged her shoulders and flew over to the gryphons. "So… where's the shrine?"
she asked. "The longer we dally, the worse things'll get and the harder they'll
be to fix, if indeed we can fix things around here at all."
Nathan and Jeremy shared a glance, while Quicksilver simply nodded in
understanding. They eventually fluffed their wings momentarily and swished
their tails in unison. "Can you read ancient alicorn?" Quicksilver asked.
Katie rapidly shook her head to ensure her ears were working right. "Come
again?"
"Can you read ancient alicorn?" Quicksilver repeated in a clipped voice, mired
by the slightest tinge of exasperation.
Katie contemplated the question for a few seconds. It did not take long for her
to grimly shake her head. "Only Swarm, but not a lot of it," she confirmed.
"Never got past the third year of mandatory learning." Her legs sagged.
"Sometimes it fucking sucks being a nymph, especially when I've been stuck this
way for Godcat knows how long now."
Four pairs of brows rose in that instant, their owners staring at Katie with
such incredulity it almost passed off as legitimate bemusement. Silence hung in
the air for a full minute on end before Nathan spoke in a sibilant hiss, "...
you're a nymph. You've been a nymph for some time..." Katie nodded, which only
garnered three talons rising up and smacking into beaks in that moment with
enough force to cause the resultant sound to echo a few meters into the
surrounding Ashwood.
NoLegs telepathically grumbled as his tail met with his muzzle a second later,
"That sure explains a fucking lot."
Nathan was the first to part claw from face, and he sighed in resignation. "Is
the general aware of this?" he asked slowly.
Katie nodded. "I told him before he sent me to the deck. He just glared at
something past me and mumbled about stupidity and surprise, but still went with
his decision," she answered earnestly. "Though I think he's not going to lay
off the assignments anytime soon, since I already proved myself to him."
Nathan sighed ruefully. "First Windwood, now you," he grumbled indignantly. He
shared a very concerned look with Nathan and Jeremy. "When is he going to go
off the deep end again?"
"Again?" Katie echoed, orbs widening.
Nathan turned back to her and nodded solemnly. "He went… very utterly fucking
insane once. Before Starcovert and Bladerune set him straight and entered the
military," he stated, choosing to stop himself there with a shudder wracking
his body so much the spear his wing cradled rattled as if it threatened to
abandon ship.
Katie's orbs shrank in alarm. Lance was nutty once? That was something very
troubling indeed, more so than the revelation of Anna being a potential host of
parasitic organisms. Although, she gave it some thought and sagged a little
more when she realized one such as he would have to be a little nutty to
indulge in the practice of foal and teenage soldiers. Especially undead and
emotionally-fraught ones at that, Faust forbid. The more she pondered about it,
the more she started believing him to be some sort of crazy-magnet given legs
and wings and the job of a flipping general on top of that.
"Just… l-let's get to the… M-Mighty Oak, alright? This is a lot to t-take in,"
Katie muttered, her voice fraught with worry to the point it sounded like a
plea.
"You heard the newbie," Jeremy piped up, turning tail and marching
northwestwood. Nathan and Quicksilver grumbled, but turned to fall in step
behind Jeremy. Katie got in line behind them, choosing to stay airborne in the
event that there was more loose soil ahead. NoLegs used his magic to seize the
reins and trundle his ride behind them with a few tugs, using momentum to get
the wheels turning as they started on their way to the Mighty Oak's shrine.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Roughly three hours passed after their initial departure from their landing
point, and the storm clouds overhead started darkening before it was even noon.
Winding trails, some with snuffed torches and others without torches at all,
led the party on a twisting trail of sorts, with no end in sight as far as
their intended goal was concerned. Ashwood itself seemed to darken as well,
with the few upright cursed trees eyeing them with their bark starting to rot
on them, cracking in places and riddled with fungus. This wound up distorting
their already-grotesque features to a degree that Katie found nauseating
whenever she so much as spared a glance to said trees in question.
The trees, in turn, seemed to be watching them so intently they started giving
off a predatory vibe. Aside from buzzing wings, claws, paws, and wheels
crunching on fallen leaves and twigs, and the occasional creak of movement from
the trees as they continued to eye them suspiciously, Ashwood was unnaturally
quiet for a forest that was so alive. One so alive with things only a mental
patient who'd read too many horror stories could dream about, or perhaps the
combined forces of whatever broke the barrier.
Katie started shivering as her stomach scrunched and twisted in perfect tandem
with every snapping twig, every broken leaf, almost as though her body itself
started falling into the rhythm of what little noise she could catch and
protesting simultaneously. A sense that she was getting closer, at long last,
to uncovering the Wise Guy behind the broken barrier started to sink in, but
with it came a feeling of dread. Who or what was strong enough to pull such a
feat off, and in such a way the inhabitants of both planets could see it in all
its grandeur? She was thankful she played dead near Frostbite, recalling seeing
the shield fall down from the Valkyrie's interior, but not before blinding
white encompassed it.
And furthermore, she started to entertain the notion that the culprit to that
incident may well be linked to the current shitshow that was the trees watching
her and her group pass through with gazes so judgemental it felt as if they'd
laid her soul bare for the briefest of moments. If so… then why would they do
either of those things?
Eventually, a tree whispered a single word in her ear as she hovered past, with
its rotting breath and a soft exhale that could not have been mistaken for the
wind, "Pestilence…" The word snapped Katie out of her reverie, and she halted
before turning to the tree quick as a whip.
"What?" Katie hissed, looking at the tree expectantly. It gave no answer,
merely opting to stare into her orbs with its own black abysses. She could've
sworn she saw swollen milky eyes with nigh-featureless irises and pupils within
those recesses, only visible thanks to the soft azure light her own eyes gave
off. Its rotting breath grew stronger and more acrid as the two stared off, but
Katie did not balk in the slightest; the tree had spoken, and she wanted it to
repeat what it said on the off-chance her ears had deceived her.
The tree twisted its head upside-down, the bark peeling away in places to
reveal pulsating, rotting flesh riddled with boils and fungus. It leaned closer
to her, and the others stopped and huddled behind her as its neck stretched
with a sickening series of cracks. Its muzzle began twitching erratically, and
as it drew closer Katie's orbs shrank as she realized the bark lining it formed
hellish teeth rivaling her own. It opened wide, preparing to lunge, but fell
short as Katie darted back, well out of range.
Katie took point and flew on ahead, and nobody hesitated to follow after her.
She went slow and low to avoid crashing into things as well as the ectoplasms'
attention, hooves tucked close and tense. Her ears sprang up and began
swiveling, straining to catch anything her compatriots weren't making. Tension
started hanging in the air, almost as smothering to her as the clouds were to
the sky overhead. It took a good ten minutes after the tree tried biting her
face off before they reached a clearing, one lined with torches that were oddly
lit with a conspicuous and sickly blue set of flames.
Landing on the ground, she turned her head to Nathan without moving the rest of
her body. "Can we take a break here?" she asked sincerely, her voice strained.
"Because my wings are starting to ache." She turned to the closest torch and
added, "And I am pretty sure flames aren't supposed to be all blue."
Nathan turned to the torch in question and reared up on his paws before he
marched to it upright, dislodging his spear from his wing and clutching it in
his talons. Edging closer, he peered at the bowl of the torch, and saw a
multitude of broken rings with runes carved into them, as well as a few pony
skulls so scorched he couldn't tell what was outside and what was inside. The
rings sported a dark rock-like substance within their middles that was only
visible thanks to holes on the outside, which the engraved metal coated even as
the fires licked them. He angled his spearhead into the blaze and started
prodding at the mass until he found an intact horn-sized ring and hoisted it
out, flames still clinging to it.
"Hrm… magic inhibitors…" Nathan paused, looking at the skulls again. He noticed
a distinct lack of unicorn horns in the burning remains, and turned to the ring
again.
"Magic inhibitors? How are they on fire, assuming that they're the fuel?" Katie
asked, orbs going cross-eyed as she stared at the now-burning spearhead.
"There's a compound within the rings, coated by metal that is then carved with
runes inside and out to allow the compound to absorb a unicorn's magic whenever
they try to cast a spell. Sablestone, I'm guessing," Nathan answered, turning
to Katie and thrusting his spear downward, sending the ring into the dirt where
the flames weakened as dust flew from the impact. Impressively, the embers
stubbornly lingered.
Katie turned to the ring, orbs still crossed. Her mental gears ground for a
moment. "Sablestone… as in… what changeling royals used to use for their
thrones?" she asked.
"One and the same, only harvested and used for a different purpose. The runes
and the metal on which they're engraved, however, can only take so much magic,
despite the sablestone being built to start absorbing all the magic of a pony
who wears it—unicorn, earth, pegasus, it matters not. Too much magic, well…
suffice to say that if a unicorn, for instance, overcharges… it results in a
backlash that knocks the would-be caster out with quite a nasty shock without
giving the sablestone time to absorb it, since it's only a very minute amount,"
Nathan muttered, turning to the ring with eyes narrowing. "I heard from Armin
that he learned a hotel staff smuggled that exact type of ring into Equestria
within two weeks of staying and investigating… for subduing anypony who spent
the night."
"Hotel staff…" Katie's orbs went wide. So that was why Natalie and Anna
couldn't bust themselves out of that mess. She trotted to the ring and stamped
a metal-clad hoof on it, channeling mana to conjure ice. The temperature
dropped, the flames on the torches weakened drastically and ice formed… before
the blue flames coming from the ring engulfed it just as it began to form on
the shoe. Hastily retracting her limb before she could torch herself, she
watched as the embers flickered with a pop. "Seriously, why's it on fire?"
"Someone probably lit the rings on fire to expunge the magic they absorbed.
But… that'll just make the sablestone useless once the fires die," Nathan
sighed, shaking his head. "And judging by the blue flames… it seems these
particular rings sponged up a lot of pegasus magic."
Katie turned to Nathan, brows raised high. "Does Lance use sablestone?" she
asked.
Nathan shook his head. "Not much of a point to; sablestone doesn't affect
changelings, we gryphons would simply take them off with our claws, and the
only three unicorns in the force could do likewise with their hooves, provided
they aren't in any way hogtied," he stated dismissively. "In short, it's moot."
Katie nodded, turning back to the line of torches. "Pegasus magic…" she
muttered. "How would one apply tiny rings to somepony with pegasus magic?"
Nathan frowned and turned to the torches, using his spear to sift through the
soot and skulls again. It took a bit of skull-turning, but with the effort he
uncovered a hoof-sized ring that would, with a great deal of practice and pain
on the recipient's behalf, fit onto a wing, or barring that a hoof. Nathan
deftly used his spearhead to heft it out of the blaze, depositing it onto the
ground next to its smaller companion. "Would that answer your question?" he
asked. Katie nodded upon seeing the larger ring.
"The torches leading away from the crystal caverns had red flames…" Gears began
turning in Katie's head as she made the utterance. She made a mental note to
take a look-see at them later, and sent another cursory glance around the
clearing. Aside from the blue flames adorning the torches, with that query
having already been answered, she found nothing out of the ordinary. Turning to
NoLegs, her mouth opened to ask him to do something, only to close when a blue
glow emanated from his tail and spread outward to envelop the clearing. Turning
back to said clearing, she watched as the glow rippled all around and faded
within seconds.
Nothing turned up, even as the last vestiges of NoLegs's magic flickered and
faded out of existence. The clouds above continued to darken, and Katie looked
straight up at them before noticing a very slight fog formed from fine misty
droplets clouding her sight a little. Yet she did not feel anything as
miniscule as a grain of sand land on her chitinous hide. A faint hue of mana,
just barely even there, pulsed so softly through the droplets Katie started to
think she was hallucinating.
Then the drops began moving, ever so slightly, shifting about in various
directions by the smallest millimeter possible. Her orbs widened once more, and
she turned to NoLegs. "The hell did you do?" she queried.
NoLegs studied her closely, his little furry face hardening into a no-nonsense
look. He waved his tail. "Do you see droplets?" he asked. Katie nodded
fervently, and he broke out into a small smile. "You're seeing humidity… though
it would seem you need magical assistance to do so."
Katie's brow rose higher, skeptically at that. "Why?" she asked tersely.
"It's vital for all the troops, if they have wings. It helps gauge whether the
weather's going to turn for the worse or not," NoLegs answered, his smile
fading. "I was required to get and perfect this spell in case we got a troop or
two who couldn't see ion charges, heat, or humidity. Matt and Natalie can't see
any of those, Lance can only see heat to an extent, but he has to spread his
wings and channel his magic through them and then the air around himself for
that to kick in, and Anna can only see ion charges… without magical aid,
strangely enough."
Katie's orbs widened further at all that mumbo-jumbo. "Lance can see heat?"
NoLegs nodded. "Nowhere near as good as he used to, ever since his wings got
clipped, and he also used to see humidity and charges. Now he can't see either
at all, so only time's gonna tell if he'll stay crippled in that capacity. It's
not likely to stay that way for long, given how his wings got repaired," he
confirmed, looking to the sky with a hiss of displeasure. "And I can't see any
of those things at all unless I cast the spell. We gotta seek shelter soon."
Katie's eyes narrowed and turned skyward again. The clouds simply stopped
crackling lightning by now, and seemed blacker than ever. She could not even
see the ectoplasms reclining within, though she guessed they were probably
preparing to send a monsoon onto Ashwood. She turned to Nathan again. "Does
pegasus magic being set aflame via rings attract the buggers?" she queried,
lifting a hoof and gesturing sharply up for emphasis.
Nathan shook his head. "No… but it does not repel them, either." He flared his
wings, and so did Quicksilver and Jeremy. "We must search for shelter… from
above. But we cannot go too high."
Katie groaned, silently cursing Lance for throwing her in this mess and saying,
"here, you work this shit out." Some general he was. She flared her wings,
making a mental note to file a complaint once evidence-scrounging concluded,
while seeing NoLegs make his wooden horse and the group's spears vanish in
flashes of light before levitating himself in his magic. As one, the unit flew
smoothly above the treeline, and circled the clearing once to gauge for any
nearby shelters.
As luck would have it, there was no visible shelter to be had within a half-
mile radius of the clearing. NoLegs led the way, backtracking the way they came
and the others falling into a V-formation behind him. Sharp eyes and ears
scanned the landscape and waited for the telltale creaking that would signal a
moving tree respectively, and traveling by air was far easier and faster than
trekking along the ground. Using the imprints they left in the ground with
claws, paws, and the wheel-tracks of the wooden horse also made backtracking
stupidly easy, though Katie could not help but wonder as she beat her wings and
kept her ears peeled.
What had lit the torches? And how in the world did they get their grubby
hooves… or whatever limbs they possed on sablestone magic inhibitors?
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Shelter, it turned out, was a mile away from where the group had initially
landed, and it was the abandoned house on the furthest reaches of Greenwood's
outskirts, in the opposite direction of their little venture no less. Everyone
filed inside without complaint, though they flung out the broken glass shards
before sitting down on the floor as thunder rumbled both sky and earth. An air
of impatience held the lot in a vise-like grip as the first droplets of rain
started to fall. Oddly, the pitter-patter of rain was accompanied by a
constant, drumming thump-thump-thump a few minutes later.
Curious, Katie chanced a glance outside and she whimpered at the sight that
greeted her. Hail was falling, each orb the size of the frogs of her hooves,
hitting with just enough force to snap the smallest of branches clean off of
their trees. "This is just like fucking Canterlot, except without pissy ponies
throwing vases everywhere!" she squeaked, ears drooping so much their tips
managed to sag past her cheekbones.
NoLegs rolled his eyes and simply flicked his tail. Within seconds, Katie was
pulled a little further from the window by his magic. "Great, the big stupid
ice balls are here to heckle us again," he telepathically seethed. "Looks like
we'll be stuck here for the night."
Katie sighed, turning to NoLegs. "I noticed doors in your horse. Maybe we could
use it for something," she stated.
NoLegs raised both brows and flicked his tail, making a motion similar to a
claw scratching his temples. "What?" he telepathically queried.
"I dunno, getting into Greenwood or something. If nothing else, we could find
evidence there," Katie retorted with a shrug of earnest. A sickening snap
filled the air, and she turned to the window just in time to see a tree branch
bigger than Twilight crash just outside, accompanied by a ball of hail the size
of a cantaloupe that was itself cemented into the severed bark. "Okay, who the
hell pissed off Godcat this time?"
"Well, if the hail gets that large, I'm afraid the little stunt you want to
perform simply won't be possible. You're liable to have your head split open,
for one thing," Quicksilver scoffed dismissively, lifting a talon and waving it
about in a manner that suggested he was batting something away. "Any ice you
could form in this weather would become very frail, very quickly. And it would
break in mere moments."
Katie turned to the ball of hail outside, eyes narrowing. Her orbs trailed up
to glance as much of her stub-horn as they were able. Then they started darting
back and forth, stub-horn, giant ball of hail, back to stub-horn, and so forth,
though this lasted for a few seconds. "Humidity…" she muttered. Recalling her
ice-bath session in the Crystal Empire, however, dispelled that budding plan
before she could even consider a phase two—were she to even conjure ice now and
trot outside, all it would do was weigh her wings down or possibly worse. Then
she also accounted for the clumps of hail and shook her head, deciding she
didn't need to add another concussion to today's problems.
And, loathe as she was to acknowledge it, Quicksilver had a point. If the hail
outside could snap tree branches bigger than she was, then NoLegs's snazzy
wooden horse wouldn't stand a chance outside. She turned to NoLegs again, now
seeing him waving his tail and spreading his magic over the abandoned house in
which they took shelter. She held her breath for a moment, watching as his
magic rippled through the bark and torn-up remnants of furniture, through the
moss growing all over, even through the emptied dresser with the torn dress
overlaid on top…
Another snap rent the air, and Katie turned to the door to find a tree branch
landing outside the frame with a muddy squelch, sinking slightly upon impact.
It was a branch no bigger than she was, and a few small pellets of hail got
stuck in its frame. NoLegs spread his magic to it as well, before the aura
faded from the area. Only when the blue glow died did two things happen,
simultaneously at that.
First and foremost, the hail melted with a most unusual crackle, giving off a
hideously green miasma-like aura as it did. This aura evaporated in a steam-
like manner, but not before it tried to get into the house, only to be repelled
when Katie fanned her wings and beat them with enough force to effectively blow
it out. Second, as this miasma was repelled, a very curious thing happened with
the moss; it withered, shriveled, died, and vanished in a puff of sickly green
mana the exact same shade of the miasma in that order. This, in turn, revealed
a very-well-hidden trap door with rusted hinges and a distinct lack of a knob
resting just under the window itself.
All eyes turned to that trap door, and five brows rose in unison. Everyone
moved from where they sat and trotted to the anomaly, circling it in a tight
cluster. Nathan grappled for it first, reaching with a talon to try to wedge
the digits between the frame and the door. Fumbling for a moment, he'd tried to
lift the door… but it simply refused to budge. Jeremy and Quicksilver tried to
do likewise, and they had no luck either. All three turned to the rusted hinges
and hissed at it in unison.
NoLegs let his tail glow and tried working the door free with his magic, and
that time he actually got it to budge and rattle against his grip. After a few
tugs, it jostled and got stuck, moving no more. Katie facehoofed and planted
herself onto the door, standing as tall and straight as she could. Channeling
mana into her shoes, the air chilled again, and ice grew onto her legs and the
door itself, though not enough to glue the door to its frame. That done, she
buzzed as much as her wings were able, and though the door was stuck, it
moved—slightly!—with a groan of protest.
After that, though, it remained fixed stubbornly in place. Nathan tried to
jimmy his claws between door and frame again, but he fumbled and cursed, that
time slipping with even less luck than before. After that, he turned to Katie
as she tried to use her whole body to tug the door open again, before grabbing
her by the withers and earning himself a startled hiss of displeasure. "Hey!"
Katie shrieked in alarm, her wings snapping taut against her sides.
Before they could come to blows, NoLegs jumped on Katie's back and magically
lifted Nathan's claws off of her withers. "Hold up," he telepathically said in
a sharp, clipped tone. "If you're wanting to yank her off, you could tear her
shoulders off and then she'll go bitching to Lance about it. I got a better
idea." Magically, he grasped Katie and yanked her bodily, though the door still
refused to budge. To be fair, so did Katie, now that she had effectively glued
herself to it.
It only took a second for Katie to realize what NoLegs was trying to do, and
started buzzing her wings again. With their efforts combined, the door budged…
a lot less than they'd have liked. In fact, it barely moved at all. Nathan,
Jeremy, and Quicksilver seized Katie in their talons again, though this time
they flew above her to grapple for her barrel. With a few more tugs, the door
opened and held for a moment before Katie was forcibly dislodged from it to let
it fall and lean against the wall.
This revealed two things: a deep abyss with a tangle of roots poking out of the
soil, and a nail with a hook screwed into the door's underside holding up a
worn picture frame by a meager, fraying thread of yarn wrapped around that
hook. In that frame, once the group re-assembled and melted the ice to better
look at it, they found a picture holding a small family of four, two fillies in
front and two adults behind with a foreleg and a limb that didn't end in a hoof
wrapped around the other. The scene the picture was taken in was relatively
normal; the family standing outside a well-maintained tree-house in far better
shape than the one the group currently stood in, with rays of sunlight
filtering in through the leaves above that made them seem to glow.
The adults wore small smiles on their faces, and the two fillies had huge
grins. The expressions weren't what caught Nathan's eyes, however, nor was it
the fact that one of the adults had talons and a beak while the other had a
pony's face and a unicorn's horn. No, it was the fillies themselves. Both had
tan-beige coats and green manes, both sported a horn, though only one had
golden baubles in her mane. The other let her mane flow freely, and was holding
a small, stuffed, snow-white teddy with a gold ribbon in her brown talons. She
had green-and-brown-tan wings spread behind her, with one of those wings
draping the unicorn next to her.
All five sets of eyes widened and, slowly, the troops shared glances. "Are
those fillies… who I think they are?" Katie asked hesitantly. She saw a lump
move down Jeremy's throat as he gulped, before he slowly gave a nod. She
noticed the errant third horn and did a double-take, shaking her head rapidly
and even conking herself on the side of her head with a hoof.
The picture did not change. Katie slowly turned back to the abyss before her
hooves, noticing the roots were sparse and folded into the soil in such a way
it seemed almost… eerily inviting. She turned back to the picture frame and
lifted a hoof to it, using her claws to tenderly flip it over without
dislodging it. The picture frame's backside beheld nothing except warped wood.
NoLegs magically grabbed the picture and made it vanish in a flash of light,
though not before taking it off the hook. "Just what is going on here?" he
telepathically asked. "Why does Sarah have a horn in this photo? She's never
had a horn that we've seen on her head, nor a scar where one would be, for that
matter!"
Katie shrugged, turning to the abyss. "I don't know… maybe it's an error on
behalf of whoever took the picture, or somepony went and somehow spliced the
damn thing in there… but I get the feeling this little hidey-hole may have our
answers," she muttered. NoLegs sighed and jumped on her back, his tail giving
off a soft light that made her shoes vanish, prior to brightening just enough
to rival the light of a lit candle. As one, they jumped down the hole, followed
by the gryphons who went single file after them, the whole lot unaware of just
what was waiting below for them to find.
Something was down there, and it was going to answer a few questions that the
troops hadn't asked, and a few pressing ones that were on their minds in that
moment.
***** Chapter LXXVI- Pirouetting in Ashes *****
The descent down the tunnel was long and constricting in spite of the roots
curling inward. It was so constricting, in fact, that the gryphons had to
resort to holding the soily walls with claws and paws, keeping their wings
folded as they shimmied down within mere seconds of the expedition. Katie had
to do likewise, but kept her tail tucked between her rear legs and her tongue
wrapped around her wings so they wouldn't snag. NoLegs was content to cling to
the back of her neck, producing his light and keeping an eye out for any sort
of floor that would let them know it'd be safe to go back to all fours. To say
this was awkward was an understatement; the tunnel got this narrow only within
the first five feet or so of the dive.
A good twenty minutes passed, the tunnel seemingly continuing down without
respite, and slowly it got tighter and tighter. Limbs had to be bent to
accommodate, cramping in seconds. If asked how to describe this particular
experience, the gryphons would have described it as excruciating, whilst Katie
and NoLegs would merely say it was a wee crammed at worst. The only saving
grace was that the errant roots did not snag on hats, coats, nor wings as they
pressed onward so slowly a snail could have crawled past them without the whole
lot even noticing.
Fortunately, the crawl only lasted about forty feet or so when Katie caught
sight of a solid floor thanks to NoLegs' magic. She hopped down, stumbled for a
second or two when her hooves made impact, righted herself and whirled around
before finding a tunnel with a few roots jutting from its ceiling. Unlike the
crawlspace, this new path was wide enough the gryphons could form two lines
shoulder-to-shoulder with ample room to stretch wings and claws, though she
noted she couldn't see its floor immediately.
Debris fell from the ceiling when she noticed the tunnel. Katie didn't even
need to look up to see that the other three bozos were fast catching up; the
scraping of claws and the falling dirt told her all she needed to know. So she
trotted to the tunnel, finding immediately that it was a steeper but more
manageable plod thanks to the light. Before she could set hoof into it, three
thuds filled the underground hidey-hole in rapid succession, each accompanied
by a pained grunt that followed mere milliseconds between. She turned to her
accomplices, finding them all in one heap on the floor.
It took them twenty whole minutes before they could get on their feet and pop
any aching bones before they even acknowledged that she was already steps ahead
of them, let alone that there was a tunnel behind her. "Aren't you lot supposed
to be big and tough?" she hissed in disapproval.
Nathan's brow furrowed. "Well excuse us, Little Miss Beady Eyes, but none of us
had anticipated that the bloody hole would be this tight," he hissed back.
Katie's eyes narrowed dangerously low. "That's what Matt said," she snarked.
This garnered a series of talons meeting faces, all three happening
simultaneously and in pairs. She turned to the tunnel and began to trot ahead
of them, careful to angle her steps downward to avoid going on another
unwarranted tumble. Forming ice as she went helped a lot, as it kept her
posture rigid and her hooves from slipping, and had the added bonus of mana
pulsing that her new cohorts could see straight away. Begrudgingly, they
trundled after her in single file, snarling low the moment their claws caught
the steep decline down.
At least this tunnel was more hospitable as far as actually traversing it was
concerned. Whereas it took several minutes to crawl down the underground
chimney and another few minutes to get the bearings together, it only took
under three to reach a small, nigh-empty room that did not have any more
tunnels. Within was the only thing this room marking the tunnel's end held; two
emaciated corpses, lying against the wall with barrels facing out and limbs and
heads slumped uselessly. Bizarrely, as NoLegs cast his light onto them, they
did not show any signs of rotting, nor of injury, yet blood had indeed stained
their coats regardless. The blood was silverish where it shimmered under the
glow, and otherwise black with age and still as though the moon itself had
drained color from the stains with its light.
Alarm bells instantly went off in Katie's head as she took a long, hard look at
the two. One was a hippogryph mare whose wings weren't bound in any capacity
whatsoever, with a tanish coat, deep brown talons, and primaries matching in
color. The only reason she could even ascertain the hippogryph's gender was
because her rear legs had been splayed dubiously wide, as were those of her
companion's. Said hippogryph's companionship was a unicorn stallion with a
tousled, dirtied green mane, a matching short beard and mustache, and an off-
white coat. Hesitantly approaching the two, she twisted her head vertically to
look at their faces as she came closer, and leaned toward their barrels as she
passed their rear knees, careful to avoid slicing them with her shoes on
accident.
Her breath caught as she saw wide open, black abysses staring back with so
vacant a gaze it felt as though they pierced right through her, as well as a
beak lined with sharp and yellowed teeth and some very abnormal growths of a
bulbous nature sprouting on the stallion's throat. Their faces had paled
considerably, though doing so for how long she didn't know. Dried, thick
rivulets of yet more blackened blood had caked both beak and muzzle rather
copiously, and streaked fur and feathers from the black canvases that were
seemingly so empty. Through the blood, she spotted pale gums and tongues, still
glistening in the light with very meager traces of saliva.
She backed off nimbly and righted her head, gazing at the two warily. An air of
wrongness began to emanate from the duo, and her gut twisted the moment it
registered that something was very amiss. Silence held for a full minute, jaws
shifting in an attempt to start articulating something, but the thoughts they
wanted to convey simply refused to apply themselves to their tongues. NoLegs
procured the photograph in a flash of light, and everyone glanced to and fro
between it and the corpses that lay before them.
The coat and mane colors, or feather colors in case of the hippogryph, were a
perfect match. Their features, slightly less so.
Finally, someone spoke as the picture vanished in another flare of light. "It's
the stallion and gryph from the picture…" Jeremy muttered, to much nodding from
the rest of the group.
"What should we do with them?" Nathan asked, looking at the two with a small,
solemn frown on his beak. "We can't just tell…"
"Leave them," Katie interrupted with a sibilant hiss. "If possible, I'd like to
avoid disturbing their nap." Turning to Quicksilver, she found him and the
other two looking at her with narrowed eyes. "Seriously, did you guys not learn
what happened when I was dragged in your tank? It's that all over again, except
we're breaking and entering."
Quicksilver took a moment to weigh Katie's words before trotting around her to
inspect the faces of the cadavers. What he saw made him back off after mere
seconds. He turned to the others and sighed tiredly. "But still… we have to
bring them…" he muttered.
Katie shook her head at the notion, and went on to object it again, "No.
Something's gone wrong with them if they're playing possum. I can't exactly put
my hoof on it… but something in my gut tells me 'don't do it.' Hell, if they
wake up, they may not want to come with quietly, either." Nervously fidgeting
as she caught sight of an off-white ear twitching, she added with tact, "I
don't know how they're going to react to surprise visitors, let alone ones they
don't know all that well. Personally, I'm not taking any chances with these
guys." Backing up into the tunnel again, she finished off with, "Maybe they're
why Anna and Sarah don't want to—"
Katie was preemptively cut off when the stallion jerked his head up suddenly,
turning to look at her so fast his neck cracked with the motion. Quicksilver
leapt back to the group at the sound and spun to see that the pony had moved.
Only then did orbs alight in his abysses, twin spheres of a dulled green. His
mouth shifted, popping and squelching with the effort, causing black blood to
dribble from his jaws and splatter onto his jutting ribcage. The knot in
Katie's stomach twisted as she saw more welling up in the back of his throat.
It took him several seconds to speak, and it was with a watery, gurgling voice
that only increased the dribble tenfold and sent bloodied spittle everywhere,
"Where… are my foals?"
Katie winced, legs stiffening. She decided to play dumb, though that only made
her gut twist further as she lied through her teeth, "I-I don't know who you're
talking about."
"You… know their names…" the stallion retorted, eyes narrowing coldly. "You
spoke their names… knowing I was attentive… where are they?"
"I only met them once, and way up north! I don't know where they've gone
since!" Katie exclaimed, using every last ounce of willpower to keep her legs
from shaking before she could process what she'd just uttered. For but a
moment, the undead stallion stared at her, mouth closing and lips contorting,
weighing her words. His orbs wavered and flickered, almost dimming entirely.
For a moment, she wanted to backpedal, but her gut twisted as if knowing
whatever damage she'd delivered was perhaps already done.
"Up… north?" the stallion echoed.
Katie nodded, legs buckling slightly as her stomach started to shoot pain
through her nerves in protest. "I… it was snowing so much… one minute, they
were there… and the next they were gone," she replied, her voice weakening with
each word she uttered. "I couldn't even… s-see their tracks… and thus, n-nor
could I follow them."
"Where?" the stallion pressed.
"A-around…" For a moment, Katie had to temporarily swallow, her mouth drying
out. It did no good, even in the damp underground air. "F-Frostbite… Haven…"
she finished uneasily.
Silence held for a long moment that felt as if days had passed them by, and
both wraiths held even gazes, though one was fast faltering. Yet that moment
lasted only mere seconds before the stallion convulsed, chest heaving and
stomach contracting as though he'd been kicked. Only then did he speak again,
this time with his head slumping once more and his tone turning solemn, "If you
find them again… tell them to come visit… if they're even still alive…
otherwise, please leave us to rot here..."
The troops exchanged looks and turned back to him, seeing a fresh river of
blood running down his muzzle from one of his eyes. It crept down his bridge,
trailed past lips, and leapt off his chin in a steady stream of drops that
splattered against his barrel, further staining his coat in ugly black that
clashed harshly with his off-white. Katie crept toward him, canting her head,
uttering weakly, "They'll come back…"
"No they won't… they're…" the stallion trailed off, chest still heaving in an
effort to repress what Katie could only guess were budding sobs. "I already…
failed them once…"
An ache surged across every nerve and fiber in Katie's body at those words. She
still tried to soothe him, yet her voice only weakened further, "But that
doesn't stop them from loving you. They'll come back someday…"
The stallion turned to Katie, eyes narrowing and a scowl forming on his face.
He shouted, "Maybe so, but this failure was not something so minor as ignoring
a scraped knee! It was something far worse than that!" His head dropped again,
and he muttered in a low voice, "All I have left of them… is our last photo
together… something that my so-called friends hadn't taken from me and my
beloved..." Katie's jaw quivered, and she made to interject, but the stallion
cut her off with a final request, "Please… just leave me… if you find them
again, and alive..." His ears fell back against his head as he finished in a
soft whisper, "tell them I'm sorry… that I failed them as a father…"
Katie's orbs shrank, and the ache darted across her nerves again. Once more she
tried, "But if they're still alive, then perhaps they forgive you for that
failure!" Only that time, she got no response from him. She turned to the
hippogryph who had yet to move, but the only sign of lingering life that she
had was a fresh tear of blood weaving through her feathers, staining them in
its wake.
"She's right. It doesn't stop the foals you had from loving you, even in
death," Quicksilver chipped in, yet his utterance did not get a response from
the stallion either. They remained for a few minutes, yet the sod simply ceased
to acknowledge them any longer. He went up to Katie and put a claw on her
withers. "Let's… go," he muttered uneasily. "You were right. Extraction will
not be possible with these two."
Katie turned to Quicksilver, orbs tiny and glinting in pleading, "B-but—"
Quicksilver grimly shook his head. "They… want to be alone. We must respect
their wish," he rebuked in a slightly saddened tone.
"But… can we at least…" Katie mouthed her next words to avoid agitating the
unicorn any further, "'tell Anna and Sarah he's cooped up here and is miserable
because of it?'" Quicksilver nodded solemnly, giving the undead duo one last
glance.
Slowly, they trotted back to the group and turned tail with them before all
trudged out of the tunnel, everyone wearing uneasy frowns and slanted brows.
Not a word was spoken amongst them as they shimmied back up the underground
chimney without complaint, as the return trip to the house's wrecked singular
room was easier than leaving it.
As they departed, Katie could've sworn she heard a choked, gurgling sob coming
from below, one that caused her to wince with a small and pained grunt. From
who, she had no intention of finding out, for it made her doubt her decision to
outright lie to... to someone who merely wanted to see a pair of siblings he
knew. And if he, truly, was who she thought and he said he was...
She paused half-way when she heard the crack of thunder, followed by a soft
crackle that grew as she neared the tunnel's trap-door entrance. The tunnel
began to widen, just enough that Katie could flare her wings and fly out, but
she dared not do so. She stopped five feet from the entrance for mere seconds,
listening to the soft crackling. It was accentuated with a few pops, and it
steadily grew louder with an unnatural hiss. If that sound was what she thought
it meant, then…
NoLegs waved his tail and grasped her and the gryphons in his magic, before
they vanished in a flare of light and reappeared outside the house, stuck in
mid-crawl position at first until they registered that they were now back in
Ashwood before righting themselves and reverting to all fours. The moment they
did, they turned to the house they'd just left and flared their wings in wide-
eyed shock.
The house had caught fire, and so did several trees they could see in the
distance, with every top burning and the flames snaking their way down. Katie
was the first to start flapping madly. "Whelp, there goes that plan! I am not
sticking around to become a fried insect!" she exclaimed, starting her climb up
to avoid becoming crispy. The gryphons followed suit, as NoLegs cast his magic
on himself and the lot to render them invisible.
As they flew above the treeline, the fires below spread rapidly as lightning
struck at the trees with a maddened fervor. Some struck Greenwood's reformed
barrier to little avail, bouncing around it like it had Natalie's shield, only
to then torch trees directly outside of it.
The ectoplasms, it seemed, made their choice for the group. Greenwood was going
to become a small bastion in a forest they decided to burn—and the possible
evidence trapped therein with it. That was assuming, of course, that Greenwood
could even survive the blaze with just its dinky little shield, which the group
seriously doubted. Katie spared one final glance at the now-smouldering house,
her heart sinking as she realized she could still hear that strangled sob
coming from far below, on top of seeing some of the roots move with a sickly
green pulse of mana. Some part of her wanted to go down and tell them the
truth, but as the flames spread to consume the door and then collapse its
frame, she realized she'd already made her choice.
And so did that stallion, for that matter. The nymph within her mind, once
locked but not springing free, hoped he and the gryph made it out of the blaze,
but she had her doubts. There was no telling how he'd have reacted to the news
of Anna being a military foal, after all, let alone the knowledge of their
cutie marks if he'd ever received it…
There was also no telling, right then, whether or not she'd condemned him to
spend eternity in that tomb, its top half starting to crumple in the inferno as
she and her group climbed higher into the sky, without ever knowing what became
of his foals. It somehow felt wrong to take the only memorabilia he had left of
them, when for all he knew, that was the last thing he'd had of much happier
times… of when his family was together, and seemingly carefree. It was as if
that photo was, somehow, calling them back… only to have that hope ripped away
by a little white lie that bore a single granule of truth which did not soothe
that budding ache that gave her heart actual cause to pause its rhythmic
beating. And her attempts to backtrack and soothe him backfired…
NoLegs telepathically muttered in a somber tone, "You tried… but even that
wasn't enough… and, given his mental state, he'd have doubted the truth had you
told it to him anyway..."
None of that sat right with her, but she chose to keep those reservations to
herself. Her stomach only twisted further, as though chiding her for such a
rash decision, one that may well be a one-way ticket to a possible reprimand…
or worse from her new superiors. All Katie could do was nod in agreement with
NoLegs' statement.
The fires only ensured that none would have the choice to help that stallion
and hippogryph now. The only option Katie had left was to face the music...
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
"You said what to that wraith?!" Katie winced at the sheer volume of the shout,
which had reached ear-piercing levels within seconds. Anna and Sarah were both
in front of her, the latter having shouted as she was fast turning a shade of
purple and the former standing there, staring with a shaking jaw and color all
but slowly draining from her face. The next thing anyone knew, Sarah had
lunged, seized Katie by the neck, and hoisted her up to connect solidly with
the wall of one of the lounges. Around them, Delta Unit stood by, watching and
sharing glances, yet noling dared to take a step forward to diffuse the
situation. NoLegs was also present, sitting on the couch and watching the scene
with interest.
"I-I said... " Katie could not utter another word as Sarah parted her from the
wall before slamming her right back onto it. She gasped when claws pierced the
flesh of her neck, drawing viridian blood. Sarah brought her muzzle close,
teeth bared and eyes narrowed to tiny slits. Katie averted her orbs, which only
caused the grip on her neck to tighten.
"What. Did. He. Say?!" Sarah hissed, shaking with the barest hint of restraint.
"If you don't tell me what he said within the next two seconds, I'll rip your
head off your shoulders!" Her grip tightened still, and all that could come out
of Katie's mouth was a strangled gurgle. When she failed to answer, she was
thrust to the wall yet again, and Sarah's voice only rose with the next words
she spoke, "You useless sack of shit! Why didn't you help him when you had the
chance?!"
The orbs turned to Anna, pleadingly, as slowly her throat was crushed in the
murderous grip of a gryph who demanded answers. A blue aura, briefly, gripped
Anna's head and went away just as fast. Katie's orbs flicked to NoLegs to see
his tail cease glowing just before something snapped in Anna, as she went from
blanching to beet-red—what followed for Katie was a blur of motion.
One second, she was being pinned, and the next the pressure on her neck had
ceased to exist entirely as she went sailing through the air without flapping
her wings once to land on one of the many couches in the room. Twin screams
filled the room, and Katie turned to the source the moment she landed, only to
gape when she found that not only had Anna gotten in Sarah's face, but now had
her pinned to the floor by the wings and with her own horn leveled at her
sister's throat.
Anna's eyes flashed red, just once, her head angled a little so Sarah could see
them. Delta Unit still held their breath as a bestial growl rose up the throat
of their fourth-in-command who then clenched her teeth. "Do not let me catch
you doing that to Katie ever again!" she roared, half-snarling and half-
screeching the utterance through grit teeth.
"Why're you defending the useless wraith all of a sudden?!" Sarah squawked,
wide-eyed and seemingly scandalized by this turn of events.
"Because Lance recruited her! That makes her one of my troops too!" Anna
shouted in reply, the utterance all but a keening trill to Katie, who had
covered her ears in a futile attempt to block it all out. "And she died a
nymph, for crying out loud! I-I won't let you abuse her anymore, Sarah!"
Delta Unit, collectively, went wide-eyed and slack-jawed at that. Yet noling
still dared to speak, or to step in and break the sisterly tussle that had just
escalated. Anna continued, in a low and chilling voice, "H-hurt her again… and
I'll stab you in the frogs of your hooves… I don't care if you're my sister at
this point. I will not stand… for that level of flagrant child abuse!" Sarah
could only swallow and weakly nod before, haltingly, Anna lifted her horn from
her throat and clambered off. Afterwards, Sarah scrambled up and skedaddled out
of the room, feathers puffing out as her equally-rattled talons went up in
surrender. In seconds she was out of sight, and the only sign of her departure
to be had was the noisy beating of hooves on carpeted floor, followed by the
sound of the lift door opening.
Anna only turned to the still-cowering Katie once full silence had settled in.
She trotted over to her, fully aware of all of Delta's eyes collectively
trained on her. Katie did not lift her hooves from her ears, even as blood
continued to flow freely from the wounds now adorning her neck. In fact, she
did not move at all until a hoof had put itself on her withers rather gently,
and even then it was only limited to lifting her head slightly and shifting her
orbs. "I'm… sorry you had to see that," she muttered.
Katie merely dropped her head back down, feeling an ache resonating through her
body, one that stung deeper than being punctured in the neck. Mentally going
over all that had happened ever since she'd been found, that ache grew
stronger, settling most prominently in her cranium and her still-beating heart.
"You… shouldn't be," Katie muttered in a low voice.
Anna blinked, frowning. "Why?"
Katie hesitated for a long moment. "Sa… Sarah's right," she managed, her voice
uneasy. "I'm… useless."
"No, you're not," Anna retorted, shaking her head. "You froze a gryph bigger
than you."
Katie slumped. "That was only because he was a wraith in a bad climate," she
muttered. "I… failed to stop a Beholder, could not hear you at that hotel, got
a marble column to the face, could not slice into a bastard until he was
already incapacitated, and failed to... " A lump formed in her throat, and she
paused to swallow it. A very bitter taste graced her tongue as the lump
grudgingly went down before she finished in an equally bitter tone of voice,
"to help your now-undead father. And now Ashwood's on fire thanks to the
ectoplasms, and he… he chose to stay in some underground basement…"
Anna froze, eyes widening. "Father's… undead? And Ashwood's...? I-it's…" She
turned to the changelings of Delta Unit, who all shifted uneasily at her wild
and now-frantic look. "Stay with Katie. I-I'll go check," she ordered, her
voice shaky and riddled with disbelief. Her horn glowed, her hoof parted from
Katie's withers, and she vanished in a flash of light.
It did not take much longer for an unholy scream to rend the air from the deck.
Everyling winced, and Katie opted to tuck her head to her barrel, keeping her
hooves locked on her ears. In another flash of light, Anna had re-appeared,
pupils shrunk to pinpricks and a wide, horrified frown on her face. She raced
over to Rhinoc, threw her forehooves onto his shoulders, and started babbling
frantically, "Can changelings resist fire entirely?!"
Rhinoc's ears folded back, eyes widening further in alarm. "T-to an extent, m-
ma'am," he stammered uneasily. "B-bu—"
Anna started shaking him, effectively cutting him off with a cry of, "Then
can't you do something?! G-get him out of there!"
The brown-ribbed soldier found the gumption to step in at last and seized Anna
in his magic, pulling her away from Rhinoc with a tug. She snapped her
attention to him with a feral, frantic expression, and the soldier shook his
head. "Is there smog rising from the forest?" he asked. When Anna shakily
nodded, the soldier lifted a hoof, took off his helmet, and held it to his
barrel. "We cannot stand the levels of smog a wildfire can produce. They are
just as toxic to us as they are to you."
"We have gas masks, don't we?! Find them, put them on, and get your asses down
there!" Anna cried, her voice half-pleading and half-mad. Again, the soldier
disobeyed by grimly shaking his head.
"There's not enough masks for the whole retinue, ma'am. And even if there were,
the heat levels would literally cook us alive in our chitin and turn the
gryphons into roast chimeras. That's also not accounting for the levels of
octane and methane that's now being burned as we speak, much less how much of
the woodland is already encompassed in flames," the soldier replied, looking at
his fourth-in-command with a forlorn gaze, one hoof pawing at the carpet. "And
the wildfire's probably making its own wind now to spread even farther. As much
as it pains me to say this…" The soldier closed his eyes and frowned pityingly
as he finished, "if he's already in the blaze, then there's nothing we can do."
"Nothing…?" Anna squeaked, her jaw quivering as the weight of the soldier's
rebuttal sank in.
The soldier nodded, just once. "Nothing," he repeated grimly. "We'll have to…
to scrounge for his remains after the fires die and the smog clears, if
anything even remains of him after that. We don't even know where the nooblet
had last seen him before the ectoplasms struck." The last two words he uttered
to her came out in a choked, sorrow-riddled voice, "We're sorry."
"N-no…" Anna muttered, but an aura grasping her head from NoLegs cut her off
for all of three seconds. Images flashed through her mind, from the start of
the wraiths bickering to the end where the house had caught flame. That one
spell from the cat was all it took for Anna to crumple onto the floor. Her horn
lit up as one tear formed in her eye and streaked down her cheek. It fell and
landed on the carpet just as she vanished in another flash of light. The
soldiers all looked to Katie, who lifted her head the moment Anna had
teleported, to reveal her eyes narrowed and her orbs dimming. But that wasn't
the only thing they took notice of.
Viridian blood started to seep from the corners of her eyes, and her ribs and
carapace began to dull as the first of many tears fell from her cheeks.
"Despair... " she muttered, voice cracked and strained. "I just… brought
despair… on my first mission…" She ducked her head under her forelegs again,
wings sagging as the color from her mane and tail likewise started to turn
dull. "Can't go back… I failed again… just like with my old hive… dead and
nothing I can do about it now…"
Everyling winced as an air of wrongness began to emanate from Katie in force,
seeping into their chitin and bringing with it a chilling, nauseous feeling
that started playing hell upon their nerves. A few tried to take a step closer
to start comforting Katie, but the aura grew stronger with every movement they
made. Soon enough, a few of the lower-ranking soldiers began to wince with a
growing headache.
Rhinoc was the only one who managed more than three hooves in, though even he
was not immune from what the other soldiers were experiencing. His horn lit up
once, embracing Katie in his aura—and a fierce chill ran down his spine, before
his stomach twisted into so tight a knot he doubled over on the spot. Shakily,
he backpedaled and dispelled his magic, staring at her in wide-eyed, pained
shock.
"Sir?" one of the more well-off and less-wincing soldiers asked when Rhinoc
rejoined them.
Rhinoc shook his head. "I… felt what it's…what she's…" he muttered uneasily.
"What she's… letting out…"
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Smoke rose as the hours waned, and Ashwood slowly became little more than its
namesake, partly because of the ongoing rain that continued to batter it in an
attempt to keep the flames at bay. Thick black clouds ascended to suffocate the
skies above, tinted a hideous orange as the flames feasted on every tree their
scorching tongues could lick. That smoke passed even the airships, and though
their mighty wings beat the smog away, that effectively kept the soldiers
locked in until it passed. Lance watched from the master bedroom window with
Matt, Natalie, and Anna sleeping at his side. He held a radio in his left hoof,
as a newly-arrived airship rose from the burning trees surrounding the shrine.
"Sir, we have successfully extracted the Mighty Oak from his shrine," a
masculine voice droned out from the device. "No casualties."
"Using the same ship that transports the Valkyrie?" Lance asked, frowning as
the smog concealed the airship's most predominant of features. For a moment, he
couldn't tell if the reds and oranges on it were decorative or flames that had
managed to jump aboard.
"Yes sir," the voice on the other end replied. "What of search party number
two?"
"Extracted themselves before the flames could get this out of hoof. They didn't
find much," Lance hissed in reply, eyes narrowing as the blaze swept on
unimpeded. He turned to the windowsill, where that one picture in its little
warped frame now sat. "What was found has… piqued my interest in one of my
passengers."
"You sound like you're excavating closet skeletons again," the voice wryly
noted.
"Only this time, the skeletons in question aren't exactly mine," Lance replied
in a clipped tone. "I'm starting to feel like I'm plucking feathers off a
goat."
"You aren't the only one getting that vibe," the voice from the radio snarked.
"Should we leave Greenwood soon?"
Lance cast one look at Anna, seeing scrunched eyes and hours-old tear-streaks
through the fur on her cheeks, before turning back to the picture. "... one
more day," he answered, his voice solemn. "We have… confirmed victims. Victims
that…" Another look at Anna confirmed that fresh tears were starting to build
in the corners of her eyes, glistening in the light of the fires. "... that
mean a lot to two of my passengers."
"... respects?" the voice guessed.
"Yes," Lance replied tersely. He saw Anna's ears flatten against the back of
her head, and her muzzle twitched as she sniffled in her sleep.
"Papa…" Anna whimpered, her voice raspy. A fresh tear broke free and trailed
down the side of her face, snagging in her mane. She shook and turned, her back
rising up to face Lance. "Why… he's… burning now… he did… nothing wrong…" she
continued in a strangled choke.
Both Lance and the entity on the other end of the line paused. "... relatives,"
the entity muttered.
"... affirmative," Lance answered in a tight voice, his stomach clenching as
Anna began to sob in her sleep, her body shaking and her chest starting the
first of many heaves.
"Not taking it well?" the entity pressed, his voice shaking a little.
Lance was silent. As carefully as he could, he draped a wing over Anna's body,
but that did nothing to stop her crying. She curled up into a ball, cradling
her head in her forelegs under the embrace, breathing fast turning ragged and
riddled with hiccups before long. His stomach only tightened further, and so
did his chest as the awful noises persisted unimpeded. Yet he dared not move
more than he already had, knowing full well how she flailed whenever her dreams
took a turn for the worse.
"... sir?" the entity tried.
"I'll talk to you tomorrow… over," Lance stated, lifting his other hoof to grab
the knob on the radio.
"But sir—" was all the entity could get in edgewise before the radio clicked as
the knob turned. Lance sighed and put the radio on the sill before shifting to
lay down himself, keeping Anna cradled under his wing even as she continued to
cry. He turned to Natalie as she stirred, shifting to watch them both with one
eye cracked open.
She did not move a muscle after. Instead, she turned her gaze to Anna and
donned a small, tight frown as her sobs began to quiet. Only when the crying
stopped entirely did Natalie mutter, "It's almost like we just found her all
over again…"
Lance solemnly nodded. Natalie shifted to lean toward Anna, stopping only when
her superior's feathers brushed up against her snout. Lance lifted his wing a
little, allowing entry, and sighed as he felt Natalie shift closer to nuzzle
Anna.
"I know… what she's going through," he heard her mutter.
"But your adoptive folks are alive," Lance pointed out in a low voice.
"I know that… but ever since I was twelve, I thought they'd died when I was
first dragged into the Catastrophe… and that's not saying anything about my
birth parents," Natalie retorted, curling her own body around Anna in an almost
motherly fashion. Anna nestled against her, shifting her own muzzle against the
fuzzy, slender barrel.
"Mama…" Anna mewled, her voice weak and scratchy. She began whimpering again,
only to stop when Natalie nuzzled her once more.
Lance looked toward the window again, frowning as he saw still-burning ashes
rising into the air, dancing their final moments out and around the beating
wings of the airships. For a moment, he could've sworn that he felt two pairs
of eyes land on him as a particular swatch of ashes rose into the cloudy sky.
These 'eyes' belonged to two vague silhouettes that did not linger for long,
one of whom had two freakishly large appendages spread out from the rough
approximation of a back and the other turned partially away, revealing an
equally long object jutting from what was roughly its forehead. The eyes
themselves seemed to be made of flame, slanted and with tears of embers
trickling from their barely-corporeal corners to drift away with the still-
climbing smoke.
The eyes looked at him and slanted rather sadly, but he couldn't be sure as to
why when their brief gaze broke away with a slight shaking of what he assumed
were their heads. The ashes to which they belonged let themselves be swept up
by the wind, climbing higher into the sky on what would perhaps be the first or
last of many journeys across the surface of Fantasia. Much of their small
embers died as they flew away from the window, becoming less tangible shapes
before long.
A brilliant, and oddly out of place, blue bolt of lightning streaked across the
sky, and instead of striking down it arched back up before his eyes. With one
strike, it effortlessly parted the clouds for a mere second. That second, the
remaining ashes that were still lit and had helped formed the vague silhouettes
danced up to the opening, which closed behind them the moment they crossed. He
turned back to the single photo, and for a second, the smiles on the adults
therein changed to wide frowns framed by tears of blood. He lifted both hooves
and delicately picked it up, bringing it close before accidentally pushing a
little too hard on the edges just as he started scrutinizing it. This caused
the backside of the frame to give out and fall to the bed of its own accord,
perhaps finally deciding to come apart merely to spite Lance.
The picture itself fell out a second later, twirling in a slow dance before
landing backside-up on the fallen frame's other half. Runic writing had been
scribbled onto the side now facing him, barely legible and smudged with age, so
Lance spread his other wing and used it to nudge Matt awake. It took a few
shakes, but with a grumble Matt shifted and scooted closer to Lance, horn
giving off the faintest of golden lights. "What's this say?" Lance asked in a
whisper, turning to the photo for emphasis.
Matt turned to the photo and studied the writing on its backside for a few
seconds, and his brow slanted. He hesitated, but when Lance nudged him with his
wing again, he obliged in a tight voice, "'To whomever finds my precious
daughters, if they are still alive… take care of them in my stead, for I can do
so no longer…'"
Lance closed his eyes and sat the other half of the frame atop the photo, not
even cracking them open as Matt slid the photograph out and made it vanish in a
flash of light. "That sounds to me like whoever wrote that… just gave up…" Matt
mumbled solemnly, making the halves of the now-useless frame vanish before
laying back down.
That time, Lance mutely nodded and laid his head on the pillow, sighing softly
and idly wondering if Matt even turned the photo over before thaumatically
converting it. It took him a while to fall asleep, but when he did, it was when
Matt and Natalie had fallen back to sleep no less than ten minutes prior. As he
drifted off, he felt Anna shift closer to him, uncurling a little bit. He
curled his wing a little tighter around her in response, hoping to comfort her
even in her sleep.
It did not escape his notice, however, that as he fell into dreamland the sound
of glass breaking permeated from below. He did not care, however… as he did not
know where exactly it came from, but did know that he would find out come
tomorrow.
***** Chapter LXXVII- Into The Void *****
Sarah sat on her bed, wide-eyed, stone-still, and suspiciously silent. Lazarus
and Fenrir sat at her side, alternating between watching Ashwood burn and
staring at their roommate in concern. Sarah contemplated the recent turn of
events over and over in her head: attacking Katie, then being attacked by her
own sister, and then learning Katie had died young. Out of those three things,
she did not know which was the worst thing of them all, and the fact that she
knew full well what she had done wrong did nothing to abade that sting.
Her bangs had been parted as a result of her escape from that scene, and at
first glance, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it. Yet as Fenrir rose a
hand and gently streaked a digit across the seemingly-flat surface, he frowned
when his pad met with a little bump in dead center, and one so slight he had to
double back just to confirm it was there.
Sarah paid him no mind, not even a batting of the eyelashes. She gazed past the
window, not really focusing on the fires that rampaged beyond and below. She
heard Fenrir and Lazarus muttering about her in concern, but simply tuned them
out, her mind whirring a mile a minute. Over and over again, she mulled, idly
considering a great many courses of action as makeshift responses to the events
which had happened hours ago.
This only started a whole cavalcade of queries that came with a bit of prodding
about her forehead that she thought needless, although it did actually receive
a response in the form of shaking her head at every one of them. Still tuning
them out, she kept staring at the window, and ignored the prodding for some
twenty minutes on end… until Lazarus got the bright idea of getting up,
trotting in front of her, and plopping his own rear end down close enough to
obscure her sight. He leaned until they were nose to nose, eyes narrowing
irritably. "What the hell is your problem?" he asked.
Sarah's face barely shifted, and even then it was only limited to her mouth as
she replied in a tight voice, "I attacked the shortstock, and got attacked by
my sister."
Lazarus's face hardened. "Why?" he asked tersely.
Sarah didn't blink at the query, opting instead to thrust her claws up and
shove Lazarus aside before promptly flopping on the pillow, denying him the
chance to react until the very moment she buried her face in said pillow. "I
don't wanna talk about it," she hissed, her voice muffled as a result of trying
to hide in an object that wasn't doing a particularly good job of even cradling
her cheeks.
Lazarus heaved a sigh of relief, then snorted at Sarah's rather belligerent
manner of dodging the question. He turned to Fenrir. "What crawled up her ass
and wedged itself there lately?" he hissed.
Fenrir merely shrugged and shook his head. "That, I know not. She's usually not
this pertinent," he stated earnestly. "And as somemutt who has seen how
pertinent she can get, that's saying something."
Lazarus groaned. "You're telling me you babysat her ass?" he groused.
Fenrir nodded. "That is… one very forward manner in which to put it," he
replied, shifting uneasily as a frown framed his muzzle. His ears flattened
against his head. "Although… it was less akin to babysitting and more akin to
administering some sorely needed discipline." When Lazarus raised a brow and
tilted his head in silent askance, the answer came in a very terse, very
clipped tone, "Sticky talons."
Lazarus's brow dipped so low it came close to making one of his eyes snap shut
then and there. Afterwards, and oddly enough, he cracked a small smile. "I
remember when Matt was still trying to get over the whole Catastrophe incident.
He and Natalie got a real bad case of sticky hooves themselves," he chirped. "I
just watched them from the shadows, and looking back on it now, their little
heists were amusing as hell. Back then, though…" His smile dropped. "It was
strictly a matter of survival."
Fenrir's brow furrowed at that. "Were there not any other options or
opportunities available at the time?" he queried.
Lazarus shook his head. "Nobody particularly liked us after we caused the
Catastrophe, left, and wound up gaining ten thousand degrees of notoriety for
it," he replied grimly. "Hell, I am still surprised they landed a military job,
and thought enough of me to tell their boss about it to get him to recruit me."
Fenrir's frown deepened. "Sounds suspect," he muttered.
Lazarus shrugged and opted to flop down next to their cranky roommate who was
doing her best to pretend her pillow was a hole in the sand. "Eh, it is what it
is," he replied. "What's happened happened. I think we need to…" he trailed off
when a thought hit him. He turned to Fenrir and asked, "Why were you feeling up
her forehead?"
"She has a bump… one I have not noticed until now, as it is a very miniscule
one," Fenrir replied with a genuine tone and a shrug of earnest. "I do not know
if it is merely an old wound, or perhaps a slight deformation of her skull."
"Deformation?" Lazarus parroted.
Fenrir nodded. "Possibly from excess calcium," he answered.
Lazarus nodded back and opened his mouth, but did not get another word in
edgewise as a gentle scratching filled the air, the noise drawing itself out
for three whole seconds before stopping and starting again. Lazarus hopped out
of bed and trotted to the door, noting the sounds grew louder as he came
closer. Lighting his horn and opening the door with his magic, he frowned when
this act revealed Maria standing outside the door, reared on her hooves and her
talons splayed wide.
She sheepishly dropped down to all fours and looked at Lazarus. "Daddy won't
open his door," she muttered. "I think something bad happened…"
Lazarus kept his frown, though he fought to keep it from deepening. "Did you
try the knob?" he asked.
Maria nodded. "Won't move," she answered, before tottering off down the hall.
Lazarus sighed and turned to Fenrir.
"I'll be back in a minute," he muttered before cantering out the door and
looking about to find Maria trotting to the master bedrooms. He heard something
from Sarah, but as she kept head firmly on pillow, did not make out her very
muffled utterance before he closed the door behind him magically, dimmed his
horn and trotted after the young foal. He caught up to her, but did not pass
her as they strode to the master bedroom on the right side of the hall. Once
they reached it, Maria reared up onto her hooves and grasped the knob with both
claws and jostled it for a bit.
It rattled without fully turning—rattled, and nothing more. Maria motioned with
a claw and pressed an ear up to the door. Wordlessly, Lazarus followed suit,
frown deepening as he heard a very soft, but very unmistakeable, sobbing. The
more he listened, the more familiar he grew with it… and it did not take long
for him to determine it was a mare that was doing it. His horn lit up again,
and his magic grasped the knob. He heard a tumbler turn—before runes lit up on
its metal surface, glowing a fierce and bright gold, its aura seizing his horn
and sending shocks through his system. With a startled yelp and his magic
fading entirely from surprise, Lazarus staggered back with his tail puffing in
alarm.
The bolts did not just zap him, either. The currents darted to Maria of their
own accord and zapped her, making her cry out as she tottered back, mane, tail,
and feathers frizzed and standing on their ends as a result. Within seconds of
being greeted with a small dose of lightning, they heard muffled hoofsteps,
before a lock clicked and the door opened to reveal a wide-eyed Natalie
standing inside. The sobbing now flooded the hall, though it was still soft,
and as Lazarus and Maria gathered their bearings, they noticed that her face
was not red. "What happened?!" she queried, keeping her voice to a whisper.
Lazarus shook himself to dispel any lingering jolts that overstayed their
welcome in his nerves before speaking quietly, "General's kid heard crying,
came to me, I tried to lockpick the door to investigate the crying on her
behalf, and got zapped by enchantments."
Natalie turned to him and glared, though not in the typical hard-frown and
narrow-eyed look he was expecting of one of his now-commanding officers.
Rather, her brow furrowed slightly, and her frown was so slight it seemed as
though her mouth's corners hadn't moved at all. She turned to Maria, who nodded
in confirmation, before the expression faltered and she sighed. "You two okay?"
she asked, and both nodded, though Natalie figured they were still experiencing
some aftershock. "You sure?" Again, both nodded. She sighed and glanced back at
the master bedroom. "Well… one of our own went to bed… crying," she muttered,
ears folding back. "She's probably not going to be in the best of moods
tomorrow…"
"Who?" Maria asked. Natalie turned to her, stepped out of the room, gently
closed the door behind her with a swift flick of magic, and knelt down to her
level. Silence held for a moment.
Natalie then glumly shook her head just as Maria opened her mouth to ask again.
"I… don't know what to tell you," she muttered, pausing to sigh tiredly. "And
honestly, I don't know if the soldiers lied to get out of the job early… but
the fact that a wildfire's now raging may well have forced their claws."
Maria's brow furrowed. "Did they do a bad thing?" she hissed. "Can I hurt
them?"
Natalie shook her head again. "No, you can't hurt them… and they did not do a
bad thing," she replied, her frown deepening.
"What did they do if it's not bad?" Maria asked.
Natalie gently lifted a hoof to her face and ran it up the bridge of her
muzzle, veering it once it reached the base of her horn to rub at her temples.
"...found… something unsettling…" she muttered. "And it was enough… to make
your mother snap."
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Sand devils danced, though now no light from above shined on their swirling
forms. Something else danced with them, however, blurring Katie's vision as she
trotted on determinedly. Something white, flaky, cold, that should not have
been present in the dustbowl to begin with, yet it was. It, combined with the
sand, stung mercilessly at Katie like a thousand needles, digging into her
chitin and her frail flesh. Raindrops were also in the fray, lukewarm and yet
hammering her just as fiercely. It all whirled about her in a heated fervor,
swirling about at such speeds she could not even see the individual flecks and
drops clearly without the grit getting in the way.
The wind propelling them, paradoxically, was unbearably hot. It came fast,
bearing a sandy sleetstorm on its invisible shoulders, and it was strong enough
to slow Katie's trot to a snail's crawl. It battered her everywhere,
threatening to rip her mane and tail right out of their pores, forcing her
wings wide and making them flap uselessly, tried and tried again to get her to
yield her feeble hold on the shifting ground. With recalcitrance, a fair bit of
reluctance, and an already-faltering hold, she marched nonetheless.
Impossible shapes formed in the veritable storm, shapes sporting long ears and
glares like embers. They judged Katie as she kept trotting through the storm.
"It's hopeless, Mutant," one shape hissed in an ethereal voice.
"Just give up," another chided disapprovingly, shaking a vague approximation of
its head. "You're weak… worthless…"
Katie tried to ignore the judgemental statements, pressing on even as an ache
formed in her legs as she continued to fight the storm. She clenched her jaws,
even as the sand and snow swirled into her throat via her nostrils and split
mouth, slowly but surely clogging up her throat. "You're following a foal's
dream," another silhouette spat scathingly as she trudged past him. "You'll
never find the herald of our slaughter."
Katie coughed feebly, trotting on stubbornly. The act only served to fill her
lungs even more with arid, unbreathable air. "Look at her, siding with the
ponies," another form hissed, forming directly in her path. Katie simply
trotted through it, her knees beginning to buckle as ice crackling with
lightning formed on her legs while the form itself danced around her. "She
thinks those fools will help."
"They will only cast you out once they're through with you. Just like all of
the others have before them. What makes you think they're any different from
the rest?" another growled. The storm started to howl around Katie, swirling
with stronger and fiercer winds, as if it were determined to knock her off her
hooves and bury her in its snow-laden sands.
Katie did not answer. She could not answer, not when the storm itself was
seeping its windswept tendrils into her lungs in an effort to choke her one way
or another. She had no other option but to trot through it, but the more she
moved her legs, the faster the lightning and frost spread upon her chitin. She
squinted her eyes, feeling something pooling at their corners, and though she
had an inkling of what it was, she couldn't bring herself to stop. Not here.
Certainly not now.
The scoffings of the silhouettes did not stop there. An impossibly tall one
formed and started ambling at her side, its vague-leg movements faster and with
a carefully-collected grace in their stride… but it kept perfect pace with her,
almost mockingly at that. "Have you forgotten whose banner you last served
under, you feeble-minded grub?" it hissed, the voice distinctly masculine and
packing a deep baritone that gave off an authoritative tone.
Katie shook her head, and simply pressed on. Her legs were starting to shake,
going numb with cold, their movements turning more hesitant with each and every
step. Her wings buzzed haltingly; hopefully that would be enough of an answer
to the specter now dogging her every move. "I admit, it was admirable of you to
try to defend the hive… even as we lay dead all around you. Tell me… where did
that lead you, my little mutant?" the figure asked, and rather sincerely at
that. Silence answered him, and he growled disapprovingly. "Not going to talk,
are we?"
Again, a shaking of the head was his only answer. A shadow began to form in the
tall silhouette, becoming more defined and more corporeal, yet becoming even
more of a faceless thing as he kept up with Katie's fast-faltering steps in the
process. Whether it be paradox or irony, Katie had no intention of finding out.
"Godcat was merciful enough to let us connect to you, even in the afterlife…
and this is how you dare spend your time in our company?"
That remark actually caused Katie to pause. Her legs stopped moving, and she
slowly turned to the sandy shadow as he, too, stopped. Her mouth opened a
little, but then closed when she realized she did not have anything to say to
him. He turned to stare back at her, his ember-like gaze turning into a pair of
orbs so light a blue they almost seemed grey, narrowed into slits that were
ablaze with a coldness even she thought unnatural. A defined, gnarled horn sat
atop its forehead, as long as Celestia's but as hideous as the storm that
whistled shrilly through its grooves. Fragments of a short, stringy mane danced
from the thing's neck and around the horn's base, framing long ears that stood
as tall as the horn itself.
The other silhouettes, now casting shadows themselves, caught up to the two,
and surrounded them. More and more eyes, all eerily grey, were trained on
Katie. She kept her focus on the tall figure before her, even as darkness
gathered until what little light that did not come from the menagerie of eyes
was simply shrouded. The shadow knelt to her level and asked a simple, short,
"Why?"
Katie shivered as the cold, the lightning and the storm began to wreak havoc on
her nerves. Her mouth worked, but all that would come out was a series of
spluttering coughs as she tried in vain to keep the storm from suffocating her.
Her orbs flickered, weakly, and she felt liquid trickling down her cheeks. It
took her several long moments, but eventually she gave an answer. "If I… don't…
then who will?" she asked back.
The orbs of the figure before her narrowed a little more. "Time itself has all
but forgotten us, our society, and the very order of our hive with it. And
though I know not how much time your ailing body has left… as with all life,
you too shall be reclaimed by the Void that we have crossed to so long ago," he
said in warning. "Yet you still carry on, on some unfounded hope that may be
shredded when happenstance tears it from your cracked, softened hooves?"
Katie's vision blurred as more liquid formed in the corners of her eyes. Her
body continued to grow numb to the storm, as the frost turning it that way was
now up to her neck. She stood, defiantly, for now she had little choice. "...
all I have left are my memories, and that hope," she said in finality, though
her voice cracked in strain and weakness of lung. "S-someone… on Fantasia… will
k-know…"
"Know what?" the shadow hissed, leaning in close until he was nose-to-nose with
Katie.
"They… will know what… happened to us… so we won't be lost and forgotten by the
mists of time," Katie answered, noting she was fast losing feeling in her ears.
It wouldn't be long before the rest of her head followed suit. The figure
before her reared up with a series of unnatural crackles, tossing his head back
and bellowing out the most hollow laughs she had ever heard. The rest of the
shadows joined in, and soon even the storm's winds were drowned out in a
growing chorus of maddened mirth.
Frost crept along Katie's muzzle, freezing her teeth together inch by inch. The
laughter lasted for mere seconds, yet rang in her head for some time after the
figure before her dropped to her pitiful eye level again, a soft twinkle of
some sort flickering in his orbs. "How noble of you… but that little ploy of
yours has too little planning and far too many holes to be even a smidgen
plausible. Let's say you did indeed tell someone. What were to happen if they
died in a war? Had no foals to pass the tale onto? Or simply cared not for it?"
Katie's orbs widened even as frost covered her eyes then and there, and she
began to consider the shadow's rebuttal that blew her idea right out of the
water. She wanted to speak, but the frost now secured her lips tightly shut,
and all she could manage was a small croak that itself was drowned out by the
ongoing storm. "You thought too little ahead, my little mutant. But… I suppose
that's to be expected from someling clinging onto something as feeble as hope.
A perfect allegory… for a perfect mistake of the late hive," the shadow said in
a scathing tone of voice, with the slightest tinge of mockery to it.
Then, one by one, the shadows dispersed, each turning into sable sand and snow
to run away with the wind to parts unknown. The tall shadow idled, scrutinizing
Katie as the rime of frost thickened on her body with a weak crackle of her
stub-horn. They stared at one another for some time, until he was the only
shadow that remained in the storm. "The Void will claim you soon, as you have
stolen a power from it… a power noling should have in their hooves, least of
all you. It will stop at nothing to retrieve that which you have wrongfully
taken." He shook his head pityingly. Katie's stomach twisted as she watched
him, powerless to do anything, his harsh words ringing in her ears.
"And you will become just another arcane shadow in the mists of time. No past,
no future, not even a name to call your own—merely another casualty in a sea of
just as nameless corpses. As have countless others before you. Before us," the
tall shadow finished in a tone of finality. He sneered one last time before he,
too, lost his shape and joined the countless others in the ongoing storm that
was simultaneously scorching and chilled. The wind kept blowing for some hours
after that, but how long was lost to her. Gradually, its winds changed
direction… and grew warmer and more hellish as they did. The ice slowly melted,
and the lightning it produced faded as well.
The ground heaved with an unnatural groan. Dust flew from it as another tremor
rocked the barren soil. Katie tried moving, but only managed a bare twitch of a
knee that she could not feel anymore. Another shudder ran under her, and though
light returned in the form of a scant few moonbeams, something else caught
Katie's attention in the corner of her frost-covered eyes. She turned her orbs,
and mentally screamed as… as… as a giant hole of blackness formed, distant but
steadily growing larger. Deep violet veins, almost black themselves, pulsed
through the hole, and a myriad of clawed tendrils reached out and lashed at the
ground from the hole's edges.
Screams upon screams came from that hole, distorted beyond compare and less…
less bestial than they should have been, producing a chorus that was both
unnatural and unbearably loud. The clawed tendrils struck again and again at
the ground, each impact making it shake erratically, ripping out chunks of
earth to toss into the purple-lined maw that was its very corporeal body. Not
even the moonlight could dent it; in fact, it started sucking the scant rays
towards itself with no damage whatsoever. The air around it distorted as it
continued to grow, causing patches of the earth and sky to shift colors just as
they vanished into the black abyss.
Katie started wiggling violently, forcing more ice flecks to part from the coat
of rime that held her in its merciless grip. Feeling slowly returned to her
body, and she noticed an ache that came from her rapidly-beating heart as it
tried to burst from her chest. Her mind screamed "You need to move!" but no
matter how hard she tried, she could not get her defrosting legs to work. The…
black, clawing hole that was devouring both earth and sky grew even larger.
And even closer.
The frost wasn't melting fast enough. Feeling was coming back to her rattled
nerves just as slowly. All the while, Katie's orbs were trained on the
approaching danger that seemed to take its sweet time gorging itself on
virtually everything around it. She screamed, but the ice muffled her as she
worked as fast as she could to get off of the spot of ground to which she'd
been affixed against her will.
Time wasn't on her side. Cracks formed in the rime, but only thanks to Katie's
persistent wiggling. Even then, the cracks were small enough to go virtually
unnoticed. The sand and snow clogged them up, and the rain froze upon contact,
sealing them shut with a vengeance. The ground shook, but never enough to knock
her over, as if it were doing this just to spite her. Panic rose, and with it
Katie's maddened shaking increased tenfold. New cracks formed, but were sealed
tight just as they'd opened.
The black hole grew larger still, unceasingly, uncaringly, without faltering
once. The ground, sky, and moonlight wasn't enough to sustain its rapidly-
growing mass. Its horrendous cries upon cries rose to a new octave as the ice
finally started giving way and Katie moved her legs for the first time since
she'd gotten stiff with frost. Her hooves slipped and she fell onto her stomach
thanks to the coating on her hooves, and though this caused the last remnants
to break away, she realized with dread clawing at her thoughts that she still
could not entirely feel parts of her body. Worse yet, she looked at her back,
only to find that the frost had ripped her wings right out of their sockets
with it, depriving her of flight.
Katie's stub-horn lit up of its own accord, and the light it gave off was a
crackling red in color. Bolts of freezing cold lightning fired off from it by
themselves, launching up to the hole… only to be absorbed by it. It wasn't
until several dozen went into it, only fueling the thing's growth, did her horn
cease launching energy, and by then the behemoth was as tall as a mountainside.
Even so, her stump continued to give off light, its red glow cradling her in
its pitiful radius.
A single voice, coming from the hole itself, shouted through the throng of
cries with a crystal clarity that Katie could not ignore. "Run, you
spellcasting idiot! The Void will swallow you whole if you don't move!" it
yelled, the utterance spurring Katie on. She forced herself to move her legs,
to get her hooves under her, and once she did the ground's heaving increased
tenfold as the Void grew tall enough to shroud even the moon.
It was high time to start running, and Katie was all too eager at this point to
do anything but. She didn't even attempt to cancel out the glow, or use her
magic to propel herself onward, unstable as it was. Instead she turned and made
a mad, stumbling dash, having to catch herself within the first few steps.
There was no room for error; the Void was fast gaining ground, and Katie needed
to put as much distance between it and herself as possible.
One slip-up would cost precious seconds that she couldn't make up for. Her
gallop was clumsy, frantic, fueled entirely by a primal fear that held her
fast, and disoriented thanks to the sand and snow and rain now flinging
themselves directly into her eyes, but it was certainly better than nothing.
More than once had she caught herself looking over her shoulder, and each time
she did her heart drummed harder in her chest, and her stomach came that much
closer to turning itself inside-out at the sight she continued to behold.
Behind her, the Void continued to rend the dustbowl asunder, without mercy,
without moderation, without even a modicum of restraint. It did not know the
meaning of the word 'empathy,' for it was entirely focused on one task and one
task only: the utter destruction of its surroundings, and whatever lay in them.
It had to have fuel, one way or another, and nothing would stop it from getting
it. The rational part of Katie's mind was doubting her ability to outrun this
beast, but that rationale was tossed to and fro in a sea of unparalleled terror
that only her wide eyes and shrunken orbs could convey.
She simply kept scrambling, hoping with all of her childish might that she
could get away. The Void, however, was slowly, surely catching up to her. The
air turned chilly, then plummeted to sub-zero temperatures in an effort to
stall her even as it, too, was sucked in to that black maw of empty nothingness
that was utterly hellbent on consuming anything and everything. It seemed
intent on sating some sort of hunger not even its fleeing prey could hope to
grasp.
The ground shook a hundredfold now, as the Void grew large beyond
comprehension, reaching, perhaps, Fantasia's core. To run from it as it was now
only spurned Katie further; she did not wish to know what it would do to her if
she were caught here and now. Her footing became steadier, truer, faster and
more coordinated, and as a result her speed had picked up. To go back and face
the Void head-on would be like a flea facing off against a lich-wyrm—it was a
fight that was hopelessly one-sided and would surely end in disaster.
She couldn't stop it from wreaking havoc. Couldn't stop it from desecrating
Fantasia. Just like she couldn't stop her hive's desecration. All she could do
was survive, but even that was looking less and less likely as the Void only
continued to grow with its maddened consumption. The screams continued to rise
octaves higher, until they were beyond ear-piercingly loud.
An idea sparked in Katie's head. She could warn somepony about the Void, and
they may be able to stop it! Though… she'd have to find somepony first. She
kept running, determination now fueling her stride. Unfortunately, gravity
started to alter towards the beast behind her, further ripping entire chunks of
land and pulling them towards that black abyss that should not have been
present, yet was. It was slight enough to go unnoticed at first, but the shift
increased tenfold in a second.
Katie clenched her teeth to stave off the ringing in her ears, the ache in her
chest, the pain growing in her legs and back with each and every step she took.
She had to focus, putting her mind into scrambling and setting aside all else
in her desperate bid to outrun the Void and tell somepony about it. But as
gravity continued to shift, that was becoming increasingly difficult to manage;
within another five seconds, she was slowed to a snail's crawl all over again.
The loose, barren soil didn't do her any favors either, pulling her with it
into the growing nothingness that was doubtless a few paces behind her now.
She still had to try, clutching feebly onto her hope. It was all she had left
at this rate. But now, she could not move forward with the loose soil pulling
her back. Not even digging her hooves in helped; that just ensured she was
slowed down further. In fact, all her efforts yielded now was a series of
accidents that resulted in Katie tripping over her own hooves repeatedly. She
still kept at it, praying that this would not end up getting her sucked in.
She failed to notice a chunk of ground being torn directly behind her, creating
several cracks that isolated a crude circle around her. Trying in vain to move
forward, her vision now completely clouded by sand and rain and snow, she just
worsened her woes by continuing to slip. Within moments, the Void was directly
behind her, clawing at the ground with its many tendrils, screaming and crying
and hollering as its mass came within millimeters of the end of her tail.
Katie was utterly helpless as a tendril reached her and pried the chunk of soil
that she stood on out, her heart stopping as she realize she'd been flung clean
off her hooves and up into the air in the process. It did not take her long to
start emitting a terrified screech as the nothingness capitalized on her lack
of flight without mercy, snatching her once again in its shadowy limbs, and
yanked her bodily inside its hungering maw.
The screaming, the crying, the howling of the Void stopped as she was sent
sailing ass over teakettle into the bleak unknown, with only the aches in her
body to keep her company. Not even her scream reached her ears; she wasn't even
sure if she did shriek at all. Dead silence now permeated this place; in fact,
it reigned here with a steely grip. Sound all but ceased to exist here in the
sable.
Here, the air was deathly still, even as countless chunks of soil broke apart
around her and everything else was sucked into that hungering beast. As these
chunks passed, even if they brushed up against her mane, tail, or legs, neither
of those things would move until some force she could not see broke them apart.
Katie had to manually move her legs, mane and tail of her own accord just to
register that they even shifted. Gravity never took hold in the Void, instead
replaced by a feeling of weightlessness, and for a time she could've sworn she
had trotted on empty air that felt solidified, yet somehow liquid at the same
time.
Light never really was, nor had a place of its own, in the Void, despite being
likewise devoured. Even with her meager glow, Katie could not see an inkling of
her surroundings; here, everything was a black abyss that she'd been forced to
paw around in, if indeed anything other than herself was corporeal in form and
mass at this point. She wasn't even sure if she was the only corporeal being
trapped within this endless blackness.
She winced, idly figuring that the shadow was right. The hope to which she
clung did her no good, since she'd gotten swallowed up. The only thing to do
now was to press forward… but where? Here, her sense of space was completely
skewed and turned on its head, and with her ability to see stolen from her by
the inky black, there was no way of knowing which way was forward. Time was,
likewise, distorted here. There was no sun, no moon, no stars with which to
keep track of it; had she not known any better, she'd have assumed time was
cemented in a one ever-expanding, ever-infinite moment. It certainly had the
vibe of such.
Katie opted to continue sailing through the Void. She figured it would take her
somewhere in its belly. It wasn't like she had any better options at the
moment, either. It took eons, perhaps, but something eventually broke the
silence of the Void: a roar unlike any she'd ever heard. It was one that
carried with it a distortion that echoed from everywhere, something powerful
enough to shake her surroundings and, at the same time, giving some light to it
that revealed a crimson galaxy of stars all around her. Planets and suns and
moons and nebulas passed her by, and for but a moment Katie was genuinely awed
by the sight.
Her eyes went wide. She tried to move toward a star… and found solid ground,
formed of stardust, beneath her hooves. The star in question hissed and
glimmered bright red as she approached it, forcing her to back away when it
started giving off an unbearable heat. Katie marveled at the star, tilting her
head at its mere presence. Her awe continued to grow, and she tried to approach
a nebula. It hissed around her too, also giving off heat, but unlike the star
it let her trot through it without incident. Perhaps this was why the Void was
destroying Fantasia, just to create this in its stead?
But the initial awe gave way to a deep, heart-stopping fear that froze Katie
when a deep, guttural, demonic voice reached her ears, "I have lived for
countless eons… my enemies fell as time marched on…" Katie whimpered, feeling a
gaze of pure rage landing on her as the Void shifted around her once again,
returning to the endless blackness from before, and gravity once more shifted
as it dragged her deeper into itself.
"And none would be foolish enough… to perform what you have done…" it added
scathingly, just as she twisted around to find a large, toothy maw bigger than
a mountain, fast-approaching from the black and from behind her. Its skin was
unnaturally greyish-red, almost the color of rotting flesh, but it swallowed
her quick as a flash before she could take in the rest of the monstrosity's
features.
There was nothing she could do at that point, except watch from within the
belly of the beast as it continued to destroy Fantasia. She cared not for how
she could, in fact, watch from within even as sickly, foul-smelling damp walls
of more putrid-seeming flesh squeezed her for all it was worth. The fact that
she could even see beyond her new prison sent chill after chill down her spine,
idly noticing that a crystalline substance of some sort was solidifying around
her at a frightening rate. Outside, she bore witness as frozen mountainsides,
whole forests and deserts, a volcano or two, and even a city with towers and
magitek that managed to reach the heavens… no matter what it was, it was all
devoured by the Void.
The land… nay, perhaps all of Fantasia became one with the Void. At the sheer
devastation, just as a series of bright lights flashed outside of her prison
which then revealed an earth brown corridor of stone and chains adorned with
spiked links and runic writing carved into the steel, she let out another
strangled scream. The crystal finished solidifying around her at that point,
and she became trapped and immobilized like an insect encased in amber, mouth
frozen open and fear etched onto her tiny face, her scream henceforth leaving
her forevermore.
It was the only thing she could do, locked in a prison such as this. She
doubted anyone outside her prison, if indeed anyone was even present, would
hear her anguished cries.
There was nobody there to help her.
Time stretched until she lost track of it all over again.
That one scream lasted for an agonizing eternity
But none could hear her, regardless of how long her scream became.
Her screams went unanswered, unheeded, entirely devoid of even a shred of
acknowledgement to the outside world...
Katie's orbs alighted and she jumped to her hooves, shaking like a leaf and
with her mouth agape as she took in her surroundings. She was back in the
lounge, on the couch, with the lights shining from the chandelier revealing
that NoLegs was in front of her, looking at her with a frown. Katie crumpled
back to the couch, heaving an immense sigh of relief. NoLegs watched her
intently, and when he was sure she wouldn't jump back up again, he waved his
tail and alighted it in his magic. "You okay?" he asked as his magic gripped
her head.
Katie still shivered. "Th-the Void… it got me…" she muttered.
NoLegs quirked a brow. "The Void?" he repeated.
Katie nodded that time. "Wh-what time… is it?" she croaked, hoping to change
the subject.
It was NoLegs' turn to sigh. "About four in the morning, and the only one you
woke up with your hollering was me, in case you're wondering," he answered
glumly, his aura seizing her body and lifting her gently up. "You need to sleep
in a proper bed. A couch ain't good for someling with your particular
combination of ailments," he added in a gentle reprimand. Katie didn't dare
argue with him, idly figuring that her nightmare was indeed the fault of the
inert couch.
Instead, she decided to ask him something. "Can I have more purple wasp for
breakfast?"
NoLegs nodded. "Eh, we probably got some spare wasps in the freezers. We can
stuff them, fry them… what all you in the mood for?" he replied.
"Sliced and with bread," Katie answered with a shrug. Her mouth opened a full
90 degrees as she let off an exhausted, gargantuan yawn. "And toasted," she
added once the yawn had finished leaving her mouth. Exhaustion gripped her,
despite the fact that she just woke up, and she realized she still felt that
ache, settled deep into her chest, though now it was little more than that.
NoLegs yawned, nodded, stretched his tail, and started ambling with her in tow
towards the lift that lead to the bedrooms.
***** End of Arc IV: Chapter LXXVIII- Harmony Amidst Calamity *****
Anna woke up as the sky lightened outside, blinking drowsily as her mind
stalled in kicking itself into gear. With bloodshot eyes, she clambered over
Natalie, and landed on the floor with legs wobbly and aching. Trudging to the
toiletries' corner, hooves dragging as she went, she let her mind spurn awful
images that had transpired the night before. Over and over, they tumbled upon
themselves, trying to make something cohesive and understandable that she would
not have any chance to misconstrue. As it was, everything, even the images
NoLegs telepathically sent to her, made her knees weaken with each step until
she outright collapsed in the shower stall.
She didn't turn the water on. Instead, she opted to lay there, on the smooth
tile, absently letting her mind replay the images over and over. Some foalish
part of her wanted to deny what she had mentally received, what she physically
heard, what she very nearly did with the tip of her own horn… but she just
couldn't bring herself to do so. Her stomach twisted when she realized that
Sarah had, more than likely, not received the news she'd gotten.
And if that was the case… then she'd need to know, somehow. Her stomach
outright clenched at the notion. How in hell was she going to explain this to
her, especially since she had the audacity to attack her last night? Granted,
it was in defense of a helpless troop, and Sarah didn't know it also
constituted as foal abuse on top of that, but… she could have handled it
differently, she reflected. Lost deep in her musings, she failed to keep track
of time, and heeding the sound of hooves scuffling on carpet, then hitting on
tile was entirely out of the question for her. It wasn't until a hoof prodded
at her withers did she bother to look up, finding Lance looming over her with a
frown on his muzzle. "Hey," he muttered.
Anna didn't get up, even as he poked her again. She merely stared at him,
nodding absently. "You okay?" Lance asked. She shook her head. "Figured as
much," he sighed, and trotted right inside the shower stall, making sure to
avoid stepping on her. He sat on his haunches at the far end of the stall,
watching her intently, as if expecting her to go timberpony all over again.
"Listen… there's something you need to know," he began.
Anna shifted her legs under her body and turned to him with a weary, skeptical
brow raised. "What?" she croaked, her voice dry and raspy enough to come out as
a whisper.
"Greenwood's… parts of it, anyway, are burnt to a crisp," Lance answered,
frowning as Anna's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. She opened her mouth, but he
lifted a hoof and waved it to cut her off. "That's not the only thing, so hold
your horses," he stated. Anna's mouth shut at the command. "None of the cursed
trees have moved once since Matt hit them with Ragnarok yesterday. I'm thinking
of flying down there myself to see if they're truly dead or not, and some part
of me thinks they're still alive."
Anna's glare eased, though she donned a frown of her own. "L… let me come
with," she muttered.
Lance closed his eyes and mulled the request over. On one hoof, her curse could
express itself again, with or without cursed trees around them. She could, in
blind panic and agony, easily turn on him if he didn't bring sufficient backup.
On the other hoof… there were confirmed victims of the wildfire, and the least
he could do was let her trot with so she could get some measure of closure.
There was also the chance that he could scan any cursed trees up close,
especially if they were incapacitated by the fire last night, though said fire
may have destroyed anything worthwhile in regards to how the ponies became the
trees.
"On three conditions," he said softly, opening his eyes as he said that. When
her gaze softened some more, he proceeded to rattle off the conditions in a
clipped voice, "One, we take Sarah with. Two, you put your belt back on. The
less distractions we have down there, the better. Three, do not engage anyone
or anything unless necessary."
Anna mulled it over for a few minutes, then shook her head. "I… attacked Sarah
last night, and…" she trailed off as Lance stood up, trotted to her, sat down
again, and draped her with both wings.
"NoLegs informed me as much before he went to bed after you came in crying last
night," Lance muttered, softly. "You may have made some bad blood with her… but
compared to what could have come out of it if you didn't restrain yourself,
things would have been indefinitely worse."
Anna turned away, sighing tiredly. "There's another reason," she heard him say.
Turning back and raising a brow just an inch, she looked at her superior
expectantly. "Why does your sister have a horn in the family photo?"
Anna stared at him for a few seconds. "A… horn…" She shifted into a half-
slouch, leaning to one side as her rear hooves slid out from under her.
"Yes. Quite clearly poking out of her forehead when it was taken," Lance
answered with a curt nod. "I know, this may seem like a dick move coming from
me… but I just want to know."
'Why?" Anna queried.
"Call it a matter of curiosity," Lance answered bluntly.
Anna looked away again, sighing once more. "She… never had a horn. Someone
must've spliced the picture," she mused.
Lance's frown deepened at that. "I didn't see any evidence upholding such a
claim," he muttered. "No obvious splice lines, no jagged edges, no clear
indication of vastly differing tints and shades between the horn and the rest
of the photograph's contents… the horn didn't even fall off the picture."
Leaning toward Anna, pausing when she turned to him again, he added very
bluntly, "So, unless the splicer was skilled enough to fool even me, I don't
think that's even a little bit coincidental since we've both heard her terrible
harp-playing skills. There is no way in hell she should even be able to use its
enchantments, if Shining indeed took care of that."
"The enchantments may be activated upon touch, Lance. Your wings were like
that," Anna shot back. Now, it was Lance's turn to sigh.
"That may be the case, but it's still fishy to me," he muttered, shifting his
front legs to lower himself to Anna's eye level. "Now then… are we going to
visit Greenwood when we go down? I know, you and Sarah don't want to go back,
but some part of me wants to check and see if the damned villagers survived the
blaze or not."
Anna contemplated that for a few seconds, before once more shaking her head.
"We're not going into the village proper, but we'll hover above it to see if
the assholes inhabiting it burnt or not," she stated. "Sarah can't fly for
another week or two, you only got the wind back yourself…"
At that, Lance had to concede that she had a point. He nodded once. "For now,
though…" His ears folded back and he blushed as he trailed off. "Let's just
take it easy." With that said, he stood up slowly, keeping his wings tucked at
his sides. He nudged her with a hoof to get up, and begrudgingly, Anna moved to
do just that. As soon as she stood, though, she leaned against the wall for
support, her knees wobbling dangerously. Lance spread his left wing and used it
to grasp the knob and turned it a few times, before steaming hot water
sputtered and rained down on them both.
For several minutes, they were content to stay there, letting the water soak
them to their skin. Anna sighed, still idling against the wall while Lance
spread his right wing to grasp for something above her. His wing pulled back,
now curled around a scrub brush that may well have been a loofa in comparison
to the feathers that held it. Then… the brush gently tapped Anna's shoulder
before it started scrubbing.
The unexpectedness of being scrubbed made Anna jump with a yelp, and she
tumbled forward into Lance's barrel. His eyes widened and he hastily raised his
forelegs and grappled her withers to stop her, though this pushed him a little
toward the wall. "Whoa! I didn't mean to spook you!" Lance exclaimed, still
clutching the brush in his wing.
Anna blushed and pulled away before backing off, flinching a little. "Sorry…
just… spacing out," she mumbled weakly.
"I could tell," Lance sighed, and extended his wing to offer the brush to her.
She looked at him, crossing her eyes at the brush as though it had been glued
to the bridge of her muzzle. "Are you going to take it, or do I need to scrub
you myself?" he asked softly.
Anna's legs gave out again, and she slumped to the floor. "Y-y-you're treating
me like I'm fourteen again," she grumbled, her blush growing redder by the
second.
Lance promptly spread his left wing and slapped his face in lieu of his hoof.
"No, I'm not," he muttered, scandalized. "You're acting like a foal," he added
when wing parted from face.
Anna's face continued to redden, and her ears fell back against her head as
they too started to pick up on the hue. She flinched when Lance took that as 'I
do not want to brush myself' and moved to do so for her, once more connecting
bristle with withers and gently scrubbing. She made no objection as he scoured
out bits of grime in her coat, but her squirming as he trailed the brush down
her back all the way to her croup told him that she was not exactly elated with
him doing so, either. Fortunately, he went no further than that, and retracted
the brush after trailing it back to her shoulder.
Anna stood up when the brush moved away, and on unsteady legs she marched right
up and leaned hastily until Lance was nose to nose with her. Her eye twitched,
and her tail swished, spraying water outside of the shower stall as it did.
"You want me to ram that brush up your ass?" she hissed, her horn starting to
sputter.
Lance actually sent Anna a rather coy grin. "If you do, you're buying another,"
he replied coolly.
Anna promptly summoned a crystal arrow in a flash of light, and maneuvered it
until it hovered behind Lance's tail. She cocked her head, eyes narrowed
dangerously low. "Want me to geld you?" she growled.
Lance's smirk widened in spite of the threat. "You wouldn't, despite the fact
that you're pissed off enough to even insinuate the thought," he snarked. His
ear twitched when he heard the sound of hooves scraping against the carpet and
then on tile, but paid it no heed since he was well aware of the sharp
instrument of torture poised at his haunches. He leaned a little closer to
Anna, until their snouts touched, and his grin went Cheshire in that moment.
"Go ahead. Try to geld me," he challenged smugly.
Anna's magical grip wavered for a moment, before the arrow pulled back and
surged forward—only to be stopped just a mere inch from its ill-gotten prize
when his tail flicked and wrapped around it tightly in a blur of motion. "You
do realize you're being insubordinate right now?" Lance mused, flinging the
arrow away in a manner that left nary a scratch on his hide. The arrow sailed
through the air and clattered harmlessly in the sink.
Anna balked and leaned away. Lance pressed to keep their snouts touching,
matching her retreat for every bit she gained in distance. "And besides, that
was just one arrow, of one of your deadliest sorts too. If you'd actually
wanted, you could have flayed my entire hide clean off, balls intact and
everything," Lance sneered. Neither noticed that a shadow was now looming over
them, nor that said shadow's owner was looking at them with utter bemusement.
"You are, like, the biggest cockhole I've ever met!" Anna declared, her chest
puffing out. Her magic grasped Lance by the shoulders and shoved him back, and
her cheeks started to puff as well.
Lance's grin twitched knowingly. "Oh? Since when did you become a peeping hen?"
he chirped.
Anna marched over and got into his face again, making sure to keep him far away
enough with her magic so their snouts wouldn't touch. Her face heated until it
was the color of his mane, reminding Lance of a hissing teakettle about to
launch its lid straight into the air. Neither noticed that a second shadow
joined the first, heralded by hooves on the carpet and then tile, for they were
too engrossed in their fight at this point. "Y-you make it sound like I
actually look whenever you have to take a leak, you pervert!" she screeched.
"You let me trot into the shower a few days ago without your belt," Lance
countered quickly. "Aren't you the pervert here?" Anna gabbled and sputtered,
but could not make any counter to Lance's argument. "And furthermore, you let
me scrub you. Is there something you'd like to keep hidden from me?" he added.
"N-no!" Anna cried, leaning back again. Before Lance could start to match her
retreat once more, somepony else at that moment—one of those who owned the
shadows—cleared their throat and made both arguers stiffen at the sound.
"Did I trot in at the wrong time?" a feminine and very bemused voice asked.
Both Lance and Anna paled, and slowly turned to the speaker with eyes fast
widening to find that Natalie was standing at the entrance to the stall that
they'd neglected to close. Behind her, Matt stood idling, a grin on his face
and his cheeks puffing as he struggled to keep himself from laughing without
lifting his hooves to contain it.
Anna and Lance fumed and turned to each other, glaring again. "We'll settle
this later," they hissed in tandem.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
Sarah found herself being dragged down to the now-scorched Ashwood, magically
at that, by Anna. Lance flew at their side, with NoLegs perched on his hat and
a saddlebag with a gunblade loaded onto his back. For some reason that Sarah
did not wish to grasp, her sister had gone out in the dress Rarity had made for
her, drill-bow and all. Hell, she took it one step further by using the gaudy
golden ribbon on her back to have the Accelerator affixed to her back in one
firm, pretty knot. Twilight had also accompanied them, casting an illusory
spell so the ectoplasms wouldn't detect them on their way down.
Katie came with too, settled on Twilight's back, though she kept silent during
the descent. Lance was clumsy in his flight, often miscalculating his velocity
or how hot the air was, and dangerously dipped more than once and much faster
than he kept anticipating. Though, his sheer wingsize made up for his
shortcomings, keeping him from colliding with his companions with powerful
beats. They descended in a slow corkscrew, to maximize both distance and the
time needed for Lance to gather his bearings and get a better hang on flying
altogether after so long without. As a result, it took the group an entire two
hours to actually reach the treeline.
Before they landed in the Mighty Oak's torched shrine relatively close to it,
the group circled a few times above the now worse-for-wear Greenwood. Some of
the houses had burnt branches, and one unlucky abode was burnt to a crisp and
collapsed on itself. And yet, all the villagers therein with the exception of
the pregnant mares and foals were trotting about, pulling wagons of fresh logs
and pieces of that abode in addition to lugging various tools around. There
were hammers and two-handled saws, a few nails and auburs that would need to be
either hoof or magically operated for use, and some axes and shovels and picks
to dislodge and cut up any fragment stuck in the ground.
The elderly ponies and the triad of leaders took less time actually helping
cart around the luggage and more time directing the younger villagers toward
key points in the village, where damaged houses needed immediate repairs lest
they end up like the one which had collapsed. Some elders helped where the
youngsters could not easily bear loads on their own, rushing over and magically
lifting heavy planks of scorched or fresh wood, or with entire piles of fresh
logs when needed. In spite of last night's inferno, Greenwood seemed to be
embracing synergy to almost harmonic levels. And sure, there were still no
pegasi to be seen within the village proper, yet the unicorns and earth ponies
therein looked to be doing just fine without them.
All in all, the village had gotten out of the blaze mostly intact and with
enough unharmed and able-bodied villagers chipping in with effort and necessary
tools, which meant that things were more or less alright… for the time being.
Twilight hovered above them for a moment longer, marvelling at the sight. A
twang of longing struck a chord throughout her nerves, and for a brief second
she thought of Ponyville, idly wondering how Ivory Scroll was handling the town
with her and her friends absent. She could only hope things were going
swimmingly back in Mythos.
The moment they touched down, and a second after when Twilight caught up with
them, the illusion wore off of the whole group. Twilight turned to Lance and
smiled as he proudly flared his wings and flapped a few times with a happy
whinny leaving his mouth before he folded them and looked at her with a grin.
"I feel like I am already getting the hang of flying again," he chirped. He
bowed his head—bowed!—and fanned his wings low with the motion, his primaries
touching the ground. "Thank you, sincerely."
Twilight's grin widened. "Don't mention it," she chirped back. Her smile
dropped. "What's the plan?"
Lance straightened his posture and folded his wings shut. He looked to Anna and
Sarah before nodding once. "You two… first off, my blaster, if you please," he
stated. Anna nodded and lit up her horn, carefully unravelling the ribbon on
her back to make sure she did not accidentally pull the trigger. When that was
done, she magically hoofed the Accelerator over, letting it come to a gentle
rest between his wings.
"Aren't you going to…" Twilight started, but trailed off when Lance moved to
stand upright, arching his forehooves over his head to grapple the blaster and
hold it in front of his chest. "... oh," she weakly finished as he hefted it
over his withers. "Say… are you biologically built differently? The only pony I
could see pulling your stunt would be Pinkie Pie," she queried.
Lance nodded in earnest. "We Fantasians have a more… upright-leaning skeletal
structure, with broader shoulders and hips to enable that sort of thing. All
fours is still more preferable in the long run, but I do this just to carry the
damn cannon for the short-term," he replied. "Of course, the skeletal structure
doesn't make things much easier, just more bearable."
Twilight quirked a brow. "A different skeletal structure?" she pressed. "Could
you… provide x-rays for me? Because that sounds dubious," she muttered.
Lance's grin widened. "Gladly, but we'll have to clean up here before then," he
answered. "The plan is, we search for any more cursed trees that escaped the
blaze intact, or… are torn open enough that we could easily see what makes
them… well, cursed trees."
"What about Greenwood?" Katie piped up.
"Eh, let them be for now. They're just rebuilding; besides, we'd be dicks for
crashing that party," Lance stated.
"Isn't the father of that filly's foal in there somewhere?" Twilight pressed.
Lance shook his head and his smile dropped.
"Given that the baby's a pegasus, the father would have very likely came from
outside Greenwood to knock her up. Either that, or somepony slipped through the
cracks long ago and genetics decided to toss in a pair of wings for once,"
Lance stated firmly. He flared his own wings for emphasis. "Greenwood's
strictly earth and unicorn-based, to the point of booting dissidents and
outsiders altogether. Shining saw that first-hoof," he added, flapping once.
"They'd probably throw logs at us anyway just because three of us have wings."
Twilight mulled it over and sighed. "And going there now would be
counterproductive… for everyone," she finished for him.
"Exactly," Lance agreed with a nod. He turned to Anna and Sarah. "And two of us
still want to avoid that town altogether." He glanced up as a hum filled the
air to find an airship as it came down to land at their clearing, hearing
something angrily stomping around within it with enough force to actually shake
it. He promptly walked up to the nearest stone henge. Twilight and the others
followed him, simply to let the shuddering airship land. The moment it hit
solid, scorched soil, the gangplank fell open, and out of the vessel stomped
the Mighty Oak, looking a little singed in places himself but otherwise
alright.
A few changeling soldiers flanked the Mighty Oak, wings beating to keep them
aloft. One actually had the audacity to alight on his head, though the sentient
construct really didn't seem to mind all that much. He did not even lift his
spear-arm or knuckles to bat the changeling away. "Our friend here did not like
being kept indoors overnight," the changeling on the Mighty Oak's head
reported.
Lance nodded and lifted a hoof from the Accelerator to motion the changelings
back. "Alright. Take the ship up before the villagers take notice," he ordered.
The changelings nodded back and flew back into the vessel, only for a few to
poke their heads out to make sure the gangplank wouldn't scrape their friend on
its way up prior to going back inside and closing it shut. The airship beat its
wings, and in seconds it ascended to the air to rejoin the others.
Once that was done, the Mighty Oak promptly turned to the group and marched up
to them. He stared intently at the lot for a moment, before lifting his
knuckles and hovering them just inches from Anna. She lifted a hoof and tapped
at the knuckles once, before they shifted to Sarah. She lifted a claw and
banged on the steel for a bit, and the Mighty Oak retracted with another nod.
He lifted his knuckles again and held them before Lance, who lifted a hoof and
tapped at the steel as Anna had done. He backed off and nodded again.
"Um… it's a golem, right?" Twilight asked uneasily.
Lance nodded. He turned to Anna expectantly. She noticed and turned to Twilight
before elaborating, "He, actually, but yes you'd be right. I was told he was
crafted by one of Fantasia's alicorns and given life long before Faust and
Godcat were sealed." She smiled. "Dad let us play with him when we were
little."
Twilight nodded, and turned to the Mighty Oak. He looked at her intently, in
turn. Eventually, he nodded again, and lifted his spear-arm to gesture to an
eastmost henge. Runes lit up, and Anna turned to it with a frown. Twilight
conjured the rune-translating book and flitted through it, gradually piecing
together what the henge was trying to convey to her. "'I see you have made some
new friends,'" she translated.
The Mighty Oak nodded fervently at that. Twilight closed the book and made it
vanish. "Shall we get going, then?" she asked, to much nodding from the group.
She looked around, and spotted the gate before long. A metal-clad hoof coming
to rest on her withers stopped her just as she raised a hoof, and she turned to
Anna to find that she had extended that metal-clad hoof, in addition to a
shaking of the head.
"That way… goes to Greenwood," Anna muttered dismally. "We'll have to go due
east to avoid it."
Twilight nodded and turned to the henge whose runes lit up. "That way, then?"
she guessed. Anna nodded and promptly trotted to it, lifting a hoof to touch it
with a sigh that Twilight could've sworn was almost nostalgic. Lance walked up
to her and draped a wing over her withers, and she offered him a small, tired
smile in return.
"Dude, have you fucking married my sister?" Sarah asked, causing the two to
jump and stumble for a moment.
"No, I haven't," Lance answered, turning to Sarah with both brows raised high.
"Why do you ask?"
Sarah snorted, nostrils flaring as air left them. "Seriously? You keep…
wrapping your wings around her, for Godcat's sake. And some days she likes you
and some days, so I hear, she'll want to wedge arrows up your ass. That's
something only somepony's wife would do," she stated, as though it were fact.
At that, Lance again shook his head.
"If I'd have married Anna, strictly in the hypothetical sense, I'd have put a
golden ring on her horn by now, and another on my left wingjoint," Lance
countered firmly, frowning as he said that. "As things are, even if I'd like
to, I cannot do so."
Now, it was Sarah's turn to raise her brow. "And why not?" she challenged.
Lance proceeded to curl one set of primaries over themselves, only to extend
them one at a time as he rattled off, "One, pulling rank. Two, she's still a
little too young for me, and three, she's prone to sprouting bark and ivy
leaves. Four, we're still trying to figure out what broke the damned barrier,
and at this rate—"
Katie decided to interject, "Um, not to speak out of turn, but… one of the
trees told me a single word yesterday. Before the wildfire."
Lance turned to Katie almost immediately. "'splain," he ordered.
"The tree… said 'pestilence.' I don't know what context in which it could mean,
but…" Lance raised a hoof and waved it, and Katie promptly shut her mouth
before she could finish. He turned to Anna, only to find her tensing on the
spot.
"... pestilence, you said?" Anna asked, ears folding back as a scowl wormed its
way onto her face. At Katie's nod, she shuddered and stomped the ground.
"Please… don't utter that word again."
Katie's ears jutted upright. "Is it bad, in the sense that Maria would define
it?" she pressed.
Anna haltingly nodded. "Exceedingly," she muttered. "Just… don't…"
Katie hesitantly nodded back. "A-alright…" she muttered. "I wonder if it's
because of her parents," she thought idly, looking at the Mighty Oak as it
raced through her head. "Does he like wraiths?" she queried, lifting a hoof to
point at the Oak for emphasis.
The Mighty Oak shook in response. But he did not approach her, nor Twilight,
who trotted up to Lance. Sarah groaned, rolled her eyes, and followed them
reluctantly. Behind them, the Mighty Oak walked, and as one the group passed
the henges into the scorched Ashwood.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
It took them a little under thirty minutes to reach a small clearing created by
the wildfire last night, scorched pitch-black all around and with trees having
collapsed under their own weight as a result of the inferno. This was thanks to
the group's skills in flight and self-levitation, in addition to the sheer size
and speed of the Mighty Oak. A mile away, they could barely see the patch of
obsidian, standing proud and tall despite what had happened. None of the trees,
as a result of collapsing, reached any barrels; the tallest one only towered an
inch past Katie's height were she to stand on the ground with ears and wings
upright.
Twilight was magically sifting through the torched wood, with Anna and NoLegs
chipping in. Not one cursed tree had ever been in the clearing; there was not
even the slightest hint of bone in the resultant charcoal to indicate as much.
Sarah took to manually overturning crumbling logs, and Lance used his wings to
dust off parts of those logs as best as he could. The Mighty Oak watched them
intently, wondering what it was they were digging for.
Katie herself didn't chip in to help. Her body ached as she looked at the burnt
bark and other bits of scorched fauna that was once alive. She'd already done
enough damage, and honest to Godcat she was wondering why Lance decided to drag
her back here anyway. Of course, she didn't vocalize that part of her concerns,
as the nymph within her told her 'Shut your mouth and be good,' and for once in
her life she was compelled to obey that inner nymph.
Ten minutes into the overturning of blackened rubble, the group reached the
pile taller than Katie herself, who noted that a lot more burnt wood had caved
in there than the surroundings. In fact, that was dubiously so, to the point
the pile almost looked like a closed flower, waiting to bloom with the sun's
morning rays. She turned away as Twilight lifted a few of the hunks of burnt
bark, only to shriek and backpedal with her magic flickering weakly as doing
that uncovered a pair of soot-covered skeletons.
Anna and Sarah both cried out as well upon seeing the skeletons. One sported a
broken horn, and tattered remnants of a beard, while the other had a beak and a
talon that lay outstretched. There was a second talon clutching a mound of dirt
with a skeletal hoof wrapped around it as well, rather protectively at that,
coming from the skeleton with the beak. Hoof and claw met at the mount and held
each other in a cold, tight grip, and tarsus and pastern sported one golden
ring each. Had Katie looked at that moment, she would've sworn the rings
weren't there before.
Sarah gabbled, her brain scrambling as she tried to process what lay before
her. Katie winced, her ache growing stronger as she heard the immediate
confusion fast giving way. She tried, desperately, to ignore it, but her body
was not keen on obeying this day. Pain shot through her veins as the Mighty Oak
himself walked over to inspect the ghastly scene. Lance stepped back,
scrutinizing the skeletons for a moment, his wings drooping slightly as Sarah
turned to Anna.
"Wh… who are they?" Sarah asked, slowly, her voice cracking and still fraught
with confusion.
Anna looked away from her sister, and to the skeletons. Even deprived of most
of their flesh, and with so much still buried under the rubble, she seemed to
note several once-familiar features. Hesitantly, she lifted more bits of bark
aside with her magic, revealing more bones belonging to the deceased. She
pushed these aside, and more bark after that, until at last complete skeletal
structures were exposed.
Twilight, feeling bile rising in her throat as she watched, noted that the
unicorn's skeleton had broader shoulders and hips, spaced further apart for
reasons she could not place. Perhaps the owner had been crushed in the rubble,
which seemed a possibility given that the bones were just excavated. The other
skeleton had back hooves, and wing-bones flared wide and broken, with one
draped over the unicorn that lay with it.
Sarah's heart stopped for one beat when the full tableau was exposed before
her. "Wh-who…" she managed in a croak.
Anna turned to Twilight, who saw tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
Slowly, she raised a shoe-clad hoof and gestured to the skeletons. "Twilight…"
she said in a low, bitter tone, "take a few steps closer. I'm sure…" The raised
hoof shook, and Anna struggled to keep it still as a fresh tear trailed down
her cheek. "I'm sure… they'd like to meet you."
It took mere seconds, and a few glances between the skeletons and the twins,
before Anna's unspoken meaning registered to Twilight. Her stomach clenched,
and her heart drummed harder. In an effort to see something else—anything else
at this rate—her eyes gravitated to the lone mound that was the only thing
between the cadavers. Even then, she saw the hoof and claw continuing to clutch
it well beyond the mortal coil.
Slowly, she took a few steps forward, before Katie let loose her tongue and
grappled her neck with it. She felt Katie shaking her head when the tongue
formed one loose coil. Another unspoken meaning registered: "Don't." Before
Twilight could contemplate why Katie would perform such an action, Sarah strode
to the mound of dirt and thrust her own talons into it. In seconds, she was
digging, pulling aside whole chunks of earth as thick as her fist to uncover
something trapped beneath the collection of soil. She paused, eyes alighting
with recognition as she stared at the object before proceeding to pry apart
more chunks of soil to uncover more of its form.
"... Mr. Muffin? Wh-who left you here?" Sarah queried as she uncovered a small,
stuffed and dirtied teddy bear in the broken mound of dirt. Through the grime,
she could still see patches of white, accentuated by an equally-dirtied golden
ribbon. She reached in and pulled the small plush out, and noted that despite
the dirt and some small scratch-marks in his fur that made a bit of cotton and
a few flecks of blackened crystals spill out, he seemed more or less alright.
Her pupils shrank, and she brought the plush close to her chest as her eyes
settled on the skeletons once again.
In seconds, everything dawned on her, just as it had Twilight. Sarah
backpedaled on her hooves, wings flaring and pupils shrinking in alarm. Lance
turned to her, noticing the toy, though he elected not to say anything. NoLegs
did not utter anything telepathically either. Both could see the wide-eyed
horror on her face, knowing full well the reason behind it, and it made their
stomachs turn. Anna magically pulled something else out of the loose mound of
soil, and held the object a distance away from the skeletons before shaking it
off. She promptly brought it back to herself and unraveled it, revealing it to
be a parchment of paper. Then, she beckoned Lance and NoLegs over with a hoof.
Lance trotted over and leaned to the parchment, finding more archaic scrawlings
that could only barely pass off as runic writing. Ink splotches and scuff marks
born of dirt ran rampant on the frame, and with soot thrown in for good
measure, not only made the parchment appear older than it was but obscured much
of its writing. He and NoLegs had to squint their eyes just to make out the
outlines of the various letters splashed haphazardly upon its surface.
NoLegs magically took the parchment and looked over it thrice. He glanced at
Anna, who nodded back to him. "I can't read much of it. What little I can
doesn't… make sense," she answered. NoLegs nodded back and looked over the
paper one more time before magically embracing everyone, even the Mighty Oak,
and filling their thoughts with his voice as he read the note to them.
"'To the Envoy of Cocytus, I never thought that you would visit me and my
beloved after we became wraiths. Much less had we expected you to deliver such
news that our daughters were in Frostbite when you last, supposedly, saw them.
But I shouldn't have been surprised when you did. Not the least bit.'"
"Envoy of Cocytus? Who's that?" Twilight interjected. NoLegs looked at her and
shrugged in earnest.
He continued to read, "'However, when I saw you with that cat and those
gryphons, something struck me as very odd. I could tell, almost immediately,
that you all were hiding something. The way you fidgeted… the way you
sidestepped when asked… that's something someone who'd tell the truth would
avoid doing.'" NoLegs paused to give Katie a look, and she merely glanced away.
He shrugged it off and continued, "'Thus, regardless of whether you told a lie
or a truth, I have decided to end it here. My beloved Veronica made no motion
to object. For us, there is no going back; nothing more to atone for than our
past failures. Should you find this note, stay as far away from Greenwood as
you can. I know not the full extent of what goes on behind its closed doors, as
I have deliberately distanced myself and my family to keep them safe, but I can
assure you it is most unpleasant.'"
Lance's brow furrowed at that. He turned to Anna and Sarah, both of whom nodded
weakly in confirmation to that last statement. "I haven't seen much myself…"
Sarah muttered, turning to the bear in her claws. "Mr. Muffin helped me leave
when things got really bad." To much of Twilight's immediate confusion, he
decided to not query about the very absurd and borderline bizarre flight of
fancy that was a stuffed bear supposedly helping Sarah get out of Ashwood.
Before Twilight could speak about it, much less glean when this event
supposedly happened, somepony else decided to interject and cut off that train
of thought right in its bud.
"You… wouldn't believe me if I told you," Anna muttered, just as grimly.
Katie jerked to Anna, orbs widening as she retracted her tongue. "You know what
goes on there, don't you?!" she hissed. At Anna's nod, she flared her wings and
buzzed. "Well, what is it?!"
Anna lifted a hoof and removed the shoe with her magic. Once she did, the skin
on that hoof writhed and twisted with an angry red pulse of mana, causing its
fur to ripple unnaturally. She put the shoe back on, whereupon the pulse of
mana ceased, and her skin fell still. "Anna.. is there something horrific going
on?" Twilight pressed. All she got was another glum nod.
NoLegs sighed and continued to read, seeing that Anna had gone tight-lipped all
of a sudden, "'It is as I lay here, in the burning remnants of my own house,
that I realized I will go to Hell for my inaction. I could not save my foals.
The only comfort I have is that Veronica is coming with me, and when we cross
the gates… Greenwood will fall. Anna Aria Windwood, and Sarah Rhapsody
Lyregale… if you are, by some twisted miracle of fate, reading this, I love
you. I can only hope you forgive me… but turn back once you conclude reading
this. Take Mr. Muffin with you, if you can. I will watch you, even though I
will surely have been cast into Hell's fiery pits… and I will, likewise,
witness the calamity that will befall Greenwood…'"
NoLegs frowned as he made the note vanish in a flash of light. "'That was…
deeply disturbing," he telepathically groaned.
"'The calamity that will befall Greenwood…'" Lance mused, frowning at that.
"What the utter fuck was he babbling on about?"
"Greenwood seemed fine…" Twilight added, putting a hoof to her chin and tapping
idly. Turning to Anna again, she pressed forward, "Are you gonna elaborate for
us, or is this something we'll have to see ourselves?"
"The latter," Anna muttered, shaking her head. "Honestly… I'm not sure what he
meant by 'calamity,' but… but if he told me and Sarah to stay out of it…"
Katie's stomach twisted as she finished that statement for Anna, her own voice
grim and dour, "... then it can't bode particularly well."
***** Start of Arc V: Chapter LXXIX- The Abode of Wysteria *****
Lance and Twilight frowned as the group formed a small circle, while the Mighty
Oak dug into the earth with his massive steel knuckles. Everyone was ruminating
about the very cryptic warning they had received from the fire-torn remnants
that were once a house. Sarah would not yield her tight grip over Mr. Muffin,
and sat with body shaking and feathers puffing as a trench was carved into the
ground.
At least, deathly silence hadn't held the group as it had in the crystal
caverns. Katie relaxed a little at that, content to listen to the rhythmic
scraping of soil as the Mighty Oak continued to dig. "So… should we still look
around… after the Mighty Oak…" Anna trailed off, brow furrowing as she looked
to where the deceased pair had been discovered.
"Yes," Lance replied tersely, his voice grim as the hole the Mighty Oak made
deepened substantially. "Which reminds me…" He turned to Katie and addressed
her as the Mighty Oak jumped into the hole, which was now deep enough to
swallow both his feet easily, "Were either of them, in any way, literally
vegetating?"
Katie shook her head as the Mighty Oak used his arms to haul himself out of the
hole. "The stallion had… tumors on his neck, but that was about it," she
replied dismally. "Either he was… starting to, or he swallowed things that
fused… into his neck somehow."
"But the flames got him before he could turn, if he was indeed turning," Lance
muttered. A mute nod of confirmation answered to him, and his wings drooped as
he turned to the skeletons when the Mighty Oak approached them again.
He stomped the ground once in front of them with a massive foot, and mana
pulsed through the ground before vines erupted and tenderly grasped every bone
in an embrace like that of a blanket. The vines lifted the skeletons, and
slowly, precariously placed them into the hole he had dug, careful to keep
their rings on their pastern and tarsus. Once laid at the bottom, the vines
pulled the dirt over top them in a smothering blanket, until the ground was
once again flat with only the barest traces of loose soil to ever confirm that
patch had indeed been tampered with. A low groan left the Mighty Oak as he
forced his metal jaw to move, and he trembled in place for a few seconds as he
looked upon the fresh grave he had just dug.
Then he turned to the rest of the party, his metal jaw closing and a spark of
green fire alighting in his seemingly empty eyes. He stomped once, and everyone
stood up to face him. Even though he was unable to physically shift his face
beyond its meager movements, they could still sense something budding within
him. Another low groan left him, and the sparks of flame dribbled from his eyes
in a manner reminiscent of tears. He stomped again, and more vines erupted
before ensnaring four pieces of the torn house, forming crude crosses that were
then affixed onto the soil, the vines snapping off their roots to wrap around
the pieces and hold them in place.
Twilight hesitantly approached the Mighty Oak, frowning when she noted he
didn't seem to realize he was somehow crying. "They… were your friends… weren't
they?" she asked, garnering a reluctant nod in response. The Mighty Oak groaned
again, jaw parting for a moment, which amplified the sound and somehow made it
echo somberly. Then it snapped shut, and he waved his knuckles at the house one
last time.
Vines erupted once more, forming a thick wall with holes that alighted with
green power. Twilight turned to it and stared for a moment before realizing he
was trying to convey something to her with those gaps. She pulled out her
translation book from the thaumic plane and pieced together what the message
was, "'Nobody should have to bury their own friends… what did they do to
deserve this?'" The vines retracted into the soil, and Twilight made the book
vanish. "Is that why you were stomping around in the airship?" She got a nod
from the Mighty Oak.
Silence held for a long moment, as nobody could conjure an answer to the Mighty
Oak's translated question. How could they answer it, when the only thing they
knew was that the deceased died willingly? Lance's stomach twisted as he
remembered the soldiers pulling the Mighty Oak away, and considered that they
had to take him by force, now mentally picturing him trying to reach his
companions, slowly but surely being consumed by fire…
No wonder he was stomping about, in that case. He started wondering who else
may have been trapped in Ashwood, when the wildfire broke out, unable to leave
because the Mighty Oak wasn't there to save them in their moment of need...
Possibilities turned in his head, each more dismal than the last. He recalled
that Ashwood was suspiciously quiet last night, as the fires raged and tore it
from the roots up, and that as far as cursed trees were concerned, nothing
turned up yet. Had, perhaps, the entire forest decided to die then and there?
He looked around; just him, his group, and felled and torched trees littered
the scene.
Katie turned to Lance, noticing his silence. "Some of the torches… were alight
with blue fire," she muttered, snapping him out of his stupor and causing him
to look at her. "In a clearing. We should investigate that first."
Lance frowned. "I heard something about that yesterday…" he muttered, brow
furrowing. "But why do you want to start there?"
"Something about that clearing… was off, sir. Just… wrong," Katie replied,
shivering as she recalled her hoof nearly catching fire. "The gryphons
accompanying me suspected absorbed pegasus magic, and literal loads of it." She
buzzed her wings, teeth grinding a little. "If the torches are still around
when we get to that clearing, I'll eat my tail!" Her ears perked, then rotated
as she caught a faint sound. She strained, trying to ascertain what it was and
where it was coming from.
Lance opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, when his ears rotated too. Anna
and Sara's ears, likewise, moved in unison. Twilight and NoLegs followed suit,
as slowly the noise grew louder. They heard twigs snapping, leaves crunching,
and something shuffling about in the fire-torn undergrowth with a fervor that
could only be called panicked. In tandem with that, though, came a horrific and
pained cry that distorted the longer it dragged on. Eyes darted, and even the
Mighty Oak found himself glancing around to figure out where the sound was
coming from. It persisted for a few minutes, stopping only with a hiccup, and
then resumed without its source revealing itself.
Katie deftly hopped off of Twilight's back and landed smoothly on her hooves.
Silently, she trotted past a few of the felled trees, slowly as to avoid
startling the already-shrieking newcomer who was raising quite a fuss. She
chittered softly, shifting her body low and keeping her wings shut as she slunk
out of sight past the barely-visible obsidian patch. Several minutes passed,
with the shuffling continuing and the outburst growing louder and more frantic,
before silence settled so fast all eyes that could widen did widen. Had
something gone wrong? Did the source of the outburst calm down? Or was it an
illusion?
They got their answer when Katie cooed, just loud enough for the whole lot to
hear, "Hey, hey… it's okay, little guy…" The crying started all over again
immediately after that, but amidst it they could hear Katie mutter, trying to
reassure that which was wailing. Exchanging glances, Sarah and Anna took a few
steps away from the group before vanishing beyond the trees and obsidian patch,
keeping their steps slow and quiet. Lance and Twilight followed them, as did
NoLegs, whilst the Mighty Oak opted to stay in the clearing.
They came upon a most bizarre sight a good forty yards away from where the
grave had been freshly dug, under a felled tree that managed to stay mostly
intact after it landed on one of its worse-off brethren. There, Katie had laid
down and cradled something that struggled in her forelegs, ears pinned back as
she nuzzled and cooed to get it to calm down. Seeing the group approaching,
Katie extended her tongue to wave them over, as her hooves were currently
occupied in more ways than one.
Seeing the invitation, the group came closer before they blanched in unison. A
tiny, thin, and heavily burnt foal wailed and thrashed with hooves made of
bloodied, soot-covered bark. Wings of tattered leaves buzzed feebly, and eyes
of a dulled, almost milky forest green were glistening with fear and wide,
glancing everywhere they could in an effort to find a way out. Blood stained
the foal's tiny, pale face in dried droplets, and it kept trying to use its
hooves to push Katie away. Strangely, despite the bark and leaves and the
horrific burns, this little one wasn't rotting even as branches were growing
out of its head and rear in place of a mane and tail. "Dear Godcat… you're
kidding me…" Lance muttered, pupils shrinking at the sight.
Katie shook her head even as she tried to soothe the screeching tree-baby.
However, the child continued to fuss and shriek, flailing for all it was worth.
Lance hoofed his blaster over to Anna, who took it in her magic before he
shifted to lay down in front of the two with hooves extended. Sensing what he
was wanting her to do, Katie hoofed the baby over to him, brow furrowing. "Do
we take this one?" she asked.
Lance hastily nodded and turned to cradle the baby, who tensed and hushed upon
noticing it was in another set of forelegs. He looked at the foal, who looked
back at him with a sniffle. "Hey… relax. You're safe," he muttered, keeping his
voice soft as he shifted hold the foal to his barrel. The foal immediately
began to shriek again, but quieted when the legs holding it gently bounced.
"Shh…" The baby shifted to cling to his uniform, and slowly Lance shifted to
stand on his hinds again, wings spread for balance.
Katie stood up again, eying the child warily. "I'd say we're not taking samples
off that one. Just… no," she muttered.
Lance gave another curt nod, continuing to bounce the foal in his legs to
placate it. "Yeeeeeah, Alexander ain't getting his claws on this one," he
agreed. He turned to Katie. "Filly, or colt?"
"Colt," Katie replied bluntly.
"So… what do we do?" Twilight queried, looking at the child intently. "How do
we feed him… and can he still eat?"
Lance sighed, shrugging his shoulders as the child finally hushed, looking
around with very wide eyes. "I doubt it. He's probably not eaten since… I don't
know when, to be honest." He shifted to nuzzle the foal, wincing as his snout
brushed up against fraying bark. The foal poked him with a hoof, and he pulled
his head back. "And the little guy's already part tree, too… which is going to
make caring for him a lot more challenging…"
Twilight's brow slanted. "Do you think you can manage it?" she queried
sincerely.
Lance nodded. "If nothing else, I can keep him calm," he replied. He turned to
Sarah and eyed the plush she stubbornly clung to. "Do you think Mr. Muffin
would make a good friend for the tyke?"
Sarah's eyes darted from Mr. Muffin to the foal, then back again. "Not like
this, no," she muttered. "He'll need to be cleaned and patched up first…"
Lance nodded, seeing why Sarah made the remark. He turned to Twilight. "Would
you be comfortable holding the little guy?" he asked.
Twilight nodded, lit up her horn, and took the foal in her magic, smiling as
the child went with quietly. She watched, perplexed, as the little one buzzed
his false wings with a changeling's fervor. "Hrm… would this count as 'bound
wings?'" she asked.
"Not really much wing to bind, in the strictly biological sense," Lance
groaned, flexing his forelegs before slowly retaking his blaster from Anna. He
lifted one of his wings to brush his primaries against the child, who burbled
and tried to grasp the feathers. "I'd wager none at all." He smiled as the baby
managed to wrap his little barky hooves around a primary, cooing in a distorted
voice that still held an air of innocence about it.
Anna's horn alighted, and she took off her front shoes before making them
vanish. "Well… the poor thing's gonna need a basket," she pointed out,
garnering a look from Lance and Twilight.
"You are right… but where are we going to get a basket?" Twilight shot back,
frowning.
The ground beneath Anna pulsed and trembled slightly, shimmering with a green
ripple of mana. "You'll see," Anna replied with a cheeky grin budding on her
face. The ground shook, a low groan filled the air, and trees snapped as the
Mighty Oak finally decided to catch up, stopping just behind the group. She
turned to him with a nod and jerked her horn to Twilight for emphasis as the
ground pulsed with another viridian ripple.
Twilight turned to the Mighty Oak and lifted the child a little higher than her
head. The Mighty Oak tilted his body slightly, and lifted his knuckles slowly,
until they could brush up against tiny wooden hooves. The baby squealed and
cooed as he started tapping at the knuckles with all four legs, and then
stopped and curled up when the knuckles retracted. She turned to Anna as she
levitated the foal to her barrel, before feeling the ground pulse and heave a
little with power.
Twilight opened her mouth, about to ask what Anna was going to do, when the
ground in front of the felled tree cracked and split in several places. Mana
seeped into the breaks in the soil, filling them until light burst from them in
miniature rays that weaved twisting lines that had no structure, no form, no
fine-tuned control. Simply put, light became corporeal and extended, outwards
from ash-laden soil in serpentine motions. The magic danced around Anna's horn,
yet did not launch from it. Her flesh writhed unnaturally, before a bit of ivy
sprouted from her left foreleg with something cradled in its leaves.
"A-are you transmogrifying again?!" Twilight asked. Anna shook her head.
"No," Anna replied, voice echoing with power, "merely utilising my special
talent." She conjured arrows in a few flashes of light and stabbed them into
the ground where light erupted, causing that light to twist around them and
hold tight. These arrows were different from her standard, Twilight noticed;
predominately bark with feather fletchings and steel heads. The ivy growing
from her foreleg threw several small somethings with enough force to make them
land in the holes and retracted back into its host, leaving just a small wound
and an upwelling of smeared blood as proof that it had been there.
The power pulsed through the ground with increasing intensity and frequency,
and the light embraced the arrows down to their feathers. Yet, not once did the
glow turn red, nor did Anna's eyes as she concentrated. Slowly, the tiny
objects that were lobbed onto the arrows burst, and from them more viridian
vines expanded outward, gradually taking the shape of the light. NoLegs waved
his tail and, with a flicker of his own magic, summoned the wooden horse on
wheels again and watched as poison ivy slowly grew into a manageable, corporeal
form. When they ivy started rising past the fletching in an effort to find
something else to ensnare, Anna merely lifted the arrows out of the holes,
careful to avoid cutting the vines and keeping their roots in the soil at the
same time.
The ivy continued to grow, steadily growing inch by inch as the arrows they
were anchored to kept rising up into the air, ensuring the vines could not
grapple for anything else. Mana repeatedly pulsed, nay, pumped itself into the
earth and the roots of the ivy, hastening its growth at an admirable rate. When
the vines were about as long as the felled tree, the arrows disentangled
themselves and an aura seized the plants by their roots before yanking them out
of the soil in tandem.
Twilight gave a low whistle at the sight and watched as the vines were rolled
onto themselves in almost perfect coils, each about the size of a pony's head
when Anna got through with them. Anna conjured her front horseshoes again and
slipped them on, turning to Twilight with a small smile on her muzzle. "My
curse… has some benefits," Anna muttered, ears folding back a little. "Just…
not a lot of them."
Twilight sighed, and flinched as the infant poked her in the barrel with his
bark-laden hooves. "What are you going to do with the ivy?" she asked, glancing
between the gathered coils and Anna for a moment.
Anna frowned. "Make a basket for our little guy," she replied.
Lance flared his wings and flapped once. "I'll do an aerial preliminary in the
meantime, see if I can spot any wayward torches," he muttered, turning to Anna.
"You have a radio on hoof?" Anna nodded and conjured a radio in a flash of
light, affixing it to the collar of her dress with care, before conjuring
another one and affixing that to the collar of Lance's uniform and turning both
devices on with another flick of magic. He nodded and turned to address Katie.
"You want to help?"
Katie's wings flared instantly, and buzzed with fervor as NoLegs conjured her
clawed shoes and put them on her hooves. She turned to the little one, who
stretched his legs and yawned. "Sounds good. Pretty confident little twiggy
over there will be safe in the meantime," she muttered. Then her wings sagged.
"A timberbaby. Great Godcat, what the hell has Fantasia come to…?" With that,
both she and Lance took off rather clumsily into the skies, one struggling to
balance his wingbeats and the other veering a few feet away just to avoid
getting a faceful of said wingbeats.
~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~
An hour after they launched, making sure to keep to the treeline as they
fitfully scanned Ashwood, nothing turned up for Lance and Katie. Lance had kept
his blaster firmly in his hooves, in case anything struck him and his soldier,
who was leading him to the clearing that she had mentioned. All the while, both
listened intently for anything to come through the radio, and from the world
below their wings. Only silence answered to them from the latter; the whole of
Ashwood was as still and tranquil as yesterday, and the ectoplasms that still
reigned in the skies had likewise gone quiet. A niggling feeling that something
was wrong settled in their guts and minds, but neither elected to comment on
it.
The radio, however, was animated with chatter. "Got the basket built, and some
dirt put in it so the ivy's rooted in it," Anna reported from her end.
"And the foal's condition?" Lance asked.
"In the basket and asleep with Mr. Muffin in his hooves," Anna replied in a
chipper voice. "And we've relocated back to… the shrine."
Lance frowned. "Why? Did something happen?" he asked.
"The Mighty Oak got antsy," Anna sighed, her voice followed by a low groan of
wood and metal.
Lance nodded and muttered, "Fair enough." His eyes gravitated down when Katie
stopped all of a sudden, and—what in the wide world of Fantasia was this? He
and Katie had come upon a clearing, lined with a ring of scorched torches
alight with suspect blue flames. Green miasma danced in the center, spiraling
around a tall willow tree that was not only in bloom, but decidedly not
scorched or punctured in any capacity whatsoever. The branches were long enough
to coil around the trunk twice, and with the flowers in the way, neither of the
airborne duo could ascertain if it had a door or not.
A whole uneven chasm surrounded the clearing in a jagged ovoid shape, each
twist and bend as wide as three Valkyrie tanks, with the whole thing going deep
enough into the earth to let magma spill out. Its radius was wide enough that
it effectively protected the clearing against the wildfire's wrath; still-lit
torches aside, virtually nothing had blackened. He turned to Katie, who looked
at him with shrunken orbs and hooves flailing in the direction of the bizarre
sight.
"That tree wasn't there before, I swear!" Katie gabbled. "That clearing was
empty yesterday, except for those torches!"
Lance turned to the sight again, and took a moment to study the chasm that cut
this sight off from the rest of Ashwood. "Forget that… how the hell did it get
out of Ragnarok intact, and turned into its own little island?" he questioned,
and he would have scratched his head at the strange sight if his hooves weren't
full.
"Found something?" Anna queried from her end of the line.
"Yeah, and I'm flabbergasted," Lance snarked in reply. "I'll investigate, see
what the hell is up, and then I'll rendezvous with you at the shrine."
"What is it?" Twilight piped up from Anna's end.
"A tree that isn't torched, and blooming," Lance replied bluntly as he and
Katie slowly descended into the clearing, stretching his back hooves a little
early to compensate for his loaded forelegs. "Not sure if it's a house yet,
since its branches are long as shit, but either way it's pretty strange." As he
and Katie touched down with a brief stagger and trotted to see the nearest
torch to discover burning rings and bleached skulls therein, the radio's
chatter picked up quite a pit.
"In bloom? But it's autumn!" Anna griped, sounding just as perplexed as
Twilight. Lance snorted and righted his posture first, and bade Katie to
approach the strange willow with a wing after they pulled away from the torch.
"Actually, some trees do bloom later than others," Twilight cut in as Katie
gave a reluctant nod and started to shamble forward. Twilight uttered a garbled
syllable before Anna decided to go on a little tirade and cut her off.
"I know that, thank you very much, but Ashwood was destroyed twice, if you
recall!" Anna pointed out, audibly stomping a hoof. "Nothing outside of
Greenwood should have survived, unless it's a really persistent cursed tree!"
"Sis, please don't wake the baby…" Sarah chimed in as Lance started to walk
after Katie, going slow to avoid tripping over her.
Anna audibly groaned. "Alright, alright," she muttered. NoLegs gave a meow as
Katie and Lance neared the admittedly-majestic branches, both pausing to stare
at the flowers, but not just because they were gorgeous. The petals were
uniformly formed, small and a delicate lilac in hue, untouched by any singe
marks whatsoever. Yet they oozed a thick, rather shady scent of iron and rot
that clashed horribly with their fragile appearance.
"... a wisteria willow," Lance muttered, nose wrinkling at the scent.
Katie lifted a shoe and brushed her claws against a flower, careful to avoid
cutting it. The flower bounced upon the claws, and did little else but eject a
tiny red seed onto the ground. That seed sizzled and popped as soon as it
landed, before it evaporated in a smog of green miasma that for but an instant
turned a hideous crimson. Her brow furrowed, and her hoof dropped at the
anomaly. "Strange… this tree seems to be of a magical sort…" she noted before
rearing onto her hinds to part the branches with her forelegs. More seeds
ejected from the ruffled flowers, each one vanishing in a puff of smog after a
crackle or two.
Lance cocked the Accelerator, ears twitching as Katie simply stopped. "You
okay?" he asked.
Katie gave a slow nod. "Yes. This tree, though… something ain't right with it,"
she muttered blandly. She turned her head to Lance, the rest of her body stiff.
"I don't trust the seeds. Do you think it would be wise to freeze these flowers
before they hork up more of them?"
Lance shook his head, and made to gesture Katie to stand aside when the tree
slowly, of its own accord, parted its branches. With a distinct red pulse of
mana, a swath was erected for them to pass through, revealing a pristine wood
door built into the trunk. Oddly, there were no window frames or sills to be
had here; just that door, and nothing more. Katie reoriented her head and
dropped back to all fours, and Lance found his grip on the blaster tightening.
"Whooo-kay, I'll be surprised if this is a cursed tree that has enough living
space for a cluster of twenty changelings," Katie muttered.
Hesitantly, the two approached the bark, and paused to turn around as the
branches closed behind them with another spray of smoking seeds. "If somepony's
actually sick enough in the head to do that, then why did we only find this
anomaly now?" Lance questioned, turning to the door first, noticing that crude
runes had been carved into its frame around a tarnished silver knob. He turned
to the branches after, but all that yielded was a sky clouded with flowers; he
couldn't see anything past them, let alone under them except for the door. When
his eyes gravitated back down, he and Katie exchanged concerned looks.
"Want me to trot around the bark before we break and enter?" Katie asked, brow
slanting. Lance gave a mute nod and watched as she started to trot around the
trunk. It wasn't long before she vanished from sight, and the only sign she was
even there was the gentle thunking of her shoes on the soil. It took her twenty
minutes to come back from the other side, brow furrowed again. "Nothin'," she
reported.
Lance sighed and readied the Accelerator, angling his wings to the blaster
before the tarnished knob spun, and the door spontaneously pulsed with red mana
that filled in the runes, before it opened with hinges a-creaking to reveal a
dark abyss beyond. Katie sat on her haunches and threw her forehooves into the
air. "Yeesh, is somepony lonely in there?!" she cried in exasperation, her
outburst echoing into the conspicuous tree.
Nopony answered from within the abode, if it was indeed even that. Katie stood
up and snorted before she took the first step inside, followed by Lance.
"Should've asked NoLegs to come with…" Lance muttered, glancing about in an
attempt to let his eyes adjust to the lack of light. "It would've been really
useful to have a light about now…"
NoLegs meowed from his end of the line, before Anna piped up, "What is it?"
"Found out the tree's a house, and it's dark," Lance replied.
"Peculiar… alright NoLegs, warp over to Lance," Anna muttered, before NoLegs
meowed and a pop sounded from the radio. Seconds after, he appeared before
Lance in a flash of light and alighted his tail. "Hooray for teleporting cats,"
Anna added wryly.
"Indeed," Lance agreed. Immediately, NoLegs jumped on his head and cast his
glow about the room they were in. A living room greeted them and Katie, thick
with dust that had seemingly drained most of the color, shrouding the space in
a brown hue as dull as the soil outside. Cabinets, open yet spaciously empty,
hung to their left, and to the right sat a small table and a large flight of
stairs going up. In front of them was another door leading deeper into the
house. Past that, the place was barren; nothing had even decorated the ceiling
unless the dust counted for something.
Katie's stomach twisted again as she beheld the sight. Lance's wings ruffled,
and NoLegs made his blaster vanish in a flash of light with his tail puffing
out. Hesitantly, Lance reverted to all fours, nose still slightly crinkled.
"Abandoned…" he muttered. He turned to Katie. "Hear anything?"
Katie's ears twitched, swiveled upright, and rotated repeatedly for a few
minutes. She eventually dropped them and shook her head when she failed to
detect a single sound. "Zero, zip, nada," she replied. "As still as a fucking
grave."
"So it let us in… and nobody's here…" Lance spread his wings and fanned them in
the air in lieu of his forehooves, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "This is…
a very peculiar house."
"Probably enchanted," Katie noted, wings shuddering for a moment. "I mean…
nothing else would come close to explaining why it admitted us to begin with."
She turned to Lance. "Which way first? That second door over there, or the
stairs?"
Lance pondered this for a second or two, and strode to the second door to
scrutinize it. On the surface of this door, he found naught but a splintering
array of runes that warped with age and a hole where a knob should've been. He
lifted a hoof to push it open, but when he made contact the door fell into the
next room with a thud that sent dust flying everywhere. He staggered back, hoof
shooting to his muzzle in a vain attempt to keep the dust out of his nose and
mouth, coughing with NoLegs as the cloud settled.
Peering into the room after sneezing a few times, Lance frowned when he eyed a
kitchen with cabinets thrown open and a countertop in the center of the room
with a cutting board resting upon it, and a dulled cleaver impaled on top of
it. Beneath the cabinets rested a metal sink, filled with dirty dishes coated
in a black grime so thick he couldn't tell what was silverware and what was
plates and bowls. It formed this improbable, shapeless blob that seemed to
inhale any dust that came into contact with it. A stench of rot came from that
sink, which made him gag a little before he reigned in his stomach and elected
to stay as far away from that atrocity as possible. NoLegs hissed, and likewise
shielded his mouth and nose with his tail.
He turned to scrutinize the rest of the kitchen, hoof still firmly on snout, to
find that another door stood opposite of the reeking sink. Then, something on
the counter caught his eye; the cleaver glinted with a distinct red color. Had
it rusted, perhaps? "Katie, c'mere a sec," he ordered, his voice muffled. He
heard thunking hooves and scraping claws, before he felt something tap his rear
pastern. Taking the hint, he trotted to the cutting board so Katie could enter
right behind him, and it did not take him long to hear her retch and hiss.
"What is that smell!? It reeks worse than where that disposal plant supposedly
stood!" Katie cried, coughing to get the stench out of her lungs.
"I don't know, and I don't want to find out," Lance grumbled in reply, turning
to study the cleaver when he noticed something jutting out a little from behind
the cutting board, practically small enough that he only noticed it now.
Curious, he trotted around the countertop to ascertain what it was, but stopped
as he reached one end of the countertop. Resting just behind it, flush against
the structure, was the bleached, headless and dust-covered skeleton of a long-
dead pegasus—a pegasus who, suspiciously enough, had rusted metal wing-bindings
and copper feathers with runes carved into them. Lance gave a sympathetic wince
at the sight, his own wings cringing as an old and particularly unpleasant pain
came to the forefront of his thoughts.
Well, he found the wing-bound pony he'd caught wind of, but the poor bastard
was already long dead. He hesitantly approached the hollowed-out carcass, and
began scrutinizing it in an attempt to find out what had killed this
unfortunate sap, and… huh? There was a rune-inscribed tarnished ring on its
left front pastern. He heard thunking steps again, and it took mere seconds for
Katie to emerge on the other side of the countertop. She, too, paused to
consider the corpse, putting a shoe to her chest in respect. Then she noticed
the ring and sighed. "Looks like this one got a dose of sablestone absorption…
but why?" she muttered.
"I wish I knew," Lance muttered dismally, eyes gravitating to NoLegs. "Take the
corpse. We'll bury it later." NoLegs nodded and made to grasp the skeleton in
his magic, but the moment he did the skeleton simply crumbled to dust, letting
the ring and wing-bindings clatter to the floor and kick up another cloud in
the process. Lance and Katie jumped and coughed in unison, grimacing as they
realized that body transport wouldn't be possible with this lost soul, either.
Nonetheless, NoLegs managed to grasp the wing-bindings and the ring the body
left behind, and made those vanish accordingly in a burst of light.
They turned to the cleaver again after, and found curled and dirtied feathers
resting just behind the cutting board. The feathers were so old the color
simply drained from them, and the caked-on dust only ensured that their
filaments clumped together uselessly. NoLegs touched them with his magic too,
but they likewise disintegrated. "What did they do, boil the poor bastard?
Bones and feathers don't crumble like that unless smashed, ripped, or drained
of collagen first…" Lance groused, brow furrowing.
"They'd need a pretty big pot to boil the pony," Katie hissed, rearing onto her
hinds and resting her fronts onto the countertop's side to better observe the
cleaver. "This may be the work of the unicorns who snagged your wings and
plucked you."
Lance gave another wince. "In that case, I get dibs on their horns," he hissed,
turning to the door that stood opposite the sink. There was something horribly
wrong with this place, and he was going to find out what exactly that was. It
did not escape his notice, however, that the radio had gone silent. "Anna? You
there?" he asked.
"Still here," Anna replied. "The ectoplasms' clouds are turning black… can we
go back to the airship?"
"Yes you can. Me, NoLegs, and Katie will follow you as soon as we are able,"
Lance answered.
"Alright. We've called the vehicular transport vessel so we can get the Mighty
Oak in the sky too," Anna replied. "We'll need to teleport to the mastership
anyway, solely for the baby's sake." She sighed. "He'll need a bath."
"Alright. Over and out," Lance muttered before he started to trot to the third
door. Strange, this one creaked open to let him in too, and without a pulse of
mana to signify any enchantments. What sort of secrets were hiding in this
wisteria-turned-house? Part of him demanded immediate answers, but his inner
skeptic warned that things could turn sour at any moment. Something was here in
this abandoned abode, of that much he was certain. With Katie falling in step
behind him, he reached the third door and lifted a hoof to throw it open as he
had the one before it.
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