Chapter One: Sudden Impact
-GUILTY HORNET-
-CHAPTER ONE-
"SUDDEN IMPACT"
I : AND THE QUEEN TAKES THE PAWN
She looked at me, her eyes glossy with un-shed tears, and I could see her emotions plain as day; written in bold across those wide, glassy disks: fear, self-doubt, regret – oh, but there was so much regret.
The buzz in the base of my horn had informed me of all this without me needing to look into those eyes, but that would not have given me the justification for my actions that I obtained from seeing, beneath it all, a battered but not quite broken conviction that she was right.
And she gazed, beseeching; begging, into my eyes – though they were not truly my own – and her mouth opened, and from those trembling lavender lips came the words:
“I’m sorry.”
She said it so sadly, and I could barely suppress the laugh which rose in my throat. Even now, she did not understand the truth of the situation.
I grinned a wolf’s grin and replied: “You will be.”
She frowned; her peculiar pony face twisting into a look of confusion. It was in this moment, as her question raced in vain to her lips, that I struck. A spell I had practiced many a time - but never quite found a use for -sprang forth from my horn and summoned the emerald light of my kind out from the ether, bribing it into flame with painstakingly gathered love.
The ring of fire formed around her as I had known it would, growing by the second so that after a few moments the sphere of magic I had beckoned forth engulfed her completely, sinking gracefully down, first into the tiles of the floor, and then the earth beneath.
I must admit that childish curiosity coerced me into inaction, and for some precious moments I watched her go. It did not last long, however, and I turned upon the hooves I had stolen and swept from the room without so much as a glance back.
II: THREAT PREVENTION
The thought came to me in the midst of an impromptu song, the contents of which are of no importance, that it might not be enough merely to trap the unicorn who would so easily destroy my plans. Cutting short my anticipatory revelry, instead of the spell I used on her, I cast an advanced teleportation spell as the means to take me where I needed to go. It was speed, rather than efficiency, which dictated this choice: if Twilight Sparkle (what a ridiculous, absurdly pony name) was as adaptable as her reputation claimed, it was possible that she may already have found the prisoner.
They could not be allowed to escape.
As the spell took hold I let the green flames welcome me into their embrace, and did not flinch when they flared like miniature suns, cutting me a door through to the other side of a fold in the fabric of space-time. This was my magic, what cause had I to be afraid? There were more pressing concerns than the paranoid what-ifs that came with higher magic at present, after all.
Glancing around me, my gaze was drawn by the faintly tugging buzz of emotions in my horn to one passage in particular. My quarry had not gotten far, then? It was unsurprising, I supposed, since she was at that point blissfully unaware of the hunt in progress.
I found her glancing listlessly at the unyielding crystal walls of her prison, searching for a way out. There was none to find – at least none that wasn’t guarded – and I relished in her distraction as I crept closer, dropping the useless disguise and humming in satisfaction as the fur-coated skin metamorphosed back to its chitinous true state.
She saw me as I closed on ten meters from her and she lit up her horn to defend herself, eyes widening whilst my horn buzzed from her fear. The bolt she loosed was hasty; poorly aimed, and I evaded it with ease with a mere step to the side, kindling an attack of my own.
She stared in dumb confusion as I cast a spell on myself, either unable to fathom – or, more likely, entirely ignorant of – my intended course of attack. The specialised sac in the roof of my mouth filled quickly and I let the newly synthesised gel-silk spill from my hollow fangs, to be spooled up in the grasp of my magic.
She fired again, and this time I had to dive to the floor to avoid being hit. She was clearly panicking: these were not purposeful spells but mindless bursts of magic. I had heard the naïve princess, Celestia, praise the unicorn’s intellect many times those past weeks, but it appeared that when Sparkle lost her cool, she lost much of her intelligence also.
I was almost disappointed – almost – by how easily this skirmish was turning in my favour; and very nearly felt a rush of pride in Sparkle as she dodged most of the silk that I whiplashed across the still air: mere strands sticking to her hooves whilst the rest careened on by.
Her dodge had been clumsy, however, and I watched as the unicorn stumbled and fell – hard – onto the stone of the cliff edge. It made a curious crunching sound as she landed, and as I stalked forward to fire my second spool of silk, I saw why: cracks spider-webbed across the stone between her ledge and the cave wall proper.
I prepared to fire, and she got to her hooves in a desperate attempt to carry out some counterattack. Lowering her horn as if to stab me with it, she kicked off in an attempted lunge with both hind legs, a move which caught me off guard. But before she managed to leave it, the ground beneath her voiced its disapproval of her sudden movement by falling inexorably away from the rest of the cliff, taking her with it.
My spool of silk jetted over her head as she plummeted down, down, down. Slowly: too late, I redirected it towards her spiralling form and it caught her; slowed her; just a few moments before she hit. More silk stuck to her right legs than her left ones, and whilst it momentarily slowed her descent with a sharp yank at all four legs, the worst happened mere seconds later. With an echoing crack, the left silk snapped, her momentum carrying that side down and trailing her head violently behind the arcing torso, the weight of it flinging it round and down, then back up towards the still-bound right limbs.
The unicorn’s wail of terror and its terrible buzzing companion in my horn abruptly stopped, and just after, her body hit the ground with a sickening crunch, her head lying on its right cheek with the neck twisted further round than I felt it should be able to. The significance of the cessation of emotion not having yet hit me, I edged out over the precipice with horror clutching icily at my every cell, praying that she was still alive despite all the evidence pointing at the other option.
I looked down at her, dread in my heart, and she did not move.
I glided numbly down to her, thoughts ricocheting in my head, and she did not move.
I touched a hoof to her, praying to the stars, and she did not move.
It took me a moment to realise the pained, grievous howl I was hearing was my own, and another to understand why. Whether I had wanted this to happen or not, Twilight Sparkle lay dead at my hooves, and all because I had seen fit to hunt her down.
I collapsed beside her, my neck falling over the top of her outstretched foreleg, and noticed with a start that a weak pulse still beat, ever-fading, in her arteries. Desperate, not really comprehending what I was doing, I fired up a spell; dusting off the cobwebs of memory and shooting it out to be our saviour like one of those knights of old.
Renewed hope flared in my heart...
But then her body tensed up; becoming still and cold as stone as her pulse stopped dead. She was gone; gone forever where not even the most powerful magic could hope to truly return her from. For a long, long minute I grieved: my mind an agony of guilt, believing for all the world that I had wasted my only chance to save her. Then, some time later, when the sobs stopped wracking my body as much as they had been and the sick feeling in my stomach dissipated under my unwillingness to accept the truth of what I had done, my logical side caught up and I realised what spell I had cast in my desperation.
A temporal stasis spell: it was no wonder I felt utterly drained. It would hold as long as I kept adding magic to it, but it was an imperfect thing, as all spells are doomed to be, and it would not stop the march of time completely.
No matter what I did from this point on, eventually – perhaps in a year's time, perhaps less – that infinitesimally moving heart would stop forever.
After a while the reality of what had occurred hit me, and desperately, like a fugitive on the run, I teleported away from that place as fast as my magic could carry me. For the longest time after I dropped back into existence all I could think was that I had killed her; and that she was doubtless doomed whatever spell I cast upon her.
Eventually, though, my sense of purpose returned and I was able to pull myself together. Banishing my recent memories to a locked door far in the back of my mind, I painstakingly returned to my disguise, strode hurriedly out into the corridor and resumed the life of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza; attempting to hide both the fact that I had been crying from the ponies I passed, and the reason why from my own mind.
Try as I might, though, the truth of what had happened refused to be expunged completely and not even the soon-to-be-fulfilled dream of saving my malnourished kingdom could raise quite the same joy as it had earlier that day.
A mare lay dead, or as close to it as one could get, because of me, and a corresponding piece of my soul lay likewise shattered and frozen beside her.
I cannot imagine a worse pain someone could feel than that which grasped my heart at that moment, and which refused to go away. I could try to ignore it all I wanted, but a broken soul does not cease to be so damaged just because one wishes it.
III: A CANTERLOT WEDDING
In Cadance’s shape, I stood before the unwitting Celestia: beside me the fiancé I had stolen and around me many happy faces. The princess of the day said the words that served to marry us, and I tried to look as if I was enjoying the moment: the kiss: the day my apparent dreams came true.
I think I managed it – indeed, I must have, or Celestia would not have looked nearly as pleased about the proceedings as she did. But Cadance’s dreams were not my dreams, however identically to her I looked, and I’m not even sure my dreams were quite the same then as they had been earlier that day. I did not notice much of what happened there, strangled by my thoughts as I was, and as a result I do not remember many details of the proceedings that followed the wedding itself.
Eventually, though, the whole affair came to a close and I was allowed some time alone with my new husband. From the way they spoke and the laughs in their eyes, they were clearly expecting us to consummate our marriage; for me to… ‘make love’ … with Shining Armour.
I did no such thing.
To take the place of a princess in order to plan an invasion was one thing; to mind-control and marry her husband to allow it to take place was a step further; but to rob the couple of that most intimate of moments for no reason besides base desire would have been unforgivable. I already had enough guilt to bear without adding that, too.
And how, how could anyone – even the most twisted monster – have sex with the brother of a mare whose death they'd caused and steal him in every possible way from the one who loved him, whom they had imprisoned in a dank, cold cave under the city you planned to invade.
I did many things I am not proud of for my people’s survival, but that act is not one of them.
Pah... Small comforts…
Instead, I took him aside and asked him what I needed of him: more an act of courtesy than because I needed to.
“Shining, darling?” I called, my voice sickeningly saccharine in imitation of that of his true love.
He turned to face me, and I nearly cringed at his pathetic appearance, the fragile justifications I had amassed starting to fracture. He was slack jawed, dumbly smiling and sluggish; like a drunk puppy, a pale imitation of the strong and stoic captain of the guard he had once been.
“Yes, honey?” he slavered in response.
“I need you to order the guard from their posts, to convene in the parade grounds, alright? It’s very important to the castle’s security. And then I want you to drop that hideous shield – we’re already married, what’s the risk now?”
He took a long, long minute to work past his doubts and answer me, but I refused to add more mental conditioning unless I needed to, for fear of causing serious long-term damage.
“If you say, so, dear.” He mumbled, turning and heading shakily off to his troops. I watched him from our room’s window as he gave the commands, staring after the soldiers as they dispersed and re-converged on the parade grounds as I had asked. Once I was satisfied it was all underway, I locked the bedroom door and gave a minute’s sorrow to Twilight Sparkle: broken and doomed in my spell, entombed beneath my very feet.
IV: UPON A DARK CANVAS
The flood of my people, like airborne seas of ink, blotted out the skies as if they were spilt paint across a masterpiece; beauty laid to waste by the carelessness of its artist’s errant hoof.
The artist was Celestia – the complacent fool – and, unfortunately for her, the paint she had spilt was spreading of its own accord. The guard had been easy targets, and their bulky platemail had only slowed them down; preventing their escape. Looking out across the palace grounds, I could see them – or at least the silk cocooning them – from my waiting place in the palace’s outer buildings.
I had feigned capture by my own changelings and lay in illusory bonds not far from one of the lavish balcony gardens. Shining Armour – his conditioning stripped thoroughly from his mind in he hopes he would not suffer any long term damage – lay unconscious by my side. The guard whose escape I’d ordered my changelings to allow should been summoning Celestia at that very moment; in mere minutes I would be facing the princess, to battle one on one.
True, I could’ve had my army capture her for me, but if one was to rule a country one had invaded, one may as well inform one’s predecessors of their immediate redundancy oneself.
I was in my element: not a skulking creature of shadows and carefulness and paranoia, but a glorious, shining motor driving the axles of victory steadily forward. I was in command, I was ready for anything.
They were a long few seconds: the seconds in which she finally appeared. She saw me and galloped forward, horn ablaze as she blasted my drones aside. Their pain, transmitted to me through the painful buzzing of my horn, served only to fire up my own adrenaline; bringing the spell to cause our foe’s downfall to the ready even more quickly.
Panting for breath as she leaned down to me – oh, so trusting – she gushed at me: “Cadance – thank heavens you’re alright. Did they… did they hurt you at all?”
“No.” I replied, my voice changing from high and sweet to low and commanding as I shed the faux-form and lanced her newly horror-stricken face with emerald light. She staggered back and fell, and my newly arrived kin darted forward to restrain her thoroughly. Firing another shot into her desperately writhing body, I added; perhaps more viciously than I needed to:
“But it looks to me like you’ve taken a few nasty blows… Here, let me fix that for you.”
With that, I blasted her full in the face with a powerful stunning spell, and she fell into the waiting embrace of my subjects’ magic. They lifted her upon their backs, and between the four of them carried the dethroned regent to our temporary centre of command: the palace throne room, no less. I followed them eagerly; the tide of battle was in my favour, and I intended to keep it that way.
V: CHANGE OF MAGANGEMENT
It was as I sat in my new throne – a tall, golden thing, and thankfully more comfortable than it looked – that yet more good news emerged, snatched from the seas of battle in the mouth of a glorious gannet; carried swiftly to my new domain.
The gannet was a wiry runt of a changeling, whose eyes betrayed no intelligence above the average but whose sheer agility was impressive; soaring from her end of the hall to mine in mere seconds, stopping almost as soon as she flared her wings to slow herself; and floating gracefully, but not overly slowly, down to land by my hooves.
Tracing a circle of lime magic in the air with her horn in the traditional salute of our military, she simultaneously drew the report scroll from her harness and shook it open with a flourish of her hoof.
The weighted parchment which rolled down from her grip bore great news indeed within its hastily written shorthand:
Report of Capture, for eyes of Her Exalted Royal Highness, Hive-Queen Chrysalis de Vespidae-Alveare only.
Report follows:
Five (5) ponies: 2 pegasus, 2 earth, 1 unicorn. Captured on palace outskirts w/ no serious injuries/ loss of life.
Details below:
Pony, pegasus, female: l. blue, chromatic. Marked w/ white cloud & tri-coloured lightning. Suspected Bearer of Harmony; Loyalty. Violent tendencies; tenacious – treat with additional caution.
Pony, pegasus, female: c. yellow, l. pink. Marked with three (3) pink butterflies. Suspected BoH; Kindness. No significant threat, besides suspected BoH role.
Pony, earth, female: honey yellow, straw yellow. Marked with three (3) red apples. Suspected BoH; Honesty. High physical strength – to be restrained heavily. Promising candidate for interrogation.
Pony, earth, female: pink, pink. Marked with three (3) balloons: two (2) blue, one (1) yellow. Suspected BoH; Laughter. Appears to possess limited control of earth pony magic – high security risk, guard complement no less than six (6) category four (4) service personnel.
Pony, unicorn, female: white, d. blue. Marked with three (3) blue gems. Suspected BoH; Generosity. Violent when panicked; largely ineffective but v. persistent. Physically & magically weak – all magical attacks improvised; presumed no combat training.
End detail on captives. Details of capture:
Engaged: H24:M11, captured: H24:M19, by Categ. Four (4) GSaEU #114: “Stormy Day Matinee”. Minor engagement; hostiles unorganised & untrained; no serious injury on either side.
End capture details.
Planned course of action:
Send messenger to HERH with prelim. report. Transfer prisoners from current position to Temp. Comm. Base Epsilon (palace throne room) by GSaEU #114, assisted by GAAU #602 “Upon Great Tempest”. Imprison captives as per HERH’s will.
- Solid Case, Decanus Evocatus: Categ. Five (5), CO for GSaEU #114
End Report.
I thanked the young Excursor for delivering such heartening news to me, and for doing it so quickly: if the time notation on the report was accurate, she’d taken the scroll and then negotiated her way through both the raging battlefield and the labyrinthine palace corridors to arrive around thirty-five minutes after the prisoners had been captured.
Such a feat of speed would have required her to fly flat-out all the way, and for her to have taken no breaks in which to catch her breath. This display of duty impressed me greatly, and I signalled to my advisor to have her made a duplicarius by way of a reward.
At my wave of dismissal, the Excursor rolled the scroll up neatly, depositing it by my throne, and took flight once more to relay the news that I did not object to her Decanus’s plan.
I sat and watched as my subjects hastened back and forth, waiting for the next item of importance to be brought to my attention. I thought it odd that there, in the midst of my people’s largest battle in history, I could sit in a my enemy’s throne and actually feel bored.
In this boredom, my mind began to turn to memories I had managed to bury for those past hours: memories of a cave; a unicorn; a fall. Fighting to show no sign of the up-surging guilt and sorrow, I stood from my throne; attempting to give off an air of purposefulness as I strode from the room accompanied by my ever-present praetorian guard.
I had to do something – anything – if I was to prevent the entire hive learning of the cause of my woe. They could sense my unrest, I know, but somewhat illogically I felt much worse showing it outwardly than I did through my outgoing flow of emotion.
I strode down the corridor and fought back the tears… I very nearly succeeded.
VI: TO BLACKMAIL A PRINCESS
Our purpose was simple: find one of the unicorn messengers used by the princesses to communicate long-range and get them to send a letter of warning to the absent Princess Luna. My advisor had narrowed the possible locations of such a pony down to two: with one of our various units across the city, their capture as yet unreported; or in the besieged staff quarter of the palace, our current destination.
On the way to the staff quarter, we rendezvoused with one of our supply units and equipped ourselves with full changeling platemail and a variety of weapons. The armour was no substitute for my own, wherever that was, but it would certainly do a lot to protect me if there happened to be a guard squad trapped with the cornered palace staff.
It so happened that the integrity of my new armour was tested sooner than I had anticipated: I had been leading my elite force onward in the direction of the barricaded quarter that was our destination when a significant portion of what must once have been a palace room materialised above us; showering the corridor in flaming debris.
My praetorians dealt with the threat of fire quickly and effectively – as I had known they would – and spread around the epicentre of the fallen debris in a rough horseshoe, glaives drawn and directed, like mine, at the two figures who lay in the middle of this mess.
One, the fur on her foreleg matted with blood, merely stared up at us in dread; while the other got to his hooves and gave a look that might have been somewhat intimidating were it not for the fearful quiver of his lips.
“Stay back, filth! I am a prince of this realm and I will not hesitate to kill you in defence of it!” blathered the idiot pompously; vainly neatening his blonde mane even as we aimed our blades at him.
“Now let me pass, before the Guard get here and kill you all – I care not what you do with her, the useless wretch couldn’t even cast a simple teleport spell properly.”
He made to step forward, as if he expected his pretentious, pathetic prattling to have made us forget our duty and let him go. The fool. Glaring down at him, I took a more methodical approach to my response than was strictly necessary: this infantile excuse for a prince had been Tartarus to deal with these last few months, and I was more than owed some payback.
“Firstly, you cowardly little shit, shut up or I will have you killed here and now.” He promptly did just that, and I could not resist issuing a mocking beat-down his way.
“Oh, so you do value life, so long as it’s your own?” No response.
“Now, little prince, I do not think you understand just how much danger you are in. Do you really think that you: unarmed and unarmoured, would last even a moment against me: the queen of the changelings?
“Even without my praetorians –Tartarus, even without my weapon – I could kill you where you stand a thousand times over. Save your pretentious bravado for the other prisoners, Blueblood, lest you want to start losing nonessential body parts.”
He gulped; wobbled on his hooves; blinked a few times: then his tough act broke down and he began bawling like a foal. Losing my already diminished patience, I slid my hoof along my weapon’s handle to grasp it just below the blade and swung the blunt end at his head – hard.
He crumpled, and the irritating wailing stopped, the only sound now being the injured mare’s sniffling. I stepped in closer, half-leaning down to examine her: the leg looked badly cut, but not broken, and her horn showed the tell-tale signs of magical overexertion: nothing as serious as I’d feared, both were easily cured.
As I had checked her wounds, I had noticed that her cutie mark displayed a scroll caught in a swirl of golden magic: I could hardly believe my luck – she might just be what we were looking for. I could have mind-controlled her to speak, but the weight of recent events on my conscience stayed my hoof. Instead, I spoke softly to the mare, hoping to obtain a favourable response without forcing it from her.
“What is your name?” I asked, and she looked up with an expression somewhere between that of a deer in the path of a carriage and simple bemusement.
“Starlit Scrolls…your highness?”
I appreciated her adding that recognition of my status; no matter that her hesitance and caution had almost made it sound like a question.
“’Your Highness’ will do nicely, Miss Scrolls. Now, am I correct in the assumption that your special talent relates to magical delivery of items, such as – as your name would certainly suggest – scrolls?”
“Yes, Your Highness. But I don’t think I can cast anything right now; I think I really hurt my horn with that teleport.”
“Don’t worry,” I soothed. “It’s not as bad as it probably feels… I could fix it for you - your leg too - if you'd send this letter for me in return. What do you say we do a nice, simple exchange: your help for my help?”
“A-alright, Your Highness. But p-please don’t hurt my… my mind. I-I’ll do as you say, you don’t need to do…that.” The mare quivered visibly, her terror plain for all to see, so I pushed down my impatience and continued to speak in the same placating manner as I had been until this point; raising my hoof to my heart as I made my promise.
“You have my word I will do no such thing. Only when absolutely necessary, and that should never become the case – if you remain cooperative, that is.”
Leaning even closer, I touched my horn to hers and brought the spell up gradually, so as to avoid overloading her already damaged horn. Even so, she whimpered as the magic washed over her soot-blackened spire; cleaning it inside as well as outside, preparing it for the follow-up spell which would soothe the magical tissues within and repair the scorched exit pathways.
As the second spell ran its course and retreated from her horn, the unicorn sighed in relief. Reopening my eyes, which I had shut in concentration, I straightened up and smiled at her in a manner I hoped would put her a little more at ease.
“Better?” I queried, and she nodded back. “Then you’ll have no trouble completing my task, I assume?”
“No, Your Highness.” She responded, and I couldn’t help a grin: it felt good to have the fear and respect of another’s subject.
‘How’s it feel, Celestia, to have your citizens call me “your highness” in place of you?’, I thought smugly, though the smile drooped somewhat at the realisation that the mare’s foreleg was still untreated.
Though her horn had undoubtedly required the most care be taken, it was the leg which would require the most complex treatment. Had she been being attended to by one of Equestria’s doctors, such a wound would likely have taken days to reach a level of healing where the leg was usable, but I am a changeling and we have certain shortcuts available to us; such as the one I used on her injury.
Whilst my subconscious concentrated on synthesising the necessary substances within my sac, I used the same simple cleansing spell I had on her horn to disinfect and remove foreign objects from the wound. Again, she winced in pain, but did not cry out this time.
The synthesised gloop in my sac was ready, and I spat some from my fangs to remove any silk residue from their ends before once again leaning in over the mare. Carefully positioning my head over the wound, I let the slightly viscous gel stream from my fangs onto the exposed flesh; changeling cells in protective goo coursing over every inch of the gash in preparation for the next step.
Starlit Scrolls was looking with a mix of repulsion and fascination at the translucent gel I had deposited on her injury, evidently waiting for it to do something more than just sit there.
I had love to spare, so the costly spell I was about to cast did not concern me as much as it would’ve done a year earlier when we were all starved of love, and I began the preparations to cast it calmly and professionally.
When I say I acted professionally, I mean as professionally as one can carry out the act of biting someone, this admittedly not being very professional at all. In one fast, effective manoeuver, I stabbed my fangs into her flesh just deep enough to draw new blood – which, given the state of her limb, wasn’t very deep at all – and retracted them to allow the gel to fill the gaps I had made in the covering.
The Scrolls mare looked up at me in shock, yelping in pain, whilst the blood burnt green on my fang-tips and I lit my horn up one last time, sending a jet of soft green light over to the gel-covered wound. Using the genetic information my body had picked up from her blood, the sweeping ray of magic commanded the dormant changeling cells in the gel to transform, reconstructing the lost flesh from the deepest point upwards.
As her skin began to take shape, I felt fatigue begin to creep into my body, but I ignored it and focused on growing her coat back out from the bare skin to cover the last indication of the wound. The colour was slightly off, but close enough to the rest of her to be a passable fit, and I sat back in satisfaction as Starlit stared dumbly at her repaired foreleg, eyes wide in disbelief.
Stammering a little, she returned her gaze to me as she spoke. “Th-thank you, Your Highness,” she said, and this time the fear was very nearly absent from her voice.
My side of the bargain dealt with, I wasted no more time in giving her the scroll; and after a moment’s hesitation she grasped it in her magic and closed her eyes, her horn flaring with topaz light as the scroll vanished in a flash of warm orange.
“Come,” I said to her, and she got to her hooves obligingly, “I have further work for you, Miss Scrolls, and I would rather discuss it in more comfortable surroundings.”
My praetorians, who’d until that point been statue still in position to strike, let out audible sighs of relief that they would not be required to stand on their spots for another lengthy discussion with my new acquisition and hastened to reform around us.
Together, we returned to the throne room; our mission complete.
VII: VOWS OF THE GUILTY
It was not until much later that I finally got a reprieve from the running of the invasion: the last dregs of the Royal Guard were being mopped up by the second, and I felt I could turn command over to my High Imperator - leaving me free to get some much-needed rest.
Out of a sense of respect, I did not take Celestia or Luna’s chambers, and I avoided altogether the section of the castle in which Twilight Sparkle had once resided, which left me the ambassadorial suites. They were roughly equivalent to what I’d gotten used to under the guise of Cadance, and I had made myself quite comfortable in my new domain when a knock at my door roused me from my almost-sleep and a nervous-looking messenger pushed open the door in order to lay a sack full of parchment scrolls on the bedroom floor.
He saluted smartly and hurried to explain his uninvited presence in my chambers. “Letters, Your Highness: correspondence between Princess Celestia and the suspected Bearer of Magic. Apologies for the intrusion - High Imperator Labium insisted they be delivered to you at once, My Queen.”
I took the bag in my magic and waved him away, removing the topmost scroll and prising it open. Sitting up in my bed, I straightened the parchment out and began to read. Its contents were nothing particularly valuable from a tactical point of view, but it made for surprisingly compelling reading as Celestia’s correspondent – doubtless a close friend of hers – detailed her rather ordinary life in a town called Ponyville.
The more I read, the more engrossed I became, to the point where I laughed at the mare’s bad jokes and felt bad for her when she detailed how things had gone wrong for her and her friends. And then, I reached the end and saw whose name was written there.
"Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle."
NO! No, please! Not her – it couldn’t be her, it mustn’t be.
"Twilight Sparkle."
My eyes glistened with tears – please, don’t let this be the life I took!
"Twilight Sparkle".
The mare I had doomed was the very same mare who’d written this letter. The mare who’d made me laugh through her words alone, the mare who had forgiven an arrogant showmare despite her having nearly destroyed the town, the mare who’d diligently written all these letters to the princess she admired so much – this was the mare I’d killed.
I cried for what felt like forever, and, out of either a sick sense of fascination or a feeling of duty to find out exactly what I had cost the world today, I picked up another letter and began to read. Hours later: hours of sorrow and stabbing guilt; hours of fighting exhaustion to keep on reading, I almost-religiously deposited the last scroll back where it had come from and bawled into my already waterlogged pillow.
It wasn’t fair – I did not want to be a killer, and this mare, this mare did not deserve to die. It wasn’t right that she lay dead – or as close to dead as one could get – in a stupid bucking cave under this Tartarus-wrought city.
Eventually, the tears came no more, and I came to a resolution of sorts. Standing in front of the tall mirror; I straightened myself up as high as I could, set my jaw and vowed to the heavens above:
"On the lives of my people, on the honour of my ancestors, I will not let you die. No matter the price I have to pay; no matter what I have to do, Twilight Sparkle, I refuse to let it end like this."
Even the establishment of my new kingdom and the matter of feeding my malnourished populace fell behind this oath in my mind. It was all-consuming, this task I had taken on: unshakeably, undeniably the right thing to do.
I had perhaps a year to find some way of fixing the grievous injuries I had caused, a year to save Twilight Sparkle – and with her, my soul. It would not be easy, but there was no real choice. Refocusing my gaze to the skies, I spoke:
“Fate, you cruel, cruel bastard – I accept your challenge and all which may come with it. I will not fail her now.”
END OF CHAPTER ONE
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First it's feet, second it's hooves.
How did Twilight die? Did Chrysalis's silk not catch her in time or what? It's not very well explained, though I love how well you're describing her turmoil over killing. Everyone has a line they refuse to cross, after all.
And the invasion goes as planned, with a well played sucker-punch to Celestia. Emotion based magic is, in MLP, extremely powerful after all. It enslaves empires and disintegrates tyrants, it freezes the world and defeats chaos gods.
I see what you did there.
So Pinkie can control earth magic, and the battle lasted 8 minutes. Also really liking the subtle world-building with the changelings, like the award of 'duplicarious'.
Hooves, though I suppose technically they are feet...
You really captured Blueblood well, and doubly so with Starlit Scrolls. It seems Starlit's revealed that, to her allies or even to her assistants, Chrysalis is most generous.
Comma should be inside the quotations, not outside.
Very good story, and good spin-off of The Perfect Day. Eager to see how this goes down.
5244865
I'm pretty sure the author Gwen Stacey'd her. That is, the webbing didn't have enough give and stopped her fall too abruptly, so it was almost as bad as hitting the ground. It's not the ground that kills you, as they say. Even a short fall can be lethal if you're caught wrong by a rope, that's the principle behind hanging.
That was a particularly horrible way to kill off a superhero's girlfriend, to have him actually catch her before she finished falling and have it matter not one whit.