A Cavalcade of Cards

by QueenMoriarty

The Old Guard and the New Guard

The royal sisters did not always make their home in the shining mountain city of Canterlot. In the Boundless Days of yore, when the accords had all been signed but the three tribes were not yet formally gathered under a single flag, the Sun and the Moon made their home in Fortress Everfree. There, they watched the world grow and mend, waiting for the moment where they could cease to be gods and simply rule. They filled the time until then with wild adventures, throwing all of their power and cunning into battles with any magical monster that would dare to show its face. Eventually, Fortress Everfree became less a base of operations and more a true home, and ponies took to calling it the Palace of the Two Sisters.

But what was Canterlot, before it became the center of Equestria? Well, in those days it was the center of the world.

Earth pony ingenuity had combined with pegasus magic in a glorious invention, the skyship. With the sky suddenly open to any who wanted it, the distance between countries seemed to vanish or triple at the whims of the wind, and international trade was made feasible on a scale previously thought impossible. Every country worth their gold had at least one major skyport, half for the convenience and half for the postcards. The griffon fiefdoms built theirs in a giant tree, the yaks hollowed out the southern face of an entire mountain, and Saddle Arabia built a magnificent brass tower that reached up from the sands to the sky.

The ponies went for a more simple design, simply building their port onto the side of the Canterhorn. Canterlot began life as a shanty town, built around a dock that looked more like a landing pad for dragons. It was the subject of a not insignificant amount of ridicule from dignitaries and tourists getting off at Canterlot, to which the engineers and sailors would have only one response;

"But you're still here."

Because Canterlot was not built to look pretty. It was not built to dazzle, or impress, or even hold half as many ponies as it ended up being home to. It had not been built by ponies who concerned themselves with such matters. It was built by engineers, and it was built as a gateway to the pony lands.

And while a gateway may lack many things as part of its design, it is never lacking of guards.

They were Commander Hurricane's Winged Wardens. Every single one of them was a hardened pegasus warrior who had lived through both the Great Winter and the War for Dominion. They had seen things that most ponies wouldn't believe, faced down monsters that the average skyship passenger had only ever heard of, and three out of every five of them had gone on dates with the alicorn sisters.

Admittedly, that last part is more the historical equivalent of locker room gossip than any significant achievement for the Winged Wardens, especially given how the attitudes of the Royal Sisters differ between modern times and the pre-Equestria era, but it does remain in most history books as a reliable way to shock some attention back into schoolponies.

In any case, the duties of the Winged Wardens were even fewer in number than the duties of the modern Royal Guard, if one can believe it. Merchants may be an unruly and devious lot, but they knew better than to cause trouble in the open, and tourists usually waited until they had left the skyport to start causing international incidents. And most miscreants were deterred anyway, not by the presence of the Winged Wardens but by a simple fact of construction.

Canterlot was made of wood, and very little else. Even the foundations which clung to the Canterhorn were almost entirely timber-based. Most of history's innovation with magic-powered lanterns happened within a twenty-year period as a direct result of a griffon inventor having repeated bouts of paranoia while visiting the shanty town, owing to his regular smoking of a match-lit pipe.

The end result of these various factors is that Commander Hurricane's Winged Wardens did very little in life to protect Canterlot, aside from chase down the occasional pickpocket. In death, though...

---

"You'd think fencing lessons from ponies who've had thousands of year's practice would account for more than this," Flash Sentry coughed between swipes and blocks. The spectral pegasus he was sparring with just grinned right back.

"Kid, the only thing I've had thousands of years' practice in is standing around, looking impressive and making spooky noises to scare off midnight thieves." Blade of soul met blade of steel in a flurry of sparks and unworldly echoes, then the two broke apart yet again and circled. "You and I both know the sword's for nothing. Any pegasus told to fight is going to be using bagh naka and aerial wrestling, and since I can't feel wind current, I'd be no help in that anymore."

Flash yawned, then caught the ghost's blade effortlessly as his eyes were closed. "For a silent, untouchable phantom, you telegraph your attacks way too much."

"In my day, fencing was purely ceremonial, or for charity demonstrations. The moves have to be flashy, or you lose the audience." The ghost demonstrated by miming a series of exaggerated parries and ripostes, which ended with a lunge at Flash. He intercepted it so quickly that his sword seemed to teleport.

"Huh. I always did think that 'Commander Hurricane's Winged Wardens' sounded like a circus group name." The air in front of Flash Sentry blurred into indistinct steel as he effortlessly blocked and parried all of the ghost's strikes. When they broke apart again, the spirit was panting and Flash was barely even sweating.

"How?" The spirit panted. "This shouldn't be possible."

"Shouldn't, but is." Flash leaped forward, his sword just barely being caught at the last second. "Guess you've taught me more than you think."

Since a ghost is already dead, it should not be possible for them to feel fear. Part of that is because they no longer have the necessary glands for the chemical process of fear. Part of that is because there's barely anything that can hurt them, and what can hurt them only does so if they've already got nothing left anchoring them to the world. But even so, the ghost was afraid.

"Let me guess what's going through your head," Flash sneered. "You're angry at me. Every atom in your being is hyper-charged with the irrational urge to kill me. Part of you thinks that I'm annoying, but you know that's not enough to make you hate me, so you look for another excuse. And now you realize why; because everything I do, everything I say, everything I represent is completely opposite to how you view the world. The world as you know it no longer makes sense when I enter the picture. But the world's always been this way, so I must be wrong. I must be illogical. I don't fit in the puzzle that you see the world as, so you rebel, and try to end me. But that instinct makes you impulsive, makes you predictable, makes you powerless to stop me."

The ghost threw itself at Flash Sentry in one last desperate attempt, and anyone skilled at ghost-magic would be able to tell you that he was intending to phase straight through Flash's defense and cut his heart in half while it was still inside of him. They'd also be able to tell you that Flash's sword did not have any special magical properties, and that there was nothing he could do to stop the ghost.

They would most likely continue to say this even as they watched Flash Sentry parry the ghost so hard that it was sent flying over him, and landed with far more impact than it should in the haybale behind Flash.

"And that," Flash snapped to the assembled new recruits, "is why we still recruit living ponies when we have a massive garrison of eternal warriors on our side. Because the living practice, improve, and have a will to survive that no spirit can ever match."

Author's Note:

When I set out to write today's chapter, I did genuinely intend to write about the Winged Wardens as ghosts who still watch over Canterlot. But then Flash Sentry barged into the room and demanded a chance to be awesome, and it all got quite out of hand.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

When your special talent is getting in the way of things, you're going to be an amazing fencer... so long as you can make sure it's your sword that's getting in the way.

In any case, definitely an interesting concept, though the abrupt tonal shift is more than a little off-putting. I have nothing against Flash—indeed, I like seeing authors use him respectfully—but the way he barged in and stole the spotlight was more than a little disconcerting.

[QueenMoriarty]

7670563

the way he barged in and stole the spotlight was more than a little disconcerting.

I'm So Meta Even This Acronym

[Bugsydor]

7671418
IS META

[Gavier]

7677994
2 meta 4 me

ta

[PresentPerfect]

I never knew where this was going to take me, and boy was it a ride. :O