Regina et Equi Nox

by NejinOniwa

Ch2: Transitaes Mundia

Chapter 2 – Transitaes mundia

Gustav Adolf, King of Sweden, was not having a good day. It had started well, turned decent and then proceeded to roll itself in the mud somewhere around lunchtime – after which it had just started going plain crazy. Now, he was faced with a situation straight out of some old fable.
He tried analyzing the situation in his head. One. Kristina throws a fit at lunchtime. So far so good. That happened at times, and the Vasa temper was nothing but legendary.
Two. Lady Platzer storms in during the council meeting, babbling about my daughter having nightmares and turning into a rainbow. This wasn't all too good, but it had happened before. Admittedly the whole rainbow part of the business wasn't something he was acquainted with, but stranger things had happened. If nothing else, we can always look back to the Ring of Fire that started all of this. Ha! Hard to trump that in terms of strangeness.
Or so, he would've thought, at least. Until today. But. Three. I run here as fast as I can and see not my daughter turning into a rainbow, but a rainbow turning into some...dark blue horse thing wearing a crown. And my daughter, my heir, is nowhere. To. Be. Found.
No, this was not a good day, his subconscious confirmed as his considerable royal bulk finally budged enough for lady Platzer to get a view of the scene.

-/-/-/-/

Luna's eyes had been plagued by chromatic assaults for what seemed like several hours, before the light finally had started letting up. She had during this time given much thought to the situation she was in and its possible nature, tried to understand the cryptic words of Discord, and slept a bit – undisturbed, for once. How she slept, or where it was, she had no idea of whatsoever. The day had brought her enough peculiarities that by now, she simply didn't stop to think too much about it.

Not that she could “stop”, in any event. She was rather sure that she was moving, despite the fact that all the senses she was used to counting among her bodily features was telling her otherwise. If for nothing else than the fact that last time – the first time – these color swirls had happened (although that trip had been much, much shorter) she had been brought to Discord's prison-world. His astral body. Verily the mind itself of a spirit of chaos. She shuddered slightly at the thought. It was only a theory, of course, but all the more it seemed likely to her the more she thought about it. After all, it wasn't as if any of them – neither her sister nor herself, and definitely not any of the Elements who had done the sealing this time – had any sort of detailed concept of worlds beyond their own, certainly not to the levels needed to use one as a spell target. Until now, at least. And barring a random hit sending the draconequus off somewhere undetermined – which he had, during his ramblings when she was there, called out as utterly impossible – it seemed quite likely that the sealing bound him inside his own mind, rather than some exterior realm. After all, he was most likely more than powerful, not to mention knowledgeable, enough to make his way back from wherever he ended up. Discord's downfall had always been because of his underestimating other ponies, true, but there was so much that they didn't know – possibly things that he himself didn't know, even – about the chaotic powers he used and represented, that not underestimating him was simply an impossibility.

Nay, it was quite likely that the Elements, in their mysterious ways, had determined that the best prison for him would be one that inhibited the scope of his power by its very nature. And by sealing him in stone, thus cutting off any sensory input from the outside world outside what he was able to gleam through the barriers, he would have no means of establishing a connection to the physical realm again, making an escape virtually impossible to facilitate.
That is, unless a nearby astral-side object projected energy in a form he can process and use... Discordant emotions, perhaps. Are emotions astral energy? I need to look over that document again, but this seems to make sense, to some extent.

Looking back and theorizing on the past was rather pointless now, however, regardless of how much it affirmed her ideas. It did nothing to help her current situation; moreover, it would do very little to help her with the situation that was undoubtedly about to unfold. At the rate this day was going, she was highly doubtful that she was just going to be kindly shuffled back into the castle again – they rather tended to come midway into some enormous disaster. Indeed, the last time she had had one of these days had been in the time just before her final fall (much of which was still clouded to her memory), when her many years of pent-up envy and spite had shrouded all but the most base parts of her mind. There had been a great deal of disharmony and strife between the small nations of the time, and thus Luna had yet again donned her mantle as Head Ambassador for Equestria. Her peacemaking mission went on without much success, however, and the pettiness of the rulers and politicians she had met with during the tour had, little by little, driven her utterly mad with rage.

On that final day, she had been forced out of her embassy at Moch Pal'hamr, one of the larger holdings of the Third Flight, fought her way through half a brood of dragons to retrieve missives and artifacts they had plundered from the embassy, gone head-to-head in a screaming competition with the local brood lord that neither of them understood a word of (Old Canter Equestrian doesn't mix well with South Tyrr-Draconian) and subsequently placed the entirety of Tyrr'him and the southern reaches of Equestria under a spontaneous (and very unscheduled) eclipse for four days in response to the dragons' show of disrespect. Needless to say, her sister hadn't been very happy at her for that. Two weeks later on the eve of the new moon, she had, at last, given in to the Nightmare.

She shivered slightly at the recollection. However, that situation was quite different from what she was currently facing. She was mostly at peace with herself, very much at peace with her sister (aside from some pastry-related issues that she managed to get ever so worked up over whenever they arose), and the only real problem she had was that she couldn't sleep. A problem which seemed to have fixed itself somewhere in the middle of this rainbow-drenched tunnel. Or whatever it was. Nay, moreso likely it was to be whatever new quandaries she came to face whenever this star-cursed color trip ceased, that would come to trouble her for the coming time.

The streaming colors were letting up further now, and she was starting to see something. Holding up her hoof she was able to make it out, but it looked – felt, too, now that she thought about it – as if it was covered with some sort of pastel goo of various colors. It was quickly drying away, however, though it seemed to be dematerializing rather than evaporating as she felt no residue of it released into the air.

That observation made, she set her eyes upon the scene before her. And made a list.
Primary. We are likely in a castle. Luna had lived far too long a life and seen far too many variations upon the designs of such housing to mistake a castle chamber for anything else. The implications of this fact was more troubling than reassuring, however.
Secondary. There are two- no, three bipeds in this chamber with us, all looking quite distressed. And perspiring. The last seems to be lamenting its existence.
This was both promising, as it likely meant that she was not expected, and thus less likely to be a part of any intricate evil scheme that some far-off overlord might have summoned her to (it had happened before); however the obvious anguish in the last individual indicated something had clearly gone very wrong here, which meant that she (as a conveniently materialized newcomer without any ties to anypony) would quite possibly become a scapegoat and/or be forced to attempt some sort of reparation of whatever damage had occurred. Finally, the perspiration meant they were probably not machines. She had never gotten along very well with those types.

Lastly, their language is entirely incomprehensible, and bears little recognition to any tongue we speak or know of. This was most likely not very good at all, since her chance of explaining the situation (and/or talking her way out of any eventual scapegoating) was reduced to nil, along with any chance of getting a clue on where she had ended up. Alongside the obvious fact that it was somewhere she'd never been before, or alternately that the language and inhabitants of the place she was had changed so much in the thousand-or-more years since last she had been here that they were utterly unrecognizable, which would indicate that culture and tradition had done the same as well, rendering any prior knowledge she might've had entirely useless.

Footnote. That is a crown, on the big one's head. That, or very metallic horns. Neither of those were good prospects, and barring the chance that the local variety of unicorns sported multiple growths and adorned them with what was undoubtedly solid gold and gems in the name of fashion, she was dealing with royalty. And from what all the signs read, it was a male. A Prince, then. This was not good at all. There was a reason male rulers was a trend that had never caught on with ponies – they were always so very temperamental about things, which always made negotiations a bloody hassle. And this one was not, it seemed an exception.

His pinkish complexion was reddening deeply – he did not have much fur to speak of, aside from some fair tufts on his head – and, staring menacingly at her, he said a few words. Not knowing how, or if, to answer, she simply stayed silent, causing him to redden even deeper and keep talking – it sounded a lot different this time, though. Is he trying different languages? A small sliver of hope, at least, if the man was at least trying to get through to her. Very small.

She was just about to open her mouth and try some of her own various options, when the dam finally burst and the man started roaring and stomping around like a mad buffalo. Which meant that whatever it was that had happened, it was bad. Very bad.

With a fervent wish to just go back to sleep and disappear tethered in the back of her mind, she shut her eyes, folded her ears and tried not to listen to the gibberish royal tirade. Or at least, not go deaf.

-/-/-/-/

Mike Stearns, Prime Minister of the United States of Europe – formerly head of the local branch of the United Mine Workers of America and before that pro boxer – wasn't liking the prospects of this at all. Or any part of it, for that matter. He would've been very glad to have finished the whole unexplainable, supernatural and just generally weird book of his life with the single chapter of the Ring of Fire that sent them back through time; but whatever was going on here, it was a dead ringer for an entry in that same section.
What more, though, it was riling his emperor/king/lieutenant general/whatever other title the man wished to use at the moment-'s temper up. Real bad. If there ever was a worse case of royal rage break noted in their uptime history books, they had nothing on what Gustavus could muster on a particularly bad day.

And this wasn't just any particularly bad day, either. The emperor's daughter was missing, and had possibly been turned into a rainbow and/or been replaced with some blue horse thing dressed up in regalia. It was a ridiculously bad day, and the emperor's temper was going to match it. He brought his meanest stare to bear, and shot lightning through his eyes at the creature haphazardly slumping on the floor to make up for the mildly silly accenting of his English.
“Where. Is. My. Daughter.”
Though the general weirdness of it all made Mike suspend part of his disbelief for it, he wasn't exactly too surprised when the creature remained silent. It only seemed to annoy Gustavus further (no surprise there), however, as his face literally became beet-red as he repeated the phrase in German. “Wo ist meine Tochter!?”

The look on the equine's face as he repeated the words was a bit too, human for Mike to like it. However, it remained quiet, and the royal dam finally swung loose, the king breaking out his preposterously large magazine of Swedish badmouthery like an angry hillbilly dad with a box of shotgun shells. “MÅ TONDÖFVA ÄLGAR SKITA PÅ DIN HUSEVÄGG OCH YLA LOCKROP PÅ DIN BEGRAFNING! DIN SOTKALKADE ÄGGRÖTA TILL-”

-/-/-/-/

A good five minutes had passed of the biped Prince's tirade, and it showed no signs of letting up. He hadn't done anything other than scream and yell and make angry gestures, though, which meant that he, however much of a royal temper he possessed, at least seemed able to restrain it to some point of reasonability. As she cringed yet again from the latest verbal assault, the words contained therein took a few seconds to trickle themselves into the proper part of her mind and poke a bit.
“- thinn voordémdah SÁTMÁRA!”
The situation was a bit different, true. But not by much. And however odd and jumbly the other words were, the last one was exactly the same as what one certain broodlord of North Tae had called her during yet another famous shouting match between pony and dragon – albeit a lot more well understood by both parties, as she spoke and read North Tae-Draconic fluently. The language had been gone for a while now, of course, but she had a very good memory. And accursed soot-mare wasn't the type of insult a pony well versed in dragon culture forgot in the first place. Soot, to dragons, was not only an excrement of the body, but messy, hard to clean, got into the scales, smelly, ugly and generally all things bad in the world. A dragon invoking a soot word meant he was pressing the big button labeled “unspeakably disgusting” for all he was worth and pouring it all over your face.

Her first reaction was of sheer shock. Her eyes widened at the fact that she was no more entirely lost as to the location and linguistics of this region, and cringed slightly at the fact that it somehow was closer connected to the Second Flight than ought to be possible this long after its decline.
Once done with that part of it, though, the fact that she had just been called that again took priority in her mind, and brought to bear the Voice. “WHY, THOU LITTLE-”
It occurred to her too late that she had been overlooking one of the basic facts about bipeds. Seeing that familiar utterly disbelieving, mocking look officially known as “Why, the creature doth SPEAK?” on the Prince's – and his companions' – faces, She stopped just short of flying into a full-on outburst, reminding herself of the observation she had done ever so many times on ambassadorial missions to bipedal races.
Bipedal sentients have some sort of inborn superiority complex toward quadrupeds. We will never, ever be taken seriously when among them, if we stay in our natural form. Fortunately, she had devised a Bipedal Negotiations spell for the purpose a long time ago, which she now wove deftly around her with her magic, scanning and copying the general structure of the creature before her (for accuracy, she used the lamenting one she presumed was a female rather than the Prince as a base) into the magical template. A blinding light pierced the room as her horn shone up, and she cringed slightly as the spell started taking hold of her flesh and bones.

-/-/-/-/

And of course, the creature did speak up in the end.
The look on Mike's face was utterly astonished, but on the inside the cynic in him was giving a bad case of I told you so to its roommates. The words were quite incomprehensible, of course, but they were very clearly words, despite the short and cut sentence. And angry words, too. And a quite female voice. Night mare, indeed. Ha. More importantly, they sounded like they had been shouted through a huge loudspeaker system, rather than a freak horse-creature's snout. He felt wind against his face when she spoke, god damn it. This was racking up the score for weirdest thing ever and closing in fast on the Ring of Fire itself. And Mike was not happy at all about it.

Then, the thing threw them all a very strange look, before the crown on its head lit up like it was some goddam lightbulb, scratch that, a fucking stage spotlight. He covered his eyes, and simply tried to ignore the odd tone hanging in the air alongside the decidedly creepy sound of crackling bones.
A minute or so later, he was wishing the light had stayed on.

Before them stood no horse, but an honest-to-god angel, blue-black of wings and with hair that looked a lot less like hair and a lot more like someone had taken a picture of the night sky and glued it to her head. Very meticulously. And as if that wasn't enough, the crown she had previously been wearing was now a full-fledged suit of moon-themed regalia; silver, amethyst and sapphire in an intricately woven mesh, with an enormous tiara featuring a crescent of what likely was one huge cut diamond.

Oh, fuck you, Mike Stearns thought. And the cynic reminded him again, I told you this was going to be a fucking great day, didn't I? Whoop-dee-fucking-doo, all aboard the crazy train. First disappearing princesses turning into rainbows, then rainbows turning into horses, now horses turning into angels! It's a real fucking good day, Michael, the cynic finished. Oh, fuck you, Mike thought again.

Comments

[Alalic]

Well, that certainly was a good chapter. There's nothing much that I can criticize from my point of view although some of the paragraphs seems a tab bit long, but that's just me being whiny

Keep on writing!

[rainbow_stache]

When I saw this existed, first I was like then I was like and then I

[McPoodle]

OK, this one's good.