It didn't take long to find him.
A terrified pegasus, scrambling to dash up the stairs to the left of the door, his wings curiously limp at his sides. His hooves were clad in thick snow-shoes, and a fresh coating of half-melted snow adorned his body, indicating he had not been in the restaurant for long.
Ignoring the surprisingly tame commands to stop by both the archlich and prince, the stallion continued his panicked escape, fleeing further up the stairs to freedom.
Or what he thought was freedom.
In reality, the rather spacious windows were blocked by Pinkie's extensive Hearth's Warming Decorations.
"STOP COWARD! FACE YOUR END WITH DIGNITY!" Rivendare roared, his undead veins pumping adrenaline through his body. With speed that surprised the room, he galloped up the stairs, pistol and sword drawn, ready for combat. With a slice of saronite through air, the lich was floating through a portal, in hot pursuit of his colleague.
"EVERYONE STAY HERE!" Shining roared, his Royal Canterlot Voice nearly shattering the glass around the establishment. With a heave, and a small grunt of exertion, the alicorn snapped the small steel shortsword protruding from his shoulder like a twig with his muscles alone, the broken hilt and blade falling to the ground beneath him. With a beckoning hand absentmindedly waving behind him for his master, the archlich disappeared entirely from view through the portal, Shining heaving his greatsword through the opening as he followed Kel'Thuzad in pursuit of his captain.
Cadence attempted to follow, but was left behind before she could blink, the portal closing with a snap.
Shiny... be careful...
.........
"TITUS!" Kel'Thuzad bellowed, his magic scanning the surrounding rooms for life, or any sort of animation for that matter.
"Keep looking, Kel. I'm right behind you." Shining confirmed, his presence overwhelmingly accentuated by both his lichdom and alicornhood. Kel'Thuzad nodded, the only sound besides the hoofsteps of his master the screams of panic downstairs, and the distant shouts of the baron ahead of them, still commanding the pegasus to stop.
Always the first to run to action and combat...
A scream of pain alerted the lich, and his scrying was interrupted.
Violently.
With an echoing snap, and a shattering of bone, the lich collapsed, the large form of his equine friend atop his ribcage, a large gash running along his face.
"Fucking changeling..." Titus snarled, spitting a jagged tooth from his maw, a small spout of brownish blood accompanying it. At the stallion's statement, the lich turned his head rather irregularly to witness the small form of a changeling dart into a room to the left, at the end of the hallway.
"I'll kill the bastard..." Rivendare proclaimed, raising shakily to his hooves, his runeblade raising to point down the hallway towards the changeling's temporary safe haven. When the death knight attempted to walk forwards, however, he grunted, a splintered foreleg bone exploding from his shattered leg's side with a sickening gout of congealed blood.
"GODS DAMN IT!" he swore, his hoof reaching to grasp the bone out of instinct. Kel'Thuzad chuckled at his friend's predicament, but quickly shook it off.
He had a changeling to catch...
"Rivendare, stay here, that's an order." Shining commanded, the stallion marching angrily through the gap between the fallen stallion and archlich. Rivendare attempted to stand once more, but once again fell. With a sigh of defeat, he collapsed to his side.
"Yes master." Rivendare groaned.
"Kel'Thuzad, with me." Shining ordered, the lich floating back to his full height quickly, his arms igniting with blue flames.
"Sire, he may be armed..." Kel began, before Shining snorted, interrupting his thought.
The white stallion looked back to the lich, a grimace of utter rage having formed on his muzzle.
"Oh... I hope he is..." Shining chuckled, Frostmourne poised to strike at any would be attackers.
The stallion and the archlich stopped in front of the sealed door at the end of the hall, the changeling's heavy breathing heard from within.
"It'll be no fun otherwise..." the Lich King smirked, smashing the door inwards with a hoof the size of a dinner plate.
Kill... him...
.........
With a dark chuckle, the stallion entered the darkened room, frost seeping from his body in waves, his eyes glowing a deep blue once more.
Kel’Thuzad frowned, his continued scrying detecting...
Three presences?
"Master... I advise against..." with a yelp, the lich was catapulted backwards, his skeletal form smashing into the wall outside the door. Before Kel'Thuzad could react, the door was sealed by a thick sheet of ice. With a snarl, the wizard was attempting to rip the wall down, but was surprised when his arms... flickered?
He... he cut off my power...
"How... did..." the lich began, but exhaustion overtook him, his form collapsing to the floor, unable to move.
"I don't need input, Kel'Thuzad..." the Lich King echoed, his eyes squaring in on the changeling, once more in his pegasus form.
"My prince... please... I can explain!" he sobbed, his form slinking backwards into a corner of the room, tears of fear fall from the shape-shifter's eyes. The alabaster stallion growled, the temperature of the room lowering drastically as the cowering stallion already started to shiver from the cold. Walking slowly forwards, the Lich King ignored the stallion's pleas, the air around them becoming more and more difficult to breathe, the very moisture in the air starting to crystallize.
"My... my lord... they told me..." the stallion began. With another chilling growl, the stallion was above the Lich King's muzzle, his neck being slowly crushed by the iron grip of his necromantic magics.
The Lich King guffawed loudly, the entire building shaking from the noise and intensity of his magics. Slowly, yet ever so surely, the stallion was decaying. His body was rotting under the advanced and horrifying necromantic energies flowing freely from the king's dark visage, and whatever wasn't rotting, was freezing.
Not frostbitten, FREEZING.
SOLID...
"My prince... they... they told me it would..."
"THEY LIED..."
"P-Please..."
.........
*SNAP*
With a roar of annoyance, the Lich King slammed the rotted and half-frozen corpse before him to the ground, shattering it into pieces of necrotic and quite dead flesh. With a smirk, and an almost blissful shiver, the bastard's soul was gone. Doomed to the same fate as so many before it.
"FROSTMOURNE... FEEDS..."
.........
Panting heavily, Shining released the runeblade, his magical hold faltering as he knelt to the ground to catch his breath. With weary, now permanently glowing blue eyes, he examined the mess that was formerly his assassin.
"Oh... my goddesses..." he muttered, the pool of brownish and red blood pooling at his hooves, several chunks of liquefied flesh still frozen nearby, floating in the pool like some sort of horrific soup.
Shuddering, he turned to leave, dragging Frostmourne behind him. As he did, he took in the room he had murdered the stallion in.
Painted dragons lined the walls, and several large plush ponies and other creatures adorned the soft carpet he tread upon.
He chuckled.
Quite the turn from what the room was meant...
For...
.........
A small crib was in the corner, the blankets draped over it frozen nearly solid.
Dead silence pervaded the room, not a single whimper coming from the bed.
As the stallion slowly fell to the ground, one leg at a time, he wept.
"I... oh my gods..."
I... I killed them... I murdered them...
A bony claw draped itself over his shoulder, and he looked back, his tears blurring his vision.
Kel'Thuzad knew instantly.
He brought the stallion in for a hug, which he graciously accepted.
.........
"Shining... I killed them. Understood?" Kel'Thuzad sternly proclaimed. Shining withdrew from the lich, his head shaking back and forth rapidly.
"No... Kel... I wont let you..."
"UNDERSTOOD?" the lich pressed, his eyes boring into his king's.
.........
Shining relented, his muzzle falling at the archlich's sacrifice.
"Yeah..."
Good chapter. I liked it ^_^
*Reads A.N.* You're in blacksmithing camp? That's awesome. What kind of smithing are you learning? Any plans to forge something yourself, like a pet project?
Blacksmithing camp? Wow fan?
I humbly request for frostmourne to grace our world from your hands.
Well... it this isn't enough reason to shiny to stop screwing around with frostmourne, I don't know what is.
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One of my ultimate aspirations is sword and weapon making, so a battle-worthy Frostmourne would be... glorious.
However, for the moment I'll settle for simple steel and iron knives and daggers.
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One of the main problems with Shiny just dropping Frostmourne is that it is basically a phylactery that is somewhat sentient, much akin to Sauron's One Ring.
It doesn't want to part with its master, and will do whatever it takes to get back to him. Not wanting this, he kinda needs to keep ahold of it, lest it take ahold of someone else, like it did Arthas in Warcraft III...
Also, he wasn't fully responsible. Notice how during his rage I never called him Shiny or Shining...
7243817 Oh I saw a real-life Frostmourne, made by the guys on Man at Arms.
It turned out good, it's just that one bit at the ending, that the team said. 'For the Horde' that made me facepalm. Guys Frostmourne is related to the Scourge. They should have said, For the Scourge or the Lich King T_T.
Oh b'jeezums... I, uh... Wow. That was pretty sad, yo.
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First innocent casualties...
I was briefly worried it was pound and pumpkin in the crib.
Also: undead revival is now available.
Also: they still have an undead priest around who can cast resurrection.
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.........
It was Pound and Pumpkin, bro.
Also, if what happened to the stallion happened to them, there won't be anything left to resurrect...
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Ah.
Then...
The Pink One is unleashed.
No truth escapes her sight.
This is the Lich King's final hour.
Frostmourne shall be sundered, for the souls inside... PINKIE HUNGERS.
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Don't be so sure...
The inherent and reoccuring problem is the fact that Shining continues to not realize just how powerful his triple blessings make him.
Lichdom
Lich King
Alicornhood
I won't say much, as it is revealed just how powerful he is eventually, but I will say this...
If Shining were to go absolutely insane, the power that he possesses would EASILY overwhelm that of the elements of Harmony. EASILY.
Hold up! Blacksmithing camp! Why was I not told of this! I would've signed up! Good chapter by the way.
Well, that's ONE way not to have to write some one a story, have a Lich go nuts and turn everyone in the room into paste
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I would oppose on the Lich King stomping on the elements, I mean, sure Lich King is strong af, but defeating the elements would not be a cakewalk...
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Again, he's not JUST the Lich King. He's the Alicorn of DEATH. Not your particularly weak alicorn. AND he's a LICH! If he wanted to, he could probably stomp Celestia or Luna into the DUST...
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BUT YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT NOTHING CAN DEFEAT THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP AND RAINBOWS!
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Except, apparently, for death.
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Shining does have nearly NO battle experience when it comes to full on combat, but think about it this way.
Alicorns, for both the show and this universe, are treated as and ARE basically gods and goddesses made flesh. They are immortal, powerful, and physically imposing.
Also, in the beginning of the story, Kel'Thuzad acknowledges the fact that the 'newly' ascended Cadence would be MORE than a match for him in terms of arcane might.
Him.
The most powerful known mage on Azeroth! (Before his death of course...)
Either way, Shining Armor is the Lich King. An immensely powerful rogue weapon created by a universal superpower. Never mind the fact that Shining is the Lich King, he is the ALICORN OF DEATH. Saying he would mop the floor with anyone on Equus in a one-on-one fight would be the understatement of the century.
And regardless, between the two Lich Kings, Shining would win. He is the only entity in this story that had TRULY transcended mortality (he's a regular lich as well as the Lich King). No matter how many times Arthas would kill him, he'd come back. And from what we've seen in ICC, Arthas can die permanently.
Shining will almost literally never have that luxury, so have some respect.
7283782 I correct that in the next few comments. Got the >'s backwards.
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You have Tied the knot.
You have Fitted the noose.
Will you pull the Lever and complete your Sentence?
You know...you'd think they would just find a way to more or less make Shining stay out of fights. I mean at least in regards to hunting down foes.
It been shown even with Arthas that rage is what normally helps fuel the drive down the highway to Hell. Arthas's rage and fury at seeing his people being turned into undead driving him to lose more and more of his humanity.
Now we got Shining showing the same darn temper issues.
Oh dude...that's harsh. I sure didn't see that coming
... Well.
That escalated quickly.
Welp, I guess this is goodbye for this story. I don't want to read about mai character baby and infant killing fallout.
When I first read this, I thought it was just some random foal. It’s only now occurring to me that this was Pound and Pumpkin