Chapter 52 - Australis Promo · 11:54pm Oct 14th, 2021
Thanks to the efforts of several here and on Discord, several people correctly figured out the riddle of the ice.
Australis
noun, adjective
Feminine
Definition:
-Adjective: Southern (adjective) or literally "of the south"
-Noun: "Born of the south"
Origin: from the Roman Wind god of the south, Austur; known in Greek as Notus
And without further ado, the promised teaser!
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The celebration of that ancient horror's destruction was not at all unearned, let alone the exhaustion so many of them felt on that rooftop after surviving their ordeal. But celebration, outside of morale fostering internal jubilation, would have to wait. There was still another windigo not far away, Adagio and Gigan were still missing in action, and they had wounded. Sunset Shimmer especially had the latter on her mind as she tightly held a limping Flash Sentry to her.
The young man was shivering constantly, still damp from the dark magic ice that had been festering across his body only very recently melting. Thankfully none of the horrid thoughts such grim magicks might engender were brought forth, likely a welcome side effect of the windigo that made them being destroyed and his proximity to so many benign sources of magic to counteract it. That still didn't change a nagging sense of horror the young unicorn-turned-woman had at the realization Flash had been possessed by a horrid frost demon for Celestia-knew how long.
"Can't believe we didn't notice, how could we have been so-o stupid we-"
His shivering, clammy hand connected to the arm Sunset had put around her shoulder for stability had tightened its grip on her own. She was only now noticing their fingers had interlocked.
"S-Sunset, I was conscious-... the whole time," Flash whispered with plenty of understandable fatigue in his tone, still looking very worse for the wear with sunken eyes and pale skin. He often needed a breath or two between words, and the fact he was talking at all was taking an appreciable toll that he was willfully braving, "It took.. over... a bit after the concert. You all had... plenty to worry wi-ith. Meeting and meet-up to get Twi-light back, and it didn't want to get close."
He weakly chuckled as Sunset Shimmer set him down in an open seat within the van, picking up a spare shirt to dab away the cold sweat on his brow, "T-Told you-.. I'm not important-"
“You better no flippin’ finish that!” Sunset Shimmer shushed his lips with a finger, "You don't need a pretty magic rock to tell you you're important Flashy."
Flash Sentry just laughed a bit, not disagreeing but not fighting her either. He knew when she got like this, how stubborn she could be.
"Listen, we're gonna get you to... I-I don't know, a hospital and then-"
Flash just made inarticulate grumbling noises approximating that of dismissive grunts as he shook his head a bit limply, "Su-Sunset... you're fretting again. I-.. will be o-kay..."
He nodded along to his own words, chin flopping against his collar, "O-Kay... Just going to rest. You need to be with the others and put a stop to those things!"
He was going to say more but stopped and shivered despite himself at the lingering cold. Sunset Shimmer didn't even need to think before removing her jacket and putting it across his shoulders. The added heat and her getting close as to put it on him helped banish away lingering chills.
"Giving me your jacket? A-Aren't I supposed to be the one to do this, Sunnybeam?"
"Oh cut the chivalry!" Sunset quipped, lightly tapping him on the forehead, "You're the one who... Did you just call me-"
A tiny smile peaked across his tired, chapped lips, "... I've been waiting to call you that for a long time."
'Sunnybeam', a dopey nickname coined years ago; about a year or so after her first arrival. That made it about a few months into them starting to court-er-.. date.
-That meant it was already over a year that he'd already known I wasn't human... And didn't care.-
Sunset Shimmer looked him in the eyes as a worried but calm smile curled her lips. She got on his level, one hand moving to check his cheek temperature as the other kept hold of his own. Unconsciously their fingers started to rub at the other, just as it was for her to cup the cheek after confirming he was getting a hint of heat back in them.
The admiration, honest pride, and almost reverence was so obvious across the glowing glimmer in Sentry's eyes she didn't even need her powers and an empathy bond to feel it. But the massive surge of empathic power she'd gotten to feel from him upon using it to expel Notus was not forgotten. Sunset Shimmer couldn't help but divert her gaze for the briefest of moments and bite her lip, privy to how certain thoughts on certain topics flew about.
She looked back at something Flash had seemed to notice given the shift in his eye. Looking back she saw the now familiar face of Eventide Hymn conversing with Aria, Celestia, and Godzilla. The false siren, true Element Bearer, looked at him, then to Sunset, and nudged Celestia to whisper something to her. The transformed alicorn needed only a fleeting glance that showed the barest hint of a wide grin on her face for it to spread to Twilight's. Flash Sentry relaxed and closed his eyes just as Twilight gave Sunset a thumbs-up she knew the context to.
Noticing Flash had closed off his vision, Sunset did give him a tiny nudge to ensure he was aware.
"Soooo .. about Twilight..." Sunset muttered whilst rubbing the back of her head.
Sentry smiled pleasantly as he could but only nodded slightly, "I helped her as I could and danced with her, l-liked her well enough.... Buuut..."
"But what?"
"Sunnybeam, you got more to w-worry about," Flash whined ineffectively with a humored chuckle.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence! One down, two to go," Sunset shrugged while trying to downplay the threat faced to them to more than just her company.
Her hand squeezed his a bit tighter and Flash seemed like he was about to say something, something important. It was on the tip of his tongue and his lips parted just enough to start a first syllable that never came. Silence passed between them instead, just sitting together, holding hands, sharing company. It was a jarring contrast to the last months of Sunset trying to make good with the Rainbooms and Flash not being able to choose between relief, pride, and anxiety that she'd relapse and he'd have to protect his friends as he once failed to. Fear against reality was a plague before even the windigos showed up.
"You can beat 'em," Flash whispered with no hesitance or weakness in his tone like there had been. Confidence was omnipresent.
Sunset Shimmer sighed and nodded as good as she could, pointing her thumb back at the unlikely group, "Well with the company I keep these days! Ehehe..."
Sentry just beamed at her, stronger than he had in a good long while. In over a year in fact. A thought came to him and he picked himself up as best as he could.
"L-listen... we'll have a lot to sort out and talk through but... These things hate good vibes right?"
"Yyyeeeah, seems to be the jist of it. Aria Blaze said some of our..." she felt her cheeks heat up and almost could detect her absent pony-ears flop in embarrassment, "... Feelings, gave her a boost."
"Then... there is one thing I can do to help you."
He moved forward, slow enough she clearly got his offered intent well ahead of time to react on her own wishes. She could accept the hug he was offering, or go for more. She took the second option and their lips touched. He was still a bit cold, had chapped lips, and they both stunk of cold sweat; but she could feel the sparks flying. Fingers knit together as her arm pulled him in closer and he weakly, but happily held on.
It only needed to last a few moments, but lasted instead a bit longer. Both pulled away feeling a familiar red string once broken, finally starting to possibly knit itself back together.
Sunset Shimmer sighed, stroking his cheek before playfully ruffling Flash's hair, "We'll work things out after, promise?"
Flash Sentry chuckled, leaning in and brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes, "Deal..... Now... go help save the world."
Sunset giggled, giving him a quick peck on the forehead before Flash leaned back to get some much needed rest. When she turned to return to the group… she made it three steps before having to resist the urge to let out a loud, happy whinny upon jumping up and clicking her heels together.
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In a forested locale just outside of town, the sixth flash of red glimmered just within the tree line. A brilliant flare before unceremoniously depositing two forms tangled up in a heap of each other’s limbs. Adagio grumbled as she was the first to rise, trying to shake away the nausea distorting her consciousness while frantically looking about to try and get her bearings and confirm if the horrific monster she had felt a split second before getting grabbed was still with them. Thankfully no frost demons were in sight.
“Where are we?! What have you done!”
“Emergency fallba-a-a-a-“ Gigan thwacked himself on the chest and sparked, “Fallback. We were attacked and there was no time to enact countermeasures, so the fall back was to clear space. I set it to Camp Everfree so we’re somewhere between here and there.”
“Somewhere?! somewhere?! You idiot!” Adagio grabbed him by his collar and shook the cyborg a few times, “We just got attacked by a windigo, my cousin and podmates are still around a windigo! And you go running off with your tail between your legs?!”
Gigan’s mechanical eyes contracted behind his sunglasses and he pursed his lips with a grumble, “I was only trying to back up to get out of the way of whatever attack they were launching! I didn’t mean to keep warping!”
“Oh I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of you ditching everyone!”
“It was an accident!” Gigan snapped, looking aside and pulling up some diagnostics that had plenty of error codes coming from his warp drive, “I’m still damaged from the fight with Godzilla. My safeties thought I was more hurt than I was and kept going!”
Adagio hadn’t let go of him, yanking him closer to her furious visage so much their foreheads banged together. To her credit, she took getting conked on the head with a metallic skull without flinching, “While I didn’t ask to be included in you glitching out! Bring us back there, Aria and Eventide need me; let alone your teammate will need us!”
“I know!” Gigan huffed as he gripped her shoulders and tried to push the siren back despite some impulse to hold on to her. He tried to rev up his warp drive again but it sputtered out, sparks ejecting from his mid-back.
“Grahk! Piece of scrap!” Gigan snarled as he tried again, only for his limbs momentarily his limbs lock up and spark again, “I wouldn’t be running on a jury-rig if you and Tentacle Lover weren’t needing guarding every five minutes! I need my hangar, something I keep getting denied because of all the crazy stuff happening here constantly!”
“I wasn’t asking you to guard me every five minutes! You didn’t need to drag me into this mess if you’re going to wimp out at the sight of a windigo!” Adagio yelped back, throwing her hands up into the air as her pulse raced and her teeth grit.
“I didn’t cut and run! I already told you!”
“Yet you grabbed onto me!”
“And you held on so tight I had to pry you off!”
“Do you even know where we are!?”
“No! I can’t get my maps to work, can you tell me where we are!?”
“I don’t know where you dumped us!”
“You live here! How can you not know?!” Gigan roared with a huff of strain in his voice.
“I lived in the next city over, until you kaiju came crashing into our life and upended it!”
Gigan couldn’t see it but she could, the absolute geysers of negative emotions billowing out of him in the form of greenish smoke. It was taking conscious effort to avoid absorbing it, much as she often liked getting under his skin. She was also painfully aware of how much was also coming out of her.
Every mark, every snap, and the increasing yelling in their back and forth was only engendering more and more negativity. Finally got to the point she just couldn’t keep it up longer. Adagio stomped and turned around, crossing her arms, and just putting her back to the cyborg.
Gigan unconsciously reached for words before looking at his hand, noticing tremors going up and down it. The metallic fingers curled back in and kneaded amongst themselves as his eyes shut. He turned around and now they were back-to-back in silence; one trying to look about their surroundings and figure out a way back to where they’d come from, the other fidgeting with internal systems to try and get something back in working order.
This wasn’t a new position they found themselves in. They’d butted heads plenty of times before. Butted heads on planning, when the reveal of getting the wrong Twilight came to light, the topic of what to do with her, how to handle Gloriosa’s growing magic, and more. Their reactions to Eventide trying to shoulder any blame for what had happened was only the most recent incident.
And then there was the subject of the night after the concert, when both had been attacked and tormented by Notus using their own voice. Pushed far enough into despair that Adagio tried to give away her most precious gift, her literal heart, to keep away from a monster whose name she’d dreaded for years to ever say aloud.
-Zephyrus…-
The title rang in his mind and Gigan had remembered it well. It had been on his mind when the windigo showed up and he’d reacted, intending to only fallback a safe distance and then rejoin the fray. A plan that hinged on grabbing the siren he’d butted heads with so much. The reason being was slowly dawning, cusping on the horizon of thought but still mostly blocked away. Gigan just tried to focus on his mechanics and get everything working again.
It was a moment or two more when Adagio, trembling and rubbing her arm while contemplating a lot, finally sucked up her nerves and turned back around. Gigan perked his head up to meet her and she was just about to say something, either an observation of where they were or maybe even some kind of apology to swallow her pride, but it did not escape or notice just as soon as he was looking at her; that he was looking past her
“… Oh no,” Gigan whispered breathlessly.
Adagio was about to ask what it was when all perception of time slowed down to the microscopic fraction of a millisecond. He started charging forward, eyes beginning to flicker and ignite with red light behind his sunglasses while trying to mouth out something. A cold, western gale started to billow past her hair and creep along her neck. A cable shot out of Gigan’s wrist, poised to grab the siren as it swung closer, and on impulse she leaned forward to grab it with an outstretched hand. That was when a solid mass smashed into her back.
Adagio Dazzle gasped as she was slammed forward by a mass of ice, which continued to sail forward and collide with Gigan, exploding into a sea of frost to encase him despite his efforts to knock it out of the way. Everything was a dizzy vertigo; air starting to distort and move in erratic ways almost like the effect of time itself was being twisted. She caught a glimpse of Gigan stuck against a tree trunk with a car sized hunk of ice growing out of a human shape anchoring him into place despite attempts to free himself. The cold swallowed the cyborg up entirely.
And then in an instant, Twilight Sparkle was on top of her, eyes and face giving only a bemused façade as her fingers curled around Adagio’s necklace like there was no force barrier. Twilight braced her foot on Adagio’s stomach and kicked off while wrenching her arm backwards.
The cord making up Adagio’s necklace snapped, and she felt almost as if a chunk of very being, her breath and pulse, was torn off. It was a massing thought in her mind as a tear stung on the corner of her eye as she fumbled backwards, that this was exactly what Sonata had experienced.
Zephyrus took inventory of the deceptively important red jewel, looking at it in mild amusement for all the trouble it had caused despite its tiny size.
“This new body has made things far more convenient if the situation allows,” the windigo noted calmly, comparing success here to the resistance he had encountered trying to wrench away Aria’s necklace and the complicated body surfing that was required to remove Notus’ spawn’s necklace.
The Western Wind took a glance at Adagio, who was sprawled onto her knees and hands, heaving while frost started to form across her limbs and cheeks. Etched across her neck and collar was an ugly, ragged scar, exactly like the one her little sister had initially. On Sonata it had started out small, if still blatantly noticeable, before growing over the ensuing weeks. This jagged, tense mass was etching across her skin in a matter of moments, western gales carrying those dark emotions within the green mists directly into it without filter. It was like she was going through what Sonata had over about a month in the span of moments.
Adagio gasped and shivered, trying and failing to rise, eyes glued to her necklace.
Zephyrus let it dangle from their fingers before snatching it back up and holding it in their palm as they looked upon her. Crouching down, the windigo wearing Twilight Sparkle’s skin gripped the eldest siren by the chin and inspected her, “So, you really are my daughter. I almost thought for a while initially that your mother would have killed my remainder before you could be born, or right after.”
Their eyes met Adagio’s as ice crawled up her neck and sunk into her cheeks. Zephyrus noticed something that spurred a glare as his gaze bored into Adagio’s even as she practically had a seizure, “… You have his eyes.”
it was adorable to see Sunset suppress a happy height after she and Foash hooked back up. I also love how Celestia and Twilight ship them. Zephyrus’ comment about Adagio having [his] eyes implies that maybe she isn’t his daughter.. Hope to see more of the chapter soon.
Flash and Sunset coming together is just wonderful.
Oh, I never thought I'd feel sorry for Adagio, but despite her mistakes, she doesn't deserve this horror.
Just wanted to point out real quick that the word "hanger" as used here is probably supposed to be "hangar".
...Yeah, I know, but I couldn't think of anything else to say.