I
Chapter Two
General of the Night
Murmured silence.
She turned around and entered the study once more, still fuming. As it was, she was still quite angry when a white alabaster alicorn, Princess Celestia, arrived to the cheers of the townsfolk. As she walked out to the courtyard, the warrior raised her spear up, prepared for the oncoming battle.
Yet, despite Celestia’s arrival full ornate armor, the white alicorn did not attack immediately. She seemed to scan the area, looking for whomever it was that was leading the forces, despite the fact that Aranea stood almost directly in front of her. A few moments later, she looked at one of the thestrals, “Where is your leader?”
“Ex-fucking-scuse me?” Aranea called out, shocked. She was only a few steps from the princess. Celestia turned to her, and eyed the dragoon with a critical look while Aranea looked scandalized, “Are... Are you serious? Please tell me you’re joking.”
“No,” Celestia answered, looked confused, “I am not. What is the issue?”
Aranea’s eye twitched violently, and she took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Imma fuckin spell it out for you, was the internal monologue running through the woman’s mind as she glared at the alicorn, “I’m the leader, you pack mule.”
“Pack mule?” Celestia gasped, shocked.
“Culture joke,” Aranea answered, looking rather furious, “but, I still can’t believe you blatantly ignored me like that. Rude, and not very diplomatic.” The dragoon rolled her eyes at the large horse’s confusion. “Why are you here?”
The alicorn stared at Aranea for a few seconds, looking around as if still not believing that she was the leader, “Aren’t you just a soldier?” the princess asked, that look of confusion still etched on her face, “I am fairly certain that you have to be just a soldier, no self-respecting general fights from the front of their forces.”
Aranea rolled her eyes and stabbed her spear into the ground. “Maybe where you’re from,” she said, “but, unlike those idiots,” she waved a hand off towards the sky, “I prefer my soldiers remain loyal.” Celestia frowned.
“Then why fight with them?” the alicorn asked, “Why not fight alone?”
Aranea gave an aggravated sigh, “Because I realize that a war cannot be won alone.”
Celestia frowned, “But, I won this one alone,” she answered.
Aranea picked up her spear, “Perhaps you won the fight, but you have not won the war.” She pointed her weapon at the white alabaster princess, “If you have indeed defeated Nightmare Moon on your own, you have gained my respect and gratitude, however, as the general of this army, I will not allow you to take this town without a fight.”
“Very well, but your soldiers will not fight with you,” Celestia said, causing Aranea to give her a skeptical look.
“Asking for a handicap like that,” Aranea actually sounded shocked, “It’s a form of cowardice, but one I will grant you this time.” She waved the gathering army back with a shout.
Celestia frowned, “How is that cowardice?”
“You are forcing your foe to fight alone,” Aranea answered, “Yes, it may seem honorable, but, at the same time, it is akin to asking your foe to lay down their shield merely because it is a heater, and you use a wankel.” She remained in a fighting stance, giving Celestia a stare.
Celestia’s confusion worsened and Aranea sighed. “Just, let’s get this over with,” she leapt back, away from the horse and onto the balcony of the mansion. After a few seconds of staring from Celestia, the white alicorn charged. Wings beating violently as she raced towards Aranea, the dragoon launched herself skyward.
Celestia turned to fix her attack, only for the woman to slam the side of the spear into her back and render her flight momentarily useless. Seeing the chance for an attack, Aranea leapt off and launched further into the air, before plummeting downwards at the alicorn.
The speeding tip of the spear drove itself home into Celestia’s neck, only for the attack to be worsened when the tip of the spear seemed to explode with a shockwave and speed the alicorn’s descent into the ground with a loud ‘Umpf!’.
Celestia crashed into the ground with yelp, and Aranea landed several feet away, staring at the alicorn as she struggled to get back onto her hooves. “Still able to stand, good,” Aranea muttered, “All of my previous opponents weren’t after that attack.”
Celestia glared at the dragoon and launched herself forward, only to have the woman sidestep and slam the spear into her back once more. The alicorn princess crashed into the ground and stood up, spitting up dirt when she stood. “...Have you ever bothered with a fight before, or do all ponies immediately revert back to magic?” Celestia’s glare returned with a vengeance and this time she launched herself skywards.
Aranea watched as the alicorn raced at her from the air, her sword held before her. An unnecessarily distanced attack, easily avoided. Aranea sidestepped, only for a ball of fire to slam into the ground next to her. The barrage increased, leaving only the singular spot the alicorn was aiming at. Aranea dove into the flames and then jumped skywards towards the diving alicorn.
Yet again, the alabaster princess launched volleys of flame at the dragoon. Slowing her skyward rise, the woman started falling backwards spinning her spear like a baton through the air as fast as she could. The flames slammed into the weapon, but were dissipated by the centrifugal force before they could do anything significant. A swing of her weapon, in between volleys, allowed Aranea to once again fly skyward and dodge to the side of the solar princess.
A loud clang marked the connection of Celestia’s sword on her armor, but a mere scratch was the result. Aranea turned and slammed her spear into the princess’s side full-force, dropping her mid-air. Repeating her shockwave attack, the solar princess was slammed into the ground once more.
“You,” the alicorn princess coughed, blood and dirt maring her once pristine white coat, “leave me no choice but to doom you to the same fate as my sister.”
Aranea looked on quizzically as a small number of colored gemstones began floating around Celestia, who glared at Aranea with a passion. Raising her weapon, Aranea charged at the princess, only to be blinded by a brilliant light.
She felt her spear crash into something and then she herself, after the spear was wrenched from her grip, crashed into a very solid wall. When her vision finally cleared, the dragoon sat in a large room with naught but a metal door and grey rock walls extending up forever, though the room remained somehow lit.
The dungeons of the Canterlot palace were mostly grey with very little to see, as per typical of a dungeon anywhere. However, unlike most dungeons, these held no other residents aside from a new arrival who had appeared in a flash of light. She dropped from the air and stumbled back, catching herself a moment later.
A few rather loud curses burst forth from the woman’s mouth as she scrambled, looking around at her surroundings. The door to the little room was in a mostly metal frame, with its top upper half in bars, allowing the prisoner to see out into the hall. The other cells of the dungeon were completely empty and the cobwebs in hers signified that, until she had arrived, hers had been as well for some time.
No guards stood in the hall, and no sounds came from anywhere nearby. It seemed that due to the lack of use of the dungeons they were basically abandoned. Grabbing the door she pushed as hard as she could, and cursed when it didn’t move. “Damn it, those idiot horses,” she hit the door in frustration, “they have no idea the plots I could hear in that forsaken place. The whispers I heard.”
She was still ranting internally when her spear fell from the air a moment later, clattering on the cold stone floor. She scrambled over and picked it up. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it, so she turned and lunged at the door with it. The door creaked and swung in as she pulled her spear back and put it back on her back.
She marched out and made her way out of the dungeon into the massive halls of the castle. She began making her way through the halls and turned around the corner, nearly running into a group of guards.
Both parties froze, and Aranea gulped. I need a distraction. Why am I thinking of Gangnam style? She pointed off past the guards, “Look, a distraction!” The guards turned and she sprinted around the corner.
Nearly running into a group of nobles, she hid at the corner. When the guards followed her around the corner, they were greeted by the sight of the woman wearing a top hat and a monocle, while casually smoking a pipe. “Hm, yes, quite. Quite.”
The group disappeared around the corner and a few moments later the screams of nobles echoed through the halls.
Aranea ended up hiding and running for some time, before she entered a massive room and almost ran into Celestia herself. She lated right before crashing into the flank of the princess. Taking a deep breath as quietly as possible, she tried slipping back out the door before it slammed shut and failed.
Celestia spun around and met Aranea’s eyes.
“How did you get out?”
“Broke the door.”
“...I shouldn’t have given you your weapon.”
“You think?” Aranea said, giving Celestia an incredulous look.
The princess’s horn flashed and a sword appeared in her magic, swinging downwards at the dragoon. The spear was swung off Aranea’s back and she knocked the sword back before hitting Celestia and forcing her back.
“You’ve gotten better,” Aranea said, glaring, “at least faster.”
Celestia didn’t even speak when her horn flashed again, blinding Aranea. She covered her face, and once the light was gone… She was back in the dungeons. Her spear, however, was gone. An aggravated sigh escaped her mouth and she sat down on the slab of marble intended to be a bed.
The cell door squealed slightly as it opened, likely due to disuse, and a blue alicorn entered the cell. She was moderately taller than she had been before, and seemed more collected. Aranea glared.
“Hello, Dragoon,” the blue princess said, looking up into the soldier’s eyes.
“Queen of the Night,” Aranea answered, her voice sounding strained.
“Not anymore,” the alicorn answered, “Though we once called ourself that.”
“Yeah, I know. I was there,” Aranea said, a frown finally crossing her face as her glare intensified. The blue alicorn wilted slightly.
“Indeed,” she answered.
“Why are you here?”
“To apologize for our lies back then,” Luna said, wilting a bit under Aranea’s glare. “We had no right to promise you something we could not grant.”
Aranea stared at her for a minute. Luna gulped but looked relieved when Aranea sighed and looked away. “I’ll forgive you, for now, on one condition,” the silver-haired woman said, “you help me and try and find a way home.”
“Agreed,” Luna answered, “Now, We are afraid we cannot let you out.”
“Not surprised, it’d be a foolish thing to do, politically, letting me out. I am, technically, an enemy of Equestria,” Aranea retorted, sitting back down on the marble bed. Luna stood there and she gave the princess a withering stare.
Luna paled and turned back to the door, letting the guards open it. Stepping out, she called back, “I convinced my sister to give you a chance.” Aranea turned her way and stared at the exiting pony for a second.
“Yeah yeah,” Aranea finally waved her off and lay down on the marble. She had already taken off her armor, which the guards had tried to confiscate. Suffice to say, the murderous glare that appeared on her face had motivated them to not bother even attempting.