When he wasn’t brainwashed into being evil, Shining Armor seemed like a pretty stand-up guy. Plus, it turns out he’s Twilight Sparkle’s big brother. Despite his family ties and the fact that he was mind-controlled at the time, I don’t think Cheerilee’s likely to forgive him for threatening one of her kids any time soon.
At least the rest of the ponies seemed to have accepted his shift of loyalties easily enough. Once we’d explained the situation, the guardponies under Shining Armor’s command had seemed relieved to find out what was going on. I guess leaning that the reason your commander and princess had slowly been going evil was all due to mind control would take some worries off your mind. Most soldiers start having some serious moral dilemmas when their commanders order them to do questionable things.
For any career military person (or pony, as the case may be), following orders was a matter of pure instinct. A big chunk of basic training is hammering that single lesson into every single recruit’s head. The guards had to have noticed that Celestia was going down a pretty questionable path, but as long as she wasn’t deep-frying newborns and eating them by the dozen, most of her soldiers would suppress any doubts they might have about their leader and do as they were told. The Equestrian Royal Guard took a lot of pride in their service to the princess; the idea of making like the Praetorians or Janissaries and tossing Celestia out had to be horrifying to them.
Finding out that Celestia had gotten a mind-whammy courtesy of Discord solved the dilemma for them quite nicely. It eliminated the problem of choosing between doing the right thing and remaining loyal to the princess they were sworn to serve. Instead of betraying a ruler who’d turned tyrannical, they were saving Celestia from Discord, and from herself. That thought sat much more comfortably in their minds.
With a couple dozen guards helping out, we didn’t have any trouble getting the kids and old folks into the relative safety of the Everfree Forest. I started having doubts about just how safe the dark and spooky forest might be as soon as we passed through the treeline, but hopefully this would be a temporary arrangement. With Shining Armor on our side, I was starting to feel a slight bit of cautious optimism that we might be able to turn this thing around after all.
Shining Armor’s ponies promptly got to work setting up a temporary campground when we reached the clearing around Zecora’s hut. It was hard not to be a bit impressed by their good old military efficiency. Within a few minutes they had already made good progress at getting ground cleared, setting up tents, and forging order out of the chaos our group of refugees had fallen into. Trixie took it upon herself to set up an impromptu magic show, which helped to keep the kids distracted and out from underfoot.
While Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rarity explained the situation to the rhyming zebra, I trotted up to the Captain. “Think everyone’ll be safe enough from the local critters camping out here?”
“Hopefully,” he answered. “My ponies know how to maintain a perimeter and keep a lookout for anything that could cause us trouble. We’ve never set up a camp somewhere as wild as the Everfree Forest, though.” He glanced over at the zebra. “I expect they will be deferring to local expertise quite a bit.”
It looked like he had a decent handle on the situation. The guardponies all seemed happy to have a nice simple problem to deal with, too. Protecting civilians from monsters was righteous and didn’t come with any moral complications. After everything they must have been dealing with since Discord turned Celestia to the Dark Side, that had to be a pleasant change of pace.
The three Element-bearers had finished talking to Zecora and dispersed to help with getting the camp set up. Zecora headed our way, speaking to Shining Armor in her oddly lyrical voice. “Should you need help finding shelter or food, I think you’ll find my skills are quite good.”
“Good to know,” I felt my smartass-sense tingling, and couldn’t bring myself to resist the call. “Say, are there any wolves in this forest?”
“Timber wolves there are among the trees,” Zecora answered, her expression unreadable. “But large groups of ponies they should let be.”
I cursed under my breath as she dodged my trap, but I wasn’t about to give up after just one try. “Say, do you have any oranges?”
The zebra glared at me.
Shining Armor cleared his throat, and looked at me with a hint of reprimand in his eyes. “We appreciate any help you can offer, ma’am.” The Guard Captain and Zecora fell into a conversation about the details of getting everything set up, leaving me free to deal with the next order of business on my plate.
I found the wall-eyed pegasus helping set up tents with the two other pegasi she’d flown in with. Despite her best efforts, or more likely because of them, it wasn’t going very well; the two tents were little more than disorganized jumbles of sticks and canvas. It probably didn’t help that Derpy seemed to be chatting happily with a unicorn filly instead of paying attention to what she was doing. A filly that looked an awful lot like her.
Huh. No wonder she was so distracted.
“Hey Derpy,” I called out. “Got a minute? There’s stuff we need to talk about.”
Derpy frowned and looked hesitantly at the two ponies she was theoretically helping. “Can it wait a minute? I think Blossomforth and Cloud Kicker need my help with this tent.”
“We can manage without you Derpy,” the lavender pegasus (not sure which one of the names Derpy had tossed out was hers) hastily volunteered. “I’m sure he’s got something very important and time critical that he needs to talk to you about right now, right?” I caught a hint of desperation in her voice, and the white pegasus was shooting a pleading look at me.
“Oh yes.” I played along. “Sorry, but it really can’t wait.” On a whim, I quickly pulled up my Sight and checked the two pegasi out. They were clean of any Discordian or Denarian taint. Never hurts to be thorough. Just to be safe, I checked the kid too; the thing with Ivy a couple years back had made it crystal clear that the Denarians will use children if it gives them a tactical advantage. The filly was clean, and the connection I saw between her and Derpy confirmed what I suspected from the physical resemblance. Derpy had mentioned that she had a kid, after all.
I dropped my supernatural vision, and now that I wasn’t busy getting fleeting glances of their auras I saw the two adult pegasi shooting grateful looks my way.
“Well, alright then,” Derpy reluctantly agreed. A second later, she grinned over at the two pegasi she’d been trying to assist. “As soon as we’re done talking, I’ll come back and help, okay?”
“No need to rush.” The white pegasus quickly assured her. “Take all the time you need. We’ll probably be done by the time you get back anyway.” From the look the two pegasi exchanged, I’m pretty sure they intended to make a point of being done before Derpy got back to ‘help’ them.
Derpy said a quick goodbye her daughter before trotting over to me. “So, what d’you wanna talk about? Muffins? Spying? Spying on Muffins? Infiltrating Celestia’s palace to steal her muffins?”
“Not here,” I cut her off before she could go on too much of a muffin-related tangent. “It’s sensitive info; we need a bit of privacy for this.”
For a second, I considered grabbing the other three ponies from our little group for this little conversation, but I decided against. It was better to just keep this between me and Derpy. We headed for the edge of the camp and kept walking past it. After a minute or so, Derpy started looking around a bit nervously. “I think we’re far enough away now that nopony’s gonna overhear us.”
It wouldn’t have hurt my feelings to get a little bit further away first, but this was probably far enough to work with. I turned around, gave the area a quick once-over, and took aim. “Forzare!”
Derpy went flying and slammed face-first into a tree. The tree lost, but the hit left the pony stunned and an easy target for my next spell. “Arctis!” A thick layer of ice sprang up around Derpy, covering her completely except for her face. I was tempted to just finish things right then and there before she could recover from the sucker-punch I’d hit her with, but there were a couple bits of the scenario that just didn’t quite add up. As long as I had her safely pinned down, there was no harm in asking a few questions first.
Once the pony had a few seconds to gather her wits, she turned her eyes on me, now completely devoid of the wide-eyed innocent cheerfulness she’d been displaying up to this point. “So,” the Derpnarian declared coldly. “You finally figured it out.”
“Leading us straight into a trap did kind of give you away,” I remarked casually. I probably should’ve suspected her a bit sooner; after all, she’d given me a letter from Discord back when I first met her. Maybe he’d already had his hooks in her at that point, and tossing a coin her way later on had just been an afterthought.
Derpiel grimaced and made a few perfunctory efforts to break free of her icy prison. After a few seconds of struggling she gave it up for a lost cause, and turned attention back to me. “You are making no effort to remove me from my host,” the possessed pony commented. “Why?”
“One or two things don’t quite add up about you,” I answered calmly, taking a seat in front of the demon-pony – about fifteen feet away from her, just in case she had any nasty surprises in store for me. Sure the ice held her for the moment, but I wasn’t a big believer in taking needless risks.
“Do tell.” The Derpnarian seemed to be falling into the classic villain ploy of sitting down and discussing things like civilized people. Even if Nicky didn’t have the decency to explain his entire plan to me when he had me beaten and at his mercy, most of the other Denarians respected the traditional bad guy rules. Odds are that within the next minute or two she’d start offering me money, power, or whatever else might catch my fancy in exchange for letting her go.
“You led us right into an ambush, yeah, but you also did a lot to help us get away.” Smashing a hole in the floor certainly made our escape a lot less problematic than it would’ve been otherwise. “Plus, Cadenziel went after you first when the fight started up. Would’ve made a lot more sense if she’d gone after someone else and left you free and in a great position to stab us in the back at the worst possible time.”
“Most astute.” Yup, Derpiel was already breaking out the flattery. The Denarians could be really predictable sometimes. “You are correct. Saluriel’s host and I were working at cross-purposes.” An annoyed grimace decorated the demon-pony’s face. “I can assure you, the ambush was just as unpleasant of a surprise for me as it was for the rest of you.”
“I bet it was.” Needless to say, I was going to be taking anything the Derpnarian had to say with a grain of salt about the size of the Sears Tower. Demons aren’t exactly known for being honest. “Anyway, let’s move on to the main event. You’ve got a coin, but you’re fighting with Sally the Snakeboy. What’s your angle?”
“To do exactly as I’ve done in all our dealings to this point,” Derpiel answered smoothly. “To render you aid in whatever manner I can.”
“I can’t imagine Nicky’s going to be happy about that,” I quipped.
“Ah, but you misunderstand, Dresden.” The demon pony grinned at me. “I’ve been acting on Nicodemus’ orders the entire time.”
Well well well, the plot thickens. “Explain.”
“Our alliance with Discord has lately soured,” Derpiel declared. “He has refused to perform the services he promised us in exchange for our aid in freeing him.”
“An evil trickster god who doesn’t keep his deals,” I broke out the smartassery. “Who could’ve seen that coming?”
Judging by the annoyed grimace on the Derpnarian’s face, she didn’t appreciate the interruption. Good. “Saluriel foolishly chose to betray the Order of the Blackened Denarius and align himself with Discord,” the demon pony continued on as if I hadn’t interrupted. “Others within the Order have also betrayed Nicodemus and made common cause with Discord. Nicodemus has taken appropriate measures to ensure that the punishment for their crimes will be appropriately agonizing before it proves fatal.”
So the Denarians were killing each other off. Such a shame. “So you and Sally Snakeboy are duking it here. That still leaves the question of why you say Nicodemus wants you to help me.” I had a pretty good guess what Nicky’s angle was already, but the more I got the demon talking, the better the odds were that it would let something I wasn’t supposed to know slip out.
“Surely you have already grasped his reasons.” Derpiel gave a smile that showed entirely too many teeth to qualify as friendly. “Even when we first took to mortal form through the coins, it was an old saying. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ We share a common foe; it is only sensible that we pool our resources.” After a moment, the demon pony tossed in a bit more flattery for good measure. “Twice you have fought the Order of the Blackened Denarius and foiled our schemes. Nicodemus respects your strength.”
So, Nicky wanted an alliance against Discord? Have to admit, that offer was more than a little tempting at the moment. The two of them working together had caused me all kinds of trouble, and breaking up that alliance would solve a lot of problems. Making them spend time and effort fighting each other instead of putting all their energy into finding ways to hurt me and my allies sounded appealing as hell.
Not appealing enough to offset the very obvious downsides of the arrangement, though. “I know it might seem this way to all you big nasty immortals, but I wasn’t born yesterday. What’s the catch?” There’s always a catch when a demon offers you something. If you don’t see any downsides to the deal, you aren’t looking hard enough. “If you expect me or any of the ponies to take one of the coins, you can go right on back to hell.”
“We would not ask anything so unrealistic of you,” the Derpnarian assured me. “The price of our aid is but a trifle, really. The return of the coins you have taken from us.”
Oh yeah, handing a bunch of demon coins back over to Team Evil wasn’t a big deal at all. Especially not after I’d eliminated Nicky’s only real competition for leader of the Nickleheads - he’d have no trouble getting the rest of the Denarians to toe his line. Hell’s bells, aside from Deirdre he hadn’t even lost any servants he was likely to care about. All the other Denarians he’d tossed at me were sitting in canon-fodder bodies before he’d handed the coins off to the ponies.
Sure, I’d taken Lasciel and her coin out of the picture for good, but she’d never been all that solidly in Nicky’s camp to begin with. The only reason she’d hitched her wagon to his cause in the first place was because it gave her an opportunity to take a crack at me. Under normal circumstances, she’d be butting heads with Nicky all the time. What was it Forthill had called her once? ‘A rebel angel amongst rebels.’ Sort of like James Dean, except with fire and brimstone instead of motorcycles and leather jackets.
Bottom line, if Nicky got the coins back, he’d indisputably be coming out ahead in this deal. That’s not to mention that he might have grabbed some toys from the Outside while he’d had the ponies under his control; there was no guarantee that Star Wars and that Nirn place had been his first stops. I didn’t like the idea of cutting a deal with Nicodemus that let him walk away after I’d thoroughly kicked his ass. I damn sure wasn’t going to let him get away with a victory.
The Denarians being what they were, I couldn’t trust them to keep a deal they made with me anyway. Hell’s bells, they’d been quick enough to betray Discord, and they had a lot more common ground with an evil trickster god of chaos than they did with me. The Order of the Blackened Denarius makes for a pretty sucky group of allies. At best, Nicky’s idea of an alliance probably involved him sitting back and watching while Discord and I fought it out, maybe tossing a bit of aid my way if I started losing, and then finishing off me and whatever allies I had left standing while we were all exhausted from fighting Discord.
I’d have to spend the duration of any deal I cut with the Nicklehead keeping an eye out for a knife in the back, because there was no way in hell there wouldn’t be one coming. Like the old story of the scorpion and the frog, the Denarians weren’t going to change their ways. If we made a deal, it was just a matter of time before the Nickleheads’ sudden but inevitable betrayal.
Besides, I only had Derpiel’s word that the Denarians and Discord had even fallen out in the first place. When dealing with a group of thoroughly nasty individuals with a propensity for lying and treachery, it’s generally a bad idea to take anything they say at face value. Odds were good that the demon pony was lying her bubble-marked butt off. Convincing me that the Nickleheads and Discord were at each other’s throats would be a great way to lead me into a trap. Despite her claims to the contrary, Derpiel already pulled that trick on me once. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … been fooled, won’t get fooled again.
“How’s this for a counter-offer? If you hand your coin over right now and Nicky gives me his as soon as Discord’s dealt with, and maybe I’ll let him stick around long enough to die of old age instead of killing him.” Without a coin, Nicky wouldn’t last too long; when Saluriel’s old host lost his coin, he managed to fit seventy years worth of aging into less than two years of real time. I guess demonic immortality doesn’t come with much in the way of ontological inertia. Or maybe instead of a limit on the magic, it was a case of the legions of darkness opting for the Darth Vader method of dealing with minions who failed them.
“That is preposterous,” the Derpnarian declared with sneer.
“Well now you know how I feel about your suggestion that we team up and I just give Nicky everything he needs to win.” I mentally prepared myself; if Derpiel had some nasty trick in store for me, she was likely to spring it in the next couple seconds.
Sure enough, I heard the sound of cracking ice as the possessed pony broke free of her prison. That was just the opening act, though; a second later, her mane started growing out and taking on a metallic sheen, her hooves transformed into thick clawed paws, and the rest of her body took on a vaguely scaly appearance. She didn’t quite go for the full transformation though, presumably so she could keep Derpy’s wings. In any case, the demon form confirmed that Derpy had gotten Deirdre’s old coin. That accounted for all of them, except for Nicky’s.
With a snarl, the Derpnarian flicked her head at me and sent her razor-mane slicing in my direction. I brought up my shield and let her attack bounce right off of it, sending strands of hair flying every which way. Several cut through tree limbs, and in one case got halfway through a tree trunk. “Looks like you’ve found your true calling in life.” Deirdre had always had a bit a low tolerance threshold for smartassery, so it was worth trying to push Derpiel’s buttons on the chance that it was one of those personality traits that more tied to the Fallen than the person carrying the coin. “Give up the whole demon thing and take up lumberjacking – I’ve heard it’s a pretty lucrative career. Plus, you get to dress up in women’s clothing and hang around in bars.”
That joke probably would’ve worked better if the demon had a male host.
The demon pony shrieked and tried to chop me into tiny little pieces with her full metal mane again, with just as much success as her first attempt. A quick ice blast left half her slicing and dicing hair stuck together in a single icy mass. “One thing I have to ask,” I quipped. “Out of all the ponies you could’ve grabbed, why the clumsy cross-eyed one?”
Opting for a change in strategy, the Derpnarian flapped her wings a few times and took to the air. Oh, I really hope she isn’t planning to grab me and drop me from an unhealthy height. I’ve had it up to here with demonically possessed pegasi trying to make like a Disney movie and kill me with gravity.
I nipped that possibility in the bud. “Forzare!” I put a downward angle on the blast, driving the partially-transformed demon pony back to the ground. Derpiel rolled with the hit and turned it into a diving charge that put her in position to take a diving swipe at my head. My shield held the blow at bay, and a second force spell introduced her to another tree at a distinctly unhealthy velocity.
“C’mon, you can’t really expect to win this,” I called out to the Derpnarian. “By now I’m pretty much a certified expert in taking down demon ponies. Hell, I’ve been kicking the nickled asses for the last couple days. Tessa? Dead. Rosanna? Dead. All of their ‘tardbeast minions? Dead. Deirdre? Dead. All the other demon ponies? Freed. Fricking Lasciel, one of the Fallen? Dead.” Sure, not all of those accomplishments were really mine to take credit for, but it did make one heck of a list.
I tossed a pitying look at the demon pony. “So tell me just one thing. What the hell makes you think you’ve actually got a chance of beating me? We both know how this is gonna end. We’ll fight for a bit, you’ll maybe get a lucky hit in and give me another bruise for my collection or make me lose a bit of blood, but in the end I’m gonna kick your sorry ass just like every other one of the possessed ponies I’ve mixed it up with. So why don’t you do us both a favor and save me the trouble? Just lie down and spit out the coin.”
The Derpnarian paused and for a second I wondered if maybe it was actually going to follow my advice and thrown in the towel. That optimistic streak of mine must be cropping up again.
Instead of surrendering the demon pony pulled her razor-mane in, and a nasty little smile popped up on her face. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I can’t defeat you in open battle.” Then Derpiel pulled a move I really wasn’t expecting and sent a few strands of hair slashing down.
At herself.
It took me a second to figure out just why the demon pony would voluntarily injure herself. I put it together as the demon pulled back its hair for another strike. “You’re taking yourself hostage.” I guess it’s a sign that the Denarians are starting to catch up with modern times when they start pulling evil schemes straight out of Mel Brooks films.
“Just so, Dresden.” The Derpnarian smirked and used a strand of hair to cut a very shallow line across one of her own cheeks. “You will surrender the coins, or I will kill my host. If it is as you say, and I have no hope of victory, then the death of my host is of no consequence to me. For you, on the other hand...” A horribly out-of-place sadistic smile appeared on Derpiel’s face. “The death of this creature would hurt you, far worse than any physical wound I could ever hope to inflict. Your nobility has always been your weakness, Dresden. With but a single twitch, I could wound you. Whenever this little pony’s face comes to mind, you will know the guilt of failing her.” The demon’s tone turned pensive as she tossed in one final barb. “I wonder – what will you tell her poor little orphaned daughter when she asks you what happened to her mommy?”
At the mention of Derpy’s daughter, the demon-pony gave a very noticeable twitch, and for a second I thought the pony might be able to throw off the demon’s control. I was tempted to encourage her in the fight, but at the same time I couldn’t help but worry that undermining the demon’s control could backfire horribly. If it felt like it was about to lose its control over Derpy, the demon would kill her without a moment’s hesitation.
Son of a bitch. In hindsight, taking Cadence hostage had been a bad move on my part. Apparently, it had inspired all the bad guys to follow my example and start pulling the hostage card too.
The demon had me in one hell of a tight spot. Even if I could get a spell off quick enough to beat the demon to the draw, there was no guarantee I could hit it with something that would make suicide impossible. I could try another ice spell, but if even a single strand of that razor-sharp prehensile hair was free, it would be enough.
I did have one advantage, though. While the demon wouldn’t hesitate to kill an innocent pony (and would kill off its host for pure spite if it was in danger of losing its body), demons generally don’t give up anything willingly. Demons are greedy creatures. Once they get something, they’ll never give it up if they think there’s a chance they can keep it. Instead of cutting its losses or settling for what it could get, the demon was going to try to find a way to keep its current body and wring every single concession it possibly could out of me. Even Nicodemus had walked right into a trap he should have seen coming the last time I’d tangled with him; all I’d needed to do was make the bait too tempting for him to resist.
That demonic greed would buy me time to work with. As long as Derpy’s demonic pilot thought she could have her cake and eat it too, she was going to hold off on hurting her host. Giving a wizard time to come up with a plan is almost never a good idea.
Just then, I felt something tapping against one of my hooves. I tried to look down without being too obvious about it and saw a single ordinary looking rock, wreathed in a blue telekinetic glow. Huh. Looks like we had an audience. Between all the trees getting carved up by Derpiel’s bad hair day and me tossing force and ice spells around like they were going out of style, it figured someone would’ve noticed us. I looked over at the demon-pony using her razor-hair to hold herself hostage, and an interesting thought occurred to me.
“Y’know Derpiel, you really oughta do something with that mane of yours,” I remarked casually. “Having that much razor sharp hair flying around loosely all over the place must get really inconvenient. I bet every time you turn your head you end up slicing and dicing whatever poor guy is standing next to you.” The demon-pony was getting that annoyed expression on her face that often seemed to crop up whenever I broke out the banter on someone who didn’t appreciate it – which was most of the bad guys I’ve dealt with. “Maybe a braid?” I suggested, only to discard the idea a moment later. “No, if we went with that then it’ll just be one big slicey-dicey chunk of hair. How about a big up-do then? Or maybe keep things nice and simple with a bun? Something to keep all that hair safely tied up, where it can’t hurt anyone.”
“Is there some point to your blathering?” Derpiel snapped at me.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “Stars and stones, half the time I’m just babbling out whatever crazy random thoughts and pop culture references happen to be going through my head at the moment.” I saw a brief flash of white back in the trees, and a blue glow sprang up around the demon-pony’s hair. “Then again, sometimes I’m actually passing secret messages to a fashionista hiding in the bushes.”
“What?” Before the Derpnarian could figure that one out, Rarity made her move, and in a sudden flurry of movement the demon-pony’s razor-mane rearranged itself into a single massive, tightly packed bun. The instant Rarity’s work was done, I hit the demon pony with another ice-bind and got to work on undoing Discord’s dirty work.
Once Derpy was freed from the Denarian, I checked the injuries the demon had inflicted upon her. It could’ve been a lot worse; none of the cuts were very deep, and one of the perks of being a Denarian was an accelerated healing rate. The cuts would sting for a couple days, but they should heal just fine – especially since Zecora would probably have some sort medical knowledge she could apply to patching up Derpy’s injuries.
Rarity gave a sigh of relief as she reached the same conclusion. “For a moment I was afraid I might have to stitch something other than fabric again. I would rather not have to repeat that particular experience.” The unicorn shuddered at the less-than-pleasant memory; fashion-obsessed neat-freaks and field medicine did make for a rather problematic combination. Sure, if someone needed her help she’d give it in a heartbeat, but she would still find the entire process rather trying.
“Thanks for the assist, by the way.” Derpy seemed to have zonked out from getting recombobulated, so I loaded the sleeping pegasus onto my back. “I would’ve had a hard time getting out of that one without you.”
“Oh, it was no trouble at all,” the fashionista answered modestly. Frowning down at the pegasus, she added. “I really should have noticed something was wrong sooner. I thought Derpy seemed a bit out of sorts, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I suppose I just assumed it was a result of everything that’s been happening for the last few days.” Rarity looked Derpy over with obvious concern. “She will be alright, won’t she?”
“Yeah, she’ll be fine.” Well, as fine as someone who’s gone through demonic possession can be, anyway. I don’t think she’ll have too much trouble bouncing back; these ponies are pretty tough.
We paused at the sound of a twig snapping nearby; our fight had been hellishly noisy, and I was surprised nobody had come to investigate already. Probably the only reason nobody had was that it had all gone down so fast.
“Mommy!!”
Oh. Hells Bells, I had not seen this one coming.
The young filly Derpy had been talking to earlier charged me, tears streaming down her face. The Derpnarian had kept up the facade perfectly, fooling the kid into thinking that her mother was completely normal (or at least as normal as Derpy ever could be). All of the noise our fight had made would have been scary as hell to any kid, of course she’d try to find her mom. And when she did find her, she got hit with one of the scariest thoughts that can enter a kid’s mind:
Mommy wasn’t OK.
Before I could offer any explanation, the filly jumped up and latched onto Derpy’s foreleg, almost sending the unconscious mailmare sprawling off of my back. “Mommy wake up please wake up you said you’d just be gone for a minute, please, please PLEASE! WHY WON’T SHE WAKE UP!?”
Contrary to what Michael keeps telling me, I don’t have much of a heart; what little I do have, though, broke at the sound of her screaming. I thought back to the day my own father died. They told me it had been an aneurysm, although I wouldn’t know what that word even meant until years later. All I really remembered was going in to tell him I’d missed the bus, trying to shake him awake ... and him not responding to me.
Even losing Rainbow Dash hadn’t affected me like this. Yeah, I’d lost friends before – a lot of them, in fact, and it always hurt. But seeing a child’s screams for her mother fall on deaf ears struck home for me in ways I never like thinking about.
Fortunately – mercifully – Rarity’s horn glowed as she pried Dinky off of Derpy, pulling the hysterical young filly into a hug. “No, no, no, dear, it’s okay. Shh, shh, it’s okay – there’s no need to cry. Your mother is fine, I promise.”
Dinky calmed down a little bit, but the lack of response from her mommy was clearly weighing on her. “But why won’t she wake up? She promised she’d be right back and now she won’t wake up...”
“Your mom is just asleep,” I offered. “She had a little accident, but she’s gonna wake up soon and she’ll be fine.” It was a lie, but the kid didn’t need to know that her mom had been possessed by a demon for the last couple days.
A couple of Shining Armor’s guardsponies came storming into the clearing. My throw-down with the Derpnarian had been a noisy enough little fracas, but the terrified screaming of a child must have lit a fire under their hooves. “What’s going on here?” one of them demanded.
“Mommy won’t wake up,” Dinky whimpered.
Oh hell. Between the wounded pony draped on my back and her very traumatized kid, this probably didn’t look good. If not for the fact that I had a bit of a good reputation with the guards thanks to my association with the Element-Bearers and Shining Armor, I’d probably have two of Canterlot’s finest slapping me in irons, or whatever the Equestrian equivalent was. I’ve never been all that good at talking my way out of trouble.
Fortunately for me, I wasn’t alone. Rarity, still cradling Dinky, stepped up and turned on the charm. “I’m afraid that poor Derpy had an encounter with some of the local wildlife. Harry and I arrived in time to save her, but there was a bit of an altercation with the creature. Then Dinky found us, and naturally the poor dear panicked when she saw that her mother had been injured...”
A well-timed sniff from Dinky seemed to sell it. The two guards nodded, and the larger of them gently took Derpy from me. Not having her on my back was a relief; while the weight wasn’t a big issue, it still felt kind of awkward to carry someone while walking on all fours. I was kind of looking forward to getting back to Earth and finally being bipedal again. Four legs good, two legs better.
The other two remaining ponies out of the original six Element-Bearers caught up to us soon enough. Fluttershy immediately flew over to Derpy and began fussing over the unconscious mare. “Oh my goodness! Is she okay?” A short time later the medically-minded pegasus was done checking Derpy over and calmed the worst of her fears. “I think she’s going to be alright. What happened to her? Oh, my.” With Derpy out of immediate danger, Dinky had latched back onto her mother. Fluttershy scooped Dinky up in her hooves and went into full-on nurturing mode, excusing herself as she quietly hummed to the young filly.
“Yeah, I sure would like to know just what the hay happened back there,” Applejack agreed. “One minute you’re goin’ off to talk to the gal, and then next thing we know stuff’s blowin’ up, trees are gettin’ knocked down an’ Dinky’s screamin’ fer her mama.”
I pulled out the coin I’d taken off of Derpy, kept it out for long enough to let the ponies get a good look at it, and then tossed it back into my saddlebag. I miss my duster, with its very handy pockets. Why couldn’t the weird universe-crossing mechanics transform my duster into something that would fit on a pony? For that matter, what happened to it whenever I visited Equestria? Did it just get left in some kind of interdimensional limbo? Or did it get displaced into my magical unicorn horn like some of my other bits of wizard gear? If it was in my horn, then what happened with the coins that I had sitting in that thing’s pockets? Why was my brain going off on such a weird tangent when I should be talking to the ponies?
Applejack didn’t seem all that pleased by my wordless explanation of what happened with Derpy. If anything, it just pissed her off more. “And when exactly were ya plannin’ on tellin’ the rest of us that she had one of them coins? Don’t ya think that’s the kinda thing ya might oughta tell us about?”
“This one was a bit delicate,” I explained. “I didn’t even know she was one of the Nickleheads until I got a look at through my Sight back in the palace.”
“So why not tell us then?” The farmpony demanded.
“We did have a couple other things on our plate at the time, like a psycho princess and dozens of guards trying to kill us,” I pointed out. “Plus, I didn’t want her knowing she’d been compromised.” I held up a hoof to forestall any objections. “You can’t tell me you’d act completely normal around her if you knew she’d been Denarianed up, Applejack – a blind man could read your poker face. The easiest way to make sure none of you gave anything away was to make sure none of you had anything to give away.”
“Well, I suppose I can somewhat understand that reasoning,” Rarity agreed reluctantly. “I can’t say I particularly care for it, but I do at least understand why you didn’t tell us.” Rarity paused, and shot Applejack a smile. “No offense darling, but you are without a doubt the very worst liar I have ever known.”
“Bein’ an honest pony ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed about,” Applejack answered with a hint of stubborn pride in her voice.
Rarity turned to face me. “What mystifies me is why you didn’t think to let us know about Derpy once you decided to confront her. Surely at that point there would be no danger of us spoiling your ruse.”
“I wanted to get her out of the camp and away from all the kids and old folks as soon as possible, and there wasn’t really a good chance to pull you aside and talk it all over without it looking suspicious. After I got her out of the camp and alone, I saw a good chance to take her down and I acted on it.”
“I see.” Somehow, Rarity had the ability to make those two words sound an awful lot like ‘You’re a complete idiot.’ I think it’s something inherent to all women, regardless of their species. “Tell me, Harry dear, how well did your plan to deny the demon any potential hostages and deal with the situation entirely by yourself work?”
“Um...” I struggled to find some way to answer that question that would still leave me with a shred of dignity.
“I see.” The words carried exactly the same meaning they held the last time she’d used them, though perhaps with an added element of surprise that I’d somehow managed to prove myself even stupider than she’d previously believed. Female is a complicated language.
Why had I left the ponies so far out of the loop on the Derpy situation? Sure, keeping up the masquerade made sense, but once it was time to confront the Derpnarian having them along would’ve helped. I never would’ve gotten this far without them, so why had I suddenly run off half-cocked into a one-on-one fight with a Denarian? Hell’s bells, Rainbow Dash had saved my bacon during the fight with –
Oh.
Ohhh.
It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots on that one. After losing Rainbow Dash, suddenly I was finding myself cutting the ponies out of combat situations. I’m no expert on psychology, but that can’t be a coincidence.
Hell’s bells, my entire plan for winning the fight against Discord and Nicky could be summed up as ‘get the ponies to stay somewhere safe, and then try to handle everything by myself.’ Maybe my whole plan of rushing back to Earth to set up a big nasty conventional brawl with the baddies wasn’t just about stopping the bad guys as quickly as I could. Maybe it was really about making sure that no more ponies would be at risk of dying on my watch.
“I think … I might have messed things up a bit,” I hesitantly admitted. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking that I needed to protect you. That my job here was to keep all of you safe, no matter what happens. I was wrong there. Well, I still don’t want anything bad happening to you, but it’s not because you’re some innocent creatures I need to protect, or because you guys using the Elements is the only way to stop Discord, or even just because it’s the right thing to do.” I swallowed a lump of something that had somehow gotten into my throat. I think it might have been a lump of emotions. “It’s because you guys are my friends.”
The three ponies looked at me in surprise, and then I found myself at the center of a group hug. I had no say in the matter. Not that I minded.
If Discord was here right now, I bet we would’ve had more than enough friendship to kick his mismatched ass.
Once Derpy woke up from her Denarian-induced nap, I called together a meeting of what I suppose qualified as our new war council. Well, I first gave her a few minutes to hug her daughter and assure her that everything was fine – I’m pretty sure Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy would’ve torn me to bits if I didn’t. Unfortunately, Pinkie was still in no condition to join us; I woke her up after we had the camp in working order, but she went right back to playing with her dolls, hidden away in her safe little fantasy world. Shining Armor had joined us, though.
For a while I’d been worried that the whole spy thing had only happened after Derpy picked up her coin. She was a strange one, but there’s no denying that Derpy had been oddly effective, in her own way. Losing that perspective would’ve been a shame. Lucky for us, apparently Derpy-the-spy had been in business for a while. Guess it made sense; Luna wouldn’t have been so quick to trust Derpy as her spymistress unless the pegasus had already been working for her before everything in Equestria went to hell.
Shining Armor’s area of expertise that made him an asset to the meeting was fairly obvious.
“So, let’s get this thing started.” I turned to Shining Armor. “You’re the Captain of the Royal Guard. I figure if anyone knows of a good way to deal with Princess Celestia, it’s gotta be you.”
Undoing Discord’s mind-whammy usually didn’t take me all that long, at least by the standards of mind magic, but he’d probably done an extra-thorough job on Celestia. Even if it just took the normal amount of time I would still need a good ten to fifteen seconds to get it done, and there would be no way of hiding that I was trying to bust into her brain. Getting into mental combat with a fully aware and completely unrestrained Celestia wouldn’t end well for me.
Still, if the Elements of Harmony weren’t an option, then our only option was to try and undo the mind-control the old-fashioned way. That meant we needed Celestia worn down enough that she wouldn’t be capable of crushing my brain like a marshmallow the instant I tried to start breaking Discord’s spell. The prospect of trying to take Celestia on in a conventional magic slugging match still struck me as suicidal, but if she had any sort of kryptonite, the guy in charge of her bodyguards would know about it.
“If she has a weakness, she never saw fit to inform me of it,” Shining Armor admitted.
Of course. If all we needed were some green space rocks to deal with her, our lives might’ve been easy for once. Good guys don’t get to have nice things like that. “What about the rest of the Guards then? Can we get them all on our side, and just dogpile her?”
Shining Armor frowned, and shook his head. “I believe most of my higher-ranking officers have been placed under Discord’s control. If we could somehow free all of them without being noticed, the Guard has loyally served the throne for a thousand years. Even under these circumstances most would be very reluctant to take up arms against her, and it would only take one pony who doubts our claims to warn Princess Celestia.”
The first rule of keeping a secret or running a conspiracy; the more people in the know, the worse your odds are of staying hidden.
“Even if I could rally the entire Guard against her, I’m not sure we would win,” Shining Armor continued. “We aren’t trained or equipped to deal with a situation like this. Our standard operating procedure for dealing with a hostile being of power equivalent to Princess Celestia is to contain the situation, focus on getting any civilians in the area to safety, and leave the actual fighting to Her Highness.”
So the Guards hadn’t made any contingency plans for the possibility that Celestia might turn evil? You’d think that after the whole Nightmare Moon thing they’d have realized that it was a possibility they needed to be ready for. The Equestrian Royal Guard weren’t nearly paranoid enough. However, this is coming from a guy who has a habit of checking to make sure there isn’t an invisible demon that’s about to eat his face. Maybe I’m not the best judge on what level of paranoia is reasonable.
Then again, since no invisible demons have eaten my face yet, I must be doing something right.
“There’s also the issue of her Insight.” I could practically hear the capital letter in the last word of Shining Armor’s sentence. That didn’t bode well.
“Sometimes,” Shining Armor hesitated for a moment before plunging forward. “Sometimes the princess just knows things. Things she couldn’t possibly know.” The captain shuffled his hooves nervously, and continued. “One of my ponies took an interest in a mare who was far above his station. He believed that there was no way she would ever return his feelings, so he didn’t tell anypony about them and hid them very carefully.” Considering what I’d gleaned of his relationship with Cadance, it wasn’t hard to guess who this ‘friend’ Shining Armor was talking about was. “Then one day, Princess Celestia called him into her quarters and told him he should act on his feelings. Feelings she couldn’t possibly have found out about from anypony. And yet, somehow she just … knew.”
That sounded familiar, and if it was what I thought it was it was very bad news. I’d come across that particular sort of insight before. Intellectus. Think of it as the dollar-store version of omniscience. Intellectus comes with various limits and restrictions, and you have to know what you’re looking for in order to find it, but it’s still a very scary ability. I would know; I got a taste of it thanks to bonding with a powerful genius loci. After I’d bonded with the spirit of an island called Demonreach, I could find out about anything that happened on the island just by wanting to know it.
Celestia having access to Intellectus could toss a huge monkey wrench into any plan I could come up with – especially since her abilities extended into being able to have a look into people’s heads in some circumstances, if Shining Armor’s little story was any indication. Kind of hard to plan much of a strategy when you’re dealing with someone who can find out what you’re planning with a stray thought.
Well, maybe I wasn’t completely screwed on that count. By its very nature, Intellectus is limited. There was no way to know for sure without asking the princess herself, but I’m willing to bet that her Intellectus was in some way bound to Equestria. Since I wasn’t from Equestria, I might be a blind spot for her. There had to be other blind spots too, it was just a matter of finding them and figuring out how to exploit them. “Don’t suppose you know anything that could help us get past this Insight of hers?” I asked Shining Armor hopefully.
“Princess Luna can,” Derpy chimed in helpfully.
Well, I guess that one made sense. The two sisters were supposed to balance each other out, and if Celestia could have Intellectus-ed her way into finding her sister’s hidden base, she would have. That didn’t do us much good now that Luna was stuck on the moon, though.
Unexpectedly, Derpy little out a little laugh, and looked a bit self-conscious once she realized everyone was staring at her now. “I just remembered a funny story Princess Luna told me once. Princess Celestia was gonna have this big slice of cake for dessert, and Princess Luna used her magic to hide it. Celestia was so mad. She made the guards search the entire palace top-to-bottom, but no matter what she tried, she couldn’t find her cake.” Derpy frowned. “It was funny, but I hope she never does that to my muffins. That would be mean. Then again, Luna gave the cake back to Princess Celestia eventually, so I guess that makes it okay.”
Derpy’s story did bring a rather interesting thought to mind. If Luna could hide a cake... “Derpy, when you were working as Luna’s spy, she must’ve put some kind of magic on you to keep you from getting found out by Celestia, right?”
“Yeah-huh!” Derpy nodded eagerly. “It’s kinda inconvenient though. Sometimes ponies want to mail important stuff with magical tracking spells on it to make sure their package don’t get lost, even though it doesn’t happen that often, and every time I get one of those packages, Luna’s magic messes it up. They don’t give me very many important packages though, ever since that one time with the collection of crystal goblets, which wasn’t my fault at all. I just don’t know what went wrong; one minute I was just flying along, and then, wham!” Derpy waved her hooves about, miming a pony crashing into the ground, and successfully knocking a glass of water into Rarity’s face in the process. “Oops,” the grey pegasus shot Rarity a nervous grin. “Sorry.”
“It’s quite alright.” Rarity answered, trying very hard to hide her aggravation at how the mailpony’s antics had messed up her mane.
“Okay, good.” Derpy smile innocently, and got right back to talking. “Plus Luna sends me muffins sometimes, so that makes it okay.” Derpy frowned in confusion for a moment. “ Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, muffins! Do we have any muffins?”
I smiled at the scatterbrained pegasus. “Derpy, once this is over I will scour the Chicago phone book for a place that offers an all-you-can-eat muffin meal.” There’s got to be a restaurant like that somewhere.
“Yay! Muffins!”
“Yes, well that’s quite lovely of you Harry,” Rarity declared primly. “I don’t suppose we could get back to working on a plan to save Equestria now, can we?”
“Oh, there’s no need for that anymore,” I answered quite calmly. Every single pony except Derpy stared at me in shock. “I already figured it out.”
“And when exactly were ya plannin’ to tell the rest of us ‘bout that?” Applejack demanded.
“I just did.” I turned to Luna’s number one spy. “Isn’t that right Derpy?”
“Yeppers.”
“See? Derpy agrees, I just told you I have a plan. I guess she would know, she helped me come up with the plan, after all.” Silence reigned as the other four ponies looked at me expectantly. After several awkward seconds of silence, I grinned over at Derpy. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a genius?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Well you are a genius.” I raised my voice loud enough to carry to the rest of the camp. “Can someone get this pony a muffin? I think after everything she’s done, she deserves one!” I turned back to the pegasus. “I’m sure someone will have one. If the Summer Queen still owed me, I’d call in the favor and get you a muffin, but I wound up having to use it a couple of years ago to get a donut instead.”
Applejack very loudly cleared her throat. Once she was sure she had my attention, she spoke. “Are ya’ll gonna stop horsin’ around, and actually explain what yer talkin’ about already?”
I thought it over for a moment. “Nah.”
Applejack glared at me. “Why the hay not?”
Sure, I could’ve explained about the issue of Celestia’s Intellectus, or that if Applejack knew the plan she would have to pull off the sneaky parts of it with that terrible poker face of hers, but that wouldn’t be very much fun. “It’s real simple, you see. Not explaining things is kinda like candy for wizards.”