Rare Find was carrying a basket of oranges back home. Sweet! I get a nice bonus for this week’s delivery, and a bunch of oranges. The alley was dark, as sunrise took a while to work its way around the mountain and reach the west side of Canterlot, but he’d walked this way a hundred times before.
He stopped when he heard a rattling noise behind him. Who’s there? Was I followed? Was somebody watching the exchange? He looked around, and saw an open tin rolling harmlessly across the cobbles next to the trash cans.
Oh, thank the Princesses. I must have nudged it as I walked past. The nighttime makes everything seem more scary than it really is, even in the city. Oh well, it’ll be light soon. And tomorrow I head out to pick up another delivery.
He turned back to his task, and nearly trotted into a short figure in a dark cloak.
I can’t see anything at all under that hood. He’s just standing there, breathing. Is he okay? Does he need a doctor? Oh stars, isn’t he going to say anything?
“I’m very sorry,” said Rare Find with a forced laugh. “You came out of nowhere.”
“Is he friend, or is he foe, the pony wonders,” replied the figure in a deep, raspy voice.
I… what? I mean, yes, that’s pretty much what I was wondering. That and if he knows what I just delivered. Is he going to tell the guard?
“I can assure you, I am no friend,” he continued. “I am Lord Tirek! And I will take what should have been mine long ago.”
As Rare Find slumped to the ground, drained of strength and vitality, his fading thoughts were, At least… he doesn’t know…
“That’s not north, is it?” asked Octavia.
The three girls stood on the battlements of a relatively intact section of castle walls, looking out over the forest. In the distant east the sun was rising, throwing buckets of gold tinged with streaks of black and splatters of other colours across the canopy.
“It doesn’t look like it,” replied Vinyl.
She had one arm around Octavia’s waist as they stood looking out, both looking ahead with contented smiles. They resolutely did not look behind them.
“So what should we do about these guys?” asked Trixie.
She was leaning on an intact crenellation, her body language forcibly relaxed. Her battered magician’s hat lay on the stone floor beside her, cast in shadows.
“Smile,” said Vinyl calmly. “Avoid sudden movements. Keep our voices down.”
To their left, one of the advancing changelings hissed quietly, tasting the air with its disturbingly long tongue. To their right, a group of three took tentative steps towards Trixie. She gripped the stone, willing her body not to tense.
Another changeling hissed and chattered somewhere behind them. There were changelings perched on rooftops and sections of broken wall, changelings slinking along the battlements, changelings climbing up walls, changelings hanging down from stone archways, changelings looking out of bare stone windows, changelings crowding the street between the broken buildings, changelings hopping up to stand on fallen lumps of masonry, and changelings hovering in the air. Without turning around to look at the swarm, there was no way to count them, to tell which one had made the noise, though it was fairly likely that they’d lose count if they tried. The creatures were practically impossible to tell apart in their natural form.
“And we wait patiently for these other guys to arrive,” added Octavia, indicating the flight of silhouetted changelings flying in over the forest. The approaching group swooped around them once before landing on the battlements nearby. Nearby changelings ducked reverently out of their way. Several of the arrivals were wearing the forms of pegasi.
One of them stepped forwards. He was in the form of an orange pegasus who looked strangely familiar, and held his head high with an air of authority. The others around him lowered their heads in deference. He looked the girls up and down. A green flash enveloped his body, leaving him in the same shiny black body as the rest of them. He reared up, settling his weight awkwardly on his hind legs, before another green flash left him standing there as a human male.
Trixie allowed herself to turn and look directly into the face of Flash Sentry. The details were all there, from the annoyingly confident grin to the styled eyebrows. “You girls are a long way from home,” he said as he stepped forward.
Trixie looked at the other two girls. Then she took a deep breath, turned back to face Flash, and punched him hard in the face.