//------------------------------// // Dinner of the Gods // Story: The Beloved of Princess Nightmare Moon // by Aegis Shield //------------------------------// The Beloved of Princess Nightmare Moon Chapter 5: Dinner of the Gods Bandaid and his Mother Dazzle Kick stood in the center of her dojo courtyard. To one side, Rainbow Dash was punching sand in a wok. To the other side, First Aide sat on his haunches with a neutral frown on his face. The other two would-be students had fled only yesterday, citing boulder-related injuries. Ten days of doing very basic exercises had helped Bandaid lose some ‘water weight’, as his mother called it, but it was time to do something a bit more if he was to make progress. “Should I assume you’ve been eating willy-nilly all you want at the palace in Canterlot?” Dazzle leaned to poke his belly a little. “I feed myself!” Bandaid said, jittering back and half-whining. “And I live in Ponyville now, you know that.” “Yes I know that,” she walked about him a few times to see what she had to work with. “Alright, Bandaid. You know I’m training Rainbow Dash there as my protégé. She’s learning all of my moves from the old octagon fights these past few decades. But you know the difference between her and you?” “She’s an athlete and I’m not?” Bandaid said glumly. “No. Well, yes, but try again.” “She’s a mare and I’m a stallion?” Bandaid tried. “More than that.” “She’s… got wings?” “She’s a pegasus, yes,” Dazzle nodded. “And a rather fine specimen, if I must say.” Rainbow didn’t look up from her practice punching, but the egotistical smile flashed across her muzzle when she heard. “She’s got wings, and you’ve got… not wings,” Dazzle trailed off a little as she tried to bring it back around to her point. “Point is, I can’t train you like I train her. You’re an earth pony. You’re gonna get a whole different regiment than she does. So the lesson for today is that you stop comparing yourself to her. Sound good?” “Alright,” Bandaid said slowly. “You’re still gonna teach me, though, right?” He saw First Aide lean forward with a frown out of the corner of his eye. “I’m gonna teach you to not get taken by an attacker,” Dazzle chose her words carefully and the look in her eye said she was very aware that her husband was watching these lessons like a hawk. “I will teach you to disable, paralyze, knock-out and escape. Understand?” She waited for her son to nod. “I’m gonna show you dodging techniques, deflection techniques, and a little bit of offense in case there’s no escaping your attacker. Now then…” she reached into her saddlebag and produced a tiny red flag. Going over near Rainbow Dash’s practice area, she planted it on the ground. It was only a few inches high. Then she went over to First Aide and planted a yellow flag. “Your Dad is the start, and Rainbow Dash is the finish.” She told him. Then she reached again and gave him a mace can. “Is… is this mace?” Bandaid read the label with concern. “It’s more reliable than you punching somebody, ‘Princess’!” Rainbow called with a snigger. “Add an extra hundred punches to your practice, Rainbow,” Dazzle barked, looking over her shoulder. “And don’t interrupt.” Rainbow grumbled, regretting herself. Dazzle returned her attention to her son. “Now, put that in your saddlebag and go from yellow flag to red flag. I’ll be your attacker.” “My what?” Bandaid blanched. “Your attacker. Your kidnapper. Whatever it is that you’re so scared of you want a former octagon champion to train you to overcome,” Dazzle said, turning serious. She stood in the middle of the dojo courtyard and waited for him. “Go on, now,” she gestured with a hoof. Bandaid went over and stood by his father. First Aide shrugged up at him. The brown stallion reached into his saddle bag for his mace. “Why’re you grabbing that?” Dazzle asked. “No one’s attacking you! You can’t wander around with your weapon out all the time!” Rainbow sniggered again, biting her tongue from a that’s-what-she-said joke. “Now, walk from yellow flag to red flag!” Bandaid did so, cantering slowly. As he neared his mother, he tensed up, but she let him by. He reached the red flag. “Again!” she said. She had him do this a number of times, until the eighth time when she grabbed him from behind. “Does this smell like chloroform to you?” She put a wet rag over his muzzle and less than gently WHOMP’D him onto his back. “Mom!” he groaned, turning over and struggling to his hooves. “This isn’t a movie, chloroform takes like six minutes to knock a pony out! It's an anesthetic!” Dazzle looked at her husband. He nodded stoically. She whapped Bandaid with the rag, “Don’t ruin my fun,” she snapped. “Go again.” Dazzle waited a random number of times for him to go by her before she grabbed him up again. Bandaid leaned forward with all his weight, trying to anchor himself with his hooves. Dazzle shifted herself, grabbing him by the chest and hip before tossing him onto his back and dropping the rag on his muzzle. “No. Again.” They went again, and again, and again. Bandaid hit the ground every single time, on his back with a grunt. “Again!” Whump. “Again!” Whump! “AGAIN!” Whump! Bandaid gave her a wider berth after that. “Therrrre you go, you’re suspicious of me, therefore you don’t walk close to me!” Dazzle praised at last. He breathed easier when he got to the red flag. “Again!” she waited a few more trips, then tried to grab him. Bandaid launched himself forward and she grabbed his saddlebags instead. He reached up before she could get a hold of him, snapping the little clip open. “That’s right, the bag isn’t worth your life! Leave it behind! Good, good!” She nodded. The next few hours were a slow burn of walking from A to B and getting thrown on the ground, or pinned, or wrestled to a stop until he tapped out. Dazzle showed him no mercy. “Wow, he’s actually getting there! Hehehe~!” CLANG, Rainbow’s hoof struck the lip of the wok rather than the sand within. Skin slashed open. She let out a howl as droplets of blood spattered the ground. She hunched, holding herself with clenched teeth. “Aahhhhh! Sssssss….. Aaahhhhh! Ssssss….. Aaahhhhh!” She staggered back a little, red going down the front of her leg. “Rainbow!” Bandaid skirted past his mother without meaning to. She reached to grab him, but he tap-tapped her shoulder twice and was behind her. Bee-lining for the injured pegasus, he didn’t see his mother’s startled expression. He’d aimed so high to get around her… did he do that to shuffle past Nightmare Moon? “Oh jeez, that looks pretty bad,” he opened his saddle bag and set it next to himself. “It’s nothing!” Rainbow said between clenched teeth. “Gerrof!” “It’s bleeding is what it is,” Bandaid said clinically, kneeling down next to her. She tried to back up, but couldn’t do much more than scoot on her butt without her front two legs. Trainee Bandaid was gone, Nurse Bandaid was there now. Dazzle Kick opened her mouth to protest. Rainbow Dash was tougher than that! “Looks like you nicked something, hang on, I’ve got a… ah-hah.” He used a sterile wet wipe on her ankle and fetlock area, finding the cut. It was three inches long and bleeding. Murmuring and tutting to himself more than anything, he set out his little healer’s kit without so much as a word. “Can’t let you bleed all over everything,” he said in a peppy talk as he got a mild solution onto a dry patch. Dazzle Kick saw her husband’s wide and happy grin from all the way across the yard. She frowned at him. He giggled quietly. Still his son, it seemed. Bandaid gave her a two-wrap gauze and pinned it with a safety pin, using his mouth. “Jeez,” Rainbow said, looking to away with a slight flush. “You do this all the time, huh?” “It’s my job,” Bandaid said brightly. “I’d stop for today if I were you, at least let that scab over. If you keep training today, it might rip itself open and start bleeding again.” Rainbow looked at Dazzle Kick, who gave only a nod. “A-alright, I could use an afternoon nap anyway.” She darted skyward, leaving the blood on the wok and across the ground in front of Bandaid. He got a spare rag from his medical pack to make sure it didn’t dry there. He watched her flight path to a cloud above the hot spring. Ahhh, that was how she slept outside in November. Her little cloud home was right above the hot spring. He leaned to scrape at the wok with a laceration cleaning knife. “GOTCHA!” Dazzle Kick grabbed him about the neck and hauled him back. “Does this smell like chloro-!” Bandaid squealed in surprise and stabbed her in the arm. “AH-HOWCH?!” she flailed away, spattering blood across the ground. “You stabbed me!” she shouted, faltering on her leg and staggering. “Oh jeez, Mom!” Bandaid was on his hooves right away and First Aide rushed to her side from where he sat. “Oh you’re bleeding everywhere! Oh you’re bleeding everywhere! Did I hit a vein?!” Panic set in. This wasn’t a patient, this was his mother! First Aide shouldered past his son, his own medical pack bursting open as he did so. It unrolled like a bandoleer, displaying his shining silvery tools. “Glad I kept these!” Some hours later Dazzle Kick was less than thrilled, sitting on the side-lines while her son swept the dojo courtyard with a tiny broom. He stared carefully at his work and not at her. Her wrapped leg had stopped bleeding, but she was very surly. “Now how do I teach him? I’m injured,” she grumbled. First Aide appeared at her side with her daily medicinal tea tray. She reached for a little sandwich but he swatted her hoof and made her take the tea first. She grumbled, but obeyed her husband. “Happy now?” she gestured to her wrapped leg. “Don’t be cross,” First Aide said. “Be happy that he’s at least quick enough to react.” “I guess there’s that,” Dazzle admitted grumpily. “Besides, look how sorry he is,” First Aide said, trying to balm the hot coals of her indignant anger. “He won’t even look at you.” “Mm,” Dazzle said neutrally. “Maybe Rainbow can help teach him,” she pondered. “These changeling things he’s told us about have wings, right? They’re prolly light and flighty like she is. It would be a closer match to what he’s actually facing.” First Aide rolled his eyes, “Yes dear.” Later That Night… Bandaid didn’t really know what he was doing, but it didn’t seem like the wrong thing to do. He sat by the hot springs. Making double sure Rainbow Dash was not around, he spoke to the night. “I know you’re there,” he said aloud. There was no response from the darkness. “I’m not stupid. I know Nightie is having you watch over me in case I’m attacked. I dunno if you’re alive or something in the same way ponies are, but I’d bet bits to branches that you’re staring at me right now.” Leaning, he slowly looked up at Luna. She glimmered innocently at him. “You’ve been full for the past three days. That’s not natural.” Luna gave a proverbial start. “Nightie says that you have conversations with her, and that you’ve… watched us make love,” he looked to one side, blushing. “I dunno if that means you could deliver a message for me, but… I guess the best I can do is ask and the worst you can do is say nothing.” Luna, of course, said nothing, but she did listen. “Tell Nightie I’m doing just fine? That I love her?” he asked, steepling his hooves as though in prayer. “My Mom and Dad are taking good care of me, and I’ve made a new friend. I’m gonna stay here for a while to learn to defend myself under my mother’s tutoring. Thanks, erm… amen,” he concluded, offering a shy smile. Luna rolled her proverbial eyes a little. Amen indeed. He was lucky he was cute when he made that face. Then she watched him bathe. ***** Chrysalis and her entourage arrived at the drawbridge of the Palace of Canterlot. The seven changeling guards flanked her, four carried her litter and one lay unconscious across her lap. Only when the entire group was inside the palace proper did she give any sort of reaction to the many, many pony guards that had formed a loose ring around them. “Hush, and shush!” she boomed, slowly standing. She paused to pull a blanket over the injured of her number. “If you’ve a pony that calls himself healer, bring him forth. One of ours was badly hurt in the journey.” A messenger was sent scrambling and the litter was lowered to the ground. She pushed past the curtains of the litter and out into the sunlight. She grumbled at the massive, sweeping ivory white halls. White and gold and marble, everywhere she looked. “Tell the great white bitch that I’ve arrived as promised. Princess Nightmare Moon is expecting me.” “Th-this way to the throne room, erm… erm… your majesty,” the escort bowed low before her. She followed him, leaving her litter and guards behind. She was a goddess, she feared no pony in this building. “I leave Chirrup in your hooves. Do not disappoint me,” she told the other eleven changelings. They bowed low and went into the litter to fetch her and bear her to the medical wing of the palace, under the watchful eye of the pony guards. The poor thing had to be put under a sleepy spell to get any rest at all, traumatized by whatever sand demon had taken a hold of her on the journey here. “Have my usual chambers been prepared?” “Oh yes, your Majesty,” the escort said as they walked deeper into the palace. “The deepest part of the dungeons. Doors removed, pillows stocked as requested.” He smiled at her, but she merely nodded that she’d heard him. They walked in silence for a time, until finally they arrived at the massive golden double doors. Chrysalis couldn’t smell Celestia’s divine aura. Odd… Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “H-how should I announce your entrance?” he offered the formality. Chrysalis tossed her ethereal mane with a haughty chuckle. “I like doing things myself. Now toddle.” She dismissed him. Lighting her horn, she threw the doors open with a measure of her might. They crashed open with her sickly green aura surrounding them. “I have arrived!” she trumpeted to the room. Twilight Sparkle startled upright in the throne, offering her most dazzling smile of greeting. “What the-?!” Chrysalis said dumbly. Catching herself, she snarled a bit. “Where is Celestia?!” she demanded. “How dare you sit on the throne of a goddess, my little pony?!” Guards closed ranks about the dais, forming a line of shining golden armor between her and the startled looking young mare. They scowled openly at her. “I am sitting in her place while she attends to… uhm… personal matters,” Twilight said politely, touching the golden circlet on her head that ordained her the rank to sit upon the seat of power. “I-mean-ah… HAIL!” The protocol was there, and everypony in the room bowed low to her. “To you Chrysalis, Queen of the Changeling Empire and all her holdings! Child of Faust, Goddess of~!” “Yes, yes, thank you,” Chrysalis said shortly. Though she did stop to admire all the bowing around her. Finally some respect. “Hail as well to you, eh, Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight leaned forward on the throne with a great big smile, clearly expecting more. “I’ve no idea of your rank or standing, little one,” Chrysalis said just a little bit grumpily. Twilight wilted visibly, crestfallen. “But you sit in Celestia’s stead, so proper respect must be due.” She gave a slow and easy bow that did not linger for but a few moments. She honestly looked like she’d spotted a bit on the ground and had stopped to pick it up. “If you will tell me where I can find my sisters while my servants settle in I will leave your stewarding court and get out of your mane, my dear ‘niece’.” “Erm, w-well,” Twilight’s confidence faltered. “Princess Celestia is busy at the moment, as I said. And Nightmare Moon is asleep. Come sunset they will be gathering for their evening dinner, I am sure you could join them then.” The purple mare offered an apologetic smile. “Very well,” Chrysalis turned quickly and easily. “I will join my servants in the palace dungeons. Let none disturb us that don’t wish to die a rather gruesome death to changeling fangs.” She fluttered her insectoid wings open, buzzed a few inches into the air and was away before Twilight could say anything more. Later… When the dinner hour finally came, the moon was high in the sky. The royal dining room was a sight to behold. Celestia, Nightmare Moon, Chrysalis, Cadance and Twilight Sparkle all sat at the same table. Four children of Faust, all under one roof, at the same table. The tingle of power and magic gathered in the room made Twilight scratch at her inner ear more than a few times. The very air seemed to shimmer now and then as the auras of the four gods mixed, tossed and mingled like so much oil and water. “Well this is… unexpected,” Celestia allowed herself to say. “We’ve not seen you in over a year, Chrysalis. How have you been?” “Less hungry, very productive,” Chrysalis lifted an empty cup to her lips, more to be polite than anything. She didn’t eat food like they did. “The Changeling Empire flourishes under my guiding hoof. The capital is finished to my designed, and growing by the week to suite everyling. The changelings that voluntarily went into hibernation during the hard times are being awakened bit by bit. Housing is a problem, but we make do.” “And the river?” Celestia asked. “Flowing nicely. All the bags of grass seed we’ve gotten from you northerners is working wonderfully. Keeps the erosion at bay.” The Changeling Queen smiled rather pleasantly. She felt Twilight Sparkle staring at her. “What?” she barked a little more harshly than she meant. “You just… look so different!” Twilight said, touching her circlet to make sure it was on straight. “Less starved and skeletal? No longer full of holes?” Chrysalis smirked at her until she nodded. “Well, you’d be surprised how healthy you look when you’re topped off with mother’s love.” She tossed her ethereal mane a little, letting it flow in the air around her. “I sort of know what you mean…” Twilight murmured, smiling shyly at her plate. The day with the perfume had really stuck with her, and she’d even asked Celestia the brand name so she might have some for herself. Chrysalis eyed the little burst of love radiating from the purple mare, and her feelers flexed down into view. She squinted suddenly, flinching like she’d been flashed by a camera. She glanced at Cadance, who was an absolute bonfire of love energy. She’d forgotten she was there for a moment. No changeling could feed on that without bursting, much less look at her on the magical level. It was like looking into the sun. Speaking of the sun… “Well,” Chrysalis heaved a big breath after the meal was well underway, “Let’s go ahead and address the elephant in the room, shall we?” While her siblings ate, her wings buzzed a few times and she unrolled a map on the table between everypony’s plates and her own. “We all know the story by now. Nightmare’s beau got snatched from his house and dropped into mine. Nightmare thought it was a kidnapping and murdered thirty-seven,” she paused to glare at her, “Of my people in her rampage to reach him, when she could have very easily just flown to the upper tower.” Nightmare went hot in the face. “I’m keeping that morning star, by the way. It’s solid silver and should help to pay for the funerals once I melt it down.” Nightmare’s muzzle scrunched and she looked guiltily to one side. “We’ve since established neither I nor anyling under my hoof took the stallion. So--!” “So the question becomes who took him, and how he ended up in…” Nightmare traced her hoof from Canterlot to the Badlands border, to the changeling capital city. “Er, what’s it called?” “Gnosis,” Chrysalis said plainly. “You named your city ‘Knowledge’?” Twilight wondered aloud. “I let my people name it,” Chrysalis said indignantly. “They built it, after all, not I. A few centuries of planning, waiting, and drawing up blueprints to make something so grand; I suppose it seemed fitting.” “That’s really nice of you!” Twilight smiled wide. “Mm,” Chrysalis allowed. There was a short, awkward silence. “So, given that Chrysalis did not take Bandaid, then whom?” Celestia wanted to know. “The Equestrian record for teleportation by magic is…” she paused to think. “Five hundred and twenty-two meters,” Twilight said automatically. “Done by a stallion named Snap Step over three centuries ago. He slept for two days in a hospital afterword, from the mana strain.” There was a stunned silence and Chrysalis snarked, “Faust, what’re you making this child read?” “Whatever she wants and more,” Celestia said just a little testily. “Ahem,” Cadance said, to reel them in. “So no teleporting.” The Changeling Queen murmured down a few options. “It takes two weeks to travel from Gnosis to Canterlot on hoof, and a few days by train though no such track exists. The river would be too slow as well, no boat is that fast. Sheer speed, then?” Chrysalis slowly, slowly turned her head towards Celestia. Cadance saw her looking, and looked at their sun-powered sibling as well. “How fast would you say your Sun-Step is, Cellie?” Her lopsided, fang-filled smile was just a liiiiittle bit accusatory. “More than fast enough to-!” Celestia stopped herself. “You don’t think I took him?!” She stood with an angry frown. “I would never!” Cadance reached and touched her hoof. The white mare heaved a deep breath to calm herself, then slowly sat again. After a moment to collect herself, she spoke again. “I could not grab Bandaid in Ponyville and then Sun-Step all the way to the Changeling Empire,” she said carefully. “His neck would break.” “Hrm?” Twilight asked. “When I Sun-Step, I can move as fast as sunlight breaking the horizon,” Celestia told Twilight. “The sudden burst of speed would pull his poor body apart. Or at the very least crush his ribs and destroy his heart.” Nightmare shuddered at the description, trying not to imagine Celestia turning Bandaid into a pancake. She touched her hoof to her chin. “I mean, I suppose I could hold his neck or place him in a brace of some sort, but the sheer momentum would break his body. There would be no stopping it.” Chrysalis thought this over for a time, remembering her little run in with whatever-it-was out in the desert. She didn’t sense malice from her sister. Though, she never did until it was too late. The queen-mask expression she always wore was well practiced. “Well, there’s one other thing to do then.” “What’s that?” Nightmare wanted to know. “We go to his home and examine the scene of the kidnapping,” Chrysalis said. She turned to look at Nightmare Moon. “Where is he staying?” Nightmare’s muzzle scrunched at the idea of showing all her siblings exactly where her beloved had moved to, to be away from all this drama and nonsense. Seeming to sense this, Chrysalis smiled with all her fangs. “I’m topped off, Nightie, and so is my hive. I’ve no reason to take him from you anymore. I promise.” “Thy promises drip with honey and snake venom,” Nightmare grumbled, unconvinced and staring at her plate instead of her sibling. “We all signed the golden contract,” Celestia reminded her. This seemed to placate the Princess of the Night, but not by much. “We need to know, Nightie. So we can unravel this mystery and see who is trying to set we gods on a war path with one another.” The black mare hesitated for a long time, her eyes going from sibling to sibling. She didn’t like it. She didn’t want to expose Bandaid to all this. Not again. He’d moved out of the palace for a reason. Revealing his dwelling would be a deep betrayel of his trust but… Celestia was right. “He… he has a house in Ponyville, in the valley ‘neath Canterlot herself,” she finally told them. “Come with me after dinner, I will show you.” “It’ll take a train hours to reach the next town over, why not go tomorrow?” Cadance asked, fork pausing on its way to her mouth. “I’ve another way,” Nightmare said, shaking her head. “Eat your fill, I must prepare. Come to the Obsidian Hall when you’re ready to depart.” She levitated a fruit from the trays in front of them and wiped her mouth daintily, as only a princess knew how. Turning, she left to go uncover the magic mirror in her room. She was grateful Bandaid was away visiting his parents. He would not appreciate four of the children of Faust suddenly piling into his bedroom. Luna murmured with disapproval as Nightmare moved the mirror to the center of the room, in front of her desk. The black mare grumbled back at her, not interested in what she had to say. Until Luna brought up Bandaid, that is, “He said ‘amen’ to you?” Nightmare found herself giggling. “That’s so sweet!” Even miles away, her beloved could draw a smile to her face. Now, she had to bring three other gods to his home and root through his things. He wouldn’t be pleased… She stuck her head through the magic mirror to make sure he was not home. Nopony was there. She breathed a sigh of relief. End of Chapter 5