//------------------------------// // 82. Dominoes - Part Three // Story: Letters From a Little Princess Monster // by Georg //------------------------------// Letters From a Little Princess Monster Dominos - Part Three Sunburst was lost and terrified, and it was getting worse. The northern tundra around him was filled with a clinging damp fog, making all of the surroundings a vague world of indistinct shapes that could have concealed any number of monsters. The only thing he knew for certain was the shadowy rump of the Princess of Love, which bobbed ahead of him just barely within eyesight despite him galloping just as hard as a bookish unicorn who lived above a bookstore could manage. He did not even have enough breath to call out to the princess to slow down from her punishing pace, a speed that a greatly pregnant princess should not have been able to make. For just a moment, Sunburst almost lost the princess in a waft of denser fog, but when he emerged out of it he nearly ran into her oversized rump where his cloak was beginning to slide off. “Wait up… Your Highness…” he managed to gasp while wheezing for breath in the snow. The rest of the surreal landscape around them was a bare suggestion of reality amidst the thick fog, with little puffs of his own breath adding to the obscuring mist by clouding up his glasses. “Why… did you run?” managed Sunburst after a few moments of desperately needed oxygenation and at least three mental promises to start exercising again. “Home,” breathed Princess Cadenza. She leaned forward with a low glow beginning to dance across her horn and reflect from the surrounding fog. “Need to go home.” “Good idea, Princess.” Sunburst looked down at the ground and searched for hoofprints, which brought up a very peculiar observation. The slushy snow showed their hoofprints, which was not all that odd. The puzzling observation was the two mismatched sets he could see a bodylength away from the end of the princess’ glowing horn, that headed in their direction but vanished at a nearly razor-sharp line just out of reach. Literally out of reach, because when Sunburst tried walking over to the strange pony/griffon prints, he could feel something impeding his progress, a something that faded away as Cadenza’s horn glowed brighter and brighter until he could not longer look directly at it. “Home,” she whispered, setting one hoof in front of another and plunging into that treacle-like resistance with Sunburst right behind. “That’s not home, Your Highness,” he said while following anyway, because staying behind would have left him alone in this creepy fog. He held himself close to the warm, cloak-clad flanks of the princess until Sunburst recognized the spastic twitch that traveled down her barrel, held for a time, then went away. “Labor?” he squeaked. “Oh, sweet stars above, let that be a false labor pain. Your Highness, I don’t know anything about birthing foals so maybe we should go somewhere with a hospital and ponies who do this kind of thing for a living and oh stars there’s another contraction are they supposed to be coming this fast?” Using a quick burst of magic, Sunburst arranged his warm cloak over Cadenza’s back with an unspoken prayer that maybe she was just cold in this strange fog that concealed… Buildings? The slushy snow under their hooves had transitioned some time ago into hard crystal, much like the abstract crystalline structures that surrounded their path. As a researcher, Sunburst wanted to examine every angle and facet of the crystals, but the way that Cadence had begun to breathe in short pants and gasps took primary precedence. “We need to get you to a hospital, Your Highness,” he said while looking frantically for anything that might vaguely resemble such, or even another pony he could ask directions from. There was a towering structure they were approaching, with giant spires and high walls which did not look very hospital-y at all, even though Cadenza began to slow her punishing pace, then came to a stop in the building’s cold shadow. “Home?” she asked, her eyes still closed as she lifted her nose and sniffed, then breathed in a huge lungful of the surrounding scents that Sunburst had been ignoring. Strange plants. The sharp tang of freezing air. A dusty feeling that could only be described as crystals in the nostrils. The scent of… ponies. Many ponies who had walked these streets and lived in these buildings for years until— “Home,” breathed Princess Cadenza with her legs slowly collapsing beneath her until she slumped up against some sort of triangular plinth that seemed to be missing the object which should have been displayed there. “I’m home.” Sunburst looked down at the sudden surge of moisture around his hooves and added, “Your water broke. Oh, my.” ~ ~ Ω ~ ~ Trixie looked at the cards on the table, then looked around the ice cream shop. There was no sign of the odd counterpony, and she could not for the life of her remember just what he looked like. The three cards remained, silent and unmoving, without the special code Trixie had marked on the back of all of her trick deck so she could not tell what they were. One was a coincidence. Three was not. “Ice cream is over,” declared Trixie, tucking her deck of cards away and giving a tug to the three cards on the table, which Twilight had one small hoof on top of. “Come on, Twilight. Give me the cards.” “No.” It was a very small word, spoken by a very small alicorn, but it gathered the attention of all of her friends, both large and small. Trixie’s table rapidly became the center of a dozen ponies, all of whom were patiently waiting for the next move. Well, most of them were patient. “Hey, a card trick,” said Rainbow Dash. “Let’s see how this works.” “No trick,” said Trixie, fighting back her reaching hoof. “Discord.” “Discord?” Rainbow Dash flipped the first card over anyway and gave the equal sign it revealed a skeptical look. “That’s not very threatening. Unless you’re afraid of math.” “Now hold on a second, RD.” Applejack picked up the card and peered at it. “This looks a lot like the cutie mark of the mare that mah brother’s been visiting.” ~ ~ Ω ~ ~ Starlight Glimmer wiped away a trickle of sweat and regarded the crystalline cutie mark storage boxes she had just finished, one with an image of a sun on it and the other marked with a moon. It was time. ~ ~ Ω ~ ~ “Our town. Starlight Glimmer,” said Twilight, trembling enough that Trixie took off her cloak and floated it around her thin shoulders. “She’s dangerous,” said the little alicorn after a few moments of trembling and bunching part of the cloak over her head. “Powerful.” “Heck, that Sugar Belle mare didn’t seem too afraid of nuttin’ in her town,” said Applejack. “Well, ‘cept baking.” “Starlight Glimmer takes away cutie marks,” said Twilight very slowly, and continued despite the anguished gasps of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. “Makes ponies weak. All the same. Can’t fight that.” One small hoof flipped over the next card, and a general sigh of relief swept around the table. “Princess Cadenza’s cutie mark,” said Rarity. “I can’t imagine what kind of trouble she could get into in Canterlot, unless she’s finally foaling.” ~ ~ Ω ~ ~ ”Don’t push, Your Highness,” gasped Sunburst as he lit his horn and struggled with a task that he never thought he would ever face, even hiding in another room while a qualified doctor dealt with all the bloody mess and mucus. “There’s a loop of cord over its neck that I need to slip… Got it! You can push out the foal now.” “I’m trying!” snarled the Princess of Love in a raspy voice that made Sunburst swear to a life of abstinence in the back of his mind. ~ ~ Ω ~ ~ “She’s probably surrounded by a hundred doctors and Prince Shining Britches holding her hoof,” said Trixie. “What’s this last one?” She flipped over the card, looked at the bloodstained cutie mark, and turned pale. ~ ~ Ω ~ ~ “Come out, little pony.” Duke Plummets ran the edge of his serrated knife down the edge of the servants quarter door with a rasping noise that made the two ponies inside the small room rattle and clatter around in a panic. “I know who you are now, Lord Green Grass. Come out and meet your end like the Canterlot coward you are.” The griffon licked his beak and got a firm grip on his lengthy knife. The two ponies were weak and powerless. Their blood would feed the Flock, and bring power to the griffon’s attack upon the helpless ponies of the valley. Rivers of blood would flow once again and return the noble race of griffons to the heights of glory they deserved. Starting with the deaths of the sniveling unicorn and the pregnant servant who had been pretending to be his wife. ~ ~ Ω ~ ~ “It’s Green Grass,” whispered Trixie, her field wavering while it held the card. The cutie mark of a stubby unicorn horn with little sparkles around it glinted red from a long smear of blood down the center, looking almost like a sword in the light of the ice cream store. “He’s in trouble in the griffon aerie. I’m too young and beautiful to be a widow. We have to save him.” Twilight’s magic scooped up the three cards and laid them out on the table, face up: Equal sign, crystal heart, and unicorn horn. “Discord is going to win. I can’t do this all by myself,” she whispered, only to have Apple Bloom put a foreleg across her back. “You don’t have to.” “Yeah,” said Twist. “We’re all your friendth.” “We’ve got this together,” said Applejack. A general round of cheering swept around the ice cream store as Twilight and Trixie’s friends gathered together. The only exception was Pinkie Pie, who seemed glum enough for Trixie to take her to one side and ask privately, “Pinkie, what’s wrong.” Pinkie Pie looked back with mournful blue eyes. “It’s the end of the arc.”