//------------------------------// // A Dream of Ruin // Story: No Sun-Queen Shall Rend Asunder // by Plough and Stars Pony //------------------------------// A Dream of Ruin One night when Princess Twilight Sparkle was away in the Crystal Empire on her second vacation to see again brother and sister-in-law, and interviewing and researching, Flash Sentry dreams a dream unlike what he dreamed before. It was not the dream, which once hollowed his eyes and haunted him with shame; though now it left him content and vigorous. It was another dream; the polar opposite. Flash Sentry finds himself at a well-scrubbed and unclothed trestle table in a crowded but not noisy restaurant, groaning with plates, pans, and dishes steaming, fragrant and bubbling. Eyes wide and mouth wide open, Flash takes in salad from every part of Equestria and across the sea. A dish in front of him levitates, held in lavender magic tendrils. Twilight tips most of the food on to her plate. "Have trouble choosing, Flash? Don't blame you." A second plate levitates, and several spring rolls fall on to her plate. The stallion stares at her as scores of hammers march in wide lines over the table following a young shaven-headed stallion all in black with an armband of crossed red hammers. He was barking in to a loudspeaker something about waiting for worms. Huh, can you order worms here? "W-What is this place?" "River of Dreams," Twilight replied, pointing to the back of the Hall. A bare brick wall covered with posters of a middle-aged stallion in worn black shirt and fleece. His mane was black and puffed up in a large greying curly perm. From his place, Flash could see the bags under his eyes. The posters cried out titles of songs and albums, silhouettes of the stallion, mouth open belting out a song, one red background while his mane and sunglasses were in yellow. "A live music act?" "Yeah, Joel Bronco. He writes superb music." Flash finally sees something he likes, tipping sliced and destoned peaches and nectarines stuffed with crushed ginger biscuits on to his plate. He saw bits of cress there too. Looking over the table again, he sees a bowl of limp crescent-shaped objects a dark golden-brown colour. The smell was...so scrumptious his stomach almost growled. Right away he knew it was rum-fried bananas, and he chose that to eat for pudding. As the stallion tucks in, Joel Bronco strides on stage in to the light to the stamping and the cheering. Tapping the microphone with a toe, he said in a deep Manehattan accent. "Thank you, big crowd to-night. Let's start with the old favourites...," A piano started tinkling in slow slinking tune. Much much later, but no time at all, Flash and his mare walk out of the maze. No Guards in sight. Statues, the soft light of the yellow lamps, faraway tinkle of water in fountains. All of Luna’s stars blaze above. Bright dazzling mermaids and sea-ponies glide above the same way bricks do not and clouds do. Gleams from their tails and fins dapple the lawn at his hoofs. Bellies full and warm of pasta, salad and sea-food, hoofs heavy from, waltzing, jiving and quick-stepping. “Who were those two, the Luteces?” Flash asks. -The Luteces were/had been/will be an act in the saloon-bar where they had danced. A sky-blue mare and a sky-blue stallion, auburn-maned, and blue-eyed. The mare wore an old-fashioned brown dress down to the floor, long chemise, shirt,-and sleeves, green tie. The stallion was dressed similarly. Not that you could see beneath the two blackboards he wore strung over his withers. The mare levitated a plate with a hoof-full of bits. They had stood at the back next to the bar. The mare would offer the plate and the customer would pick one. Mare or stallion was supposed to flip it. The sky-blue mare would offer “Heads?” in a Griffish Isles accent and the sky-blue stallion would quip “Or tails?”, in an identical accent. In an unspeakable act of sorcery, dream-logic or something else, the coin would always -always- turn up heads. Twilight had tried, with no success and a lot of groaning. As he led her away, Flash heard the mare, Rosalind?, say “Do you not find the dimensions of the creative designs of a slumbering brain quite convivial for some rest and relaxation, brother? - “Where they brother and sister or something?” Twilight asked, leaning in to him, scratching a nuzzling itch. “I dunno,” her stallion admitted. “I mean, they were like, more than brother and sister, you know? They were finishing each other’s sentences, and knew the other’s mind perfectly.” “Lots of mixed siblings are like that, I’ll have you know,” Twilight said, grinning up at him. “Me and Shiny, for instance.” “Well, Steel and Sharp do that too. And they’re not brothers.” Flash Sentry, who had never known the frustrations, the wheedlings, the sweet gestures, the meannesses of either brother or sister, whether elder or younger, nodded. “Well, we weren’t finishing each other’s sentences." "Well, perhaps not yet." Twilight places a hoof on his cheek. The stallion leans in to it. The mare smiles, falters a second, then.. Mouth shaping a single soundless syllable. Silent, but understandable. “Now” And the purple rouged mare blushed. And she leans in. Flash Sentry leans in too. Twilight slides her hoof round her lover’s neck, capping the frog on to the back of his head, keeping him there as their lips danced. As they kiss, once light, now deeper and deeper, sea-ponies and mermaids explode, colouring the heavens with sky-filling fire-works. A squat shape of darkness rises out of the ground, in the bar of the shadow cast by the Two Leaping Fillies. Red lights gleam out of the shape. A dazzling whiteness opens below. The mote steps in to the swimming azure, turquoise, and lavender washing over the lawn. A silver-grey stallion, dark-grey tail, body clad in the gold-edged night-coloured armour. Flash recognises him. He is not surprised, thus not alarmed to see Captain Ironhoof in the grounds. Flash obediently bends his knee, lowering his naked body to the grass. There he stays, as the earth jolts more and more as Ironhoof approached. The earth shakes once more, and Ironhoof is in front of him and still Flash waits for the order to rise. Flash’s front legs begin to whine from strain, but this was far from the extended bowing he had to do for basic and advanced training. The stallion quietly clears his throat, “Good evening, Captain”. Glancing up, a tiny breach of protocol, Flash sees the Captain’s eyes, claret-red, shooting fury down at him. Anxiety seeps in to him, his stomach curling, Flash thinks, “What have I done? Quick to answer his own question: Well, become romantically interested in Princess Twilight who I know he is pursuing, but apart from that… “You may get up, Flash Sentry,” the gruff voice from above at last commands. Sighing, then grunting gratefully, the light-orange Knight rises from the dewy grass. Facing Ironhoof, his expression has not changed. Flash settles his features in to the stoic neutral glare of the ever-dependable Royal Guards stallion. “Come with me, Flash Sentry,” the Captain rumbled, through white clenched teeth. “I have something to show you”. Across the wide, wide entrance halls, grey stone below and grey stone above, ornamented with identical white Pegasus stallions, granite become themselves. But Flash could feel pairs of eyes upon him as he follows the Captain, like a procession of damnation. Towering stone walls close in, choking the streams of stone in to narrow corridors, flickering circles of yellow light every twenty paces uncurtained of tapestries. Iron Hoof is silent as the trees, and grey as the crypt. “This is the way to the dungeons, not his office,” Flash realised suddenly. At long last, the long stream runs slap up a wall, two torches right and left of a door of plain bright varnished wood. The brass doorknob is swallowed by Iron Hoof’s thaumic aura, twisting it, unlocks with an innocuous click. Brown wood swings over, a rectangle of blackness. Nothing to be seen, or could be seen. Captain Iron Hoof turns his great grey head to face the Knight. “In there, Flash Sentry”, his voice rough. “The lights will come on when you go in.” Breaking eye-contact with the Captain, Flash Sentry looks in to the deep void inside the door. He strains to see anything at all. The last torches were still twenty and forty paces away; too far to throw light. Apprehension prickles at the root of his mane. Flash hears the dry rumble of the Captain’s voice yet again. “Do you doubt me, your Captain, Sir Flash Sentry?” Looking back, Flash sees Iron Hoof glaring at him. Iron Hoof tips helmeted head forward, “The lights are ready to go on upon entry. Obey me,” he growls, gritting front teeth, and clenching those at the back, steel as well as iron pouring in to Flash’s eyes, polluting mountain burn with mercury and fly-ash. Insides wriggling, mouth and throat dry, heart nervous to right the perceived insubordination, Flash swallows silently, murmuring “Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” as he bows. Straightening, hoofs and shoes squealing on the stone, he walks, towards the black open portal. No sound but the scrape of his metal shoes. All at once, Flash feels the stone run under his hoofs, carrying him, blackness zooming towards him. At the edge of the worn stone, and the doorway, Flash feels the stone river pitch him head over heels over in to the void. Flash thumps hard on to solid ground under his hoofs, haunches, and chin. He lifts his head, straining it left and right, waiting for the torches. Clouds of white vapour rush in to the room over his head. The Knight whinnies in surprise. His heart beats slower But no torches flare or even sputter to light. Flash waits. The darkness persists. No torches light up. Flash is unable to even see the brackets holding the torches. Frowning, Flash wonders if the torches need unicorn magic. Turning round, he sees Iron Hoof right outside the door. “Sir?” Flash asks. A squeal of rusty metal in the lintel, and a portcullis of thick bars slam down between the Knight and the Captain. "Sir?" the stallion asks, panic and terror rising. "I saw you with her. Despicable that one of my favourite Guardsponies should be degenerate enough to seduce one of the Princesses of Equestria." "I didn't seduce her," Flash cried, too quickly. "You seduced her and that is the end of it. I always knew you had a nose downwind of her. Now get out of my sight, snot-nosed whorse's whelp. You will never see Twilight, me, or daylight ever again." And he turned away. Flash Sentry woke, stiff with fear, among rumpled sheets, muzzle rammed in to pillow. Subtle but sharp odour of a stallion’s sweat hanging...Wing unfurled but folded round and under his abdomen, aching. The other bent at obtuse angle up the wall. Adrenaline rich in his veins. The stallion pants, snorts hot on his muzzle. What was that? Oh...oh, buck. Iron Arse. A feeble voice filters through the wood and weave: “Sir Flash Sentry, may I come in? How are you this morning?” Galvanic impulse dies. Flash crashes back on to heaped blankets. Oh, okay. Panic over. Why would I think it was the Captain? Oh, that was a bad dream. Flash Sentry takes a deep breath, thinning the adrenaline, holding, and expelling. “Come in, Greyhoof. A good morning to you.” The stallion glances at himself in the mirror across the room, searching for grey gouges under hollowed eyes and sweat-stickened feathers. No. Wide eyes and mussed velvet fur. Presentable for another day beginning with “y”, guarding the useless and unusable Blue Blood. Flash Sentry drags limbs on to the floor. Flash grins truly to greet Greyhoof. “A good morning to you too, Sire. Did you sleep well?” The taste of Twi’s kiss, the softness of her lips…Ironhoof’s fangs gritted to snapping point, dark-grey fur blackened to storm-clouds with rage,…the agony… “Yes, Greyhoof, well – just a bad dream.” Greyhoof nodded. “Nothing too troubling I hope, Sire?” No, he could handle this. “No, Greyhoof, not at all.” All that day, déjà vu of the dream is in the small place at the back of Flash Sentry’s mind. The stallion turns ears back at the giggles and the sighs of relief and bored groans from the Prince. Turns ears forward, to silence; the murr of a Princess as he takes her first kiss. Flash's heart skips a beat and throbs harder. Ever since that day weeks after the Coronation and had he had caught himself imagining talking to Princess Twilight, her beautiful adorable face alight and open with interest, what it must be like to put one arm round her shoulders...what it would feel like to touch those soft warm lavender lips with his own and he had realised he was in love with her; the desire to kiss her had been there. Now, the stallion wonders what was like to kiss mare. Flash had never gone out with fillies in his school. His dislike of The Order had put paid to that. A minute flex of his wings to make sure they would not snap out in a wing boner. Oh no, he did not want that happening in front of Prince Blue Blood. On other occasions on that long, long, day, he wonders, should he tell Grey Hoof or his friends about the dream. Well, a good and gentle friend Grey Hoof might be, but he was old, worn out from work, and tired. Sharp Spear and Steel Wind could be better, but for them it was only recently since they had learned he was in love with Twilight. And a little more recently than that, they had learned she may have feelings in return. they might shy away, be reluctant to listen.