-Arizona-
“So let me get this straight, you didn’t start the blizzards up until after taking a year and a half of building a castle made out of buckets of ice.” I was curious as to what Snow had to say about this as we started our way back towards Alpaca Accretion. “In all that time this organization called GODLESS never sent a single operative to talk to you or even check on your progress once, not even just to see if you were still alive?”
“No, and before you ask what I’ve been eating, I’ve come to appreciate the taste of fish with my lowborn winged pony heritage.” The emperor penguin quacked out. “Putting that into perspective, I’m now realizing that I’ve been abandoned out here. Still, if I had succeeded, then my kingdom would have been absolutely glorious!”
“None of you would mind if I were to take Snow Bank down the fast way by myself right?” The looks I received were questioning ones from the alpacas. The alpaca siblings eventually shrugged, but Velvet continued giving me a concerned look.
“Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do Arizona?” Giving Velvet one of my best grins, she rolled her eyes and then gave me a flat stare. “Fine, but be careful near the bottom. We’ll be following you down shortly and we’ll be doing it in a much safer fashion than you will. Honestly you are insane Arizona, but I know you’ll survive it.”
“Wait, what are you doing?!” Pulling Snow Bank from Rattle’s back and then quickly untying him, I started pulling him towards the edge of the mountain. He started struggling, but he couldn’t get out of the iron grip of my hooves. “Oh no… are you insane!”
“Yes, I thought we just established that about her a second ago!” Velvet answered his rhetorical question bluntly.
-A minute later-
Life was just awesome and incredible.
The wind was in my hair, there was a rush of adrenaline as the snow fountained off to both sides of me and I was laughing joyously as the world passed me by at incredible speeds.
Riding a somewhat evil penguin, which used to be a pony, down the mountain was fun. Now if only he’d stop screaming his lungs out.
“This is the most humiliating day of my regal life!” Cried out the upset penguin.
It couldn’t be a perfect ride, but it was pretty darn good from where I was standing on Snow Bank’s back. His penguin body was a really effective snowboard.
-Alpaca Accretion-
We hit the ground sharply and went skidding towards some water at a high speed. When we hit the small lake, we created a huge explosive blast of water that drenched many of the surrounding alpacas.
We probably had a few alpacas gawking in our direction and were expecting Paprika to have caused a ruckus, I’d be sorry to disappoint them. Paprika’s family loved her, but the other alpaca weren’t as warm to our excitable hug happy girl.
Once I got control of my faculties from crashing into the small lake, I grabbed the limp and heavily battered emperor penguin to swim for the shore of the lake. Erupting from the water, I dragged our prisoner along with me onto dry land.
“Hey everyone, we found the problem and he’s penguin shaped!” The alpacas all gave me a curious glance for my announcement as I held up the penguin for everyone to see. “The others should be down soon enough. He’s the cause of all the rampant magical blizzards in the area, it also caused any compasses in the affected area to malfunction. I could use a holding cell or a place to incarcerate him before he wakes up, so where should I put him?”
The alpacas were nice enough to show me a place where I could stow Snow Bank safely away, they even set up some guards for him to make sure he wouldn’t cause any more problems.
-An hour later, Velvet-
“Thank you again for the hospitality Mrs. Paca.” I liked Paprika’s mother, she wasn’t nearly as bad as her daughter when it came to giving out affection in a painful manner.
Pepper nodded gently and smiled at us, she was happy to see that we were back and had solved the problem swiftly.
Speaking of Paprika, she was sitting between me and Arizona with her tail wagging to the point it would almost catch fire. If it did light aflame again, that would be the fourth time it’s happened since we sat down for snacks and drinks.
I was getting tired of putting out Paprika’s tail and it amused Pepper Paca to no end for some reason whenever I did so.
“So I guess we’ll be heading for Rein soon?” My village was not a place I wished to go, but it seems like our detour was over with after we were done here with the alpacas.
“Yeah, but before that I need to ask about something and we’ll even spend a day or two here with Paprika’s family relaxing. Snow Bank, the penguin, mentioned that you had one of the keys we’re going to be looking for?” Not very subtle Arizona, though Tamale did seem to perk up at the mention of the word key. “He said he was going to snow you guys out and make the key easy pickings. The reason why we were heading to Rein in the first place was to look for one of the keys to seal the Shadow Horde that’s said to be held by Velvet’s people, we’re tracking them down because it might lead me to finding my mother.”
Pepper immediately stood up and was at Arizona’s side to begin snuggling her deeply and even kissed her on the forehead. Arizona seemed to accept the motherly attention and nuzzled against Pepper’s rather tantalizing fluff.
Tamale simply smiled a bit at his wife gently, he shook his head and stood up to go somewhere.
This reminded me of the things Kuril or Grace would do for us, Paprika had good parents even if they necessarily didn’t have the time to focus entirely on her with all her brothers and sisters to take care of. I think Paprika turned out well enough given the circumstances, since she became old enough to survive on her own.
While Pepper was giving Arizona comfort, Tamale had disappeared and the cria all around us seemed to be looking in the direction of the tepee.
I just bit into an apple and chewed a bit as I continued to watch Pepper and Paprika comfort Arizona… when did Paprika join the cow snuggling?
A familiar wad of fluff lashed out at me and I was dragged into the cuddle mass by Paprika who placed her head over mine and tightly snuggled me.
Was it too late to escape the two alpaca? Make that three… it’s four now… oh this was about to go critical wasn’t it?
All the cria were started to come together into the hug and feeling the warmth among them all I felt at peace with my inevitable destruction by alpaca hugging. We all started to be squished together tightly in a collective embrace.
I just happen to be unfortunate enough to be Paprika’s main target in this affectionate assault, I think I could hear my bones creaking a little under the strain. Arizona was taking this all pretty well and at least she wasn’t having the life crushed out of her… lucky.
“Ahem.” All the cuddling alpaca lifted their ears and as one they turned towards Tamale who stepped forward and held something up.
All the alpaca separated like the sea. Tamale moved forward and gave Paprika a stern look, she loosened her loving grip on me with a sheepish smile.
Tamale nodded to Paprika and then turned to Arizona who was being held off the ground by Pepper, he grunted loudly and Pepper looked to him with a raised brow. Tamale stared back sternly.
Pepper Paca eventually rolled her eyes and sighed before gently placing Arizona on the ground.
“What do you need Tamale?” The T shaped object was held out to Arizona and she looked at it curiously. Tamale tilted his head at the object in his hoof and then nodded towards her. “You want me to take this… wait… is this one of those keys?”
Tamale nodded, making Arizona take the key from him and she looked it over. I shook off Paprika and made my way over to give it a glance as well.
It looked like quite intricate for a key, it had an image of an alpaca on the clockwork like T portion and the end of the key’s shaft had a swirly fluffy looking bit of metal that looked like you had to insert it into a lock of some kind.
“Doesn’t look like much, don’t know how my mother honestly started looking for these things.” Arizona studied the shiny silver key.
Moving forward, Paprika swiped the key from Arizona’s hoof to look at it too. She looked curiously to her parents as she held the key.
It seems like they were about start a silent conversation when the key began to glow slightly, Paprika froze up and looked at the key in her hoof. She seemed a bit mystified by the glow and began smiling brightly at it while making a cooing noise of excitement.
So we just had one of the magical keys now and it was connected to Paprika in some way?
Pepper moved up to Paprika and nuzzled her daughter, then she reached into a pack and pulled out a sturdy looking cord. She looked at Paprika fondly and Paprika soon held out the key to her mother.
Pepper threaded the cord, that looked to be made of her fleece, through the key and she put it around Paprika’s neck.
Placing her forehead against Paprika’s, the motherly alpaca stared deeply into her daughters eyes for a bit. After a long silent stare, Paprika started blinking and then she pushed the key underneath her fluff for safe keeping.
Paprika wrapped her hooves around her mother and hugged her tight while her tail wagged at an excessive speed… and there it goes again catching fire. Sighing, I moved over and exhaled a cloud of ice over Paprika’s burning fur.
Paprika gave me a happy smile and kissed me on the nose for taking care of her once more, I sighed grumpily and gave her a halfhearted glare as she snuggled into her mother.
“So what’s the full story behind these keys anyway?” My mouth moved, I heard the words coming out of it and I was surprised that I broached the topic. Puff hadn’t been too great on the details behind these keys. “I mean we heard that it was used to seal away deadly shadows that would consume the world, but not who made them or who used them.”
-Pepper Paca-
Story time! I called for my cria to gather with a simple sweeping look. Paprika was always wanting to hear good stories, my first daughter was strong and swift in her love and affection. To think she would be one of the key keepers.
Also that poor reindeer didn’t understand that eventually she, the cow and Paprika were all going to be more than friends. My eyes never lied, my daughters can’t either.
I started out by looking for a large patch of dirt on the ground to start etching the story into the dirt for my children and our guests to peruse. There was a good one near the tent and all my little cria were eager and waiting to hear the story.
I put my hoof to the dirt and started to draw the pictures in their perspective.
-Legend-
Long ago, a moon princess was enshrouded by a dark shadow and turned on her sister the sun princess in jealousy and anger, fueled by the shadow as it took control of her. In their anger, before they were defeated, the nightmare of the moon launched a final spell into the distance before the moon princess and the nightmare were both sealed away together.
After their battle, the sun princess was too tired to notice what she had missed and would soon pull herself together to start uniting the ponies. However, she didn’t ignore the problem once it came to her notice, monstrous shadows given teeth and ravenous hunger attacking the five tribes.
The sun princess eventually got a group of unicorns together to go fight the shadows that were, unknown to her, unleashed upon the world by her sister. The forces that were sent by the sun princess gave the five embattled tribes powerful backup that would inevitably help force back the world eating shadows.
The sun princess was too busy building a power base and organizing her ponies to do much more, she was also too upset and downtrodden to lend the tribes any further aid.
The unicorns of light, along with the five tribes, came together after being beleaguered by the hungry shadows they fought for a time.
During this fighting, six heroes rose to face the shadows.
There was a male longma warrior whose blazing wings and ferocity scorched the numerous shadow monsters. He would protect those who were injured until they could stand again, his blazing form held the shadows at bay.
Though fierce, he always showed kindness in how he protected the injured and weakened, he was always gentle with those he cared about.
One was a female alpaca fluffmancer whose love knew no boundaries, though some wished that she had them. Her love turned the shadows against themselves, her fluff protected her from their sharp claws and rending teeth as she continued to face the shadows with the light of her heart.
This was our champion who was generous beyond compare.
Surprisingly only a single ram from the sheep came to the other tribe’s aid, his courage was said to be endless to the point he would hold his ground even when all hope seemed lost.
He quivered and cowered, but the ram's loyalty could never be question as he fought side by side with every other tribe making up for the lack of numbers from his tribe on his own.
The ice shapers, reindeer with powerful ice magic, had a lovely doe champion whose prowess and beauty could match that of the warrior longma. She would never lie and was always honest about her feelings, no matter how often it irked the other champions.
With time, they could see that the reindeer champion’s honesty in pointing out all their faults had actually helped the tribes to become more cohesive as they all learned to make up for their weaknesses.
The cattle had a seemingly foolhardy cow, who feared no danger and her steps were said to have shaken the world.
She brought laughter to the battlefield, boosting the morale of all those around her even as she actively acted like a complete fool.
The unicorn stallion, sent by the sun princess, gave us a light to fight the shadows.
His magic prevented the fighting from being a lost cause. Not only was he a beloved fighter, he was also a great friend to all.
Using the power of their friendships, the champions gathered together to create the seal and six magical keys.
They sealed the Shadow Horde away in a mountain, like the missing heroic pony pillars would have.