Chapter 26
~ Five Months Later~
Shining Armor rubbed at his eyes as he trudged into the expansive dining room of the Crystal Palace. Thanks to every light source reflecting off of everything else, mornings in the Crystal Empire were both much colder and significantly brighter than the ones in Canterlot despite it being the seat of power for the Diarch of the Sun, and he had never really gotten used to it.
Even now, after better than half a year of living in the latest protectorate of Equestria, Shining found the mornings to be the most difficult part of the day.
The fact that he was not a ‘morning pony’ didn’t help.
The coffee did, though. Especially since the cooks were always sure to make it extra strong. Double-brewed black coffee bitter enough to kill a small rodent was just about the only thing that could kick his sludge-filled brain into gear these days.
“Lord Armor.” One of the Crystal Knights, the Imperial equivalent to the Canterlot Royal Guard, approached him and saluted as Shining sipped his coffee.
He briefly considered dropping the guard out of the nearby window. It was far too early to deal with whatever it was that required a damned Knight to deliver it to him, personally.
Well, technically all missives delivered to him had to be done so through a Crystal Knight. It was some hackneyed holdover from the Empire’s old traditions. The Imperial military was surprisingly autonomous compared to the Equestrian Guard. Senior officers and the various echelons were expected to handle their own problems, and if the problem required a higher pay grade, it had to be delivered by someone who was under the direct commander of that pony.
That meant that if something needed the attention of the second-highest executive authority in the Empire, and the highest military one, it would have to be sent through a Knight, and it was far too early for something that dramatic.
“Yes, Captain Opal?” Shining asked quietly once he had swallowed the contents of the mug, then slid it out to be refilled by a waiting servant.
“My apologies for disturbing you so early,” Opal began, “but we've received a direct communique from Canterlot, and it bears the Triune.”
The Triune.
Shining Armor swallowed hard as a newly refilled mug was put in front of him. Moving quickly, he wrapped the mug in a sheathe of telekinetic energy, slugged it back, swallowed again, turned to the Captain, and held out a hoof.
“Let me see.”
A scroll, thick and heavy, was placed in his grip. It did, indeed, bear the wax-sealed Triune as promised, which did not bode well.
The Triune was a symbol that had only recently come into use, and it bore the combined detailing of Celestia, Luna, and Twilight Sparkle’s cutie marks. The only reason his wife Cadence’s mark wasn’t among them was because, legally, she wasn’t an Equestrian Princess. She was an Imperial one.
That meant that this scroll bore the sum total authorities of the three highest rulers on the continent. The Princesses of Sun, Moon, and Friendship had apparently deemed something so important that it deserved to carry the weight of three thrones.
“Thank you, Captain.” Shining set the scroll down and reflected on how he hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet. “You may return to your duties, I’ll call if I need you.”
“Yes, Lord!” Captain Opal saluted with a metallic crash, then turned in perfect parade-ground order, and marched out of the dining room with a deafening clangor.
Metal-shod hooves on a crystal floor.
Who in Celestia’s name thought that was a good idea?
For once he couldn’t blame Sombra since the palace predated his rule, meaning it was probably thanks to his wife’s ancestors which did not speak well of their common sense. Then again they were nobles and, however well intentioned, nobles would always be nobles.
“Crap.” Shining stared at the scroll like it was about to unfurl and bite him. “I wonder what the odds are that that thing holds good news…”
Not great odds, he’d wager.
Sighing, Shining Armor looked up from the scroll, leaned back, and took a deep breath before yelling: “CADENCE!”
His shout was answered by a magical detonation, and Shining Armor winced. She’d probably been in the middle of feeding Flurry, who still had the occasional flare. They were nothing like they used to be, which had been downright apocalyptic, but they were still an alicorn-scale surge of magic.
A flash of light heralded his wife’s arrival. She appeared a few feet to his left looking slightly singed and seriously put out.
“Yes, darling?”
“Ooh… sorry about that.” Shining grimaced as Cadence gave him a flat stare while she magically smoothed out her mane and sifted the ash from her coat. “It’s important though, honey.”
He held up the scroll for Cadence, showing the wax seal outward, and Cadence’s eyes widened as she recognised the mark.
Trotting over to her husband’s side, Cadence took the scroll and broke the seal, then unfurled it on the table so they could both read the message that her Aunties and little sister had considered important enough to warrant one of the first official uses of the Triune. It was thick and heavy and consisted of almost two dozen pages, all regarding the same topic.
“Stalliongrad…” Shining let out a thoughtful hum. “I thought Celestia had pretty much given up on that place.”
“She didn’t give up on it, Shiny,” Cadence said. “But Stalliongrad’s criminal element is too entrenched for her to do anything meaningful. If she sends funding, it goes missing, internal investigators either find nothing or suffer ‘unfortunate accidents’, and no matter where she looks everyone’s hooves are either squeaky clean or she’s handed some low-level patsy.”
“Why not just put the whole city under martial law, then?” Shining Armor asked, stomping his hoof as he did. “It’s clear the place is corrupt!”
“Stalliongrad is huge, Shiny,” Cadence replied with a sigh. “It would take half the Guard to secure that place, and that’s assuming nopony gets bribed… and it would be the citizens who suffer the most, not the criminals.”
“So what’s changed that it warranted the Triune?” Shining asked, turning back to the scroll. “Is she asking for a joint action between our Kingdoms?” He paused thoughtfully, then nodded. “That might be effective.”
“Maybe…” Cadence mused as she skimmed the text. “Wait… no, it’s something else. Here, honey, look!”
She pointed out a section of the scroll a page-and-a-half in, and Shining read it over in detail.
“Wait, seriously?” Shining looked up at his wife in disbelief. “She wants you to perform an investigation on why Stalliongrad has suddenly started paying its taxes?” He lifted the page and scanned it again before looking back to his wife. “I don’t get it, isn’t that a good thing?”
“Y-Yes… in theory,” Cadence allowed. “But the more pressing question would be: what changed?”
“Who cares?!” Shining laughed and pushed the scroll away. “Why would Celestia want us to go poking a bear that’s finally decided to stop raiding the garbage?”
“Maybe she’s worried it has something to do with King Sombra?” Cadence said.
Shining Armor settled back down at the table, took a drink of his third refill of coffee, and Cadence grimaced again, this time at the strong smell coming up from it. He sipped at it a few times, and his brow furrowed as he stared down at the swirling dark brew.
“I can’t reason that out,” Shining admitted. “Sombra would have nothing to gain from changing the status quo of Stalliongrad. If, and I do mean if, he was in that area, he would benefit far more from leaving things the way they were.” Shining Armor shook his head. “No, I still think Saddle Arabia is our best bet.”
“I highly doubt Sombra had anything to do with the vizier’s death,” Cadence grumbled.
“He died out of nowhere!” Shining countered.
“He was ninety-five!” Cadence huffed before turning back to the scroll and scanning over it until she reached the middle.
There were several pages that had clearly been compiled by Twilight Sparkle herself. They mostly contained data points and charts, but they all painted a picture of Stalliongrad as a city that had held onto a terrible but stable municipal standard for decades before seeing what appeared to be a miraculous spike in prosperity three months prior.
Currently, Stalliongrad was reporting record low unemployment rates, cleaner streets, lower crime, and a happier populace, and that was just from the reports from the Equestrian Intelligence Division’s few operatives in the city.
Moreover, several known criminal cells had gone dark all at once. Known fronts for Stalliongradi famiglias were found mysteriously deserted. Suspected famiglia agents were vanishing too, sometimes under the very noses of the EID operatives who were actively tracking them.
There were no trials though. No criminal proceedings were moving through the Stalliongradi courts either. Nothing more interesting than average petty crimes, anyway. The worst offense they’d had to deal with in the past month was a case of regarding some poor stallion’s cabbage cart being repeatedly overturned by an unlicensed unicorn aeromancer which was more unfortunate than tragic.
Still, Cadence mused, Shining Armor had a point. None of this actively suggested the influence of a being like King Sombra. The Crystal Tyrant was subtle, but even by his standards turning a city from a cesspit of misery into a thriving and productive Equestrian city was just too convoluted.
More likely it was some clandestine shadow war between the famiglias that got out of hoof, the result of evil and selfish ponies finally turning on one another the way they always tended to.
At least, that was Cadence’s line of thought until she reached the last few pages, between which was an envelope that held several magically taken photographs..
“Shiny, look.” Cadence shook the photos out and scattered them over the table.
The images were in color, but the shades were a bit washed out due to the speed at which they probably had to be taken. They all seemed innocuous at first, save for a single pony that was somewhere in each of the images. In each case the pony in question had been circled in ink.
It was a lithe young pegasus mare. Her coat and mane were varying shades of gray, and gave the impression of an overcast afternoon in the far north. In a few of the photos her eye color was visible; a soft, unassuming shade of brown, and overall she was the sort of mare who probably couldn’t have stood out in a crowd if she tried.
Cadence and Shining both would have overlooked her in an instant if she hadn’t been specifically pointed out.
Both unicorn and alicorn stared at the mare for several moments.
“There… there’s certainly a resemblance,” Cadence said finally.
“She’s the wrong color, but an illusion is nothing to a sorcerer like Sombra,” Shining agreed, then started nosing the photos out of the way to look over the final page. “The dossier says her name is ‘Cloudy Skies’… EID reports say she claims she’s a social outcast from Cloudsdale, although with a common surname like ‘Skies’ that’s probably impossible to prove one way or the other.”
Cadence tugged the sheet away and skimmed it.
“Lives on the outskirts of Stalliongrad in a recently finished manor,” Cadence read off, then frowned. “EID hasn’t been able to reach the grounds, though… something about getting lost in the woods, and the suspicion is magic.”
“Could be a perception filter.” Shining went back to the photos and looked over them again. “Sombra was a tyrant and a murderer, but his actual magic was a lot more subtle than the history books give him credit for.”
“Agreed,” Cadence said. “This also says she’s regularly seen in the company of two bodyguards.”
“Is one of them a dark stallion?” Shining asked blithely.
“Surprisingly, no.” Cadence set down the page and started sifting through the photos until she found one in particular. “Here… here they are. A griffon hen and a young female pegasus not much older than a filly.”
Cadence turned the photo to Shining Armor and held it out. Shining took it in his telekinetic grasp and examined it more critically than he had the others. The griffon hen was young, too, but she had a hardened look to her. Probably a professional mercenary, he would guess. There were a lot of those types in the north.
The other one, though… the near-filly pegasus was almost an identical shade of gray to Cloudy Skies, though her mane was significantly shorter and a little darker. Also, unlike Cloudy, her feathers darkened to a deep, thunderhead-black at the tips while Cloudy’s wings were a uniform, if somewhat mottled, gray.
Both hen and filly were wearing light and tightly strapped leather barding, a favorite of pegasus and griffon mercenaries as it served to spoil the worst of an arrow or crossbow bolt’s damage without hampering their flight. The griffon appeared to be unarmed, but for all Shining knew she simply favored her claws in combat. No griffon was ever truly unarmed, after all. The lack of visible arms didn’t eliminate the very real and likely possibility of hidden weapons either.
The filly, on the other hand, had an obvious and unusual weapon strapped to her side.
A warhammer.
“Hey Cady,” Shining said as he examined the filly. “Twilight said that she and her friends received a message from Fluttershy months ago regarding that filly, Scootaloo, right? The one Sombra cursed and then healed while he was in hiding?”
“Mhm.” Cadence nodded. “Do you think that’s her?”
“Could be,” Shining allowed. “Could definitely be… Sombra was known to favor the warhammer too, which is a strange choice of weapon for a unicorn.”
“Why?” Cadence asked.
Shining set the photos down and hummed thoughtfully as he took another sip of coffee. Sometimes he forgot that his wife didn’t always have her horn. Unlike his sister, the only other Alicorn ascendant, Cadence had been born as a pegasus.
“It’s the weight,” Shining began. “Unicorns have always favored lightweight weapons because we wield them with our telekinesis. The lighter the weapon, the longer we can use it. That’s why the oldest legendary weapons of Unicornia were made from mithril.”
“Light as a feather, hard as dragonscale,” Cadence recited quietly.
“Exactly, a mithril rapier, for instance, could be wielded almost indefinitely.” Shining Armor set his mug down and picked up the photo of the three figures again, this time focusing on the filly’s weapon. “But a warhammer is heavy, it’s meant to break joints and crush through armor.”
“A symbolic weapon for a tyrant,” Cadence said angrily.
“True, but it’s also a tool of intimidation,” Shining pointed out. “Do you have any idea what kind of magical powerhouse you have to be to wield a weapon as heavy as a warhammer in a protracted battle?”
“So his choice of weapon is him flexing at his enemies?” Cadence asked, drawing a chuckle from her husband. “Color me unsurprised… so you think that filly is Scootaloo and that he’s teaching her?”
“It’s not outside the realm of possibility is all I’m saying,” Shining replied. “This is all assuming these random loose threads tie up into an actual lead, though. It could be coincidence, I still can’t figure out a motive and we’re making a lot of assumptions here, grey pegasi aren’t exactly uncommon.”
“No, I know,” Cadence said. “Twilight seems convinced, but you know how she gets when she thinks she’s found a pattern.”
Shining nodded. He did know. He grew up with her after all. Twilight was brilliant and incredibly keen-minded, but she was also obsessive and had a tendency to find patterns where there was only chaos. That didn’t mean she was wrong, though. There were definitely suspicious signs involved, and the timeline mostly matched up.
It was worth checking, anyway.
“Why us, though?” Shining asked. “Why not just deploy more EID operatives?”
“It’s political, I think,” Cadence replied. “The Equestrian government is compromised by corruption in Stalliongrad, or at least it was last we check, but a foreign dignitary like me isn’t beholden to the crown.”
“But you also can’t do anything permanent,” Shining pointed out. “They’ll bow and scrape then go back to whatever they were doing the moment you leave.”
“It’s not about changing anything, Shiny, it’s about investigating.” Cadence shuffled the pages of the scroll together and pushed it towards Shining Armor. “The information in the scroll points towards this ‘Cloudy Skies’ acquiring vast amounts of property via some extremely shady transactions. All surface-legal, of course, but they don’t make any sense otherwise.”
“You think it’s a takeover?” Shining mused.
“It sure looks like one.” Cadence sighed and shook her head. “If it is Sombra that means he’s using Fluttershy as a cats-paw.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re going to check it out,” Shining said. “I’ll have the knights put together an entourage, you want to ask Sunburst to look after Flurry?”
“Yeah, we should leave as soon as possible,” Cadence stood and began trotting towards the doors of the hall, but paused as she reached them.
“Cady?”
“Sorry, just…” Cadence shook her head. “I really hope it’s just a coincidence. Stalliongrad is too close to the Empire for comfort.”
Shining Armor could only nod. The northmost city of Equestria was practically sitting on the Imperial border. As much as he wanted to find Sombra and Fluttershy, he didn’t want to imagine what they’d been doing so close to the Empire for that long.
That and, ever since Sombra returned, there had been sightings of a pillar of shadows in the tundra far, far to the north. So far out that even Cadence couldn’t recall anything ever being built out there.
It never came closer to the capital, but it also popped up like clockwork.
The pillar was too much like Sombra’s magic to be unrelated.
Maybe if they found him they could just ask.
Shining Armor chuckled at that. Sure, ask the Crystal Tyrant about what that horrible shadowbeast on their borders might be up to and could he please maybe put it back wherever it came from.
Sighing, the Commander of the Crystal Knights stood from the table, finished his coffee, and left the room to find Captain Opal and see about that entourage. If Sombra was in Stalliongrad then they would need as much muscle as they could reasonably afford.
As cities went, Stalliongrad was never destined to be a great beauty among them. It had none of Canterlot’s graceful, sweeping grandeur, and even as an industrial center it lacked the orderly lines of Detrot and Fillydelphia.
It looked, instead, like what it was: a stubborn old matriarch, long past her troubled youth and hard bitten by brutal winters and short, unpleasant summers.
There was nothing aesthetically pleasing about the city. The roads were wide enough to feel mildly agoraphobic only in the places where they weren’t cramped and uncomfortable. The bare brick structures bore the wear and tear of decades, and the people who inhabited the city were not much better.
Suspicion lingered on the carriage being drawn by Imperial porters as it trundled down the open boulevard that carved through the heart of the city like a poorly healed scar. From its windows, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, and her husband, Prince Shining Armor, looked out over the huddled masses that moved in lonely throngs.
“They don’t even look at each other,” Cadence said quietly as she pulled the curtains back over the window. “Even in crowds they act like they’re alone.”
“I never liked Stalliongrad,” Shining said. “It always felt like I was being watched.”
“You’ve been here before?” Cadence asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Once,” Shining replied. “It was a training deployment. We did joint exercises with city guards all over Equestria. We went out to Vanhoover and Las Pegasus, and it went alright. Fillydelphia was probably one of the better ones…”
“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” Cadence said with a wry chuckle.
“Even the best were just like any local militia,” Shining admitted. “Poorly trained, and mostly civvies in uniform. Most of them were just good mares and stallions wanting to do their civic duty, but they weren’t soldiers.”
“Was Stalliongrad different?” Cadence cocked her head as she asked, and her husband looked pensive for a moment.
“Kind of…” Shining said. “They… well, they certainly knew how to fight, I’ll say that much.”
“Why does that not sound like a compliment?” Cadence asked.
Shining chuckled. “Because the militia of Stalliongrad didn’t fight like soldiers, they fought like insurgents, or guerillas. They used advanced urban clearing tactics, psychological warfare, and some… questionable policies.”
Questionable policies had been the polite way to say it. The Stalliongradi defense force had a standing policy to use extreme force. They didn’t hold back, never let up, and never stop hitting until whatever they were coming down on was beaten senseless or dead. It was a combat doctrine that turned them into a military equivalent of a rabbit punch followed up by a series of low blows and a shiv to the kidneys.
It was effective, though.
At the time, Shining’s superior had wanted to reprimand the Stalliongradi for their brutality, but technically speaking nothing they did was illegal or disallowed. They simply operated at the extreme end of violence that they were permitted to, and the fact that they kept themselves so carefully on the ‘right’ side of the line suggested that they knew precisely what they were doing.
In short, that meant that their brutality wasn’t a result of the local Captain and municipal defense committee having loose control over the militia. It was the opposite.
This was how they were trained.
“Will it be a problem for us?” Cadence looked concerned as she glanced back out the window. “Stalliongrad is famously corrupt, and I can’t imagine any amount of recent improvement can change things that quickly.”
“I doubt it will be an issue,” Shining said. “There’s no reason for them to attack us, and if they did it would be all the evidence Celestia needs to bring down the weight of the crown on Stalliongrad.”
That would be an understatement.
If the Stalliongradis attacked a foreign Princess on Equestrian soil it would be a diplomatic incident. It didn’t matter that the Empire was a protectorate. In fact, that would arguably make it worse since there would be fewer political hangups preventing a joint action. No, Shining was certain that the militia of the city would leave them alone. If something unusual or illegal was happening the main problem that he and his wife would face would be finding it at all.
But that wasn’t even why they were here. He had to keep reminding himself that the reason they were here wasn’t to investigate wrongdoing. The true matter was to determine if King Sombra and Fluttershy had fled to the north.
The more Shining thought about it on the trip to the ancient city, the more he disliked how likely it seemed. Sombra would find no welcome on Imperial soil, but it was hard to remember sometimes just how huge the Crystal Empire once was in his day. The borders of the Empire used to encompass the city that would become Stalliongrad, and all of the land around it. Hiding here put Sombra close to his former seat of power while providing him with a haven amid a den of lions.
It was an open secret just how little control the Princesses had over Stalliongrad, after all, and a creature as subtle as Sombra could easily determine that much.
If he was here, though, then why were things improving?
That was the only part that failed to track in Shining’s mind. Why would Sombra make the city less dangerous for agents of the crown. The worse the city is, the easier it is for him to hide.
So why?
Shining’s thoughts were interrupted as the carriage came to a juddering halt.
“Ooh!” Cadence pushed the door open and goggled up at the building they’d stopped in front of. “This isn’t so bad.”
The structure was massive, ten stories of solid red stone quarried from the nearby mountains. Unlike the rest of the city, it had weathered the years with remarkable aplomb. The walls were rough, but whole, the great pillars stood as solidly as ever, and the looming presence of its immensity towered over the rest of the city like a sullen patriarch.
“The Red Hall,” Shining said. “It’s the administrative heart of Stalliongrad, and the seat of the Governor as well as the parliamentary council.”
“Is it bad that I was expecting a crumbling ruin?” Cadence asked with a weak laugh.
“Not really,” Shining replied, smiling wanly. “All things considered, they could probably be taking better care of the city at large.”
“Hopefully the governor is agreeable,” Cadence said as the Crystal Knights formed up around them and they began ascending the steps to the Hall.
The great double doors of the Red Hall opened with a pained groan of ancient wood and metal as the party approached. On the other side were four figures dressed in the white-and-red livery of the Stalliongradi guard; two were ponies, a mare and a stallion, both earth ponies. The other two were griffons, and all four looked unimpressed.
“Welcome to Stalliongrad, Princess Cadenza.” The large griffon at the lead, a dun-colored male with mottled white spots across his feathers, bowed his head briefly as he spoke with a thick but cultured accent.
The bow itself was more telling, though. It was low enough to indicate respect, but short enough to make it seem more perfunctory than genuine.
“I’m afraid you’ve come at a troubling time.” The griffon continued. “We would be happy to take you to the diplomatic suites, though. I must insist that you take only four of your guards with you, however. This is policy, I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course.” Cadence gave the griffon her best smile before turning to dismiss the other six guards.
“We would like to meet with Governor Prochnost as soon as possible,” Shining said, taking a step closer to the guards. “Our visit comes at the behest of the Equestrian Triarchy.”
“Yes, we are aware,” the griffon said, which caught both Cadence and Shining off-guard. “Unfortunately, the Governor has recently stepped down from his post to see to pressing family matters and the governance of Stalliongrad currently rests with the council.”
Cadence and Shining Armor shared a look of shock. The governorship of a city was no mean posting, especially for a city that rivaled the size of Equestria’s largest and most prosperous cities. Abdication of a seat was practically unheard of.
“Then… we would need to address the council, I suppose,” Cadence said. “Can we speak to them?”
“The Interim Chancellor will be closing the session in a few hours,” the griffon replied. “You will be met with at a time shortly after that.”
“I see.” Cadence glanced at Shining who just shrugged, then turned back to the griffon who had begun leading them up a set of stairs. “May I ask a few questions of you?”
“Certainly,” he replied.
“Firstly, I’d like to know your name,” Cadence asked.
“It is Grunveldt,” he replied. “Of Bitterclaw.”
“Grunveldt Bitterclaw,” Cadence repeated. “Your rank?”
“Lieutenant Commander.”
“Well, Lieutenant Bitterclaw, can I ask about the role of ‘Interim Chancellor’?” Cadence continued. “What exactly is that?”
Grunvedlt sighed, a sound of annoyance more than anything else, but he replied after a moment of consideration.
“You are aware that the governorship of a city is appointed by the crown, yes?” The griffon took on a lecturing tone as Cadence and Shining both nodded. “But the parliamentary council is elected from the landholders. In the event that the city lacks a governor the council elects one of its own to act as a temporary executive authority.”
Shining frowned. “That’s… that makes sense I suppose, but I don’t think a redundancy like that has actually been used in… Written’s Quill… a few centuries at least. I can’t remember ever hearing about it.”
“You are correct,” the griffon replied. “The station of Interim Chancellor has not been used in over three centuries, but with the abdication of Prochnost, it became necessary.”
“That’s fair enough,” Shining agreed.
In truth, he’d been hesitant to deal with Governor Prochnost at all. The stallion was known for being hard-nosed and bellicose, and it was a strong opinion within the EID that Prochnost was one of the most deeply corrupt individuals in the city. For certain, it was unlikely the famiglias of Stalliongrad would be as well behaved as they were if the local government wasn’t playing ball with them in some capacity.
There was no proof of course. It was in the famiglias best interests to ensure that their friends in the local government appeared squeaky clean, and the few times Prochnost had ever been investigated there had been nothing to suggest he was in league with any of the criminal families.
But the suspicion was still there.
As they reached the diplomatic suites, Grunveldt directed his small squad to sweep the room, and the Crystal Knights followed suit a moment later, going over the room again before bringing in their charges and their associated luggage.
“I will send someone for you when the Chancellor is ready,” Grunveldt said.
“Wait!” Cadence trotted out after him as the griffon turned to leave. “The Chancellor, what’s his name? And what’s he like?”
“The Chancellor?” Grunveldt chuckled darkly. “Her name is Cloudy Skies,” Cadence felt the bottom drop out of her stomach at the name, “and as for what she is like? Let’s put it this way… the local nickname for her is ‘Baba Yaga’, make of that what you will.”
As the Stalliongradi guards left the pair to their suites, Cadence and Shining Armor both felt a chill run down their spines at the griffon lieutenant's unsettling promise. If Cloudy Skies was indeed Fluttershy in disguise, then how much had she changed?