Letters From a Little Princess Monster
Tripartite - Part Five
An hour. One simple hour. It was amazing what a pony could do when their tail was in a vice. What an entire army of ponies could do was even more impressive. The Storm King’s plan for attacking Canterlot had depended heavily on overwhelming force and speed rather than stealth and deception. Well, and the triggering presence of a now less-than-mythical fourth alicorn princess.
It would have been a fiasco.
From her command chariot, Tempest Shadow looked back over her shoulder at the assemblage of Royal Guards spread out across the sky and headed into the Frozen North at her command. Old geezers from retirement stables flew at the sides of young cadets still damp behind the ears, obsolete chariots that had been ‘liberated’ from in front of veteran’s drinking establishments were filled with retirees who bulged out from half-fastened armor, and the entire crew from Canterlot! - The Musical were mixed into the flight, wearing cardboard armor and holding prop swords.
And if Tempest screwed this up, they were all going to die in fire or ice, depending on the exact circumstances of her failure.
She looked down at the small alicorn who had triggered all of this, and who now was huddled close to Tempest’s hooves with her eyes closed and giving silent twitches as if Twilight Sparkle were dreaming.
“Don’t even think about touching her,” said Laminia from the back of the carriage, where she had placed herself next to the dark bulk of her batpony husband. “When she gets like that, the world changes.”
The skepticism Tempest was feeling must have shown in her face, because the batpony extended both of her sleek dark wings, gave them a short flap, and folded them back against her sides again. “I was crippled since birth, unable to fly. Twilight Sparkle gave me everything. My wings back. Our Princess of the Night. My husband.” She hip-bumped the stoic Night Guard by her side, who made no other response than to stand there and look like a large dangerous statue.
“Even if this goes right,” started Tempest, “in what can laughingly be called my plan, we’re going up against griffons who are turning themselves into Windigo. Probably the wingmaster of the aerie and his son at the very least, since I can’t imagine one of their flock breaking with the Nightscape Covenant unless they had permission from above.”
“If we die, we die,” said Lamina. She shifted inside her borrowed Night Guard armor, making a faint clanking noise above the sound of the wind, then lowered her helmeted head to look at the supposedly sleeping Twilight Sparkle. “We serve the Princesses.”
“You don’t need to be here.” Tempest Shadow was far too aware of Laminia’s pregnancy, because Princess Cadenza had mentioned nearly every pregnant mare in the whole castle while they talked. Well, the pink princess talked. Tempest mostly listened, and had only managed to get a few words in edgewise when Cadenza was eating. “You should go somewhere safe, for the sake of your foal.”
“There will be no safe place if the Windigo return,” intoned Laminia with a certain fanatic fierceness to her voice that brought a chill down Tempest’s back. “My place is at my husband’s side. When I am cut, he bleeds, and if he dies, I will die with him.”
“At least you have armor.” Tempest shook her head, making her loose mane flutter in the chariot’s slipstream. She had accepted her own set of Equestrian armor, but decided against the helmet and neck protection because she had never liked the way it obstructed her movement. The rest of the armor was just fine, and most probably was going to be needed far more than she liked.
“If the wingmaster and his son are both Windigo, we’re not going to survive. The best we can hope for is one of them falling down the stairs and dying before we get there,” mused Tempest. She did not have enough space in the chariot to pace back and forth as she wished since there were too many ponies loaded onboard, so she settled for moving closer to the rail in order to watch the ground below shift into duller greens and browns as they approached the Frozen North. “If we get out of this alive—” Tempest pointed her horn at the bulky form of Pumpernickel “—I want him.”
Laminia cocked her head to one side, looked back and forth between her hefty husband and Tempest, then gave a quick glance at the sleeping Twilight Sparkle before asking, “Why?”
“Because nothing gets the blood up like a fight,” said Tempest. “I’ve been living with yeti and other conquered races of the Storm Isles for the last two decades, and everytime we have any kind of fight, I’m left high and dry afterward. I’m sick and tired of it, so it’s either him or Cornet there,” she added with a jerk of her head to the startled bugler standing at the back of the chariot, who had his brass instrument on a cord around his neck.
“I don’t know.” Laminia’s golden eyes narrowed, although a faint smile teased the corners of her lips. “I’ve put a lot of work into my husband.”
Pumpernickel’s eyes tracked from his wife back to Tempest, then settled on a straight-ahead somewhat glazed expression.
“I promise I won’t break him,” said Tempest. “Much. I mean it’s been a long time.”
“We’ll talk about it after the griffons,” said Laminia. “He’s always been a little too much for me to handle by myself, so maybe we can come to some sort of sharing agreement. What do you think, Knucklehead? Do you want another mare in our relationship?”
Pumpernickel shifted positions and kept his eyes forward. “What I really want is for both of those would-be Windigo to fall down the stairs and die before we get there.”
❅ ❅ ❅
Trixie should have been more afraid. Terrified, even. There was some pony out there who could remove cutie marks, the Windigo were returning, Discord had been released from his stone prison, and Cadence was missing.
Worse, Twilight Sparkle was off by herself to face the Windigo, without Trixie’s guidance. Or maybe Trixie was missing the little alicorn’s presence on her problem instead. The train car was full of Trixie’s friends to compensate, but that should not have helped as much as it did. It was similar to her dreams of transforming into an alicorn, with extra limbs who did not do what Trixie wanted: just having them did not mean they helped.
Well. Friends did help. Both her larger friends and even Twilight’s smaller versions who circulated around the train car like energetic tourists out on an adventure.
Twilight had taught Trixie more than she had learned in return, and that was considerable. During the absolute worst of times, the little alicorn seemed to know exactly what to do by instinct, something that Trixie would gladly sacrifice her future wings to learn. It was not a spell, or the freaky thing she did with zebra magic and dirt, but something within the slender body and violet eyes that let her see things.
Important things.
And Trixie had to admit despite her protestations of ambivalence, Princess Cadence had become quite important to her life. Not merely as an intellectual foil, or a convenient audience for a new trick, or even an assistant at teasing an emotional response out of a stiff and humorless Shining Armor when he really needed it. Trixie had been an only foal, and during her time as Celestia’s student, Cadence had become as close as the older sister she never had, even if only in her mind. Then she had announced her pregnancy, and Trixie had been secretly thrilled at the concept of a semi-sibling she could play with and adore, then give back when it became poopy or hungry.
Now, the pregnant princess was in the blowing snow somewhere outside the train’s windows, all alone, giving birth in some frozen drift. Well, almost alone, since that geek Sunbust or whatever had followed her. If Twilight were here, she would find some way to save her. Twilight would draw strength from her small friends gathered around for support, just like her own older friends were huddled next to Trixie on the train bench.
Shining Armor was soaking up most of the support at the moment, which was not surprising since he needed it the most. Applejack had taken the seat closest to him, with a friendly foreleg around his back and a sympathetic ear for his murmured concerns. Fluttershy of all ponies was on his other side, keeping silent vigil. It was the position that Trixie had recently vacated, because she had proven herself totally unable to keep silent when it was needed. It was more comforting for Trixie’s busy mind to pace up and down the train car’s aisle, trying to organize her scrambled thoughts. The chill of their surroundings tugged at the back of Trixie’s mind, made more cold by the fact that Rarity was darning a hole in Trixie’s newest cloak while Pinkie was hoarding a supply of delicious cupcakes covered in pink frosting.
A cupcake would help keep Trixie’s nerves in order. Pinkie insisted they be saved for later, which seemed at least to be a sincere claim, since none of the mismatched crew had even gotten to eat one since they boarded the train. Hunger was not helping Trixie’s concerns, or Rainbow Dash, who was taking her enforced confinement in the train car poorly.
“If I can’t go to the griffon aerie, I should at least be out there,” snapped Rainbow Dash, jabbing a hoof at the swirling blizzard outside of the train windows.
“Freezing to death and getting lost,” said Trixie. “Then we’d have two ponies to search for.”
Twilight Sparkle would not have snapped at her friend. She would have used her concern to solve their mutual problem. The little alicorn would have just looked off into the distance in that intense fashion, found some cryptic revelation from their words, and shot off like a rocket to save the day.
There was no sign of a solution anywhere inside the train car, just cranky and worried ponies, including one who looked far worse reflected in the shining glass.
“Why me!” Trixie shifted in the aisle of the train, trying not to look at the miserable lump of Shining Armor sitting with her startled friends. “I mean a week ago, you could have given me a thousand answers, you big lump! You’re supposed to be the big, bad Prince Shining Armor, hero of thousands. You’re going to be a father, and I haven’t even gotten to take Green—”
All of Trixie’s friends in unison gained intensely curious expressions right before Trixie managed to stop her mouth. Those big, trusting eyes and huge ears of the smaller ponies would get Trixie into far worse places than in this express train, headed north until they ran out of tracks or until they found Princess Cadence in labor. Facing friends was something Trixie had never done before, but could be considered the same as some sort of unique stunt if Trixie put the best face on her situation. Poor Shining Armor liked to have everything all laid out in detail, a picky mind full of checklists much like his sister. “Is it a colt or a filly?” she asked out of impulse.
That seemed effective in shaking Shining Armor out of his slump. He wiped his snotty nose on the back of his fetlock and stammered out, “A filly. And an alicorn.”
“Another one?” Trixie rubbed a hoof absently over her own belly. “Makes me glad Greenie and I didn’t. I mean we might someday, and I’ll need to send the green goofball to get some practice with a foal, so I hope you don’t mind if we draft him into foalsitting and now you’ve got me babbling because I have no idea at all what we’re getting into.”
“I wish we knew more about this area,” said Fluttershy. “There are all kinds of delightful creatures who live their entire lives in the snow, but I’ve never seen any ponies from here.”
“There was one mention of the Crystal Empire during training, but not any more than what Princess Celestia and Luna told us back at the ice cream store.” Shining Armor bonked one hoof against his head. “Sunburst Flare, the pony who went chasing after my wife. Who is he? Could he be an agent of Discord? Some sort of criminal mastermind?”
“He’s a common pony with a common name,” mused Trixie. “Just some weirdo at the bookstore. Weedy little goatee, glasses falling off, always wears a cape. Not that it’s strange,” she added quickly. “The bookstore’s drafty. The chances of him convincing Cadence to travel into the Frozen North…”
Hearing no help from her friends, Trixie glared out the window of the train as it sped down the tracks, trying to urge the clattering beast to move faster. “I wish Twilight was here,” she muttered. “Cadence hates me, you all hate me, and I’m pretty sure there’s something else up here that hates me too.”
“We don’t hate you, Trixie,” said Sweetie Belle from where she was working her way closer to Pinkie Pie’s closed container of cupcakes. “You’re amazing. Just in your own way.”
Rarity floated the freshly patched cloak over Trixie’s shoulders and tucked it in around the new pin. “You are a dramatic soul in search of answers, and sometimes you just get carried away. Slightly,” she added. “Not that it’s a bad thing. It’s actually when you need us the most.”
“It took some getting used to,” admitted Scootaloo.
“A lot of it,” said Rainbow Dash. “Because there’s a lot of you.”
Shining Armor made as if to say something, then settled back down on his bench with a low shudder from a chill breeze blowing through the car. Trixie pulled her cloak tighter around her and shivered, trying not to look at her supportive friends. A faint clunk and gurgle from the short bottle of Applejack’s finest made Trixie take a few surreptitious glances around, then ease the small bottle out for closer inspection. She had lost track of how many cloaks Rarity had made with that special little pocket, all of which had perished in various terrible ways, along with virgin bottles of Monsieur Bourbon much as if they had sacrificed their futures to preserve her life. Despite the thought, she needed to open the bottle and drink until there was nothing but vapor left, because facing…
“I’ve faced Nightmare Moon,” she whispered to herself. “And I beat her. I saved Twilight from dying… No, we faced Nightmare Moon, but she saved Princess Luna. We saved Twilight’s life when she tried splitting herself, we managed the impossible by putting Scootaloo and Diamond’s heads back together right, we broke the codes on the Zebra’s libraries that all their huffing and puffing over centuries had been hiding. All the time I spent as Celestia’s student learning to stand on my own, and turns out I’m ten times the pony when I have friends. And you, my little bottle, are not a friend.”
She floated the bottle up in her magic, opened the sliding door to the train car…
… and yanked the cord hanging above it out of instinct when something caught the corner of her eye.
Shining Armor’s bowed head was moving, as if his horn was tracking something the train was just passing. With a screech of brakes, everything in the train lurched forward except for Trixie, who planted her hooves against the floor of the car and kept her eyes focused out in the blowing snow. There was something there, and she launched herself from the doorway like a rocket before the train had even come to a complete stop, shouting over her shoulder as she ran.
“Hurry! Candybutt is this way!”
❅ ❅ ❅
Infiltrators did not simply sneak into a foreign city, they became one of the residents, taking on the characteristics and mannerisms of an inhabitant until it was difficult to think of one’s self as a changeling. Thorax had been one of the best at sneaking into pony settlements and returning with their secrets because he took on their behaviors with unnatural ease.
Chrysalis did not like changelings who were too effective. That was her job.
His first hint that the Crystal Empire was going to be a difficult assignment was when Thorax crossed over the border. For a land that lived on love and thrived under the protection of the Crystal Heart, it certainly did not give off the aura of love and acceptance that he expected. It also proved far easier to enter than leave.
Still, he was an expert at his work. Stone Heart became a valued member of the community, not important enough to draw King Sombra’s attention, and not weak enough to be considered useless and sent to the mines. There was love to be harvested from the shadowed city, tiny little dribs and drabs hiding in unexpected places. There were secrets hidden where none of the citizens dared look, sparkling ponies who refused to see what was right under their glittering noses. And worst of all, there were dark pockets of magic in the shadows that Thorax had to sip from in order to survive.
It changed him, regardless of what he wanted. Thorax sank deeper into the background while his new self took instead of just stole, struck instead of avoiding, and became more like a shadow than a pony.
Then came the destruction. Crystal ponies running around in total confusion. The assault by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. King Sombra tapping his every source of power to fight them. The welcome concealment of the crystal mines as a place to hide.
The wave of darkness that swept over the entire city, sucking at his every sense and dragging everything into shadow.
Old Thorax would have died, or become frozen in place like all of the ponies. This place of no-time was like walking through cold molasses, taking years to sulk through alleys, months to sprint across streets, always on the move to avoid the searching gaze of the Dark King.
Changelings took love and used it for power. Love was nothing but a memory for Thorax now. He stole shadows from the source, tapping at the edges of Sombra’s magic where he would not be noticed, a mouse in the den of a tiger, nibbling from his scraps.
An old tiger who grew weak over time, although never weak enough for Thorax to reveal himself and strike.
Until…
The shadows of the city moved, bending under the flow of an old but somehow familiar magic. What was once Thorax raised his head and sniffed at the scent, feeling ancient and suppressed memories come to life. Chrysalis. His orders. The queen of the city, swollen with foal. She would be weak when she gave birth. He was to give the signal then, and waves of changelings would surge upon the helpless city.
No. That could not be. The pregnant pony queen had escaped before the Sun and Moon had attacked. She had used her magic to cloak her actions and slip away, protecting her unborn foal from the changeling assault. Those actions had revealed the truth about King Sombra to Sun and Moon. Chaos had ensued. Time had passed.
Confusion.
Bending the shadows around him, Thorax moved forward, toward the strange familiar sensation. The bonds of no-time had faded considerably since Sombra’s original spell, much like Thorax’s hunger had grown. The pain grew as he approached the two strange ponies Thorax could see moving sluggishly through the city, although they did not stand a chance at seeing his own path.
For as long as he could remember, love had only been tiny flecks scrounged wherever he could find it. The two figures, one large and one smaller, fairly glowed with power. The smaller one could be felt from many paces away, but the other was so strong that Thorax could feel his chitin blister under the emotional pressure.
It was impossible to judge how long they had been in no-time, but they moved, and that made them dangerous. Only King Sombra could move in this cursed place, and Thorax had spent so much of his life trying to stay away, to hide, to not draw any attention.
...but he was so hungry.
He stalked instead of pouncing, trailing behind his prey as no-time around them shimmered and warped. Pain and ecstasy, longing and want beyond anything he had ever felt, a queasiness around his middle, the disconcerting feeling of something moving inside of his slender belly, sharp pains and a dribbling sensation under his hind legs, all pounded into his numb mind with the velocity of a waterfall surging down a kitchen sink. He could barely keep his own bubble of time intact as he staggered forward, terrified that he would lose his concentration and be frozen in darkness like the rest of the city
Frenzied excitement filled his mind with the thought of the emotional bounty so close and yet so far away.
For the first time in forever, he had enough energy to use his changeling magic and shift forms into something less threatening. Something like the Thorax he used to be ages ago, no matter how much it hurt to change. Along with the pony form, he acquired a nose that was promptly tickled by a feminine scent, hitting him with all the impact of a hammer to the head after so long in the sterile darkness and bringing his heart to a thudding crescendo. It was familiar/unfamiliar/comforting, but made him stumble forward into the light, forced him forward just as certainly as if he were chained to an anchor falling from the side of a ship.
There were sounds, vague things so distant that they merged into a babble of confused syllables and strange sensations that grew louder as he moved, ever forward into the brightness even as the pain grew to fill his entire body with agony. Iron bands of pressure wrapped around his chest and belly, crushing him like an insect beneath a mountain, squeezing the life from him with every step, sapping his strength until he could barely lift one hoof after another.
His senses were overloaded so much that he could not even see how close his prey had become until the damp impact of his nose against pink fur brought him to abrupt awareness.
There was a connection.
And fire.
❅ ❅ ❅
Trixie did not even think about her friends following behind her as she galloped through the fresh snowfall. She was focused on the swirling snow ahead, trying her best to follow a tenuous hunch that was most probably just an upset stomach or an undigested apple seed. Her initial burst of speed slowed in the clinging snow until she was surging forward in long leaps, feeling more like an awkward blue rabbit or one of those pampered tiny dogs with short legs.
“Cadence!” bellowed Shining Armor right behind Trixie, which shocked her out of her concentration. Trixie managed a brief look over her shoulder as she wallowed through the snow, feeling an unexpected warmth under her ribs at the sight of all the other ponies struggling along behind her in a line, with Spike perched on Applejack’s shoulders.
“She’s up ahead,” lied Trixie. “I can feel it. We—”
Trixie had never been trampled before. She was pretty sure she never wanted to be trampled again, particularly by such a hefty stallion, even if the snow acted as a cushion.
“Come on, Sugarcube!” Applejack boosted Trixie right out of the snowdrift with snow flying everywhere. They were following Shining Armor’s tail… that is trail, so it was obvious which way to go, and the depth of the snow thankfully slowed him down.
“What’d you see out here?” gasped Applejack.
“Trade secret,” gasped Trixie right back.
With just a few minutes of intense cardio, they caught up with the runaway royal husband. Shining Armor had come to a halt with one hoof out in front of him, jabbing and poking at an invisible wall of some sort while the rest of the panting group piled up behind him.
“It’s a barrier of some sort,” said Trixie with a hoof-poke of her own. “Like tar. There’s a disorientation spell built into it so we never would have found it by just walking around.”
“Well, blast it!” said Rainbow Dash. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t do blast. You do fizzle.”
“Show you fizzle,” muttered Trixie, running a hoof over the sticky sluggish barrier that all of her senses wanted to ignore, turn her back, and find the train again. “Never meet strength with strength, hm…”
There had been somepony pass by some time ago, because the blurred view she could get of the other side of the barrier showed two sets of outgoing hoofprints, if a certain amount of squinting and imagination was used, along with some other tracks that she had no clue what they represented. One even looked like griffon tracks, and the nearest griffons were far away from the flat desolate land around her.
“Cadence?” Shining Armor threw a shoulder against the invisible barrier, then slumped onto the ground. “It’s too strong. We can’t—”
“Shiny!” called out a familiar voice from somewhere beyond the obstacle. “Help! Save me!”
“Cadence!” The big stallion was up on his hooves in one lunge, and slammed into the barrier, glowing horn first. “I’m coming, honey!”
A brilliant light formed around Shining Armor as he pressed forward, with the other ponies close behind. They were moving more by sense of touch than sight in moments as the light grew brighter, penetrating closed eyelids and giving off a whiff of burning hair, then…
The world popped, and everypony tumbled forward onto muddy grass. Well, everypony except for Rarity, who somehow managed to land on top of Trixie.
“Cadence!” called out Shining Armor again, galloping forward into the shallow valley that had not been there a few moments ago. It was a staggering sight, ever moreso after Trixie had managed to get Rarity’s sharp hooves off her back. A faint shimmering border at the far edge separated the wall of swirling snow outside from the muddy green-brown of a growing and warm valley filled with green bushes, splotches of damp mud, and…
...the biggest collection of gemstone houses that Trixie had ever seen, with a huge crystalline castle in the center towering over the whole city.
“That is so unfair,” breathed Trixie. “Candybutt gets a city and a glass castle.”
“It’s gotta be the Crystal Empire!” called out Scootaloo as she darted forward, carrying her scooter on her back. “Come on!”
Trixie galloped along with the others, although distracted by the sight so she soon found herself at the tail end of the herd, right beside Applejack for some reason. The hayseed gave her a sideways look, then said almost under her breath, “Ventriloquism back there?”
After a brief hesitation, Trixie nodded while galloping. Thankfully, Applejack did not look angry at the deception, but merely nodded also while galloping at her side. “Don’t like it, but can’t argue with the results.”
“Results?” gasped Trixie, who had not expected saving a pregnant princess to involve quite so much cardio. “We’re lost, in a mythical empire that had been swallowed up by shadows a thousand years ago, trying to find where Candybutt is hiding, and we don’t even know what we’re doing or how to deliver a foal!”
“Yeah!” declared Applejack, who did not miss a step in her stride. “Beats running through the Everfree Forest in the dark all hollow, don’t it!”
She had a point.