Celestia sat in her throne room, ruling over her kingdom and making the decision that would guide all her little ponies towards the correct decisions in their lives under her benevolent and wise rule. While everything wasn’t completely perfect yet, she would be making it that way in short order with the creation of a new agency for making sure the news in the papers throughout the land was royally acceptable.
After reading Twilight’s reports about how three fillies had caused such disorder and hurt feelings in the citizens of Ponyville, Celestia had thought long and hard to make sure something didn’t happen to the Canterlot Times and other news outlets. After a task force of ponies thoroughly investigated the matter for months, the only two options she saw for nipping an adult Gabby Gums coming to Manehattan or Fillydelphia. Either every single reporter would have to be placed under a geas that made it impossible for them to lie, or an official of the crown would have to approve every story that was printed to ensure that it would help enhance the Harmony of Equestria, rather than detect from it.
With wizards capable of maintaining such a magic over a long time in short supply, Celestia went with the second option.
Celestia finished signing the last document and gave the stack of papers to her secretary for them to be copied and given out to the proper ponies just as the door to her throne room was knocked open and a guard in golden armor came galloping in.
“Princess Celestia! News from Northern Equestria!” he shouted, getting the big mare’s attention.
“Yes?” she replied before prompting him to go on with her hooves as well.
The guard took off his helmet, revealing a perfectly combed mane of regulation blue hair. “I am simply to tell you, it has returned.”
Celestia gasped and...blinked several seconds later when she realized she had no idea what the stallion was talking about. “Wait...what part of Northern Equestria are you from?”
“...Highness?” he asked.
Not appreciating the question, Celestia sighed. “Well, there are dozens of things that could mean! Is it the Yaks? Have the Yaks finally decided to accept my offer of a summit so that they can learn to adopt a better lifestyle, modeled after ponies?”
The guard gulped. “A-All I was told to tell you was that it has returned.”
“Is it the wendigos?” Celestia asked.
Raven cleared her throat. “I think that kind of warning would have been a they have returned, Your Majesty.”
After thinking about it for a moment, Celestia looked back to the secretary. “Grogar, then?”
“That would be more of a he,” Raven replied.
Celestia looked back at the guard with bored annoyance. “This isn’t another Starswirl sighting, is it?” she asked. “After the Magic Convention last year, I had to ban wearing hats with bells in Canterlot because there were so many false reports.”
The guard became nervous and looked around, as if searching for an escape. “I-I don’t know! I just came from the Northern Wastes and was told to deliver the message, it has returned!”
“Oh!” Celestia said as the exact location, rather than some vague location of Northern Equestria, made her remember what the warning meant. In all fairness, she hadn’t expected so many problems to crop up in the proceeding years, forcing Celestia to name the warnings about banished foes after the heroes that had defeated them.
The it the guard was referring to was...a setback that could be corrected. Hopefully.
The Crystal Empire, a city state of its own before Equestria was truly unified in Harmony under her rule, still governed by a council of leaders and a unicorn that called herself a princess rather than a single unifying alicorn. If it had returned...there could be some real problems.
“What do the scouts have to report?” Celestia asked.
The guard blinked. “Um...it has returned, Your Highness,” he said to her. “That is the report.”
With centuries of practice behind her, Celestia kept her face calm. The guards in the North were only supposed to report back that the Empire had reappeared? Somepony had obviously given them bad orders. But, considering how long ago it was...Luna had probably been vague in her commands thanks to her inexperience in ruling a realm.
Which created quite the large problem. Celestia had no idea about the state of the Empire. For all she knew, Sombra had turned all of the ponies within it into horrid abominations during their time being banished from the world, and was now ready to destroy Equestria. If she went to examine the place herself, the dark stallion could very well entrap her and carry out his dark revenge and sick fantasies on her.
Both Celestia and Luna could go, but if Sombra was ready for them this time, he would have two alicorns at his mercy.
Twilight and her friends...were too inexperienced. Both Discord and Nightmare Moon had been overconfident in their power. Sombra was different. He was egotistical, to be certain. But he was a pony that had made deals with darker creatures for power, not some immortal being who looked down on normal ponies as if they were mud to be stepped on.
The normal guard ponies...wouldn’t last long at all.
That left...oh, Celestia suddenly realized. I know who I can send. She turned to the guard sitting next to her. “Send for Princess Cadance and Shining Armor at once!”
The two of them could check on the situation. If things were safe enough, perhaps she could even turn this unexpected event into something to benefit her plans for Equestria. In fact, she knew she could. With that in mind, Celestia took a quill and nearby pen. “My dearest Twilight, you must come to Canterlot at once,” she spoke while writing the letter she would wait a few days to send.
It was the same dream again.
The dream she had every night since she had nearly died for the second time.
It was a clear and crisp day. Not too hot, not too cold, the perfect time for everyone’s friends and family to gather in celebration of their friend’s love.
Tetia looked lovely in her dress, which actually made Fana a little jealous. She would have loved to see herself in one of the things, if they just weren’t so confining.
“Ah, Fana, good to see you,” Licht said when she got closer to him. “I was worried you might not come.”
Fana giggled. “Who do you think I am, Raia?” she replied. “We’re lucky he didn’t sleep till the baby was born.”
Off to the side, the laziest elf got a sour look on his face. “Hey…” he whined before pausing to yawn, making everyone else give a cheerful laugh.
Fana looked down at Tetia’s belly with envy. In only nine months, a human could take an empty womb and produce a baby, maybe as many as one a year. Elven women were lucky to produce three children during their entire lifetime. Even two was becoming rare.
“Say Tetia I-” Fana blinked as she looked up to the woman’s face, only to see a skeleton staring back at her.
The bones collapsed and people started dying all around her as their magic was drained away, slain by spears of light sent from the sky that quickly turned red as a spherical machine hovered above. Everyone, except for Licht and Fana. But, it wasn’t the same Licht that had stood there before. He looked different. He had on a large robe with multiple layers and three golden eyes on his chest.
“Come along Fana, there’s something I want to show you,” he said as he offered a hand. The image in front of her flickered, showing the outline of someone else inside of it, someone shorter.
Fana took a step back from the thing in front of her. “Wait...you...you’re not…”
The image of Licht reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her along as he went, walking over the corpses of their friends and family. “Come along now, you’ll just love it!”
Dread filled Fana’s mind as she tried to fight against what was happening. Whatever he wanted to show her, Fana didn’t want to see it! “No, stop it!” she shouted at him before they came to the edge of a cliff.
Down below, human children mulled about in a daze. There had to be hundreds of them. “What is this?” she mumbled.
“This?” Licht asked as the machine she had seen so many times in previous dreams floated over the children to begin draining them of their magic. She watched them collapse to the ground, their tiny voices screaming as they began to wither away, turning into shriveled corpses before the process finished. “This is what you helped me do.”
Fana tried to scream, but found herself unable to hear anything as she struggled against bindings that weren’t there. The entirety of her skin felt wet and it took a moment for her to realize that she was floating in a tank of liquid, not laying on a bed and covered in her own sweat.
The feeling was a familiar one.
“Has the girl really come back to life? Is this because of her phoenix magic? I see, then we will implant a magic item in Fana as well.”
Fana blinked as she failed to recall the speaker’s face. She remembered that he had been an important man in...Diamond. He had been in the Diamond Kingdom. And...so had she?
But...she could remember growing up in Clover as well. If vaguely. The royals she met, Fana knew they were from Clover.
Then...why do I remember…
“How disappointing. Her magical power should be heightened, but it’s practically depleted,” her foggy memory recalled someone saying as Fana remembered floating in another take of magically enhanced liquid. “Throw her away.”
And then, the monster came for her. Put something inside of her.
She could remember...a third eye?
And after that…
Bits and pieces of broken memories ran through her mind, made of emotions more than anything else.
Salamander, the Spirit of Fire, she could remember being asleep one day as it came to her only a few months ago…
“So, it’s happening again, is it?” the burning voice in her head asked as Fana saw the dragon sit on the gazebo in her dream, surrounded by the flames which consumed her kin back in Clover. “With the other piece that’s in motion, I think you will serve my purposes well.”
Fana blinked. That dream had been different as well. But, like all dreams, it had soon faded into the back of her mind, forgotten. Licht...no, the man calling himself Licht, he had thought Salamander had just come to her because she was an elf with elemental magic. But, there was more to it than that.
She just...couldn’t remember what.
There was a knock on the tank, drawing Fana out of herself to see an odd, somewhat blurry woman standing on the other side. She said...something. Fana couldn’t tell because the liquid she was surrounded with made it impossible to understand. A second later, the stuff she was floating in began to drain from the holes that opened up in the bottom of her container and Fana slowly floated to the ground before the camber was opened. As her skin met fresh air, Fana collapsed, coughing up the mystic water that had filled her lungs.
“Hey, you’re not a vegetable anymore!” the strange woman with red eyes and glasses said in an annoyingly high-pitched voice. “Huh, like the boobs. Makes me wonder why you wrapped them up so much.”
Fana blinked as she stood up to look at her breasts, then let out a scream when she realized she was naked. “H-Hey! Turn around you weirdo!” she demanded before summoning a ball of fire to threaten the crazy lady with.
After giving her a surprised look, all the mad scientist did was blink. “Wow! That actually sounded like a normal person talking just now,” she said before adjusting her glasses. “I wonder, did your magic item have something wrong with it? And it looks like you’re going to need some new makeup.”
“I SAID STOP LOOKING AT ME!” Fana yelled before grasping the flaming mana in her hand to enhance her strength, then striking the girl in the jaw.
Once the madwoman had hit the ground, she moved to pick up her clothes. She blinked at the bindings that she had wrapped around her breasts to help flatten them. They were...practice for a wedding dress?
Fana reached up and rubbed her head. Why was it so hard to remember things that should have been easy. If the clothes in front of her were in fact, hers, then shouldn’t she have had them on before going into the rejuvenation tank?
After taking a moment to get dressed, Fana looked back to the four-eyed woman as she picked herself off the ground with a loud groan. “Hey,” the scientist complained. “Is that any way to treat the person who fixed you?”
“Fixed...me?” Fana repeated.
The woman blinked, then slumped a little. “Oh...guess that was all just a fluke,” she said in a disappointed tone before gesturing to something hovering over the vat of liquid Fana had just been floating in. “Well, hurry up and take your lizard. Stupid thing’s been like that since you went in the healing chamber.”
Fana blinked and looked up at where the madwoman was gesturing. Floating above the magical device that had held her was an orange flaming egg. “Salamander?” she asked the mass of mana.
The flames dispersed, but the Salamander that came out of the egg wasn’t the one she could remember, although barely. The creature floating in front of her hand a golden-orange tint, while the spirit she saw in her memories was a reddish-pink. It had also more than doubled in size, putting it at over foot-and-a-half long. Much larger wings spread out before it glided down to land on Fana’s shoulder, making her stumble from the weight before Salamander moved around to take up a position behind her and put one claw on each shoulder while its long tail wrapped around her waist as much as it could.
“Leave this place.”
The thought that wasn’t her own confused Fana for a moment before she realized what it was. She turned to look at the lizard composed of fire mana hanging on her back. “Did you just-”
“Leave This Place.”
Fana blinked. Although her memory was foggy, to say the least, she was pretty sure she would have remembered Salamander speaking to her in the waking world.
“Did I what?” the crazy-sounding woman as she looked at Fana with a confused expression.
With the confusion of awakening dying down, even though other starling things were coming to light, Fana found herself noticing several oddities. Like the woman in front of her, Fana had no idea who she was. But the scientist obviously knew Fana. The young woman with the pink hair concentrated, trying to think of how she could know the stranger in front of her.
She blinked…
The child, no more than ten, finished screaming as his mana was drained away by the machine he was hooked into while the woman stood there, giggling giddily. When it was over, the boy slumped down, his eyes glazed over as Licht, Raia, Vetto, and Fana watched with varying degrees of interest. “You see, Master Licht? With my magic items, I can take people’s mana and store it for use in this machine, then we can transfer it to that one over there and store it in you,” she explained while pointing to another contraption that looked a good deal like the first.
“Why children? They’re so weak,” Vetto spat as he looked at the urchin that sat in the machine.
The woman looked back at him as if his question was so stupid she didn’t know what to make of it. “Because they’re not attached to their mana, duh,” she replied. “The older a person is, the harder it is to affect their magic, and the more the mana is attached to that body, making it harder to use. But kids? It’s easy peasy lemon squeezy! And my little juice machine will squeeze them all dry.”
Licht nodded. “Yes, this will do nicely,” he said before patting the woman on the head. “Good work, Sally. Now, we will need a way to contain the mana within me properly.”
...and felt her legs nearly give out from under her.
Sally cocked her head to the side. “Hey, you okay?” she asked before scratching her head. “Maybe you should get something to eat. The tank should have provided all the nutrients your body needed, but sometimes it’s best to have a little extra inside of you, ya know.”
Fana’s hand twitched. Children...taken from their parents and used as materials for an experiment.
She had helped that woman steal children!
She had been one of those children!
No, Fana told herself as she worked through her memories. That had been...different.
But…
Fana looked over to the monster in front of her before calling up her grimoire. It took everything she had to keep her voice even. “How many?”
“Hmm?” Sally asked. “How many what?”
“What happens to them?” Fana remembered Sally saying as she repeated the question Raia asked her before tapping her chin. “Well, it’s hard to say for sure. Ninety-percent will probably die in a few days without medical treatment. But even if they get some...maybe...a year? Yeah, even if they got a medical mage treating them almost daily, I don’t think they’d last longer than a year. Although, a very small few might have enough mana to survive longer than that.”
The teeth in Fana’s mouth felt like they were going to crack as she grit them. “How many children have you killed by stealing their mana?”
Sally blinked and looked up at the ceiling while tapping her chin. “Well, technically, you were the one that incinerated the survivors,” she pointed out before going back to thinking. “But...I don’t know. Maybe...seven hundred? It’s pointless to keep track, really. All that matters is getting Master Licht the mana he needs, and we’re so close too! We just need one or two more loads of kids. Although...we’ll have to find some new guys to find them for us since those last two went and lost their heads.”
As Sally turned away to look down at the puddle left by Fana drip drying on the floor, the girl with the pink hair nearly let her grimoire drop in shock. I...what?
“LEAVE THIS PLACE!”
With Salamader’s voice nearly crushing her mind with its volume, Fana grasped her head before she put her book away. “I...I should go,” Fana told the insane woman before turning to hurry out the door.
The interior of the building she was in was made of a thick, dark stone that had been built in uneven ways. After seeing the look of the halls and odd way things were put together, with squares of rock jutting out everywhere, it didn’t take Fana long to realize she was in a dungeon.
However, rather than be foreboding, the place had a familiar feel to it. Like an old house she had remembered growing up in as a child and returning to as an adult...after it had undergone massive renovations. She didn’t know where anything was, but walking around in it didn’t make her nervous. Which in itself was rather disturbing.
Not paying much attention to where she went, the woman wandered around until Salamander reached forward to mess with her hair, pulling the bangs down until they nearly completely covered her forehead. A second later, she nearly ran into a mountain of a person.
Fana blinked and took a step back before looking up at Vetto. But...he looked wrong. The Vetto she knew was tall and fit, but not to the point of being an overly muscular hulk of a man with so much chest hair it might as well have been a coat of fur. The thing in front of her looked like a twisted version of her old friend.
“Ah, Fana! You’re awake,” the twisted Vetto said with a mouth full of sharp teeth. After looking at her surprised face for a moment, he frowned. “Something wrong?”
With unease and shock filling her mind, Fana latched onto the first thing she could to try and get away when her body reminded her of a critical function. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
Vetto blinked. “Oh...uh...okay,” he replied before stepping aside. “You were in that tank for a few days.”
“Thank you,” Fana quickly said before running past him as fast as possible to turn a corner and get away.
Only, once she was alone...Fana looked around in confusion. “Great,” she mumbled. She had no idea where anything was. “Who ever heard of a dungeon with a bathroom?”
In answer to her question, Salamander tapped Fana on the shoulder and pointed to a place to turn on the right. After a few more instructions, Fana came to a smaller room that had a curtain set up in front of the entrance and small alcoves all around it, complete with doors of wood that had been brought in and set up to act as privacy screens.
She quickly ran into one and sat down, doing her best not to think about if she was supposed to take care of the camber pot, or if it was someone else. “Ugh, what happened to me?” the girl whined.
“The Equestrian tore down the wall between the two souls that have been housed in your body and burned away the infernal essence. The end result has caused a harmonic mingling.”
Fana blinked. “Uh...I have no idea what you just said.”
Somehow, Salamander actually managed to look annoyed. “The you that was and the you that is have become in sync.”
“Still not getting it,” Fana replied before she looked to the little dragon. “And why are you so talkative now?”
The little dragon rolled his eyes. “Just clean yourself off and get going.”
Bossy lizard, Fana thought to herself before doing just that, impressed a little by how the disposal system worked, as well as the magic item that created the water needed to wash her hands. But, once she was finished, the girl looked back to her rider. “What’s going on?” Fana asked at a whisper as she tried to remember why she was here. “Where am I? How did I get here?”
Trying to remember only made things more confusing. As to why she was there, how she had arrived, or why she was wearing a red coat underneath a robe that barely covered her shoulders, Fana didn’t know. But, she did remember other things.
She remembered playing in the woods alongside all of her friends as a child.
She remembered being taken from her family and raised to be a killer.
Both had happened up until the age of fifteen, when she went with her parents to get a grimoire from a Clover tower. Only, she could also remember being escorted to a tower in Diamond by military personnel, and receiving one there too.
She reached down and picked up her grimoire. It didn’t look like either memories said it should. There was a diamond on the front, and the familiar orange-red color, but...there was also a second cover sewn into the one she remembered. It looked alot like the grimoire belonging to…
“Fana! FANA, I’M SORRY!” a boy white spiky white hair shouted as the last memory of him played out in her mind.
Her fingers ran along the blue cover. “Mars,” Fana mumbled before looking over to the dragon on her back. If she couldn’t tell herself what was going on, then he was her only option. “What is this place? What am I doing here? I…”
She remembered Lict standing over her. “My how pitiful you look. I suppose this world never changes. Well, if humans are so determined to harm each other, then we’ll just help them along.” And then, something had appeared...on her forehead.
Fana reached up and rubbed her head, her fingers brushing against the implant that predated meeting Licht. She remembered meeting Licht, and then...nothing.
“Was I possessed?” she asked herself.
“In many ways, you still are.”
Fana looked back to her passenger and frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Salamander turned its head over to her. “Out of all those who have become tainted and come again, you were the closest to what she once was.”
The vagueness of the lizard made Fana frown at the thing and press her lips together tightly as she grumbled. “Why don’t you give me an answer that makes sense?”
“Why don’t you gain enough intelligence to understand my answers?”
Fana left the bathroom and frowned. Jackass, she thought before busying her mind as she slowly walked around the maze that was the building, passing people as she went. Most wore a full robe of white with the same eye decor that her clothes had in one way or another. The vast majority of them also gave her measuring looks, making Fana retreat into her thoughts to try and make sense of the situation. Okay so, after Morris threw me away… Fana blinked. Morris, that had been the mage in charge of the program for enhanced mage knights.
With a little bit of information pulled from her mind, she continued onward in her recollections. After Morris threw me away, Licht found me and… Fana frowned. She didn’t know how, but she knew the man who found her wasn’t Licht. Not just the name, but the identity. His real name was…
Was…
...why can’t I remember? Fana asked herself.
She knew that the Licht she remembered finding her in the pile of trash outside of the research facility wasn’t the same man from her memories. But, she didn’t know why she knew that.
Like the fact that Fana knew she enjoyed eating grapes, despite never having eaten them before. The Diamond trainees weren’t given fresh food in the base. But the elves found plenty as they migrated back and forth across the Clover Kingdom.
Fana groaned and leaned up against the nearby wall. Why had everything become so very confusing?
Okay so, Licht pulled me out of the refuse, healed me, and then… He cast another spell on her. Something...strange. Not light magic, it was…
No matter how hard she tried, Fana couldn’t bring up her memory of what happened next. She tried to remember something, anything that happened before she woke up in her chamber and…
“No, please don’t kill me!” the child begged her as Sally finished harvesting the last drop of magic and threw the nearly dead girl into the pile with all the others. One boy, buried under the rest was still moving though, trapped under the living corpses.
Fana...raised her grimoire. “Fire Spirit Magic: Salamander’s Breath.”
...doubled over as she remembered the heat from the spirit’s breath, the smell of cooking meat, the way she had felt...joy after seeing the child die.
Fana’s empty stomach heaved, and she reached up to hold her mouth. When nothing came up, the trembling girl fell onto her butt. “No...no that’s not...I...I would never do something like that,” she whispered to herself.
Only...she had. She could remember clearly, both after meeting Licht, and before.
She had killed plenty of children.
“But...that was different, wasn’t it?” the woman asked herself. She had been told to kill or die and...end the end, Fana had chosen death. The second time around, there had been no hesitation. “Why didn’t I say no that time too?”
Salamander remained silent.
Her stomach replied instead, giving out a longing groan. “Hungry,” she whispered to herself. “I’m...hungry.”
Fana picked herself up and headed to the cafeteria. She didn’t know how she knew the location of the collective dining room, but after moving up the stairs and making a few turns, she came upon a large, open area with a handful of people eating out of bowels, sitting on trays.
Maybe her memory was getting better.
Considering what she had remembered already, the idea wasn’t a welcome one.
“Lady Fana! You grace us with your presence,” the man in the white robe serving the food said when she walked up to him.
Fana stared at the man, blankly. She didn’t recognize him. Had he killed people too?
She realized that there was an orderly setup and slowly walked back to grab a tray from a nearby table, then returned to the man that was standing in front of the strew. It looked like it was filled with vegetables.
A moment later, the food was placed in a bowl and Fana moved to a nearby fountain that was a crude collection of metal. A magic item of some sort, it transformed ambient mana into water with a little help of the user. She used it to fill a clay cup before moving to one of the wooden benches and taking a seat.
Fana sat there for several seconds, unsure of what to do. If she ate the food, something inside of her said it would be coming back up rather quickly.
“Hey there! Good to see your back to your old gloomy self,” an overly friendly voice said, cutting through the silence of the dinning hall as another woman in a dark outfit and a witch’s hat made her way into the dining hall. “Sally said I would find you here.”
Like with Sally, Fana didn’t recognize the woman with the long, sandy blonde curls underneath a black witch's hat that came to sit across from her. “Soooooo...your lizard is looking bigger,” she said.
Salamander let out a low growl.
“Ehe…” The woman gave a nervous grin as she continued to sit there.
Not knowing what to say, Fana looked down at her food. The soup looked old and unsatisfying. But, she was hungry. After a few moments, she took her spoon and tasted it. “This is really bad.”
“Huh...well,” the witch said before standing back up. “Good to see you’re still...you. Although, I’m glad you left those bandages you always wrapped around yourself in the lab. Beautiful women like us shouldn’t restrain our looks.”
The woman’s odd statement made Fana frown. “But...I’m not,” she mumbled before looking back up at the older lady. “What is that supposed to mean?”
The claws Salamander had resting on her shoulders began to dig into them. “Quiet! Eat and leave.”
“Well…” the woman paused uncertainty and looked around with a nervous expression on her face.
“I’m not...me,” Fana said before she looked back down at her bowl. “And her, she used to laugh and wear flowers in her hair. I wanted...to get married. And...I was...practicing, to wear a corset?”
Fana reached up and clutched her head with one hand. Was that really why she had done something so painful? “I...I need to get out of here,” Fana mumbled before looking down at her bowl of stew. It looked awful and didn’t taste much better, but she needed food, so the girl quickly grabbed the bowl with both of her hands and took it up to gulp everything in it down.
Her insides were so empty, it felt as if everything she swallowed went straight down into her gut and landed with a hard thud. Fana clutched her stomach from the pain it caused and nearly fell over.
“Yes...let’s get you some fresh air,” the black witch agreed before moving around to help Fana up.
As she did, Fana looked over to her. “Who are you, again?” she asked before Salamander sunk its claws into her.
The witch gave a nervous laugh. “Oh dear, you remember your best friend! It’s me, Catherine.”
“HA!” one of the men eating at another table laughed. “Best suck-up you mean. Lady Fana is only interested in powerful mages, like me! All your brown nosing will only make your wrinkles come back faster.”
Catherine glared at the man. “SHUT IT SHIDAN!” she yelled at him before taking Fana by the arm. “Let’s get you some air, dear.
Fana let herself be led away by the other woman, her mind starting to work through the shock of remembering her past actions. These people...I don’t understand...what are we all doing here? she asked herself.
They weren’t like her and Vetto. Most of them didn’t even have powerful magic. There were a few with passable levels. But other than that, most of the people she walked past were hopeless losers.
“Ugh, stupid Shidan and all those other idiots,” Catherine mumbled. “I know that they’re supposed to be chosen, like the rest of us, but I fail to see how trash like him returning to his true form will make the world a better place for the rest of us. Master Licht should just let me drain them of their youth.”
Fana blinked. “Drain them?” she repeated before thinking up a better question. “And, we’re friends?”
The question had Cathrine looking back at her cautiously for a moment before she brightened up. “Why, yes! Best friends, in fact. Everyone here calls you Lady Fana, but not me, because we’re so close and have worked together so often,” she said happily before clasping her hands together. “Why, we always engage in cleanup operations after a harvest. Makes the bodies harder to identify, and helps me keep my skin nice and smooth.”
“Cleanup?” Fana blinked…
The woman called Cathrine sat on her broom, floating over the crowd of children that had just been drained of their mana. “Well, I won’t get anything but the dregs, but it’s better than nothing, I suppose,” the woman said before raising her grimoire. “Ash Curse Magic: Ash Absorbing Formation!”
Fana stood silent as she watched the children in front of her begin to wither, their skin becoming wrinkled and hair going gray as the woman’s aura reached out with dark purple tendrils to begin absorbing what was left of their mana. When it was finished, the group of younglings that didn’t have a single person in the double digits looked like a collection of impossibly short old people. Not that she cared as she raised her book. It felt good to make them suffer. “Fire Spirit Magic: Salamander’s Breath.”
...and made her way past the woman, through the door that had light shining through it so bright that she couldn’t tell what was beyond. She needed something else to focus on. If she let her mind linger on the memory that just ran through it, Fana knew her soup would be coming back up.
When Fana’s eyes adjusted, she looked around. The place they were standing on was surrounded by a series of floating boulders. In fact, it was a floating bolder, much larger than the ones around it and hollowed out to the point an entire base of people were living inside it. A cool mist dampened her skin and made Fana shiver just a bit as she examined her surroundings. “This is...the outside world.”
Feeling the air on her skin, the wind in her hair, the bright light and heat of the sun above. It was everything she had ever dreamed of experiencing after being taken down into the Diamond Kingdom training facility for the last time, before she had died.
Although Fana didn’t quite know what was going on, she knew who she was. And that was enough for the immediate future.
“Well, yes dear, it-”
The reminder of the woman’s presence shattered the wonder of the moment with the reminder of a question that needed answered. “How many people?” Fana suddenly asked the witch as she turned around to stare at her.
Catherine blinked and took a step back. “I’m...sorry?”
“No you’re not,” Fana told her as the girl’s anger began to rise. “Or else you would have stopped. You would have stopped me. Now, how many children did you watch me kill? Help me kill? HOW MANY?”
With the woman becoming more nervous from the questions, Fana had a feeling she needed to end this quickly as Cathrine held up her hands. “What does something like that matter?” she asked nervously. “What are you getting so angry about? Y-You were there too!”
Fana gathered her mana. “Yes...I was, but I didn’t have a choice. I don’t know why, but...I couldn’t stop myself from doing what I did. Now I do have a choice, to use my magic the way it is supposed to be used. To protect people like those children and all the others from people like you,” she said before casting her spell. “Fire Spirit Magic: Salamander’s Breath.”
The flames shot from over her shoulder, burning the woman to ash before she could scream. For a moment, Fana thought about going back into the floating fortress and dealing with the rest of them, but...she was still tired and hungry. She might be able to get the jump on Licht, or Vetto but if Raia found her, he would see right through any deception.
She needed to get away. Recover her strength. Think and settle her thoughts.
At least she had gotten rid of one of them.
Fana reached up and grabbed onto Salamander’s wrists before she turned around to run forward and leaped off the cliff. The little dragon’s wings spread wide and carried her into the air, away from the floating dungeon. “Okay, I’m out. What am I supposed to do now?” she asked.
Cadance trotted through the Canterlot palace, annoyed at the sudden summons that had brought her out of the forelegs of her husband and back to the place where everything just screamed Celestia.
In the weeks since the wedding, Cadance had decided to stop letting the older alicorn constantly send her on errands to other countries and territories of Equestria. Celestia had fumed about it, but with Luna back, she knew that ordering another Princess to do her bidding would bite her in the back when Candance brought it up in conversation with her sister, along with questions about why Luna wasn’t making any laws, public appearances, holding court, or doing anything else Celestia did.
“Why, it’s almost as if you don’t consider your sister an equal at all,” Cadance remembered herself saying. “I mean, you let her what? Prance around in the dreams of other ponies? The job that Equestria did just fine without for a thousand years? Don’t you think she should be doing some real Princess work, like I did? I know, let’s ask her!”
It was a dirty, ugly, and obviously heinous threat of manipulation on her part, but Celestia had reluctantly agreed that as a newlywed, Cadance should be spending more time on developing a real family. Since that was what the pink princess had wanted for the moment, she had been living in truce with Celestia.
Not that she hadn’t been busy. While talking about her wedding with all the magazines in Equestria had quickly grown stale since Celestia had planned the whole thing, going deep into detail about her victory over Chrysalis and triumphing when Celestia had failed was a favorite topic of hers. She was even talking to several playwrights about the issue and it was the most anticipated play of the season.
Being called back to the palace, with her husband during his family leave no less, was threatening to break that truce.
Inside the throne room, Celestia sat on the single throne from which she ruled Equestria, with Luna at the bottom of the dias. Cadance made a note to call attention to that little fact when things turned ugly and gave the big nag a modest nod. “Auntie,” she said after noticing the two guards and the latest of Celestia’s aides. She had to be cordial, or they would probably think the world was on the verge of ending. “Is there something you needed to talk to me about?”
“Princess Cadance,” Celestia said in her louder and more regal tone. “One thousand years ago, a great tragedy befell a part of Equestria. Deep in the frozen north, there once lay a place untouched by cold, full of ponies that had changed over several generations of being exposed to a magical artifact. The Crystal Empire!”
The theatrics got a confused blink from Cadance. “Oh-kay,” she mumbled. “What does that have to do with me?”
Celestia frowned a little. “A thousand years ago, the Crystal Empire was banished to shadow by the power of a dark unicorn pony known as Sombra,” she told the other alicorn. “However, all spells must eventually end, and it has become known to me recently that the Crystal Empire has returned from the realm of shadow. To ensure the safety of the ponies that have been returned to us, we must move quickly and reclaim the territory for Equestria. As such, you and your husband will go to the Crystal Empire and secure it for us.”
The sheer impossibility of what she had just heard made Cadance wonder if she was dreaming. She turned her head and gave Celestia a cautious look out of the corner of her eye. “Wait...are you actually telling me to go do something...important?”
“As things stand, you are the only pony I trust to send,” Celestia told her. “Once you have inspected the area, we can send in the ponies necessary to do what needs to be done. But first, you must go to the Empire and secure it for Equestria.”
Before Cadance could get too excited over finally being given a task worthy of an alicorn, Shining Armor stepped forward. “Okay, Princess Celestia. How many troops will we have at our disposal?” he asked. “Wizards and a few experts on ancient history would be useful as well. I’ve never heard of the Crystal Empire and-”
Celestia held up a hoof, cutting Shining Armor off. “You will not require anypony else, Captain. I have determined that you and Cadance should be sufficient for the task.”
For some reason, Luna gave a start and looked over to Celestia in disbelief. Maybe the little sister thought she would be better for this particular job, but Celestia had chosen Cadance. Although, there was a tiny ember or irksomeness at it being Celestia that told her to go do something rather than it coming from a report that Cadance decided to act on under her own volition, it was crushed by the fact that she was FINALLY going to prove to everypony that she wasn’t just some do-nothing alicorn that spent all her time going to fancy parties.
“Okay, we’ll need clothes and food,” Cadance said as she began to pace around. What else did ponies take with them on an adventure? Oh, why didn’t I play more O&O when Shiny asked me to?
Celestia cleared her throat. “Everything has been prepared for you and loaded onto the train,” she told the smaller princess. “It will just be the engine I had some wizards enchant so that it could run on its own and five cars. Traveling so light, you should reach your destination in no time. I wish you a swift journey.”
As young Cadance galloped away at an impressive pace that her husband failed to keep up with despite his years of guard training, Luna’s questioning look to her elder sister became an outright frown. “Tell me, Sister. Have you gone mad after the last time we parted ways?”
Celestia blinked as her guards gasped in horror at Luna’s words that questioned Celestia. “What are you talking about, Luna?”
“As I recall, you constantly label Cadance as a magical dunce and immature foal who does not know her proper place in Equestria, despite all of your attempts to show her where she belongs,” Luna reminded the mare. “Yet, you believe she is the proper pony to send to a land one-thousand years gone instead of me? I simply wish to know if you have completely lost your mind, is all.”
After taking a moment, Celestia let out a sigh. “Do not worry, Luna. Everything is going according to my plans.”
Luna raised an eyebrow. “Which are what? Exactly?”
“To let Destiny play out as it should,” Celestia explained...without really explaining anything.
It took a few moments for Luna to keep herself from sighing. “Then pray tell, Sister, what sort of play is Destiny writing? How does sending young Cadance and her stallion into what could be a fatal situation for them both the fate that is written upon their flanks?”
Celestia giggled. “Worry not, little sister. I know what I am doing,” she assured the blue mare before descending the throne. “I ruled Equestria for a thousand years of prosperity, trained the mare that freed you from the Nightmare, and was the reason Twilight Sparkle overcame Discord when she fell prey to her own despair, after all. Trust your big sister, I know the best course of action to take.”
The continued lack of an explanation made Luna frown as her sister retreated from the conversation and the room in short order. “I see,” she said with a frown.
While most stallions would be glad to see their wives happy, Shining Armor could only feel a growing dread in the pit of his stomach as he watched Cadance prance around in a circle before going into the train car waiting for them at Canterlot Station. Despite several oddities that entered his mind about the situation at hand, Cadance hadn’t perceived any of them and was galloping ahead towards what might be a cliff.
The reason Shining Armor thought this was because he knew the deepest, darkest secret of Equestria that not even the closest of the royal advisors knew.
Celestia and Cadance absolutely hated each other.
Although he had never really learned why, it was clear to him that the level of animosity felt by both mares towards the other was legendary in its proportions. Cadance resented everything Celestia ever told her to do while carrying out her orders in the most obnoxious fashion, and Celestia made sure to assert her authority to inconvenience Cadance whenever she could. While they were all smiles in public, once the crowds were gone, both mares would quickly become petty and vindictive in their actions. Trading comments in their conversations that cut to the bone.
Shining Armor had even fallen prey to their feud. Nopony in the history of Equestria had been promoted as fast as him. Being posted to a princesses detail only a month out of training was one thing when you used to date her. But going from that to captain of her guard, then Captain of the Royal Guard when he was just twenty-four years old had many of the literal old guard just waiting for a slip up. If not for the blind loyalty Celestia instilled in everypony around her, Shining Armor knew that her entire military staff would have been calling for his horn after he failed to identify Chrysalis at a simple glance after she trotted right up to him.
Even if he and Cadance had sent her packing a few days later.
Which had put Cadance on every magazine cover and newspaper in Equestria for weeks afterwards as everypony wanted to hear about the wedding, the evil plot, all the juicy details involving changelings, and how the Princess of Love had saved Equestria from their plans to steal everypony’s love. Not to mention Celestia. Every interview Cadance did reminded them about how Celestia had lost to the changeling queen, only for Cadance to save her moments later.
“Uh, Cadance...I think we should talk about this,” he said while looking at her cautiously.
The nervousness in her husband’s voice made Cadance freeze. “Wait,” she said before looking back to Shining Armor. “Don’t tell me, you don’t think I’m up for something like this.”
Shining Armor took a step back. “What? I never said that. I just think we should take a moment and maybe pick up some extra ponies on the way up North to-”
“NO!” Cadance said so loudly it made the windows on the train car shake. Then, she gave Shining Armor a nervous smile as an apology before her expression became desperate “If we do that, it will just show everypony that I don’t think I can do my job. Don’t you see, this is my big chance!”
After bending his ears back to the upright position, Shining Armor fought the hesitant look off his face. “Chance for what?”
If anything, Cadance became even more unnerved. “To show everypony I am really a princess!” she exclaimed. “All my alicorn life, I’ve been sent on stupid little diplomatic missions that never even mattered. And now, finally, Celestia has to send me to deal with what could be the biggest threat Equestria has ever faced!”
“What threat?” Shining Armor asked. Celestia hadn’t mentioned a threat. Just some ancient land that had suddenly reappeared.
Cadance rolled her eyes. “The Crystal Empire!” she exclaimed while throwing her wings wide. “You heard the old nag. It’s ruled by an evil unicorn warlord! We’ll show up, pound his plot and liberate the country from his despotic rule!”
After recalling what he remembered from Celestia’s annoyingly vague description of the Empire, Shining Armor felt he had to point something out as the train got underway. “Um, Celestia said that the Empire was banished by Sombra, not that he ruled over it. In fact, it sounds more like...oh no,” he mumbled as something became abundantly clear to him.
“What?” Cadance asked after steadying herself from the sudden motion of the mobile room they were in.
Shining Armor took a deep breath, then guided his new wife over to one of the couches in the train car to lay down with the insistence that it would be easier going down the tracks to hide the real reason that he didn’t want her stomping around the train car in a rage. “Sweetie, it sounded to me like the Crystal Empire was just someplace that this Sombra pony banished, not ruled over,” the unicorn explained to the confused alicorn. “A place that is...out of step with normal Equestria, and um…” He gulped. “Needs somepony important looking to act as a...g-goodwill ambassador to get a read on the place?”
The clickity clack of the rails beneath them was the only noise to be heard as the train continued towards its goal for several seconds. However, Cadance’s mane suddenly lost its perfect appearance as little hairs popped out of place a moment before they went into a tunnel that cut the lights off before coming out at the foot of the mountain. By then, Cadance’s whole body was shaking as her mouth curled into a snarl. “She...SHE TRICKED ME!”
I wouldn’t say it like that, Shining Armor thought to himself before making his way over to the other couch in what was obviously the train’s ‘living room’ car. He had been on enough fancy transports to know they were more or less mobile homes for important ponies to identify how they were all set up. “You just um, got excited and galloped ahead instead of asking questions.”
Cadance moaned and rested her head on the end of her couch. “I know, I’m an idiot.”
“Well, no point in complaining about it now,” Shining Armor said before thinking what would be their next best step. “So...do you have any idea where would be the best place to find some information on the Crystal Empire?” They could still make a few stops on the way and get what was needed.
The need to consider the question had Cadance rolling around to lay on her back and look up at the ceiling. “If it’s from before Luna was banished, then there won’t be any records of it anywhere,” Cadance told him. “Not even the restricted section of the Royal Library. Celestia had any record from those times destroyed. The only thing we have from that time is oral histories like the Hearths Warming story, and even that has been massively changed over the years.”
Shining Armor let out a little groan. While he didn’t share Cadance’s opinion of Celestia to such a degree that the pink pony did, there were some things the older alicorn did that made him wonder about her. “Never did understand why she thought that was necessary.”
“Shiny, I spend my whole life in the remote corners of Equestria to the point the average pony doesn’t even know I exist, and you wonder why Celestia doesn’t want anypony to know there was another alicorn around? That she didn’t magically create Equestria all by herself?” Cadance asked him with an even expression. “She’s a control freak, honey. She demands absolute obedience from everypony around her and will never let anypony stand as an equal because she believes that everything she does is right and nopony else can even hope to make a decision as good as her.”
After letting out a sigh, Shining Armor looked out the window to try and think of something to change the topic. “So, um…” The sight of Ponyville caught his eye. “Did you enjoy seeing Twily again?”
The look on Cadance’s face became tight. “Well...sort of,” she said, as if having to admit something she rather wouldn’t.
Picking up on the distress, Shining Armor cocked his head to the side. “What’s wrong?”
“I should have stayed in Canterlot,” the princess mumbled.
“I thought we said there’s nothing to do about it-”
“Not today,” Cadance told him. “Ten years ago! I should have told Celestia to go buck herself when she told me to go talk to the King of Maretonia. Or, I should have done it after I found out the visit was a complete farce of pomp and circumstance instead of a real negotiation! But Celestia got me out of Canterlot, and she sank her teeth into Twilight so much that poor little filly doesn’t even think for herself when Celestia is around!”
Shining Armor let out a hesitant groan. “Come on, Cadance. My sister is smart, she-”
Cadance didn’t let him finish. “She thought she got the wrong type of candy, Shiny!” the Princess exclaimed. “When she walked up to Celestia at her wedding reception, and it was her wedding reception, not the one I would have had made. Anyway, Celestia told Twilight she didn’t like the type of snacks Twilight had brought to the table and the little mare told her ‘Oh! I got the wrong plate, let me go find mine’! And then she galloped away like Celestia was going to have her executed for brining peppermint to the table she was sitting at!”
“Well, Celestia probably just didn’t want her to see the two of you fighting,” he said, trying to calm her down. And he knew they would have been fighting. Cadance had raged for days after the wedding about how Celestia had ruined everything by putting the whole thing together without Cadance’s input.
It didn’t work.
“That’s not the point, Shiny!” Cadance exclaimed. “Celestia has Twilight, and she wanted to show me that she has her. And mark my words, one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe a few years from now, Celestia is going to tell Twilight to do something. Something awful. Something that goes against everything she’s supposed to be, and Twilight is going to do it, despite every one of her instincts screaming at her not to.”
Seeing where this conversation was going, Shining Armor sighed as the tracks turned north. They needed a break from all of this, but he knew that trying to pull Cadance out of her anger was a waste of time that would just end up making them both feel bad later. So, he got up and thought of a good excuse to be somewhere else so Cadance could fume, burn herself out, then spend some more quality time with her new husband when she was done. “I think I should check our supplies before we pass out of pony civilization. The last thing we need is to be trapped in the Frozen Waste without the proper survival gear.”
Cadance snorted. “It would be just like Celestia to pull something like that,” she said before smiling at the stallion and rolling over onto her stomach so she could extend her neck for a quick nuzzle. “Good thinking, Shiny.”
The trip to the northernmost reaches of Equestria took four days.
Although Cadance calmed down after the first day and didn’t manage to reach peak levels of anger like when she had found out that Celestia tricked her, the little reminders that Celestia had sent along ensured that the pink princess didn’t have a lasting good mood during her trip north. Like the fact half the food rations were something she was allergic to, while the other half were of a kind Cadance absolutely detested. If not for Shiny taking stock of everything on the first day, they wouldn’t have been able to stop and change out their food supplies to something she enjoyed on the second.
The memory of which made her snuggle closer to the stallion on the mattress they had to buy after learning Celestia only gave them a pair of sleeping bags meant for one pony. While she supposed they would be useful when the world became an eternal winter wonderland, Cadance didn’t think having to spend a single second in a bed that was separate from her husband very funny at all.
As her husband began to stir from his sleep, Cadance got a naughty idea. “Hey Shiny,” she moaned. “I’m a little empty. How about a fillup?” The question was quickly followed by a long lick to her husband’s big, white, hard horn that sat atop his head.
“Muh? Cadance” he asked before rolling over and looking at her. “What time is it?”
Cadance grinned. “Time to mount your mare and give her a nice, creamy filling.”
Fighting off her attempt to celebrate their marriage for the fifteenth time since their journey began, Shining Armor held her at foreleg’s length and looked around. “Have we stopped?”
The question confused Cadance for a moment before she noticed that the constant clacking of the tracks that she had learned to put out of her mind had vanished. The train was enchanted to take them to their destination. It wouldn’t have stopped without her ripping it off of the tracks and holding it aloft like when she sent Shiny for supplies, unless… “Are we here?”
She got off the mattress and looked out the window to see...nothing.
An endless expanse of white that reflected the light in a way that was almost blinding to Cadance’s eyes greeted her. “But, there’s nothing here,” she mumbled before moving away from the window and looking to her husband as he cocooned himself in the blankets they had bought from a pony in a small town north of Ponyville. “Did Celestia actually send us out into the middle of nowhere?” She had pulled worse pranks on Cadance over the years, none of which were funny.
Shining Armor groaned and poked his head out of the blankets. “Do you honestly think that she would do something like that?”
Instead of telling him a most definite yes, Cadance took a moment to think things over. While she wouldn’t have put it past Celestia to send her out in the middle of nowhere on a false report, actually falling for misinformation would make the old nag look bad as well. She did her best to look infallible, after all, so as much as she hated to think it, this all wasn’t some cruel joke Celestia was pulling on them.
“No,” Cadance finally admitted. Celestia would make the trip as uncomfortable as possible, but anything that could blow back on her was out of the question.
“I’ll go take a look at the map,” Shining Armor told Cadance before getting up to carry the blankets with him as he left the sleeping car towards the one that held all of their supplies.
Half an hour later, Cadance was trudging forward through the snow with a frown on her face. The vest she had on might have kept a normal pony warm, but it was most definitely not meant for pegasi, and an alicorn’s wings just made the thing feel even more cramped. All of her instincts told the mare to rip the thing off and jump into the sky. Which was, thankfully, very clear and blue. Even though that meant she had to wear stupid-looking glasses to block out how the sun reflected off the ice and snow to keep from going blind.
With a decade of travel under her hooves, Cadance could say that the North was her most hated part of Equestria. It was too cold, too bright, too hilly, and all around annoying. Even the sand of Saddle Arabia wasn’t as bad as the north.
“Cadance, come quick, I think I found it,” Shining Armor called out from atop the hill he was standing on.
Glad to finally get to the last leg of their task, Cadance galloped up the hill and gave a start at what she saw. “That’s...not possible,” she mumbled at the sight that greeted her.
Perhaps half a mile away stood a city that looked to have been constructed, perhaps even grown, from nothing but crystal. A tall tower reached up into the sky, nearly blending in with the background and making itself next to impossible to see if a pony didn’t know what they were looking for. But, the thing that made Cadance comment on the impossibility of what she saw was the green. Despite its location, the Crystal Empire was surrounded by a field of lush green grass, and her eyes could make out trees and other plant life inside the boundaries of the ancient city-state.
“Maybe the North wasn’t always a frozen wasteland?” Shining Armor asked. “Seeing this almost makes me think wendigos exist.”
Cadance blinked. She had kept her mouth shut for years, but after the changelings… “Oh, wendigos are real,” the Princess informed her husband. “It’s why Celestia gives party ponies a government stipend to have small celebrations in as many locations that can be had during the holidays, birthdays, and for whatever reason she can find. We just have to keep them small, because it's the togetherness created by ponies that actually keeps them at bay. It’s why she doesn’t have a grand Hearth’s Warming party at the palace every year and just puts on a play.”
The new information made Shining Armor give a start. “Wait, are you saying that the majority of Equestria has to stay happy and united, or we’ll all die from the cold and starvation?”
“Why did you think I never told Celestia she could shove her goodwill ambassador position up her plot or just do a really bad job my first couple of years?” Cadance replied with a roll of her eyes. “She frightened me into keeping the position.”
The city was quiet.
Too quiet.
Shining Armor’s hooves made a loud ‘chink’ sound rather than the usual hard clop as they walked down the street. To say it made him feel on edge was an understatement. It was also odd to see the grass hadn’t died, despite being exposed to the freezing cold for at least the better part of the week. But the crops Cadance had inspected on the way in hardly looked normal. So it wasn’t a large leap in logic to figure out that the other foliage would be odd as well.
There was also the much creepier issue. “Where is everypony?” Shining Armor asked as he looked around the empty streets.
“Well, maybe the Empire came back, but the populace...didn’t,” Cadance replied as her eyes swept over the houses that were a mix of more traditional squares next to buildings that had just been grown wild, with sides jutting out everywhere. The steps were all made of traditional stone, though. And the doors had been carved from wood. It didn’t look like crystal made good material for either of those.
Shining Armor looked back at the mare. “So, what are your orders, Your Highness?”
After blinking at the question, Cadance let out a little laugh. “Shiny, you don’t have to call me that. I really wouldn’t call this being out in public.”
“Cadance, this place makes me edgy. When I get edgy, I fall back on my training,” Shining Armor told her. “You’re the Princess. You’re the one used to dealing with the weirdos outside of Equestria. You’re the one who’s had whole conversations with Luna. You’re the one who should be making the calls here. So, what are your orders, Highness?”
The pink mare might have blushed, but it was always so had to tell with her coat. “Oh, well...in that case…” Cadance took a moment to think, prancing around in a circle as she peered further down the streets that they could see from the ground. “We should see if we can find anypony by checking the homes. After that, we’ll head to the palace to see if there’s any information about what might have happened to everypony. Important ponies like to keep lots of literature about themselves around. I just hope it isn’t all written in Old Ponish.”
After taking a look around, Shining Armor led them down a road that eventually came to a residential area before finding a moderately-sized house and knocking on the front of the door. Then, after giving it a few more taps, he sighed. “If there’s anypony inside, I’m giving you fair warning that we are coming in. Please stand away from the door,” the unicorn announced before his horn lit up and the piece of wood blocking their way was ripped off of its hinges. “Hello?”
Shining Armor slowly entered the house that didn’t look as dark as it should have been before noticing that light was actually able to come through the walls, solving that little mystery. The living room was clean, without any dust on it to indicate a thousand years of nothing happening.
Although, the real surprising thing about what he found inside was the pony who was currently sitting on the floor in the kitchen. She was a blue earth pony, but looked different than any other pony that Shining Armor had ever seen. Her coat was smooth, almost impossibly so, and there was a dull sheen that covered her entire body. If not for the fact she was eating a yellow gem that looked like corn, Shining Armor would have thought she was some kind of statue.
“Cadance, I think I found something,” Shining Armor called out before turning back to the...crystal pony? Looks like whatever affected the crops and grass might have done something to the ponies as well.
The pony continued to eat, oblivious to his presence.
When Cadance came in, she looked past the stallion and smiled. “Oh, hello. Sorry about the door. We were...we came from Equestria,” she said. “Um...can you hear me?”
The pony looked up from her food and turned to stare at Cadance for several seconds. “What...door?” she asked in a slow and lifeless tone.
“The one at the front of your house,” Cadance told her as she put on a nervous smile. “Don’t worry, we can fix it if you want.”
After several seconds, the pony blinked. “Oh...okay,” she said before going back to eating.
Cadance gave Shining Armor a nervous look that he quickly shared with her before she turned her head back to the mare. “Um...do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“...okay,” the pony replied after taking another bite of her food.
Cadance took a deep breath, then held it for a few seconds before exhaling it slowly and putting on a smile. “Well, I suppose we should start with the introductions. I’m Princess Mi Amore Ca-”
Before Cadance could even finish, the pony that looked more like she was sleep walking than actually being away suddenly went rigid before her eyes widened. “Amore! Princess Amore?” she asked in a loud voice that sounded horrified.
The question got a nervous laugh out of Cadance. “Well, I don’t usually go by that name, but-”
“FORBIDDEN!” the crystal pony suddenly shouted before she put her hooves to her head. “FORBIDDEN!” She shouted again before slamming her head onto the table so hard it cracked beneath her. “FORBIDDEN!”
As Cadance backed away, horrified at the sight of the pony breaking her muzzle while screaming over and over before the strange mare fell to the ground and began slamming it against that over and over, Shining Armor came forward to wrap the pony in his magic to lift her into the air. “C-Calm down! What are you talking about?”
“FORBIDDEN!” the pony cried as she struggled in the air before letting out a loud screech that didn’t sound like anything an equine should ever make.
Unsure of what to do, Shining Armor could only step in front of Cadance as cracks started to appear all over the screaming pony before it began to vibrate, and actually shatter while still held in the stallion’s magic.
Shivering in the blanket Shiny had found for her while sitting on a patch of grass, Cadance felt like she wanted to throw up again. It had been nearly an hour since she had seen the mare try to kill herself before succumbing to...whatever it was that had taken her life, and she still felt ill just thinking about it.
All those old classes in anatomy did nothing to prepare her for what the inside of a pony actually looked like.
When Shining Armor came back out of the house, Cadance looked up at him in desperation. “Did you find anything?”
The stallion shook his head. “No journals or books in the house, and I’m pretty sure this place predates newspapers,” he said before sitting down next to her. “I still don’t understand what that was. Making like that...”
“It was a curse,” Cadance told him before taking a deep breath to try and steady herself.
Shining Armor looked back over to her. “Cadance, curses aren’t real.”
The near pre-programmed response got a sigh from Cadance as she released her breath. “Just like changelings and wendigoes, right?” she asked before shaking her head. “It was a curse, Shiny. My...magic tutor told me about them, once. And I looked up some more information after Chrysalis. Curses are unnatural magic. They do things that shouldn’t happen to the surrounding world, like...getting rid of an empire for a thousand years, or making a pony crack apart instead of...dying naturally.”
Another shiver ran through Cadance’s body. Just talking about it made her remember that poor mare’s face. She got the feeling that Luna would be coming to see her for some time to come, if the mare could fit it into her schedule. How a single pony was supposed to act as warden for all the dreams of Equestria on top of guarding the night was a mystery to her.
“So...what now?” Shining Armor asked.
Cadance considered her options. She couldn’t ask another one of the crystal ponies what was going on. It could very well end just as badly. So, she focused on the second stage of her plan. “We’ll head to the palace and-” Cadance cut herself off as the sun suddenly went down leaving her and Shining Armor in darkness. “Huh, must have lost track of the time.” She wished Celestia would give some kind of warning before she set the sun. Would it have killed her to move it until it was nearly gone from the horizon for an hour before completely getting rid of the thing?
A cold wind blew through the air as Cadance stood up on all four hooves to light her horn, which Shiny followed suit not long after. “Okay, we’ll head to the palace and get some sleep. Then pick things up in the morning,” he told her.
If they were lucky, there would be something to help explain what was going on at the palace.
“Crystals.”
As Luna’s moon came into the sky, Cadance started to feel on edge with how the extra illumination helped create more shadows all around her and Shining Armor rather than just one big, black amorphous blob that she couldn’t see anything beyond what her horn lit up. It was odd how the more a pony could see at night, the more their imagination could turn against them. Trees became monsters, houses became giants, and really creepy looking masses of black smoke...were...really creepy looking masses of black smoke that flowed over things like a black tide of evil.
“Shiny...what is that?” Cadance asked as she watched what looked like a mass of darkness fall over a house she could see in the moonlight and just consume it in a sheet of black.
“Crystals.”
Shining Armor frowned. “I’m gonna guess...it’s something we should be running from,” he said as the darkness extended their way.
Not wasting the time to voice her agreement, Cadance turned and galloped away from the dark mass along with her husband, keeping pace with the stallion even though her pegasus speed and earth pony stamina allowed her to outdo the unicorn despite the great deal of physical training he went through.
“Crystals!”
Behind them, the darkness turned, and Cadance could swear she saw a pair of eyes glare at her before the living shadow stretched forward in their direction, no longer bothering to extend in one slow mass, but actually stretching itself down the road after the two ponies in an obvious attempt to catch them.
As she continued to run from the darkness, Cadance...felt the excitement of the life and death chase fill her with a mix of joyful emotions. “Can you believe it, Shiny? Something’s actually trying to kill us!” she said with glee.
“Are you kidding me?” he shouted back at her. “How is this a good thing?”
Cadance gave a laugh. “Because, this isn’t just a stupid diplomatic mission anymore!” she said happily before they made it to the edge of the palace’s grounds, where Cadance spun around and threw off her warm jacket so she could spread her wings. “Now that we’ve calmed down a bit, let’s show this monster who’s boss!”
Thankfully, Shining Armor turned around with Cadance to tap the edge of his horn to hers, letting Cadance feel his love, and slight annoyance, for her before she channeled the emotions and unleashed them in a shield spell that swept over the city and didn’t even slow down when it hit the darkness to knock it away.
Once her spell had washed over the city, leaving it much warmer than it had been a minute ago thanks to the odd reaction some of the crystal structures had with her love magic, Cadance took up to the sky for her obligatory victory speech. “HA! Take that you-” she managed to get out before noticing the dark energies massing at the edge of the green grass that marked the outer boundaries of the small empire. “Oh, you’re still here.”
The darkness charged at her again, and Cadance lit up her horn before sending out another pulse of love magic that lit up the night and pushed the darkness away.
Only to have it mass again and move towards her once her spell had faded.
“Oh, come on!” Cadance yelled before another pulse of love magic knocked it out of the city.
After which it massed and charged again, only for her to beat it back.
However, unlike the last few times, Cadance concentrated and surrounded the city, as well as the countryside, with a magical barrier linked to her horn before she landed back on the ground to frown in the general direction that the darkness had come from. “Hey, you like that? Do ya? Let’s see you get back in now. Come on, let’s see it. Let’s see you get back in,” Cadance taunted. “Well you can’t, can you? HA!”
Once she was done telling the darkness off, Cadance noticed Shining Armor standing next to her. “Yes, Shiny?”
“So...what now?” he asked before looking up at her horn. “You can’t hold a shield spell this big indefinitely.”
Cadance snorted at his worries. “Oh, come on, Shiny. All I have to do is wait till morning. That thing came out at night, so it probably hates the sunlight. Since, you know, it’s obviously made of darkness,” she said before coming to a slight problem with her plan. “I’ll just have to stay up...all night.”
After letting out a sigh, Shining Armor looked to his backpack. “I’ll get the coffee and…” He frowned at the crystal tree in their field of vision. “And go tear someone’s door off its hinges so that we have something to burn.”
In the hours that followed, Cadance learned that fighting evil wasn’t as exciting as Shiny’s comics made it out to be. After he fell asleep, she was left to hold the spell in place with nothing to do but walk around the newly discovered crystal palace. Since casting required too much concentration for her to read anything, Cadance found herself in an ever increasing funk that was just so boring.
Minute after minute, hour after hour. All she had to do was hold up a stupid shield spell to keep out the darkness that didn’t even seem that tough. As soon as morning came, she was going to drop her spell, get some sleep in one of the bedrooms she found, then wake up and go to the edge of the empire so she could take the fight to that thing. After Shiny took a few seconds to teach her how to fight, that is.
Attack spells couldn’t be that hard to learn.
Then, when it was finally time for dawn to break, going by what her pocket watch said since all she could see was the blue of her shield, Cadance finished off her eighth cup of extra caffeinated coffee before going to get Shining Armor. Who she found curled up in his sleeping bag, set in front of the throne room. It was sweet for him to tell her that if she wasn’t going to sleep, he wouldn’t be using the luxury of a bed, but Cadance was going to force him into one come tonight.
“Okay Shiny, time to wake up,” she told him with a yawn before poking the pony hard enough to get a response.
Shining Armor groaned a lot, but slowly got to his hooves and looked around with half-lidded eyes. “C-Cadance? I had this weird dream that-oh, wait...we’re really here. Buck,” he grumbled.
After rolling her eyes, she handed her stallion a cup of coffee and led him over to the throne room’s eastern exit before heading up the stairs to what had been somepony’s bedroom. Not the ruler of the Empire, that room had been all tacky spikes and empty braziers. “Okay Shiny, I’m gonna crash here for the day, you take a look around while I’m out. See if there’s anything to find about that thing out there. Then, when I’m up, we can work on finding a more permanent solution to the problem,” she told him before cutting the spell and flopping down in the bed that had been calling out to Cadance for a good portion of the night.
“Uh...Cadance?” the bed, who sounded a lot like Shining Armor, said.
Cadance let out a grumpy moan. “Quiet, I’m already sleeping on you. Stupid bed.”
“Cadance...it’s still night out.”
Hearing her husband’s nonsensical words and knowing them to be his, because beds never said such things in trepidation, Cadance raised her head before moving back onto the cold, hard, and loud floor to look out the window with a frown. Outside, the darkness of the sky made it so it was hard for even her eyes to make out anything, despite pegasi being the tribe with the best vision.
Still, she just let out a sigh before shaking her head. “Oh Shiny, that’s not the night sky. It’s just a really thick layer of cloud cover that’s blocking all the sunlight from reaching the land below.” Cadance would forgive his ignorance. It was normal for unicorns to know nothing about the weather.
“But...doesn’t that mean the shadow monster can still get in?” he asked. “In fact, he probably spent all night gathering the clouds himself for when the sun came up.”
Cadance rolled her eyes and began to head back to the bed that was missing her so much. There wasn’t any way that something like that could-
“Crystals.”
The pink pony princess frowned before running back to the window, the need for sleep forgotten for the moment as she saw a now-familiar darkness begin to creep across the land...again. “Oh, for the love of-seriously?” she demanded.
Luna walked into the dining hall as Celestia sat down to breakfast, a large stack of pancakes sitting where her dinner should be. She kept her eye from twitching, because the last time Luna had shown real displeasure at anything he sister did, a mental health specialist had shown up at her door for a month and talked to her with hoof puppets to help insure that Luna wasn’t going to go on a psychotic killing spree and need to be sealed up again.
Pretending that she didn’t even see the food Celestia had prepared for her baby sister, since the decoration certainly looked like they were made for a foal of ten, Luna frowned when she noticed the larger alicorn reading from a book that didn’t have a title with a bit of glee in her eyes. “Is there something amusing within the pages, Sister?”
“It’s a message from Cadance!” she said happily. “Apparently, Sombra has also returned along with the Crystal Empire. Oh, this is perfect!”
The sleep in Luna’s body was beaten back at the news of such an old foe returning from the great beyond. “I shall rally the troops and prepare for a siege. This time, we will have the villain's head!”
Celestia held up a hoof. “Wait, Luna. I’ve already taken steps to remedy the problem.”
“Good. We shall done our armor and-”
“Twilight and her friends are coming here so I can send them to the North,” Celestia told her before she could finish.
Luna’s mouth dropped at her sister’s words. “Twilight and her friends?” she repeated. “Sister, why them?” The logical ponies to send would have been Celestia and Luna, themselves.
“Because, I think it is time for me to take Twilight to the next phase of her training,” she told the mare. “Now that Cadance has failed in the task I assigned-”
“A task you wanted her to fail,” Luna told the other mare. She was no fool. It was obvious that Celestia had been rubbed the wrong way by the fact Cadance and her stallion had been the one to defeat Chrysalis. A thousand years may have gone by, but politics was the same game as it always was. “You told her nothing of Sombra, nothing of the dangers she would face the Empire. You just let her gallop off towards a cliff!”
Celestia sighed and shook her head. “Cadance did that on her own. Besides, it would not matter what knowledge she would have had, Luna. If it had been Cadance’s Destiny to liberate the Empire from Sombra, then she would have done it instead of calling for help,” the mare said before looking back to the book and frowning as she mumbled. “Now, maybe she’ll learn her place in Equestria.”
The explanation made Luna understand that she wouldn’t be getting a straight answer out of her sister any time soon. Which made it a waste of time to stick around. So, she grabbed some fruit from the bowl in the middle of the table with her magic and headed towards her own chambers.
Although she knew time could change a pony, Luna could barely believe that her sister had become so ridiculously arrogant in the past thousand years. While Luna had known several fanatics in her long lifetime that clung to Destiny as their explanation for everything that ever happened, she had never dreamed that her sister would be so consumed by it.
Then again, the old figures of the Destiny zealots didn’t quite fit her sister. It was almost as if Celestia saw herself as the ultimate arbiter of Destiny, deciding where it should go rather than having a singular vision about how it led her towards a goal that mattered more than anything else.
Luna had to wonder what was going to happen when Celestia met the same fate as every other pony who thought they had learned the secrets to Destiny, much less been the one to control it. I suppose I will have to be the one to pick up the pieces, she told herself before opening the door to her apartments and headed towards the bedroom.