//------------------------------// // 89. Tripartite - Part Seven // Story: Letters From a Little Princess Monster // by Georg //------------------------------// Letters From a Little Princess Monster Tripartite - Part Seven “Come out little ponies.” There was a faint rasping noise from outside of the servant’s room, much as if the griffon was running a knife down the edge of the doorframe. “I know who you are now, Lord Green Grass. Come out and meet your end like the Canterlot coward you are.” Stargazer shivered against Green Grass’ side, shoving him in the direction of the balcony door with a clatter of hooves against the granite floor. He pushed back just as hard against the pregnant mare, holding his own and not much more. “Get a hold of yourself!” he hissed. “You’re not jumping off the balcony!” “Can’t face Duke Plummets,” gasped Stargazer, looking even paler than her coal-black coat could cover. “He’ll rip out the foal and know it’s his child! He’ll kill you too!” “He knows who I am,” said Green Grass just as firmly as he could manage. “I am my father’s son. The emperor himself is visiting the aerie, and he knows my father. I can talk sense into the murderous blowhard, but only if you keep it together!” A long rasp of talons across the outside of the door sent an icy shiver up Green Grass’ back, giving the lie to his external expression of confidence. He had known Duke Plummets was a cold-hearted bastard when they had first met, although briefly. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Entering the griffon aerie as a researcher would have meant being treated by every inhabitant as an outsider, and a biased view of the griffon history would have resulted. Since griffons were not very bibliophilic, he was depending on interviews and conversations to flesh out his skeletal Master’s thesis, so he had a talk with the mayor of nearby Toenail, left his book-filled wagon in her back yard, and traveled to the aerie as just another servant for the griffons. At first, posing as Stargazer’s husband had provided a wealth of experiences for his thesis, and no end of griffons willing to talk about their history. However, in a matter of a few scant weeks the environment chilled in more ways than one. Servants who were supposed to be rotated back to their homes vanished, with no explanation. Several eggs in the hatchery turned up broken, their precious contents absent. Blame began to be spread, and a chill wind from a nearby wilderness area put everycreature’s nerves on edge. Curiosity killed the cat, and quite nearly had killed the Green Grass during his dangerous investigation. His stomach lurched with the thought, and bile threatened to creep up his throat and betray his inner tension. Substituting for Plummets’ missing servant, he had free access to the private rooms of the Wingmaster and his son, or at least until he had angered the younger griffon with his curiosity and been struck. The brief image he had seen of Milk Toast, trussed up and bled like a sacrifice, remained frozen in his mind with every griffon he had limped past for the last week while healing. He had suspected, doubted, evaded, and tried his best not to actually believe the terrible truth until that gruesome moment, and now the secret that he had kept to himself threatened to emerge along with the scant contents of his belly. “Duke Plummets.” A quick swallow to rid himself of the worst bitterness creeping up his throat and Green Grass continued in his best Griffon, “” A low, grim chuckle was his only response, the kind of guttural noise that made Green Grass’ skin feel paper-thin to the cold breezes of the mountain city. He knew at that moment that his fate was going to be the same as Milk Toast, tied up and bled to feed the hunger of the terrible monsters that the Wingmaster and his son were turning into. The fear made him think of the small self-identified monster he had known for such a short time in Ponyville. How the world was such a terrifying place for her, but she was not afraid as long as she had her friends. Even Trixie had fallen under her spell, and to think of the blue braggart as anypony’s friend showed a small fraction of the true power of friendship. Green Grass had been running away from his parents’ attempts to marry him off for years, and Twilight Sparkle had gotten him married to Trixie in a matter of hours. She had even gotten Father to her side, and that was… epic. If Twilight Sparkle could face her fears and put her life on the line to protect her friends, so could he. “,” announced Green Grass. “” It would have been foolish to delay, since the door to the servant’s quarters was thin enough to be broken down by a single blow of the hefty griffon’s claws. He lifted the latch and swung the door wide before stepping forward, almost into Duke Plummets’ feathered chest. Green Grass looked up. The dark griffon looked down, with a hint of a cruel smile around the edges of his beak. The serrated knife held in his claws did nothing to help Green Grass’ momentary burst of false confidence. “,” said Green Grass carefully in the formal chirps and squeaks of his best formal Griffon. Duke Plummets shook his head, making his feathered crest slowly wave. “First, I’m going to cut the abomination out of that worthless bitch,” he growled with a blast of fetid breath. “I’m going to drink her blood and eat her liver while you watch. Then it shall be your turn.” “B-but the Emperor?” managed Green Grass. Plummets’ smile grew larger, and Green Grass could see jagged teeth like broken icicles inside his beak, and a glittering blue glow to his eyes. “The Emperor has eaten and drank the flesh and blood of the kine. He is ours,” he breathed, taking a step forward and shoving Green Grass ahead of him. “All of the griffons of the vale are gathered to hear my father, and when we have gathered all the remaining weaklings, we shall feast.” The big griffon ducked to get under the low doorframe, gloating, “ Once more we shall rise into the skies above all lesser beings. And nothing will stop—” All of the comfort Green Grass had taken from Twilight Sparkle’s example had been replaced by sheer terror, which had its own appeal in the deepest primitive recesses of his mind at the moment. The griffon’s shove had turned him around and nearly to the ground, much the same way a much smaller earth pony colt had been pushed around the playground by far larger classmates years ago. A bubbling of pure rage frothed to the surface of his mind, combined with anger at the inherent unfairness that strength and power gave over weaker creatures. Mixed together with the certainty of his gruesome death, it gave him a spike of adrenaline that slowed time and brought every single detail of his surroundings into sharp focus at once. The gloating griffon, ducking under the stone doorway to his room. A glitter of a golden bit on the ground, fallen to show the head of an alicorn princess. The terrified form of Stargazer, huddled up on the bed with her eyes closed. Endless hours of tree-bucking practice in the asylum’s gymnasium to keep his mind and body intact. Lessons from his older brothers on self-defense. A whisper somewhere in the back of his mind. “Go for the head.” Power exploded out of his earth pony body, focused by frantic terror into a full double-buck that tore the half-healed scar on his flank wide open. Both hind hooves aimed high, driven by instinct and armored with steel shoes, they caught the big griffon right under the chin and drove his skull into the heavy stones of the doorframe. Duke Plummets’ head collapsed with a terrible crunch, spraying blood and unmentionable shards of bone in all directions. ❅ ❅ ❅ Doctor Horsenpfeffer was seriously worried about her patient’s blood pressure from the way that Princess Luna kept stopping to rub her temples and fight back a scowl. Her inexperience with the press was obvious, and Celestia was not much help. The older princess was flustered, frazzled, and foolish, a far cry from her years of calm governance over the nation. After a thousand years of not working with each other, their whole pattern of behavior was having trouble at the edges, like two gears that did not mesh correctly. “Before we continue this news conference again, the gentlestallion from the Pollyneighsion paper seems to have a question, please,” said Luna. “I just need to know where the bathroom is,” said the dark stallion with the jaunty fedora. “Could you hold the news conference until I get back?” “In that direction,” said Luna, jabbing one hoof, “no we will not, and as I was saying before being so rudely interrupted, we have an announcement. We are pregnant.” There was a long silence in the conference room before one of the reporters tentatively raised one hoof. “You said that already.” “We are pregnant,” said Luna with more force. “I am pregnant, and my sister is pregnant.” There was another pause, longer than the first, before a reporter hazarded a quiet, “I don’t think pregnancy works that way.” “I thought alicorns hatched from eggs,” said another. “Are they nesting?” asked another. “My pet goose pecks me something fierce when she’s nesting. It could explain why they’re so cranky lately.” “Princess Cadenza is pregnant too,” said one slender pegasus. “She’s been round enough to lay an entire nest of eggs all by herself. We could be up to our necks in baby alicorns!” “Will you need anypony to adopt one?” asked a reporter. “I’ve got a cat, so I have some experience.” “Is Shining Armor the father of all the eggs?” “No!” snapped Luna. “The father of our children is… well… very complicated,” she finished slower. “My sister has only been pregnant since last week, but she shall unfairly give birth first because… It’s complicated!” “I’m going to have a pegasus!” blurted out Celestia, shoving forward and bumping her sister to one side. “With wings! I have pictures!” For a moment, Doctor Horsenpfeffer thought the two alicorns were going to come to blows, then they both stiffened and looked to the north end of the conference room. “The Empire,” whispered Luna. “Sombra,” squeaked Celestia. “We must apologize, gentlesapiants,” said Luna rapidly. “But Doctor Horsenpfeffer will be more than happy to answer all your questions,” added Celestia. Two alicorn horns flashed as one, and Doctor Horsenpfeffer found herself alone at the front of the room. She used a word. Thankfully, none of the reporters knew what it meant. ❅ ❅ ❅ There was being in too deep, and there was Sunburst-deep, fighting to help an alicorn give birth in a strange timeless crystal city with a howling blizzard outside and nothing but a hazy grey in all directions. “Need Shiny,” moaned Princess Cadenza, doubled up between labor pains in a damp puddle of her own fluids. “And I need a doctor!” snapped Sunburst, who was staring down the end of a princess he had never even considered stare-able in that fashion. “He’s so close. Next push, try as hard as you—” “I AM!” There was a creepy certainty to the Princess of Love’s declaration, as if she were engaged on some deeper level with the dark magics of this eerie place. It was like the city did not want the foal to emerge, and was fighting with every bit of its power to keep mother and child together. Worse, Sunburst could hear the shuffling of hooves somewhere out in the shadows, and he was fairly certain it was not a pegamedic or wandering physician approaching to deal with the struggling foalbirth. Still, anything was better than nothing. “Whoever that is out there,” he called out with his teeth gritted together and trying to assist the foal. “Come over and help!” The hoofsteps drew nearer without any creepy noises like in the horror movies, so at least that was one less worry for Sunburst. All this place needed was monsters and he would run away, regardless of… No, he had seen far too much already, and running would only make it worse. Catching a glimpse of the approaching pony out of the corner of his eye helped. It was a quiet blue-green stallion with a dark mane, who moved in their direction slowly, in small bursts of speed as if he was injured also. Princess Cadenza seemed to draw comfort from his presence, and the wracking pains that reduced her to incoherent groans faded enough for her to open one eye and give Sunburst a brief but sincere smile. It did not help the plight of the struggling foal, however. The motions it was making seemed slowed by fatigue, drained by the grey world around them until it could no longer survive. There was a medical procedure used on mares with birthing problems like this, but Sunburst had fainted during the school class on the subject, and did not even have a penknife. The observer pony likewise did not seem to be carrying anything useful like a hospital around with him, and obviously did not want to contribute to the hideously messy birth from his slow approach and closed eyes. Helpless. There were probably a hundred useful spells in the books he had read, but since Princess Cadenza had not decided to give birth in his bookstore, they were useless, just like him. Starlight Glimmer would know what to do. When they were young, she was the go-getter to his sit-in-placer, the proactive to his reactive. She was a genius who could probably create a spell on the fly, something to pop the ailing foal free of its exhausted parent, give it a diaper, and… whatever else a doctor did after delivery. If the world were a fair place, she would be here while Sunburst was back at Sire’s Hollow, following his mother’s directions like he always did around her. “Shiny!” gasped the princess. “Shiny, she’s not coming!” “Shining Armor will be here shortly,” lied Sunburst. “He’s going to show up right after the foal. I promise.” A quick look at the nearby Crystal Empire inhabitant did not show enough similarity to His Royal Highness for Sunburst to try pushing him forward as such, even if it had been the middle of the night, in a thunderstorm. “Can you go bring Shining Armor here, sir?” he asked instead in the hopes of getting some sort of encouraging answer. The blue-green stallion continued to stagger forward as if he did not hear, until his nose rested against the prone alicorn’s heaving flanks and he stopped all motion, frozen in place. It was all down to Sunburst. He could see the pale nose of the struggling foal between extended forelegs, where it had broken free of the amniotic sack but was unable to breathe because of its crushing surroundings. A life depending on him, and the weight of responsibility felt as if he were shouldering the entire city of Canterlot. “I can’t—” The words froze in his throat, an abandonment that far exceeded his own flight from his family, his town, and his only friend. Just because he viewed his own life as a failure, did not mean he dared to fail this foal. “Oxley’s Oxygenation,” he murmured under his breath, the reluctant magic struggling through his inadequate horn, but flowing nonetheless under his intent concentration. One spell after another, he hammered the magic where it did not want to go, tying them together with every trick he could think of and some he just pulled out of thin air. “Yetanic’s Muscular Cycle. Starswirl’s Cork Extractor. Bizanerithanian’s Simple Supporter. Nullsoft’s Llamamaz Equalizer!” Princess Cadenza pushed, and Sunburst could not help but feel her weakened magic strain against the unseen forces holding her back. His horn arced under the pressure, like he had bitten down on a lightning bolt and could not let go, even if he wanted to. Sweat poured down his face as sparks threatened to set his mane on fire, the wavering of a dozen spells held at the cusp of explosion in order to help the princess, but even that titanic effort on his part was no more effective than a breath of wind against a hurricane of darkness. The silent presence of the Crystal Empire pony was no help at all. It was all up to Sunburst, and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and her foal were about to die if he could not— Mi Amore… My Love… Throwing every bit of his magic into one last spell, Sunburst howled with pain and bellowed through his ragged throat and the blood coming out of his nose. “True Love’s CALL!” Sunburst never noticed the gush of fluids covering him when the foal emerged with an obscene sucking noise and landed in his lap, or Cadence’s convulsive spasm afterward when the gooey red mass of afterbirth squelched out. Nor did he notice the burst of light that filled the entire city after his spell activated and let the brightness of the snowbound outside world shine in. He did not even notice the motionless infant was not breathing. Fainting will do that to a stallion.