//------------------------------// // 263. Heat and Darkness // Story: Azure Edge // by Leaf Blade //------------------------------// As Rarity and Rainbow Dash entered the village on the coast of Luna Bay, Rarity realized there weren’t as many soldiers from the Pristine Army here as she thought. According to Celestia, there were only a total of fifteen soldiers present in this town, as each member of the Pristine Army was handpicked by Neighsay or one of his closest associates, which meant to cover the whole town their manpower was spread a bit thin. What they lacked in numbers, they made up for in overwhelming force, with iron rods and thick body armor, as well as helmets that masked their faces. But none of them had the magic of a dragon flowing through them like Rarity did, so that gave her an edge. True, she didn’t have Twilight’s magic freshly pumping through her body, but ever since they had begun their intimate relationship, Twilight’s gifts for magic had been rubbing off on Rarity, so good enough. Rarity used her sturdy blue barriers to protect ponies from the batons and fists of the soldiers, while Rainbow Dash hurried said ponies off to safety, Rarity covering their escape. Rarity couldn’t see the expressions of these soldiers behind their masks, but judging by the way they advanced on her, they weren’t simply going to let her interrupt them without a fight. “Hold your fire, everypony!” a familiar man’s voice called out, and the three soldiers surrounding Rarity reluctantly backed away and cleared a path for the man. He looked no different from the rest of them dressed in their armor, but he took his helmet off to reveal his identity. “Blueblood?” Rarity blinked. She wasn’t sure who she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t him. “What are you doing? How can you be going along with this?” “I could ask you the same thing,” Blueblood sighed disappointedly and shook his head. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, after what we learned of your partner. She’s a real dragon fu—” “Alright,” Rarity interrupted, her cheeks turning red. Truth be told, she wished Rainbow would come back soon from rescuing other ponies. With this many solders against her, her confidence in winning a battle was waning. These men were armed, trained, and prepared to kill dragons, after all. “But why are you brutalizing these townsfolk? They’ve done nothing to deserve this!” “They’re harboring dragons, Rarity,” Blueblood said in disgust, and the venom in his voice shouldn’t have surprised Rarity, but somehow hearing those words that she would have been saying herself not so long ago stung her ears as well as her pride. “They need to be punished. I’m just doing my duty as a Slayer, and as a member of the Pristine Army.” “Does your ‘duty’ involve terrorizing and torturing ponies?” Rarity spat and crossed her arms. She wanted to avoid a fight at all costs, but she couldn’t pretend not to be disgusted. If worst came to worst, she was still confident her magic would allow her to win against Blueblood. “We’re supposed to protect ponies, not— not this!” Blueblood laughed. Rarity stood in stunned silence. She didn’t know what she expected to hear, but for him to simply laugh off such cruelty… she felt disgusted with herself now for ever having been attracted to him. “My job is to slay monsters,” Blueblood chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Protecting ponies has nothing to do with it. Incidentally…” Blueblood walked closer to Rarity and she backed off, only to bump into another soldier behind her. To avoid a fight breaking out, Rarity stood still as Blueblood approached her and put his hands on her dragon scale necklace. “This is the scale from that sea serpent,” Blueblood hummed, looking the trinket over. “The one that you ‘killed’, isn’t that right?” “It is,” Rarity said calmly. She didn’t like the emphasis in his words. “Funny that we never saw the body, Wind Rider and I.” Blueblood let go of the scale and put his hand instead on Rarity’s cheeks, squishing them together painfully. He was definitely crossing a line, but Rarity needed to play this as coolly as possible if she wanted to survive it. She couldn’t risk a battle unless her life was at stake. “Funnier still, knowing what we know now about your partner,” Blueblood chuckled and forced Rarity’s face to move side to side. “And even more funnier, that this town connected by a body of water to ol’ Windsoar would now be said to be harboring a sea serpent. Funny how that all works out, isn’t it? Isn’t that a funny coincidence?” “If you have something to say to me, just say it,” Rarity spat. “I’m saying I already had a hunch that you let the sea serpent live,” Blueblood let go of Rarity’s cheeks, “and now here you are, stopping the Pristine Army from doing their job. Rarity? I’m accusing you of treason.” “And what are you going to do about it?” Rarity scoffed. She still had one more card up her sleeve, desperate as it may be. “I’m Celestia’s protégé. You wouldn’t dare—” “Celestia has given us full authority here,” Blueblood said, putting his helmet back on. “And she’s a busy mare. She doesn’t need to know everything that happens.” Blueblood turned to his soldiers. “Men? Gas her.” Rarity lit up her horn with magic, but she was stunned for a moment by a rough thump to the back of her head, and by the time she got her bearings, a canister that one of the soldiers dropped on the ground released a thick white cloud of smoke, Rarity coughing and her eyes burning as she was shoved further into the cloud by a soldier. More worrying than the physical pain was the fact that Rarity couldn’t focus enough to cast her magic, and as she tried, she felt an iron rod strike the back of her knee, and another hit her in the side of the arm. An armored hoof kicked the back of her leg and threw her to the ground, where she was then beaten with rods and hooves as she coughed, her eyes blurring and burning too much for her to even fully understand what was going on around her. Everything that happened was a blur; Rarity was beaten within an inch of her life, and then pulled out of the cloud of gas and forced to stand in front of Blueblood, the soldiers stripping her of her armor and gear on his orders. “This gas really sinks into leather,” Blueblood chuckled as he grabbed Rarity by her chin, Rarity barely seeing him past the haze of tears and searing pain in her eyes, “so you’ll thank me later for getting rid of all this stuff for you.” Next, Blueblood ordered for Rarity to be bound, and to be gagged ‘for good measure’, and while his cronies were doing that, he was barking at someone else to ‘bring the wagon around’. Rarity didn’t understand any of it. Thankfully, she was starting to regain a little bit of clarity, but her head was still in a fog and her body was wracked with horrific pain so she could only focus so much. Where the hell was Rainbow Dash? An iron wagon rolled toward Rarity as the soldiers finished restraining her, carried by a unicorn driver’s magic. It turned around so that the back was facing her, and then another armored soldier hopped out of the passenger’s seat. “Ah, Wind Rider!” Blueblood said cheerfully, patting the other soldier’s forearm. “Everything go well on your front?” “You could say that,” Wind Rider chuckled as he unlatched the door of the wagon and opening it, Rarity’s eyes snapping open painfully as she saw the bound and unarmored body of Rainbow Dash inside the wagon, struggling to get free of her bonds and with a burlap sack tied over her head. “Come along, Rarity,” Blueblood said cheekily, flexing his finger in an inviting motion. Rainbow reacted to Rarity’s name with muffled screams of anger. Bless her heart, even if her rage wasn’t going to get them anywhere. Rarity was shoved forward, and she considered staying her ground and not moving, but she couldn’t think of any way that would help her except getting her beaten and potentially gassed even further, so she grit her teeth into the cloth in her mouth and complied, hopping forward until she reached Blueblood’s location right in front of the wagon, her cheeks burning ever redder with each pathetic hop. Blueblood slipped a bag over Rarity’s head and tied it shut around her neck, then threw her into the back of the wagon, some soldier or other then taking the time to tie Rarity and Rainbow Dash back to back, both of them bound by the neck to each other, and to the wall of the wagon. “Isn’t this a touching reunion?” Blueblood chuckled, Rainbow yelling muffled curses and Rarity merely groaning into her gag. “Alright, now let’s get rid of them.” The door of the wagon was sealed shut. There were no windows. All that existed was the sensation of Rainbow’s fingers clasping against Rarity’s, the heat, and the darkness.