//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: Passionate Intensity // Story: The Twilight of the Crystal Heart // by WanderingPony //------------------------------// It can be said that when Sunset Shimmer and Blueblood plunged down their watery fate that not all was bad in the world. Celestia and six of the best ponies Equestria had were sleeping off a truly bad week. Luna was, for once the big sister and handling things quite well, considering magical disasters, changeling infiltrations, and losing not one, but two Princesses in a week's time. Gravity was doing it's best to add a third to the list before she'd managed three days with the somewhat falsely obtained title. --- The icy shower of river water bitch-slapped Sunset Shimmer into coherence almost instantly, leaving the unicorn with the unpleasant sensation of body-wide brain freeze and a few observations. First, there was a big chunk of driftwood lodged in the rocks that would be a bodylength or so out of reach. Second, there was the body of Blueblood, tumbling along in the water next to her. Third... Her horn lit and the sedated stallion found himself wedged firmly in the driftwood branch. His beautiful, perfectly groomed and conditioned tail streamered in the river like a golden flag. As Sunset was pulled past the two, her teeth snapped down like a vise. The tail-yanking results of having a (thankfully not quite full grown) unicorn mare hanging off your backside were quite painful enough to shatter the magical anesthesia that had left Blueblood dopier than a Vicoltdin addict on a full bottle. The meticulously fussed-over hair finally served a useful purpose and failed to tear off the foppish stallion, even if it -felt- like it should. First, Blueblood realized he was stuck in a tree branch in the middle of a waterfall, and it was a LONG way down. Second, a barely-legal and rather good-looking mare was hanging on for dear life to his tail and it hurt like blazes. Third... Blueblood removed his wakeup call from the water and set her on the outcropping of rock that'd caught the branch that'd caught HIM. Stoned horn-high, hot young mare, thrown out into Auntie-knows-where and stuck under a waterfall on a slimy branch... Wasn't what happened in Los Pegasus supposed to STAY in Los Pegasus? With some help from his companion, Blueblood was unwedged from his rather tight squeeze and joined Sunset on their narrow wedge of rock. "Well, if I'm to be stuck in this horrible situation until my guards arrive, at least it's with something decently attractive. What's your name...", Blueblood gave Sunset's cutie mark the once over, "...Sunny Delight?" "You....you don't know your own wife?", Sunset quavered. With a *ping*, a golden circle smacked Blueblood in the back of the skull and rolled to the green-coated stone. The bedraggled mare picked it up with a glow and settled the ring on Blueblood's horn, where it snugged to a perfect fit. "The...the guards threw us off the cliff! They were going to KILL us! And...and they hurt MY Blueblood! We've been so HAPPY together! You made me your PRINCESS!" As she stomped on the rock for good measure, once, twice, three times, FOUR the fragile shelter decided that having two ponies on it was just too much. The rock cracked free of the mountain, sending the two screaming unicorns into freefall. Flailing, Blueblood grabbed on for dear life to the only thing he could- Shimmer. His mouth found itself full of mare as the pair pulled themselves frantically together in an instinctual embrace before the end. For a long four-count, Sunset kissed her husband goodbye as she saw foaming death waiting in the pool below- still entwined, flesh stabbed into black, muddy water. And then they saw nothing at all. --- Scale Balancer kicked back on her heels and listened to the pre-dawn *clackity-clop* of a team of stallions pulled their trio of railway cars over the bridge. It'd been the only thing to disturb the night-time fishing and netting, and the unicorn's blue-water fur barely ruffled at the sound. She'd pulled in a fine crop of freshwater bladderwrack along with a few actual fish, what with the eddies at the top of Saddle Lake being extra fine. The pegasi had bumped rainclouds in every direction away from Canterlot, and that meant a strong current to pull the weed from it's riverbank nooks and into big mats of drifting, salty goodness. Most ponies preferred the daytime, but Scale Balancer kept an eye on the weather schedules upstream. The big wash from Canterlot would hit Saddle Lake like clockwork in the few gray hours before dawn, and that meant the best hauls were to be found at the hours only earth ponies or Luna's own found to be awake. And there was another nice mat of the stuff floating down towards the bridge, a few bits of driftwood sticking out in odd directions. A brief bit of white lit the dancing-on-tail-fish cutie mark on her flank as she pulled anchor and let the rudder guide the boat back into the current to meet it. The aura reflected off a gleam of metal, caught in the tangle. "Oho, a bit of salvage!", Scale thought as she made to toss a broad net over the entire mess. A bit of something, hooked on a stick... ...and a moment later, she realized the "stick" was a mud-encrusted HORN. Floating in the carpet of weeds was the bodies of a unicorn stallion and mare, strands of bladderwrack wrapped around them in a parody of the embrace the two ponies had with each other. The fisherpony felt something twist gut-deep and narrowly avoided chumming the waters with her breakfast at the sight, flicking the net to snatch the horrifying mess from the waters and gently lowering it to the deck. Frantically, she cut at the tangled green strands with a boning knife until they gave up their hold. Hopefully, she put an ear to the mare's muzzle as Sunset flopped bonelessly against the wood. The barest tickle of breath bit on Scale's ear like she'd hooked a sea serpent. Determination pushed the nausea aside as she began to push water out of sodden lungs with her horn and hooves, sending streamers of lake to runnel back into it's home. A few minutes of hoof-pressing the stallion and carefully squeezing streams of water out of the mare's windpipe with a gentle vise of aura rewarded her with the most beautiful hacking, wheezing, and gagging sounds she'd ever heard as the pony-flotasm greedily gasped air into their lungs. The two mostly-drowned victims found themselves dragged on a blanket into the steering cabin and nearly mummified in thick cloth pads Scale normally used to drag heavy boxes of cargo on. Smelling of fish and worse, packed together like sardines, they drifted on a soap-bubble of awareness and warmth into the dawn. --- Circling like buzzards, four faux pegasi remorselessly searched the waters for their corpse-prey. Cold eyes scanned each drift and sandbar for the drenched remnants of their Queen's victims, but hour after hour passed without a sign. As the sun rose without bodies or crowd of ponies having found them, the searchers found themselves covering the quarters of Saddle Lake, each shoreline and quiet swirl holding no more results than the one before. Spying a small fishing boat below, Six-Seventy-Five decided that the next best thing to dead unicorns was spreading the word about dead unicorns- and his wings could use a rest anyway. The four changelings briefly sparked in mid-air to become grey, armor-clad guardponies and spiraled down to begin spreading the sad news of Blueblood's assassination...