Chapter Twenty
Death and Remembrance
Canterlot, Equestria
Twilight savoured the taste of the wine she held. It was a luxury for her, an excellent wine. In fact she could probably count the number of times she drank wine on her hooves; once on her birthday when she came of age, another during last Hearts’ Warming Eve with her friends. The final time, well up until now, was when she visited her parents after defeating Discord. It had a smooth, sweet flavour, fruity but not excessively so.
She was sat in her parent’s living room, curled up in a chair and in the warm embrace of the fire just kindled in the fireplace. Her parents sat beside each other on one of the sofas. Twilight Velvet and Nightlight each had their own delicate glasses held in the glows of their respective magic. They looked at her expectantly; they wanted her to speak first. Instead Twilight had another sip of wine and took in the room around her.
They had redecorated since she was last here, the room had been painted with two walls a pleasant blue, similar to her father’s coat and the others a pale mulberry like her mother’s. Personally she preferred it over the beige it was before it; made it feel more homely.
“Twilight, well aren’t you going to say anything dear?” asked her mother, her eyes flickering with concern.
“Yeah Twilight, with the news stories we were so worried but you girls did so well. We couldn’t keep you quiet after Discord hun, what’s up?” her father continued.
“it’s” she began, but the words caught in her mouth. Twilight had been thinking about this for days, she had a plan, prompt cards and even page marks in books on psychological study that she kept within summoning distance and yet now none of them seemed in the least bit useful. “I don’t know in all honesty. It was awful and yet one of the bravest and greatest things I’ve done.”
“Well dear we asked for an audience with Luna and we’ve written to you three times so we could find out what happened. All we know is what we read in the papers.” Twilight Velvet took a gentle sip of her drink and looked across at her daughter with motherly concern.
“Is this why you wanted to wait until Spike was in bed?” asked Night Light, her father reading between the lines as precisely as ever.
Twilight could only nod in response. She found herself resenting her parents’ seemingly miraculous ability to follow each other up in complete understanding, but after being married for so long it was not that weird to think two ponies could be so attuned to one another. Taking another deeper drink, she found the courage to talk.
She started in a monotone, recounting her meeting with the humans and their uneasy alliance by the gateway. She moved on to the journey through the forest and the fight with the manticores. Then came Canterbury. She hesitated briefly at that point, she could not be sure just how much her parents had read, hay she had never bothered to read the paper. Why would she?
“Oh no you walked into Canterbury didn’t you?” asked her mom. She had closed her eyes in realisation and her husband held a hoof to his mouth as well.
Before Twilight could fight it, even though dispelling had become a skill she had been learning more of as of late, her mother had teleported her across to the sofa in between her parents. Immediately Twilight Velvet threw her fore-hooves around her daughter in a tight embrace. Suppressing a shiver of her own Twilight leant into the hug, feeling a comforting hoof on her shoulder from her father too.
“I, yes, we had to go into Canterbury. I wasn’t supposed to but I heard Luna shout and teleported in. There was, so many bodies. The evil humans had done terrible things to the ponies there mom, unspeakable things.”
“Shhh shhhh it’s ok little one. You can stop if you want, we understand” whispered Night Light.
“No, no you don’t understand. It’s not just that. Something else happened. Mom, dad, the humans had been there the night before. A few of them were still there. Pieter said they had been drinking alcohol and celebrating, some of them had been left behind and, and one of them found me outside the café.”
Twilight could almost hear her parents stop breathing. Neither one of them wished to press her for fear of what might be said, neither had the will to stop her.
“He came at me, there were bodies all over the floor and he came out of that ruined café grinning like he was insane.” Now the words began to flow quicker. “I was on a bench because there was blood all over the floor, it was on my coat, but he just stumbled forward with a sword, there was still blood on it. I, I screamed when he got to me. I was so scared and angry that I picked him up and just threw him. He went straight through a wall, I killed him mom, dad, I killed him.”
“Oh no” replied her mom. Leaning back in for a hug so fierce that Twilight thought she might suffocate. She needed this, to share with somepony who wasn’t there. It was an odd desire to be sure but her friends had all been there, they just sort of clammed up or talked in low subdued tones now. They had come to terms with it obviously but it was still a horrible experience. Right at the moment though her mother held her in her hooves and she felt safe for a little while.
Port Osprey, The Griffon Kingdom
The scent of sea air wafted down the staircase as the door opened briefly shedding a little more light in the dank dungeon. The sound of rattling chains revealed the lone figure who was restrained within. He was a dark feathered griffon, only a few shades off black with yellow eyes and an elongated beak. Tufts of his feathers were missing and in their place was the glistening bright red sheen of exposed muscle which pulsed and shook rapidly. His muscles writhed as the griffon stifled an agonised squawk.
“Hello, Gordon. How is that leg treating you, it looks oh so painful.” The voice was alien sounding, like a chorus of voices speaking at once, it reverberated with an unnerving harmony. The speaker’s eyes flashed green as what was once a mottled grey hen in regal robes of ermine transformed into a sleek black form which cast a long shadow and obscured the door from the tied up griffon’s sight. Chrysalis strode forward proudly, the two creatures behind her simply melted into the shadows.
She lit up her warped horn. A dazzling myriad of green and blue light leapt forth to illuminate the room. She flashed a smile at her captive revealing her wickedly sharp teeth, one of the few physical transformations that her new allegiance had brought upon her. She also appeared larger, as if her body had swelled in scale. As she was she would tower over any griffon she met, she was taller than Celestia by some margin.
“The fuck do you want you psycho bitch?” said Gordon, gasping as his raw vocal chords extracted payment for the words spoke, he managed a few rasping coughs before falling silent.
“I came to talk about your future in my service.” Again the unholy cacophony of voices sung the words as Chrysalis approached and stood directly before her prisoner. The room was completely barren, well cleaned and with no remarkable features except the captive and his restraints that pinned him to the stone wall.
“I am loyal to Celestia, I would never help you!” he spat in return, narrowing his eyes in defiance.
She only laughed in response, the many other sounds of laughter seemed to be jeering him, mocking his statement. “Oh Gordon, the thing is I don’t need your permission. In fact I prefer that you struggle. Your fellow agents did the same, their strength of will was evident in what I did to them. Would you like to see?” she asked, leering at him with rows of wicked incisors.
“W-what? What others, I’m the only agent Celestia has in the court?”
In response to his denial he felt metal talons creep across his throat, pricking at his skin as they travelled down his body. He screamed when they reached the exposed muscle of his leg, the pain blinding him briefly as he felt a breeze and a wing flutter. Once it ebbed he looked blearily at the new figure.
Instantly Gordon gasped, his eyes grew and his pupils dilated in abject terror at the mockery of a griffon before him. The creature was a hideous hybrid of metal and flesh. Metal coils wrapped around exposed muscle and they bulged with unnatural power. Where the griffon (if it still was such a thing) would have had its chest and ribs instead there were metal spines interlaced by yet more metal mesh, what little skin remained was melded with the steel and the whole chest cavity glowed blue from an unknown source inside the being’s chest. It dropped to all fours, looking up at Gordon but not with natural eyes. Its steel infused skull held two blue balls of molten metal where the griffon’s eye sockets were. They were evidently focused on him but they seemed to be searching his body all over, as if they recognised him from a distant memory.
“Now Gordon, you should be more polite to old friends, and colleagues. It’s been a while since you and Henrietta Sleekwing spoke as I am lead to believe.”
Gordon could only stare. No faculties remained beyond the horrid fear induced paralysis that gripped him.
“No, no fucking way! No, no, no, oh shit Henrietta?”
What remained of the former griffon merely tilted its head to one side in a twisted mockery of confusion.
“It really was quite the struggle getting it right. Garda was my initial subject but he didn’t make it. Henrietta here was more successful and Gideon was likewise a triumph.” Chrysalis stroked the taught flesh at the base of Henrietta’s neck earning an ecstatic series of beak clicks from her subject.
“I, what? Why? Why would you do this Chrysalis? So many people will die, this is beyond evil, it doesn’t make any sense this isn’t your MO.” Desperation crept into Gordon’s voice, desperately searching for logic behind the malevolent and nefarious scene before him. The stinging pain in his leg flared up and he peered down to see the other figure, Gideon, run it’s talon down the gleaming strands of muscle with the faintest of touches.
“Oh what do you know” she spat in return. “I have created the perfect instruments of my will. Through my lord’s blessing I have created the perfect vessels for his divine mandate. Look at them, the changes I vested upon them. Where they were weak I gave renewed strength. I changed their purpose, where once they served Celestia, now they serve me. I changed their very structure, infused their weakened flesh with steel and magic and created something entirely new to this world.”
“Monsters. You took good griffons and made monsters of them you psycho fu . . .” Before he finished his bout of vitriol, talons of steel dug deep into his neck causing glancing lacerations and freezing the words before he could spit them at her.
“My subjects don’t like that Gordon.” She smiled wickedly. “But don’t worry, you’ll see things their way soon enough.”
On cue the curved talons swept downwards and in one swift motion Gideon sliced the flesh from Gordon’s other leg like skinning prey. An ear piercing squawk rang out as Gordon screamed, he thrashed against his manacles as his two former comrades set to work stripping the skin from his body.
Gordon fainted under the strain and blackness enveloped him, the sickening sound of parting flesh took over. A blue glow wrapped itself around Gordon’s body and in a flash a surgeon’s table appeared, it was clinically clean. The tools of Chrysalis’ new experiments stood by along with all the implants she required. The next stages were tricky but she needed agents of her own, she needed to remove the Equestrian leadership before the griffon arrival in Equestria, especially the humans who had thwarted her so boldly before. Assassins such as these should do just the trick.
Two days later, Canterlot Castle, Equestria
From the very end of Canterlot Castle’s gardens two ponies stood on the lip of the castle’s perch. Behind them the magnificent deep grey mountain, Canterlot Rock, jutted up towards the cloudless sky. The area the two occupied was beyond the grassy green patches and wonderfully colourful flower beds of the garden proper. Celestia, since she was one of the few ponies allowed on the plateau unsupervised, laid one her expansive white wings on her young student’s back.
“You did a brave thing Twilight Sparkle. To share such painful experiences with your parents mindful of how they might react and tell them the full truth, especially in a society such as ours, I’m proud of you my student.”
“Thank you Princess Celestia. Yes they’ve been amazing. I can’t believe I thought they’d reject me. I should have stopped and thought things through. I mean Shining’s a guard, he’s a captain of the guard, and of course my parents had prepared themselves for their child having to deal with this. I guess they were surprised that I was the one.” Twilight flicked a stray hair from her muzzle, glancing around at the plateau she stood upon she found herself wondering why she had never been here before.
They were stood on the very edge, just a spindly railing stood between them and the sheer drop to the settlements below half a mountain down. The polished white stone they stood upon was akin to a stage and the audience was the rapidly growing camp below. It was early in the day with the sun at its peak. Clouds were being rolled in by the Canterlot weather team as heavy rain had been scheduled. For the moment though they were existing in a surreal moment, a storm was on the horizon both literally and figuratively.
Twilight peered down on the camp below. It was something akin to an ant farm. Ponies were filing in and out between rows of tents and the confusion of those passing between rows of identical white and purple canvas was palpable. She had imagined more order but this army had only just been mustered, proper military ethic was a premature expectation. Last Twilight checked, from her father last night, there were over twenty thousand ponies down there and thousands more were arriving each day.
“So Twilight, what do you think of our progress so far?” asked Celestia, watching her student with a studied interest.
“Well the army is definitely growing at a respectable rate and the training programs are apparently underway but honestly I don’t know much about military matters.”
“Really? You’ve not heard any other developments? It has been all over the news Twilight.”
“Sorry” replied Twilight, lowering her ears and rubbing the back of her neck. “I had other things to deal with.”
“Then in that case I am happy to tell you that Luna has met with Ferrus Animus and a train has been diverted in Appleloosa to transport them to the capital as soon as possible. Your brother proved successful too to the north. The crystal ponies are more than willing to help. Their troops, the Shining Phalanx as they are known, are on the way south as we speak. All of the Royal Guard are being recalled for training the recruits that are arriving, too few though, too many soldiers and not enough guard to train them. It’s worse for unicorns, we have so few adept battle mages, we can’t possibly make proper use of the army’s magical potential. We have the same issue with the earth ponies, sure the guard can train them but we don’t have earth pony guards anymore and their capabilities have been lost over the ages.” Celestia gave a weary sigh as she looked out at her sun. The light from it gave her mane a sparkling radiance and for Twilight seeing her princesses’ mournful expression moved her to ask a question, the first that came to mind.
“Why?” she asked, drawing a briefly confused look from Celestia. “I mean why don’t we have an earth pony section in the guard anymore?”
Celestia seemed to ponder the question for the moment, apparently weighing up her response inside her head. “Well Twilight, I suppose I can entrust this piece of lost history with you. They were originally called the Mirmillo, although they came to be known as berserkers, and that was the reason they were disbanded at any rate my faithful student. They were towering giants of earth ponies clad in the heaviest armour and covered head to hoof in blades which protruded from their armour. They were terrifying to behold, even more so in combat. Their natural strength was amplified by their training; they could use their earth pony powers to full effect.”
“What was that princess?”
“Their immense strength, magically amplified by their connection with the earth of course. Their resistance to magic and their ability to bend the earth itself to their will. I remember seeing Grit Stone the Maul collapse a scree slope to trap fleeing . . . Well yes the Mirmillo were unparalleled. That was their problem. They were warriors pure and simple, barely controllable and terrifying to the citizenry. They had to be disbanded, Equestria that was no longer had need of them.”
“But now we do” whispered Twilight.
“Now we do” agreed Celestia.
“Do you think you’d bring them back?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about some of the things we left behind, before the last war. We disbanded the army, the navy, most of the guard. I made sure our weapons of war were lost and burned, schematics were hidden away and history glossed over the harsher times of before. The wars of before became footnotes of history, a distant and alien memory of Equestria’s. I see now that no matter what I do war will find us eventually and as a result Equestria has not been up to the task. This time I will follow Luna’s advice, those that wish to will remain as soldiers for Equestria and the Royal Guard will be returned to their former numbers, assuming we win.”
Twilight simply nodded in return, processing the wealth of information her teacher had poured upon her and looking out over the camp below. Yet more change was coming to Equestria, a standing army, earth pony guards that could scare even Celestia, ancient weapons of war brought back and improved. Twilight already had a hundred thoughts pop into her head, Pinkie’s cannons loaded with magical incendiaries, runes carved into the barrels to seek their targets. The ease with which the ideas came horrified her, to think that this could be the road ahead, that was truly terrifying.