Chapter 66 - Casket
It was that time again. For a mare with a sun as her mark on her flank, she flinched painfully to the sudden jarring brightness of the light of her dark cell. So far, they had put nails far past the keratin of her hooves and into the bone. Twisted her wings almost to the breaking point. Most of the time, it was just old-fashioned bucking to her body.
The heavy steel doors slid open. Clack, clack, went their aerodynamic carapace armor. Captain Wild Flower marched in with her usual entourage: vice-captain Milky Way and two random stallion guards. Milky seemed to wholly subservient to his captain, almost to the point of love. Sunny could use that to her advantage. The first stallion guard had a minor limp in his right hind hoof he managed to hide from the others. The other suppressed his yawn.
Sunny's wings were still clamped, by they were electronically controlled through the wires in the ceiling. The cloudship had a few brief bouts of electrical surges, and Sunny had heard her binders loosen for about a millisecond. It would be a perfect time for that to happen because the cell doors are open.
"I have yet to receive a reply from our Empress Commander regarding your fate," said Wild Flower. "But I already know what she will say. Your loyalty to your masters is admirable, given your silence amidst our best torture methods, and I really don't want to deny a pegasus her means if living.
"Therefore, I am offering you an ultimatum. You can keep your silence by joining us in the fight against Gaea in the North. Otherwise, we clip your wings and throw you to the ground like a common mud pony. And don't think about betraying us. We have measures in keeping you loyal to our cause, one way or another. What say you?"
After holding it for so long, Sunny spat everything on Wild Flower's muzzle.
"Very well," said the captain as she wiped the spit from her face. "Guards, get into wing-clipping position."
After the guards wings-saluted, the moved off to the corner sides. The first one lowered a switch, and the platform below Sunny whirred open its jaws to slowly reveal the slow-moving cumulus barrier below. The wing binders kept her suspended safely, but her joints were still exposed for the deadly wind-cutting power of pegasus stallions' Atmos Arts.
"Any last words should you not survive?" asked Wild Flower.
Trap door. Hanging. Two stallions at the side. Captain and vice-captain close together. Her thoughts settled to the ideal of one unicorn she vowed to protect ever since she was given the Gift of Awakening. Her vow was her desire, and desire made her smile arrogantly.
"Twilight," Sunny whispered.
The single word elicited puzzling response from Wild Flower in the form of a raised eyebrow, but after a few seconds, she gulped. Even for pegasii, the name instilled terror in their hearts, and that caused the captain to clumsily lower her front hoof as her command to clip Sunny's wings.
The word Twilight had power The name Twilight had strength. The very name threw the stallion guards' response time off half a second, and Sunny took this advantage to swing herself towards the side. She knocked the drowsy guard out with a buck to the head, and then kicked the limping leg of the other guard. The poorly-timed release of their cutting winds severed the main cables of her wing binders. Free to move, Sunny leapt back and bounced dead on to Wild Flower. Then, just as she predicted, Milky Way jumped in front of his beloved captain to receive the devastating blow that knocked him unconscious. Before Wild Flower could react, Sunny shot her a whimsical wink, and then leapt out through the steel cell's trapdoor.
Falling. She couldn't fly. Sunny swam her freefall to the nearest cloudship below her and then twisted herself so that her wing binders pointed downward. A sharp bounce off the ice-like hull shattered half of her binders, and then on the second cloudship she finally freed her white wings. Sunny flapped her sore wings to action before crashing through the cumulus barrier. Her feathers finally roared the Atmos particle diffusers, coating her hooves with the ability bounce off the layer condensed water vapors like a trampoline.
She was airborne, but she had no direction as to where to fly to. All Sunny knew now was that she had to get away from the northern pegasii armada and one angry pegasus.
"Atmos Arts," cried a stormy voice, "Scattering Sakura!"
In mid-flight, a flurry of deep pink flower petals enveloped Sunny, but these parts of plants were anything but ordinary. Two of them cut a deep gash into Sunny's flesh before they boomeranged back to its wielder, who kept the Scattering Sakura suspended around her with her Atmos Arts wind techniques.
"On my honor, you will not get away!" Wild Flower yelled. She hovered in the way of Sunny with the might and anger of ten pegasii, and she gathered her Scattering Sakura into a form of a large and penetrating spearhead.
Before she could launch her attack, a large beam of dark rainbow pulverized a path through the sky, downing several cloudships into flames. Sunny took advantage of the mare captain's distraction to punch her in the gut, and then skipped across the clouds until she made a discovery.
A massive hole appeared in the middle of the cumulus barrier, and beyond it flickering in and out of its magical sub-dimension was a brilliant kingdom of crystal. That must be where Twilight was, and her heart beat anxiously on the prospects of seeing her once more. Sunny then leapt through the hole and dove into the blizzard of the North, but then she spotted disconcerting in her peripheral vision.
There was no way her eyes could be playing tricks, but she shouldn't be surprised all the same. If it weren't for the accompanying Gaean tanks, she would have assumed that it was a diesel truck caravan. But these vehicles were massive, moving slowly but surely like battleships in the sea. In fact, that was exactly what they were: land battleships, manufactured by the cold industrial machinations of Gaea. Its leading flagship was a land carrier whose massive tank treads tore through the snow with fighter jets being deployed through its mechanical platform orifices. It could be just a coincidence that Pegasopolis just happened to hover its sky armada close to the Crystal Empire, but Gaea? Gaea wasn't marching against the winged nation. It was heading towards the Crystal Empire.
"Twilight, I'm coming for you!" Sunny cried. The feathers in her pegasus wings burned like a jet and launched her towards the invisible Empire.
In the past few days, Apple Bloom had been through a lot. She ran away with a rogue pony scientist and her personal Robopony. She stopped by a villainous hive known as Hollow Shades. She stowed away in the truck bed of the infamous Unicorn Hunters. She braved a blizzard. She met a former warden and a unicorn raised as an earth pony.
She ended up in an Empire in the midst of a civil war. Met a unique pony subspecies, and had her first encounter with a pegasus.
After an action-packed battle against a crystal robot centipede thing, her older companions had rescued a princess--a filly unicorn princess with crystalline hair and fur. Not a unicorn with a shaved horn, but a real one. As she rode in the cart through the long and dark tunnels, Apple Bloom had involuntarily sealed her own mouth. She wasn't terribly concerned about waking Fluttershy or Agatha up. And the massive crystalline corridors wasn't as foreboding to her as any other pony would expect. Princess Sweetie Belle was probably nervous as well, staring at a filly who might as well be the same age as her. Yet she and Apple Bloom could not avoid the obvious similarity they shared, one that kept them self-conscious about themselves for all their known lives.
"So, Sweetie Belle is it?" Apple Bloom asked.
"Princess Sweetie Belle," the white unicorn filly proudly replied.
"Just princess?"
"Yes, I'm a princess."
"No fancy title like Diamond Princess?"
Sweetie Belle sighed. "No, I don't have a title like my older sister. I have yet to come of age, and everypony calls me petite princess instead. I'm not that petite."
"Is it because you have a blank flank?"
"Well… yours is blank too."
"It is, but I'm worried that it will be something other than the one I was supposed to be born with."
"Isn't your Destiny Glyph supposed to be related to your speciality? Like your talent?"
"My governess taught me that a Destiny Glyph--or a Nature's Call as we call them--is determined by genetics. Is that right Lyra?"
"It's not exactly my speciality," said the Gaean pony scientist as she continued pulling the cart with Bon Bon, "but it has been theorized that it does, and we are able to predict with twenty-five accuracy based on a pony's genes."
"What are genes?" asked Sweetie Belle. "Is that some kind of clothing like what my sister tried to make during her shut-in years?"
"Not exactly. Genes are what makes ponies earth-type, unicorns, and pegasii. Genes are what gives us our unique coat, mane, and eye colors."
"But your Destiny Glyphs don't match what you are doing. You're a pony magician, and she's a former jailkeeper. How come you two aren't doing what your Glyphs say?"
"It's not like they mean anything. Sure, my parents were musicians, and Bon Bon likes to eat candy, but these things create unjust expectations on what we should do in our lives. That's why we cover them up in our country."
"That's terrible! Why would anypony want to cover up who you are?"
"There are other ways to tell one pony from one another," said Bon Bon.
"But neither of you are fulfilling your destiny."
"Well, what can I do with three pieces of candy as my Nature's Call? Candy in Gaea is mass-produced in factories, and candy worker wages there are pitifully low."
"And I can't become a musician because they'll eventually find out that I am a unicorn," said Lyra.
"Even so, that doesn't mean we can't be talented in more than one field."
"I still find it sad that you aren't allowed to express your individuality," said Sweetie Belle.
"You are right," said Lyra as she stared into Bon Bon's eyes. "Among other things."
"Like love," added Bon Bon.
Lyra and Bon Bon's subtle emotional exchange had somehow made things even more quieter. While Apple Bloom had been mostly aware of her and Bon Bon's relationship, Sweetie Belle looked upon them with a puzzled look, while Aurea kept up the rear, despite hobbling on crutches, grunted noisily. Her words slowed the already slow pace of their trot down this crystalline tunnel. Apple Bloom had no idea of the scale of this place since Lyra's shaved horn could only generate so much light around the single-cart caravan. Aurea did mention that it was big, and she could see things in great detail through her Geosense.
The cart nearly toppled over when it made an abrupt stop. Bon Bon screamed and leapt out of her harness to wrap her forelegs all around Lyra. With a shaking jaw, the cream-colored earth pony pointed to floor.
Apple Bloom didn't see anything, but then her eyes trailed over to the cart's left wheel where she saw to her astonishment a gangly and mummified creature trapped underneath the smooth glass-like surface. It wasn't the only one, and both she and Sweetie Belle rocked and shifted around the cart as they spotted several more of these clothed creatures buried underneath the floor.
"Is that what I think it is?" asked Bon Bon.
"Humanoids," said Lyra. "And they're all complete specimens to boot."
"I've heard rumors about this place," said Aurea as she hobbled about while looking up and around. "This is where the ancient inhabitants of Empire lay to rest."
"So they did inhabit as far north as here. The clothing they were buried in seemed a bit newer than the ones Gaea dug up."
"These are humanoids?" asked Sweetie Belle. "Where are their muzzles?"
"And where are their fur?" asked Apple Bloom.
"There are so many," smiled Lyra as she increased the output of her horn-light. "I could spend my entire life here. Oh, what's this? Why are there two buried in the same coffin?"
"So this must be the Casket of Lovers," said Aurea. "Legends has it that when a couple exchanges their vows between this male and female creature in this casket, their love with last for eternity."
"Male and female? Wait a sec… Their body structure are very similar."
"Clearly, they wouldn't bury a male a female together unless is some special significance."
"This casket is definitely special all right, but you got it all wrong. You may not be able to see it, but these two are definitely female."
Aurea cleared her throat noisily. "Didn't expect a unicorn to spoil the magic. Maybe we were wrong, but perhaps this pair are sisters, mother and daughter, or cousins?"
"I'm pretty sure these two aren't related. These two humanoid females are wearing wedding rings on their ring fingers."
"The Crystal Empire has been sealed off from the outside world for thousands of years, perhaps even more. Surely there would be cultural differences from the 'humanoids' here and the ones in your country. Perhaps they liked to wear matching rings as a sign of kinship."
"Humanoid culture have been very consistent based on the various excavation data around the world. And while their numbers were small, there are groups of them who prefer the long-term companionship of their own gender."
"Perhaps they were sisters at a convent or something."
"You seem to be in awful of a lot of denial, Miss Aurea," said Bon Bon. "Surely you're not offended or disgusted by the prospect of a mare being married to mare."
"I'm not offended or disgusted. The idea is just… unheard of. Princess, what do you say?"
"I think it's adorable," Sweetie squealed. "If two ponies love each other so much, why should it matter if they're both mares or not?"
"Um, yeah!" Apple Bloom chimed in. She realized she had said it so readily, and she hadn't fully formed an opinion about two mares getting married. Yet she had seen, and perhaps felt the full weight of her adoptive mother's love for a pegasus mare, even if it was brief.
"Okay, fine," huffed Aurea, "but we have to keep moving. We don't want to keep Applejack and the others waiting as they fight off the cabal."
The tunnel suddenly felt a low tremor. A few pebbles rattled, and the corpses in the crystalline caskets shifted. Nopony dared to move, and Bon Bon and Aurea stood frozen in sweat and uneasiness.
Then from within the cart bed, Fluttershy the pegasus bolted up wide-eyed and aghast. Bandages be damned. Whatever woke her up sprung her off the cart bed and had her flying until she touched down in front of Lyra, Bon Bon, and Aurea only to join in with the trembling horror.
"The voices," gasped Fluttershy. "They're all in pain!"
"Oh, no," said Aurea. "They finally did it."
"We have to go now!"
The miracle that woke up Fluttershy threw everypony into a panic. Aurea threw away her crutch and chased down the yellow pegasus how darted into the darkness ahead. Together, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle held on to the cart and onto Agatha's body as Bon Bon and Lyra double-hoofed their pace to keep up with the two ponies ahead of them. All sense of time had been thrown out in their mad rush. Perhaps an hour passed. Or maybe it had been mere minutes, but the group had finally made to the very end to emerge into another tunnel, one that was constructed very differently than the ancient ones.
They saw trains and train tracks illuminated by the distant glow of electrical lights. Apple Bloom had seen one or two things imported from her home country into the Crystal Empire, but never she expected an entire fleet of trains. Judging from the graffiti defacement on Gaea's flag, she knew right then and there that these were the stolen cars Teddy the President-Adviser of Information Control tried to keep under wraps for years.
Further down the industrially-carved train tunnels did the group hear distant and soft clop of a set of hooves. Towards the light, they caught the silhouette of unicorn mare lighting her horn as a signal beacon.
"Identify yourself!" Aurea cried out.
"I am North Star, first maidservant of her highness, the Diamond Princess Rarity," said the unicorn. "Your friends have already rescued us from slavery, and we are on our way to take back the castle from the cabal. Please come this way."
"We'd love to, but I'm afraid we can't."
Aurea dug a front hoof into the ground to kick up into the air large rock, which she sent flying towards the unicorn after a second kick. As the unicorn stood still and waited for the projectile to pass, Aurea, tugged Fluttershy by the tail and threw her over an open car. Then she proceeded to push Lyra and Bon Bon to safety and then kick the entire cart over before diving to narrowly avoid a black and red ball of magic trenching its destructive path.
"Why did you do that?" asked Fluttershy. "That's North Star, Rarity's maid."
"I know it is," said Aurea, "but my Geosense tells me that she's under some kind of mind control spell."
Then another magic ball was fired, and Apple Bloom and her companions jumped out of the way. Boom. The magic, upon hitting a physical surface, vaporized a perfectly round hole on the ground and on the car.
"And that is not the kind of magic she normally casts," said Aurea. "Apple Bloom, you take Princess Sweetie Belle and run. Don't look back. Don't engage the enemy. Just run."
"But…"
"JUST GO!" Fluttershy yelled at the fillies.
The frightening force of the pegasus's stare shocked Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle into running and then slipping underneath two cars. Even in near darkness and without looking back, they could feel the heat of battle of one possessed unicorn against four able-bodied ponies rendering the tunnels and the trains into swiss cheese. Yet nothing exploded. All the two fillies heard was a low boom.
Boom. They no longer heard Aurea. Boom. Fluttershy uttered her last squeak. Boom. Lyra called out to Bon Bon before the latter could call out for her beloved. Then silence. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle knew not how long they travelled, but they froze in their spots knowing that if they made a single sound, they would be done for.
But then North Star teleported in front of them in bright flash. Her eyes glowed green as a ball of red and black magic gathered on the tip of her horn, which grew until it was the size of two fillies put together.
Boom.