Epilogue: Lingering Notes
~BlackRoseRaven
The Changeling Queen stormed through the hive and slammed open the doors to her private dining hall... and then she glared as an eye twitched in frustration, clawing at her holey mane as she shouted furiously: “Metanoia, what are you and that stallion doing?”
Shining Armor looked almost guiltily up as Miss Take smiled brightly, her Third Eye gleaming on her forehead, looking much more like a seductive Pegasus adventurer than Changeling royalty as she sang: “The floor is lava, Chrissy darling, and you're burning up!”
“The floor is not lava!” Chrysalis almost howled, storming forwards and shoving her way through the group of drone servants all happily serving Miss Take and Shining Armor, who were sitting on top of an enormous dining table. “Get off! Get off! I order you to get off!”
“Oh, be a good hostess, sweetie!” Miss Take said disapprovingly, and Chrysalis stared at her before the half-Changeling gestured around, saying reasonably: “Do you see how immense this table is? Darling, it's gorgeous, but it's positively ludicrous! Shine and I can barely talk to each across it, let alone sit together, and my dear, if you want to maintain a good relationship, you must sit across from each other. You must face each other, for a little while each and every day, darling.”
Chrysalis' eye twitched, and then Shining Armor grinned lamely before he reached up and tugged at the thick hide jacket he was wearing, saying lamely: “Hey, so, thanks for the birthday gift.”
“Yes, honey, but next time please don't leave the wallet of the pony you stole it from after you ate him in the pocket. Very gauche. Very gauche.” Miss Take chastened, and then she leaned forwards quickly and smiled warmly, adding positively: “But I was very proud of my baby sister for trying so hard all the same, very very proud!”
“I am not your baby sister. I am a Queen of my own hive, and at least I don't toddle around with a stupid pony I once easily made my brainless slave, working for the things we consider to be food!” growled Chrysalis, and Shining Armor rose a hoof... then winced and slowly lowered it when Chrysalis hissed at him like a cat.
“Manners, sweetie. And darling, he's not my food, he's my sweetie sugar muffin cake!” Miss Take smiled warmly, and Shining smiled lamely as he looked embarrassed despite himself. “And what do you mean, work for the ponies? They pay me to find new land, explore the unknown, and steal priceless artifacts. And best of all, I get to do it with my husband! Why, look at us right here and right now, serving as ambassadors of Equestria to the local Changeling Queen!”
Chrysalis scowled at them before she rose her head and said pettishly: “And you are earning no favors from me by sitting on my table like foals. Get down from there, now.”
“No.” Miss Take smiled pleasantly, adding positively: “And darling, you are going to agree to all the terms and conditions we've laid out... and you're going to give me that pretty armoire in the guest room, too. Oh, and some of those fancy gemstones from your treasury.”
“No!” Chrysalis snapped, glaring furiously at the mare. “And you can't make me, either! You're... you're nothing but an outcast, Metanoia! I am Queen!”
“And a Queen needs her drones. Your drones like me more than they like you.” Miss Take said cheerfully, clapping her front hooves together... and Chrysalis twitched as several of her servants nodded dreamily, gazing up at Miss Take as her big sister winked. “Social hierarchy, darling. I'm still older and wiser.”
“You can't just... come in and take my things!” Chrysalis shouted, but now it sounded more childish than outraged, the Queen stomping her hooves like a foal about to tantrum. “I don't have to do anything for you! I am a ruler!”
Miss Take chuckled at this, then winked and trilled happily: “Yes you do, sweetie, because even if you're Queen... I'll always be your big sister, darling!”
Chrysalis glared furiously at them, and then Miss Take added positively: “Oh, by the way, before you go looking for him... I went ahead and removed your brainwashing from that poor stallion you had all flummoxed, thinking you were his wife. If you want to live out your homemaker fantasies, dear, then please do what I did. Steal a husband away the honest way.”
Chrysalis stared, then gritted her teeth and trembled before spinning away and yelling childishly as she ran off down the corridor: “I'm telling Mommy!”
“I uh. Think you hurt her feelings.” Shining said after a moment, and Miss Take covered her mouth and pretended to look worried. “Oh, stop that.”
He gently shoved her, and Miss Take swayed before smiling warmly and slipping past their empty plates, sitting beside him and wrapping her forelegs tight around his neck. Shining sighed after a moment, then he smiled faintly down at her before reaching up and rubbing a hoof silently over his traveler's jacket, feeling so strange with how... right this felt.
He was an explorer, running into the wild with his strange new marefriend, seeking out new friends and stopping new foes before they even found out about Equestria. Sometimes he missed his old life, sure... but this... this was exciting, and it challenged him, and he got to help ponies and protect people and there was no more being a soldier, or being a prince: now, life was about being him. And he thanked Miss Take every day for freeing him... and even more, thanked Cadence for not just letting him go, but helping him find his way, strangely enough, to where he was now.
He laughed a little, and Miss Take looked up at him inquisitively... then blushed a bit when he gently kissed her, their lips meeting before the stallion smiled and winked as he drew back, saying easily: “Well, come on. Let's send our report to Archon. He'll want to know what's going on.”
“I already did, darling. You were sleeping in though, sleepyhead.” Miss Take reached up and ruffled his mane, and Shining huffed and shoved at her lightly before she teased: “But I do know that unless it involves your hair, my darling, many things tend to escape your attention.”
Shining Armor only rolled his eyes, then paused for a moment before frowning at her uneasily, asking lamely: “You uh... you made it professional this time, right?”
Miss Take only looked at him innocently, and Shining Armor groaned loudly, slapping his forehead and thinking wryly that even if so much else had changed, there would never be one day where he'd be safe from getting a lecture from Archon...
But Amadeus Archon was only chuckling quietly as he sat back in his wheelchair, a small smile on his features. Scars and burns covered half his visible face, and a fold of cloth was tied tightly around his head to protect his blind eyes, while the rest of his body was dressed in a pristine uniform he insisted on dressing himself in every morning... and somehow never failed to make as neat and orderly as it had always been.
Only one leg remained his own flesh and blood: the other forelimb had been replaced by a prosthetic, as had both his hind legs. But he still found his way around well enough, even though there was always a unicorn nurse in attendance that he regularly frustrated by refusing the help of.
Currently, another officer looked awkwardly up from the letter he had just finished reading – with only a slight stammer, to his credit, at some of Miss Take's phrasings – and the old stallion shook his head slowly before he said wryly: “I'll compose a response myself later tonight. Thank you, Captain. You are dismissed.”
The soldier saluted quickly, then looked awkwardly for a moment... before Archon calmly saluted back as if he'd clearly seen it, saying pleasantly: “The gesture is appreciated, son, but the uniform I wear is much different now. Now I'm just a Director. Not a General.”
With that, Archon reached down and carefully wheeled himself around in a circle, and his nurse sighed and walked up behind him, grasping the handlebars with magic to guide him as she reprimanded: “Director Archon, excuse me, but let me help-”
“I don't need your help. I'm going home to my grandson after a long night of work.” grumbled Archon, but he allowed the nurse to take control after a moment, and the old stallion sighed as he shifted in the wheelchair, asking finally: “Shouldn't you be helping someone else?”
“You know, you're always talking about this other pony you knew once. And she was bullheaded and made bad choices and refused everyone else's help too. She did, right up until the end, isn't that right?” asked the nurse mildly, and Archon gave a wry smile. “Do you want to turn out like her, with no one knowing where you are, or what's happened to you?”
“Young mare, it's not nearly as simple as you seem to think. I say all those things about her... but really, there's few ponies I've admired more.” Archon said quietly, and then he turned his eyes up towards the sky, adding softly: “And I might not know where she is. But I think I know who she's with. And that makes all the difference.”
The nurse frowned, but Archon only chuckled before adding wryly: “But maybe you're right. I'm too old for any more adventures, after all... and I already have my family waiting for me back at home. Hurry it up.”
“Yes, sir.” the nurse grumbled, pushing him onwards, and Archon chuckled again as he rested back in his wheelchair, feeling the wind against his face and thinking of her... of that reckless, idiot mare who had done so much for Equestria, as he seemed to turn towards the statue honoring the lost Princess Cadence with a smile as they passed it... but his head knowingly tilted all the same, well-aware that she wasn't nearly as lost as so many ponies thought.
You weren't lost after you found what you had been looking for, after all.
Cadence sipped at her blueberry tea, smiling a little to herself as she rested back in her comfy little apartment. It was plush and nice and altogether, just a great little place, she thought. And better yet, she made enough with the little job Hecate had set her up with to pay for some of these nice little things, like that tea she was so fond of.
The mare shook herself out, her short-cut white mane fluttering around her face before she absently rubbed at her chest: she had turned almost completely ivory, except for a few strange pink markings over her body that were almost like stripes, and one distinct pattern on her breast that looked like a bird, rising in mid-flight. Even her cutie mark had been burned away, only a faint outline left behind that vaguely resembled a hollow heart.
Then she glared a bit at the zebra lounging on the loveseat on the other side of the table, when he slurped loudly at his own tea. He had an inverted stripe pattern and skull like markings over his face, which was half-hidden by a top hat. And he was extremely annoying and rude and loud and obnoxious, and yet she kind of liked him and respected him all the same. “Cygne, the hell am I doing here?”
“Look, La Croix, you're the closest thing I know to a death spirit. I mean, Hecate has all kinds of us... Orphans, here, like she calls us. I mean, I guess that's what she calls us, since she calls this place the Orphanage and all.” Cadence said a little awkwardly, gesturing around at the apartment... and really, the entire, massive complex that sat on the steel and lightning world of Decretum, a technological paradise full of the marvelous and the terrifying.
La Croix was giving her a mild look now, though, so after a moment the mare steeled herself before saying plainly: “I've died. A lot. I see ghosts and memories that not even you can. I need to know what's up with me. I thought you might be able to help figure that out.”
“Y'all think that because I be a Loa, I must know everything 'bout freaky ghost stuff?” asked La Croix flatly, and Cadence sighed tiredly before the zebra sat up and added more seriously: “Look, okay, you and your papa ain't bad folk. I like you plenty, Cygne. And sure, I be glad to help y'all if I can. But I don't know nothin' 'bout no oiseaus 'cept that some of 'em taste real bon.”
“Thanks, La Croix. Really.” Cadence said dryly, and then she sighed a little and shifted a bit before looking out through the glass doors, murmuring: “I just wish I knew what I was, that's all.”
“You be lucky, that's what y'are. And I ain't talkin' 'bout the way you can't quite seem to hit the big ol' fais do do, either.” La Croix said mildly, and Cadence gave him a curious look, and the Loa smiled and shrugged, gesturing easily past her with one hoof. “You be the only damn orphan I ever met who also has a papa.”
Cadence smiled despite herself, then she glanced over her shoulder as there was a quiet chuckle before a pony slowly emerged from the kitchen, saying softly: “Well, not to be rude, La Croix... but I think that between the three of us, I'm the lucky one.”
Sombra emerged: he was black as night, but his eyes didn't glow with malicious energies, and his expression held all the softness of Serenite in it. He no longer wore his cape or crown, but instead he had a harness across his breast that helped secure a large, heavy steel casing across his back. It protected a strange machine that had been developed by Hecate and surgically implanted into her father along his spine, protecting him from being taken over by the poisons that even now ebbed through his body... but thankfully, couldn't be spread so long as that machine continued to function.
He calmly strode over to join them, and Cadence smiled as he sat on the couch beside her, the two gazing at one-another before La Croix bowed his head politely to Sombra. But Sombra only chuckled, saying softly: “You're always too kind to me. You all are... and mi amore, we'll find the answers one day. For you, for me... but for now, I am content. We have each other. We're part of something better, something good. I am not yet... healed, but the machines that Valthrudnir would have once used to destroy the world... are now part of what is being used to give me back my mind and body, and that... is a miracle I welcome more than words could express.
“We're on our way, Cadence. There are answers here. And Hecate will help us find those answers, stop what machinations of Valthrudnir's remain, and protect not just our world... but the many that exist out there. This is a gift.” Sombra smiled over at Cadence, reaching up and gently squeezing her shoulder. “Don't question what you don't have, mi amore. And don't sprint for the finish before you even begin the journey. Everything we need will come in time; the rest, we can make our own answers for.”
Cadence smiled warmly at her father, then nodded firmly, gazing at him with love and adoration and respect in her eyes as she savored his words, and the sight of the stallion who, even in deepest darkness, burned with a guiding light so bright that she knew, as long as he was in her life... she would always be able to find the right path.Cambiano i suonatori ma la musica è sempre quella:
Finchè c'è vita c'è speranza.