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(49)
The Red Queen (or Fighting is Magic) Part 2
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“Hello, friends!” Pinkie bounced towards them with a smile. “Eet-sa me, Pinkie Pie!”
“Wrong accent!” Twilight yelled, a magenta blast knocking the Fake-ie Pie off her hooves and into a ‘Jumbo Juice’ stand, a mess of cups, juice, milk and sugar flying liberally through the air. Fluttershy running right behind her, the frantic unicorn jumped clear over a fallen ‘custom cloak-work’ cart. The changeling she had shot a moment earlier emerged from the wreck of the Jumbo Juice stand, hissing and sticky but still looking for a fight.
Twilight spun on her hooves, cantering to keep her balance, and fired another pulse from her protesting horn. The bolt of magical magenta pegged the creature right between the eyes. It tumbled back into the leaky mess it had erupted out of, unconscious.
“We’ll never make to Al’s Famous Hardware Store at this rate!” Twilight lowered her head as a series of green blasts peppered the store behind her: a ‘Disks n’ Donuts’ store selling records, coffee and a variety of unhealthy breakfast treats.
“We could hide in there?” Fluttershy suggested, pointing at an empty store briefly illuminated by a crack of lighting.
“Dr. Weird’s Novelty Unicorn Boutique?” Twilight shuddered, flattening herself against the ground again and floating a trash can in front of her to block a green changeling beam. “No way! I’ll take my chances out here, getting shot at.”
“But I don’t see the… oh!” Fluttershy briefly took to the air, her back to the changelings so she could point further down the vast expanse of the Crystal Hall. “I see it! Over there! We really were close!”
“You see it?” Twilight asked again, but Fluttershy had to dive down to avoid getting shot out of the air. The timid pegasus nodded eagerly. “Thank the Princess!”
Setting up more explosive firestarter wards, Twilight started galloping, Fluttershy a scant few hoofsteps behind her. A volley of green fire tore into the ground behind them, nipping at their tails, punching holes in advertisements and blowing a smiling cardboard cowpony and camel into burning flakes and fragments. An oversized cigar that had been between the camel’s lips hit the ground, still burning with green changeling flame. The windows of the tobacco store they passed by shattered, ten thousand glass shards screaming in every direction.
A series of explosions prompted Twilight to look back, to see if her traps had worked, only to meet disappointment. Changelings were marching through the smoke, their crooked, warped horns lowered. Leading them was the unicorn Royal Guard who had darn near twisted her horn off like a bottle cap. His horn was glowing with a smoldering red, and it was abundantly clear to Twilight that he had easily detected and cleared out her cantrips. There wouldn’t be any more easy ambushes like in the changing room.
“Rapid Volley fire!” the unicorn roared, “On the march!”
Changelings snapped and hissed in compliance, clearly drilled in Equestrian methods of mass magical combat. There were only a dozen of them, lined up in two rows of six, but they advanced in step and good time. The front row lowered horns and – like trained unicorns – began to fire. Others buzzed overhead, looking for an opening to dive bomb.
More were streaming in from a hole in the ceiling of the Crystal Hall, only to run into a cloud of whirling steel. In the distance somewhere, at least a few of Celestia’s animated mannequines were still roaming wild. That pink beam the first one used occasionally sliced through the air at the changelings overhead.
It was chaos everywhere Twilight looked.
They’d teleported out of the storm and into the cloud! Firing a spell into a familiar storefront up ahead, Twilight and Fluttershy jumped in unison, cleanly knocking circular holes in the glass that Twilight floated off to the side. This was it. This was where she had been headed since leaving the IHOPP.
Pitcher’s Potent Potions and Potables
Finally!
“Fluttershy!” Twilight yelled as she erected a sputtering shield behind the glass windows. “Try and find some horn balm!”
“Horn balm?” Fluttershy repeated, and nodded, grasping both the urgency of the situation and the reason why Twilight had wanted to find this store above all the others. “Horn balm. Okay!”
“Sparkle!” Black Lance, the changeling warped unicorn guard, called out to her from outside. “There’s no way out of there! Surrender! Now!”
“Let me think about it!” Twilight replied, knocking over a wood and iron rack laden with faint blue potions. Brushing away the broken glass with a little wave of magic, she hunkered down, the blue aromatics staining her hooves and assaulting her nose. For a long second, she actually entertained the notion that Black Lance would really give her a little while to ‘think about it.’
“Surround the gallery!” the guard’s voice thundered, commanding his ever growing swarm of changelings. “Detail! Assume Line! Fire by File! From the right! I want that store and everypony in it wiped off the map!”
“Fluttershy,” Twilight said, in that brief lull. “Please, please find that balm…!”
“I am trying!” Fluttershy finally seemed to lose some of her timidity in the face of all the pressure being put on her. She was in the back, butter-yellow hooves a blur as she moved from shelf to shelf.
And then the barrage began.
Starting from the left front row of the changeling formation, they began to fire. All down the line, one by one but at a rapid rate, every changeling in the first row sent a sickly green blast into the front of the Potion Bar. When it reached the rightmost changeling, the tempo switched to the rightmost changeling in the back row and all the way back along the line to the left. The result was a cyclical stream of green fire that saturated the storefront, leveling everything in its path.
Twilight’s personal shield shattered painfully within the first second, driving a new spike of pain into her horn. It was a small comfort that, by erecting it behind the glass, she had at least kept a million stinging crystal shards from filling the store and bar. Instead, they had all fallen outside when the windows disintegrated.
Sucking in a breath and steeling her courage, reminding herself that she had faced down dragons, spirits of chaos and the world’s mightiest spellcasters, Twilight Sparkle raised her head briefly out of cover and fired into the two lines of changelings. It was a basic Berkelium's Beam, but would've still been more than enough to tear apart and disrupt the changeling formation. That was… if the beam from her horn hadn’t slammed into a crimson barrier.
The fire continued unabated, blowing apart alchemical potions and smashing apart the heavy stands Twilight had knocked over or thrown up as a shield. Black Lance would know barrier magic, too. Because it would’ve just been too easy otherwise, wouldn’t it? Luckily, no-changeling seemed to be paying much mind to Fluttershy in the back – if they could even see her – and that last counterattack had them focusing entirely on knocking out the Princess’s Faithful Apprentice.
“Assault Squad!” she heard Black Lance yell. “Hit her now!”
“Give a girl a break!” Twilight groaned, snatching up a nearby bottle and floating over a second from off the floor. Biting off the cork stoppers with her teeth, she shoved the mouths of the two flasks together, sealed it with a bit of magic, and gave it a good shake.
“Four, three,” Twilight counted down, and tossed the bottle towards the smashed windows of the potion bar, “two…”
A trio of dive bombing changelings crashed through the broken and blasted wood, one of them tearing the locked door right off its hinges. The lock itself snapped and whirled through the air in the opposite direction of Twilight’s improvised concoction. The wooden door flipped end over end, liberally and carelessly smashing into alchemical draughts and drafts.
Then Twilight’s Tonic hit the ground next to one of the changelings, belching out a spray of rainbow foam. It soaked the changelings, and when they tried to move, they froze, their legs and hooves stuck to the floor and the multi-colored mess beneath them. Like flies in a web, the changeling warriors resorted to their wings, trying to fly away, to no avail. The three turned towards Twilight and hissed in impotent fury.
“The assault squad has failed. Resume fire!”
Twilight huddled behind cover as the barrage resumed, indiscriminately destroying the store around and in front of her. The three trapped changelings hissed even more loudly, but quickly fell silent as the oppressive green friendly fire silenced them.
In a backroom, protected behind a curve in the store, Fluttershy finally emerged.
“I found it!” she said, excited and raising her voice despite herself. She galloped over with a potion cradled under her left wing. “Twilight, I couldn’t find a balm, or salve, but there was a crème…”
Fluttershy huddled next to Twilight, and the unicorn got her first look at what her friend had found.
“No More Tears brand?” Twilight asked, distraught. “Oh, Fluttershy, why this one…?”
“Oh.” Fluttershy blinked, trying to process the conflicting messages. On one hoof, her friend didn’t seem to like ‘No More Tears’ brand ‘restorative horn crème.’ On the other hoof, there was a picture of a very friendly gorilla on the label, promising that there wouldn’t be any more tears. He didn’t look like the kind of gorilla who would lie, at least in Fluttershy’s opinion.
“Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess,” Twilight lamented, grabbing the vial, ripping out the cork, and dumping it over her head in one go. Clear liquid ran down Twilight’s mane and face, looking no different than water or maybe rubbing alcohol. On contact with her horn, however…
It instantly evaporated and turned to steam, like droplets of water on a hot plate.
“Aaa-aaaa-aaa!” Twilight stamped her hoof in pain, but didn’t cry. “Come on…!”
Still partly wreathed by steam, her lavender horn emerged… good as new.
Twilight let out a breath. “There we GO!”
Emerging from behind her cover, she fired another beam into the changeling ranks.
This time, Berkelium's Blinding Beam met with much more success. Black Lance was only a single unicorn. Normally, an equestrian line or tercio had multiple shield-unicorns. Her brilliant magenta light clashed with his blood-red and after only a second… magenta won out, punching through and knocking a pair of changelings out of formation and out of the fight.
“Damnit!” Black Lance snarled, quickly barking out new orders. “Advance! Increase rate of fire! Breech Teams go now!”
More fire poured in, but this time Twilight had a magical shield ready to help bolster her waning physical cover. She’d started to even feel pretty confident… until the walls to either side of the store blew in. Changelings swarmed in through the gap, a wave of black chitin, snapping jaws and bright green eyes. Fluttershy cried out and threw her forelegs around Twilight.
“Fluttershy,” Twilight said, a crazy idea entering her head. “Don’t worry. They’re just bears.”
“Just… bears?” Fluttershy asked, and took another look. Instead of changeling invaders smashing through the walls, she saw bears. Growling, angry bears. Not big bears, but still bears. Twilight’s spell made sure of it.
“They are just bears,” she realized, letting Twilight go like a foal discarding a safety blanket.
“Can you deal with them?” Twilight asked, reinforcing her shield-front to let her take another pot shot at the advancing rank of changeling infantry.
“You there!” Fluttershy said, trotting out into the open. “You bears need to calm down and go home right this moment. You’re ruining this nice store!”
The closest changeling to her snarled, lunging with wide forelegs and a fang-filled jaw.
Only to meet Fluttershy’s hoof, slamming hard into its chest. Standing on her hind legs and lifting the changeling into the air, she slammed it hard into the floor at her hooves. She used enough force to put down a small bear. Against a changeling drone, it was more than sufficient. The changeling gasped as its back hit the floor with a resounding crack, eyes bugging out from the sudden impact.
“I told you,” Fluttershy said softly, still standing on her hind legs, her pink mane obscuring half of her face. “Please calm down and go home.”
The changeling Breech Teams, trained to break into homes or other buildings and subdue potentially hostile equestrians, paused at the unexpected challenge. There were seven of them to one pegasus pony. Good odds, especially since that pegasus pony had originally been clinging to the formidable unicorn now occupied trading fire with two ranks of combat changelings outside the store. Stray blasts of green stitched across the back of the store, the last one hitting a light fixture and exploding with white and yellow fire.
Taking that as their signal, the changelings charged.
Fluttershy glared, clearly displeased by having to put her bear wrestling skills to use a second time. She ducked her upper body as a changeling leapt at her and used her wings to float back out of range of a swipe. Seizing the extended foreleg with one hoof, and the crook of the elbow with the other, she twisted and drove the changeling to its knees before spinning it around and into a third hissing shape-shifter.
A second tried to bite her from behind, fangs glistening with poison. Fluttershy fell backwards, the back of her head and pink mane smashing into the changeling’s gaping mouth. Fangs snapped off and the creature hissed in pain. Fluttershy’s foreleg wasted little time in filling the changeling’s vision before slamming into its throat with a lariat. No sooner had the changeling slumped to the floor, coughing and losing consciousness, than two more jumped in to avenge it.
Twilight ran across the front of the store, her magenta shield absorbing a rapid fire quartet of green blasts. Even with her horn rejuvenated, her shields weren’t on the level of her brother’s. They began to crack under the strain, but they did their job of protecting her when she was left in the open. Her horn flashed, another Blinding Beam spearing the advancing changeling line. It was partly attenuated by Black Lance, who always seemed to reform his barrier before she could get off a second shot, but it still scattered three changelings out of position.
“Hold together!” Black Lance commanded, driving forward the changeling formation. “We are the Queen’s Royal Guards! Remember your discipline! Keep under my shield and maintain fire on the target!”
Twilight ran for cover again, further back into the ruined potion store. Sheltering behind the curve of the bar, she mixed up another Special Twilight Tonic and hurled it in an arc. This one exploded into a cloud of stinging ice. Amid the confusion, as the changelings tried to reform their shaking firing lines, Twilight hit them with another beam. This one was four alliterations, just like she had used against Twinkling Star Light. It ripped through Black Lance’s barrier, blasted two more changelings off their hooves, and hit the unicorn Guard himself right in the chest.
Their commander taken out, the changelings quickly broke apart and started firing on their own.
Twilight smirked, sensing the turning tide. Behind her, Fluttershy lifted a changeling into the air and threw it like a bag of flour. Wings flapping to let her juke to the right to avoid a blast of green magic, she executed a mafia kick into the face of another changeling, pulled it into a headlock, and brought it down with a frontal suplex, introducing the changeling’s face into the floor.
Trotting back to deflect a bite from yet another shape-shifter, Fluttershy’s hoof kicked a piece of a broken changeling horn she’d snapped off. It clattered between the legs of a galloping changeling that slammed shoulder-first into the formerly timid mare. Yellow wings snapped out to avert their mutual fall, and so did transparent duplicates that morphed under green fire into a soft gold. The two Fluttershies hit the ground and bounced into the air again, grappling and held aloft by their wings.
They locked eyes, and the changeling blinked, shaking her head.
Fluttershy’s hind legs curled up and slammed into the changeling’s stomach in a solid dropkick. The image of snarling bears never wavered in her eyes. Changelings were frightening. Ponies were frightening, too. It was a fact of Fluttershy’s life that she wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. But angry bears? Angry bears were a problem she could deal with. Not a one of these little ursines were even in Harry’s ballpark. Still, a little voice in the back of her head knew that these couldn’t really be bears. She knew they were either pretending to be bears or that Twilight had used a spell to make them look that way. For the moment, though, that didn’t matter. It was enough that they didn’t look like strange, unfamiliar monsters.
“I won’t let you hurt Twilight or anypony else!” Fluttershy surged forward, head-butting the changeling. It fell away from her, eyes glazed, a line of drool dripping from vicious jaws.
Tearing free a chunk of wall, Twilight Sparkle yelled a challenge before telekinetically hurling the ton of iron, brick and plaster at a pair of changelings, their black horns smoking cadmium green. No longer bothering with what little shattered and blasted cover remained in the potion bar, she let her magenta shield protect her against the sporadic green fire. Their formation broken, the changelings had started transforming into ponies to confuse her: Pinkie Pies and Eunomies and Twilight Velvets.
It didn’t work.
Seizing a changeling in the guise of her mother, Twilight felt her magic overpower the shape-shifter’s natural defenses. It was only marginally worse at countering magic than Rarity had been during her training to fight Antimony. Twilight focused, and her grip solidified around the changeling’s tail. Whipping it back and into a wall, the creature reverted to its natural form and slumped to the ground, all the fight taken out of it.
“We’re winning,” Twilight stated as a burst of green splashed harmlessly against her shield. “We’re winning.”
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Black Lance groaned as he rolled off his side and onto his hooves. Forcing himself to stand, he wiped his eyes and his face with his foreleg. That little lavender mare packed one hell of a punch! The green in his eyes flickered, clouding his thoughts, but he soon came to and remembered what he was doing: what he had been charged to do by the True Queen of Equestria.
His golden armor jingled around his chest, helping to dissipate the magical energy he had been blasted with. His injuries weren’t enough to keep him down, but they weren’t negligible either. Shaking his head, he took a look around. He needed to find his fire team. He needed to rally them and reform their ranks!
“Sergeant!” he called out, staggering towards the sound and fury of magical battle. “By the Queen… what? What happened?
There were unconscious changelings all over the street.
He turned towards the elevated positions he had ordered his subordinates to secure. The ‘Here be Dragons’ gaming store and the ‘Scritch & Scratch’s Exotic Quills Emporium’ on the second floor had a commanding view of the field. The changelings didn’t have any marksmares in their ranks, but he had sent a small group to command the heights, such as they were, and provide supporting fire.
Black Lance saw limp changelings hanging over the safety rail on the second floor of the gallery. Had they been taken out? He caught something pink moving around that level, and when it jumped down, he got a positive ID. It was the pink target. The earth pony. What had happened to Load and his team? They should’ve taken this mare down.
“Air support…” he started to groan, still a bit unsteady. “Where is my air support?”
The changelings should control the skies.
It was one of their greatest tactical and strategic advantages, but the interior of the Crystal Hall’s main venue was clear of black. Their insertion point was visible in the distance, but it looked like it had been sealed up by something grainy and metallic. It had to be that Eunomie witch and her swords. She’d plugged up the hole in the ceiling, but still, there had to be more reinforcements. Where were they? They still had reserves!
Where were the reserves?!
Turning around, he tried to see what he had left to fight with. Twilight Sparkle, their primary target, was only now emerging from the potion bar. There had to be some changelings left to help take her down. Coming up empty, by the time Black Lance went back to his original facing, the butter-yellow pegasus had also emerged, sticking close to her friend. As if to hammer a nail into any resistance, a dark shape descended from above… but it wasn’t a changeling.
Eunomie Mosaic floated down, standing on top of a sheet of steel blades. The same coldly merciless look was in her eyes as before, when she’d ruined their initial ambush. It was a look even worse than the lifeless gaze of those crazy Celestia mannequines. Eunomie was priority target number two, after the Sparkle girl. Given she had also seen through their ambush…
Black Lance, his mind entering damage control now that the battle was clearly lost, considered that. Eunomie had seen though the ambush. How? He noticed that there was one “pony” missing from the group. Twilight Velvet. He knew she was a changeling, of course. She was the one who had ordered this ambush, slipping a note to another changeling after leaving Hocksbach. Had she been compromised? Was it possible that…
‘She knows.’ It was pure guesswork, but it felt right in his gut. ‘That crazy Mosaic mare knows! But why let Velvet stay around at all? Why let a mole compromise your group?’
“Lady Velvet, there you are,” Eunomie spoke, reaching out a hoof.
A blast of light blindsided Black Lance, and his vision went black.
-
“Is everypony okay?” Twilight asked, trotting forward with Fluttershy. Seeing Eunomie descending from the sky wasn’t exactly expected, and neither was seeing Pinkie Pie cradling what looked like an oversized pastry decorating pen. In fact, the baker was loaded for bear, in a white chef’s outfit and hat, a variety of cooking utensils strapped to her torso. What possible use they were, Twilight couldn’t imagine. It was just more Pinkie being Pinkie, frankly.
Then there was her mother… she had just come out from out of nowhere. Twilight glanced down the Hall. Had she been hiding or fighting from another store or kiosk? Things had gotten so crazy, it was hard to tell. She was here, that was all that mattered. But she was here, so that was all that mattered, really.
“Mom!” Twilight greeted with a smile.
“Twilight,” Velvet returned, also smiling. She stepped over the smoking, but still breathing, body of Black Lance. “I’m glad I found you girls. I trust everypony here is who they appear to be?”
“Eet-sa me, Pinkie Pie!” Pinkie declared and Twilight groaned. Of all the things to say…
“The last Pinkie who said that ended up with a face full of magic,” Twilight told her, but shook her head. “But now I know you’re you. Because only you, Pinkie. Only you.”
“Huuh?” Said party pony tilted her head in confusion. “Did I say something weird? What do you think, mirrorverse-Euporie?”
“I don’t know any ‘mirrorverse,’” Eunomie stated, descending a few stair-like steps made out of swords, their flat surfaces overlapping. Her hooves touched the ground and her horn glowed softly. What was left of the metal blades she had brought with her abruptly transformed into single-edged plowshares.
“It means you look the same but you’re total opposites, and one of you wears tight leather!”
“Ah. That would be Euporie, yes.”
“So you’re the nice one and she’s the naughty one?”
“I’d rather not answer that.”
“I think we’re all who we say we are,” Twilight Velvet said, but softly, not to try and interfere with Eunomie and Pinkie’s conversation in potentially evil duplicates.
“I’m pretty sure you’re all who you say you are,” Twilight Sparkle agreed, and coughed into her hoof. “Woah... that was weird. Did I just repeat…?”
Velvet grimaced, but covered her mouth with her hoof and laughed. “Oh yes, you did! Just like when you were little! Remember?”
Twilight narrowed her eyes for a moment, but ultimately shrugged. “I guess. Anyway. Fluttershy, you’re okay, right? About that illusion spell…”
“I don’t mind,” Fluttershy answered, demure as always. She hung back as mother and daughter caught up. Only when nopony was looking did her turquoise eyes zero in on Twilight Velvet. The older mare’s lavender and alabaster-white tail flicked as she kept close to her daughter. Twilight was already talking eagerly about the next leg of their journey, the nearly disastrous ambush they had escaped seemingly forgotten. The Wireless Magical Broadcasting Tower was their next stop. Still, Fluttershy remained behind.
An unexpected pony soon joined her.
“H-hello.” Fluttershy still wasn’t anything near comfortable around Eunomie. Not only had they just met a short time ago, she seemed… distant. Not mean, really, but quiet in a way that wasn’t shyness.
“Hello,” Eunomie replied, not smiling, but not frowning either. She continued to trot slowly at Fluttershy’s pace, her eyes forward. Up by Twilight and her mother, Pinkie Pie was going back to hopping nimbly from one piece of wreckage to another, a litany of questions and observations (most of them confusing) spilling out of her lips. Twilight Velvet seemed annoyed and curt, but Twilight put up with it, grinning happily when Eunomie or Fluttershy got a good look at her face.
After they left the Crystal Hall behind, Fluttershy finally felt confident and comfortable enough with her thoughts to share them. Eunomie listened to her concerns and nodded.
“It would be prudent to check,” the dour mare agreed.
“Can… can you cast Twilight’s spell?” Fluttershy asked. If she could, then it would be easy to check right now. Twilight might not like it, but she’d understand. It paid to be safe.
Eunomie’s response was curt. “No.”
“So we have to ask her to do it,” Fluttershy determined with an unhappy sigh. Asking her to check to make sure her own mother wasn’t a changeling… she shivered at the thought of how she’d even phrase it. And what if Velvet was a changeling? How would Twilight herself react?
“It may be best to wait until we get to our destination,” Eunomie suggested. Idly, she used a trickle of magic to clean up the prim bun that was her bright red mane, making sure it was still in order and not a hair out of place. “If Lady Velvet is a changeling, then she will have already betrayed us.”
“And the radio tower?”
“It will already be destroyed, in that case.”
- - -
Applejack’s hooves were contemptuously knocked aside; a lightning quick slash from Sarai’s serrated forelegs pegging her on her exposed hindquarters. What little was left of the dress Rarity had made for her for the wedding ripped apart against the black and red spines, revealing the quilted armor underneath, glittering with metal scales and sequins. The apple farmer tumbled away, a spray of sparks shooting away from her flanks.
Sarai growled at her failure to draw blood, but turned in time to block a bolt of cloth aimed at the back of her head. Her face faded into transparency, but her legs continued to strike at high speed, making her appear almost as a blur of limbs. Rarity pressed forward with her fabric, switching from lances of cloth to whips. The horsehair flails battered against spine-covered forelegs, trying to keep the Red Queen off balance.
“Incoming!” Rainbow Dash warned, flying past the fashionista with a crackling thundercloud in-hoof.
Sarai sneered and aligned the tip of one of her forelegs to catch Dash in the face, but a last millisecond course correction turned Dash’s forward flight into a tight spiral. Holding her cloud between her hooves, she slammed full force into Sarai’s torso. The Queen’s entire body lost camouflage as her hindlegs dug into the floor, ripping parallel grooves in the carpeting and polished hardwood. Electrical arcs left her muscles twitching and convulsing as the cloud discharged repeatedly.
“Dash!” Applejack broke into a gallop. “Look out!”
Through it all, Sarai’s forelegs angled inwards, like a pair of shears. Her front hooves buried in the Queen’s torso, Rainbow Dash’s momentum kept her trapped in place, even as the tips of Sarai’s forelegs descended to spear her from both left and right. A sudden yank pulled Dash back and out of the killing zone, the sharpened spikes along Sarai’s forelegs rubbing against one another as her legs crossed over her stomach.
Pulled back via one of Rarity’s ribbons of cloth, Dash wiped her forehead in relief. “Thanks, Rarity!”
“Think nothing of it, darling.” Rarity released her hold on her friend and kept focused on Sarai. The Red Queen strode forward, none the worse for wear despite Dash’s thundercloud. “We’ll need something bigger than that, I’m afraid.”
“Or you can just give up,” Sarai suggested, trying to remove the stormcloud from her torso. Her legs passed through it, though, and it only continued to discharge energy into her. Her invisibility rippled across her body, working for a moment before failing.
“I will admit this is rather vexing,” she said, glaring down at the cloud stuck to her body. “None of the other pegasi could do this.”
“We’re just full of surprises, sugarcube!” Applejack punctuated her statement by kicking another stone bust, this one of a zebra immortalized in green verdite.
“Pointless,” Sarai huffed, raising her forelegs.
She paid much less attention to the rope snaking around her hindlegs. Smacking the stone bust out of the air, Sarai found her legs entangled. Applejack yanked hard on her lasso with her mouth, stood on her hind legs, and wrapped a foreleg around the taunt rope for good measure. The Red Queen dug her legs in, still resisting being knocked off her hooves.
“Rarity!” Applejack called. “Winter Wrap Up!”
“On it!” Rarity called back, just as quickly. Her magic seeped into the rug Sarai had ripped apart in resisting Dash’s charge. Suffused with blue magic, the rug tore free of the loops in the floor that kept it in place. Like a ragged, multicolored wave it surged up and around Sarai before clamping together like a vise.
“Did we get her?” Dash asked, hovering in place and pulling together another cloud.
“Rarity?” Applejack noticed her friend visibly straining, her teeth clenched.
“No,” the former seamstress answered, sweat beading down her brow as she channeled magic. “We didn’t. I can’t… hold…”
Two black limbs pierced the magically empowered rug.
A tearing sound followed that evoked winces and flattened ears in the three mares as Sarai bodily slit her way free. Rarity finally had to release the spell entirely or suffer a backlash. The Red Queen finished tearing through what was left of the fabric, sparing a moment to snip the rope Applejack had gotten around her hind leg. She then started trotting forward on just her hind legs, her twitching wings splayed out behind her.
“I think we may need to fall back!” Rarity suggested. She picked up the three fillies that had led them into this trap and started running for the exit. “Rainbow! Could you find us some bad weather?”
“This way!” Dash yelled, taking the lead. “We need to get higher!”
“Right behind you, darling!”
“What? Hey! Where in tarnation do ya’ll think yer goin?” Applejack easily kept pace with her friends, but stealing a look back, saw their pursuer begin to disappear. “Aw, horsefeathers! Now she’s gone and vanished again!”
“Let her,” Rarity replied, pointing towards the arc-like double-stairs they’d passed under in their initial foray into the mansion. The two ground-based mares made a sharp turn that bunched up the carpet beneath their hooves. “Up there! Rainbow!”
“I know!” Dash yelled, blasting ahead with a snap of her cyan wings.
“Would’ya mind fillin’ me in on what in the seven gates of Tartarus we’re doin?!” Applejack followed Rarity as she jumped up the stairs at top speed.
“What are you doing?” Sarai’s voice asked, and Rarity had to shoulder into her friend as a pair of serrated forelegs punched into the wooden stairs underhoof. “Running won’t save you,” the Red Queen stated, partly visible after her strike. “Hmm… maybe the pegasus could fly away and live, but you two?” She jumped back into the air and faded out of sight. “You two don’t have a prayer.”
Rarity tentatively touched her hoof to her cheek, coming back with flecks of rusty red.
“You try that without yer tricks, why don’t ya?” Applejack demanded, but Rarity quickly pushed her up the stairs. Galloping as fast as their hooves could take them, they were soon on the second floor, but Sarai followed them, her spined strikes slashing against the chaotic swirls of Rarity’s fabric that filled the air.
“Yours will be a death from a thousand cuts!” The Red Queen promised, briefly blocking their way, her legs skittering.
Rarity and Applejack crossed in front of one another and split apart, going wide left and right. Rarity ran headlong over the bannister railing, flipping her mane and turning it into a bolt of indigo horsehair fabric. Applejack galloped up, jumped off of a trophy shelf, and pulled an antique sword down off the wall with her tail.
“Transformation and telekinesis,” Sarai stated, blocking Rarity’s cloth whips. “The use of fabrics was unexpected at first, but for the most part it fits what I’ve learned about you unicorns. It isn’t anything special. It isn’t a threat.”
Snagging Rarity’s hair-whip with the spines on her right foreleg, the Red Queen abruptly spun like a ballet dancer, pulling Rarity off the bannister and smashing her hard into the ceiling. Whipping her foreleg back, Rarity went along with it, hitting the opposite wall with a pained grunt. The three fillies she had with her, still wrapped in fabric for their own safety, screamed as they followed, spinning like a top.
“As for you--” Sarai blocked a strike from Applejack’s tail, still holding a sword as easily as a hoof. “--I’m impressed you can use your tail this way. I may have been wrong about you before. Zebras tails aren’t nearly as prehensile.”
A yell on her lips, Applejack used the opening to try and land a blow with her hooves. She wasn’t the same mare that Lady Yumi had embarrassed at the pas d’arms outside Ponyville. She had learned from that, from her fight with White Dew, from Shigure, from Yumi herself, from friends and enemies and ponies who blurred the line between the two.
Countering Sarai’s bladed forelegs with her purloined sword, Applejack danced on her hooves, kicking and dodging and weaving. The expression of indignation and frustration on Sarai’s alien-like features proved that she was more than simply surviving. The Red Queen was getting seriously annoyed. The strikes came faster, more pokes than swipes, aiming just as the Queen said, to kill with a thousand tiny cuts. Applejack struggled to keep pace, her tail and hooves a blur of motion.
“Adept with all four hooves, your tail and--” Sarai snipped another lasso before it could encircle her. “--and your mouth as well.” Applejack spit the now worthless coil of rope out of her mouth, slashing wildly with her tail.
“You have the balance of a shaman, too, which is very interesting,” Sarai stated, finally catching the sword between her forelegs. A little more pressure and it bent, almost into a straight ninety-degree L. “It won’t save you, but it is interesting. Yejide was right… there is much I still have to learn about your kind.”
“Applejack!” Rarity’s warning prompted Sarai to pause, her head turning around one-hundred and eight degrees to look over her own back.
Behind her, Rarity had two dozen ceramic plates, golden equestrian trophies and silver medals, shards of wood and at least four other dueling swords, all floating in the air around her, slaves to her magical will. The contents of everything that wasn’t nailed down at the top of the stairs, and even some things that had been nailed down – now sporting the nail bits as added flavor – projected forward like a hailstorm at Queen Sarai’s back.
For her part, Applejack dove for the long stairway bannister Rarity had been standing on before, sliding through wide gaps in the wooden supports to hang off the edge of the second floor railing. Sarai had no such luxury, but her forelegs became a blur as they intercepted the debris Rarity threw her way. Originally her forelegs moved in strange orbits, having to cover her own back, but gradually she managed to turn around and face the barrage, and weathering it became much easier.
“The mass a unicorn can manipulate is determined by her innate magical pool, but the number of individual objects a unicorn can control in motion is limited by her ability to mentally multi-task,” Sarai stated, slashing downward with her bladed forelegs and smashing a beautiful ceramic vase into pieces. “I’ve never seen one of your kind use so many objects at once. Is it really that difficult?”
“Sometimes,” Rarity admitted, catching her breath. “But when it works… it’s worth it, darling. See for yourself. I took the liberty of trimming those tacky frills on your back.”
“You what?” Sarai’s neck extended and her large eyes inspected her back. Her chitin-hardened body was unharmed, but her wings…?
Her wings had been mangled! There were holes in her wings!
“Sometimes the little things are what you need to look out for,” Rarity explained, and Sarai’s head snapped around to glare at her. The former seamstress had a single red jewel set in a golden horn-ring floating over her raised hoof. It had been mixed in among the rest of the barrage, but overlooked, since it wasn’t moving fast enough to do any real damage. As long as it didn’t get into her eyes, anyway, it had been just another bit of detritus, or so Sarai had figured.
But it had been strong enough to punch through her delicate wings.
“You were all going to suffer before you died,” Sarai stated, advancing on the unicorn. “But now, just for that, I’ll make your end truly memorable.”
“Forgot about somepony?” Applejack asked, grabbing hold of one of Sarai’s hind legs. She had been hanging from the edge of the second floor, and now reached between the wooden supports of the bannister. Grabbing and pulling, hard, with all of Applejack’s earth pony strength, Sarai finally lost her balance and fell, face-first into the carpet.
“Superb work, darling!” Rarity exclaimed, jumping over the Queen’s prone body. It was a risky move, as Sarai had only been on the floor a heartbeat before her bladed limbs began to thrash. Luckily, Applejack roped Rarity’s foreleg with her tail and pulled her along and out of danger.
“What now?” Applejack asked.
Sarai was already getting back up, and the apple farmer tensed to attack.
“We run!” Rarity answered, heading the way they’d last seen Rainbow Dash fly.
“You aggravate me,” Sarai growled, clambering up onto her hind legs, and then lowering down to a more conventional four-legged posture. “You should not aggravate me!” She took off after the two mares from Ponyville and the three dizzy and sick-looking fillies they’d saved. “It will only make your deaths that much worse!”
Galloping down the gilded mansion hall, Rarity and Applejack took pains to knock over everything they passed by, indigo and blonde tails bowling over shelves and cutting down tapestries and unseating paintings. Sarai roared as she nipped at their heels, having to either plow through or go around the obstacles and debris.
Rarity led them into a sudden left turn that the two mares navigated easily, but that sent the larger changeling Queen scrambling. Sarai crashed into a door, blasting it off its hinges, but her size also kept her from crashing fully into the room beyond. She kept up behind Applejack and Rarity, her hooves punching vicious holes in the floor as she galloped.
“You can’t run forever!” the Red Queen snarled, pouncing.
“Pluck me off an apple tree!” Applejack yelped, jumping madly into the air as Sarai tried to savage her legs with a swing of a serrated raptorial foreleg. “We better be close to where we’re goin, Rares! Or we ain’t gonna get there at all!”
“Almost!” Rarity promised, also jumping as her magic rolled up the carpet beneath them into a wave.
“I’ll rip you to pieces!” Sarai howled, tearing through the surging wave of carpeting and hardly breaking stride in the process. “I’ll hollow you out and use your bodies as a nursery!”
“You know,” Applejack stated, deadpan. “I don’t recall a whole lotta death threats before I hooked up with you, sugarcube.”
Rarity giggled, leading them into a sudden right turn. “You mean since we hooked up with Twilight, darling.”
“Aw, now yer just twistin’ the facts around!”
“Perhaps, but a little attention can do wonders for your confidence!”
Sarai crashed into the side of the wall, caving it in and scrambling to continue the chase. “You won’t escape this city alive! I’ll hunt you to the ends of Canterlot!”
“Hear that?” Applejack yelled to Rarity as they galloped in lockstep. “Mah confidence can do without that kinda attention! It ain’t flatterin!”
It might have been a positive sign that the end of the hall ahead of them opened up, an iron gate kicked open and left swinging. Rarity and Applejack jumped in unison down the flight of steps that followed, Sarai crashing through a heartbeat later and knocking the iron gates akimbo.
They ended up in a large conservatory or wintergarden.
Conservatories were common among luxury manses, allowing refined mares and stallions to tend to exotic fruits and trees in the comfort of their own homes. This one was a beautiful iron and white dogwood glasshouse and solarium, designed not only to function as a greenhouse but also with enough open area – benches and tables and chairs – to host a refined garden party. Stately jungle foliage crawled along the walls in previously well-manicured patches and thick-leafed plants grew in colorful bunches in every direction.
It was also swelteringly hot, and uncomfortably wet. Rarity and Applejack landed with a muddy splash, their coats and manes starting to weigh down almost immediately in the heavy vapor-laden air. The two mares quickly turned around and backtrotted towards the rear of the conservatory.
“Aw, gross!” the fake Sweetie Belle yelled, shaking water out of her mane.
“This place… we haven’t been in here in… how long, again?” the Scootaloo look-alike wondered, rubbing her faintly glowing green eyes.
“Help us, Queen Sarai!” the pseudo-Applebloom cried, struggling against the band of silk Rarity held them aloft with. She didn’t seem to care or even acknowledge that Sarai had admitted outright that she had wanted to eat them lot of them.
With a small splash of her own, Queen Sarai of the Zilant Hive stepped forward. Rearing to her full height, she took in the open space of the conservatory and sniffed, disdainfully. Her colorful wings spread behind her and fluttered. Her torso and legs shimmered, turning partly invisible, but leaving large sections wavy, distorted, or outright exposed. Snarling, she shook her head in dismay.
“You did this on purpose,” she realized. “My wings…”
“I noticed it thanks to your smaller underlings,” Rarity explained, hooves splashing softly as she moved a few steps to the left. “Your wings aren’t like the wings on the green changelings. Not just color… every single one of you red changelings had intact, well-maintained wings. They’re actually quite lovely to look at, contrary to what I said before. But you don’t fly much with them. The green ones do, and their wings are full of holes, like they’d been chewed on by moths.”
“Wait, their wings make them invisible?” Applejack asked, only now getting it.
“That’s right,” Rarity answered, keeping her eyes on the angry changeling Queen. “Didn’t she even say it? All the changeling types have different abilities… they’re just like unicorns and earth ponies and pegasus ponies: different versions of pony, different versions of changeling. I also noticed that they can only remain invisible when they’re moving slowly. The moment they started to move, or their limbs started to move, their camouflage broke.”
“You have a rather meticulous attention to detail, unicorn,” Queen Sarai admitted, grudgingly. “You’re correct on all counts. That you learned all that from this one encounter is rather… interesting. But you also have to have realized that you’re no match for me.”
She pointed a wickedly serrated foreleg at Rarity, specifically. “You’ve analyzed me, but I’ve also analyzed you. You don’t have the raw magic to either lift an object heavy enough to hurt me or throw a smaller object with enough speed. Your fabrics are your strongest weapon, but I have over three hundred degrees of vision. I can see your every attack and counter it.”
“In a fair fight, you would be correct,” Rarity stated, jumping up and into a muddy pot.
“Anytime, sugarcube!” Applejack did the same, standing upright while holding onto an orange tree.
“Good! I was getting pretty tired of waiting!” Rainbow Dash trotted out from behind a broad-leafed red and orange colored lily. “Let’s get this party started!”
Plunging her hooves into the roiling, forming clouds that emerged out of the mist, her wings crackled with static electricity. A rainbow ripple passed through the condensation that by now completely covered the floor of the conservatory, followed immediately by a crack of thunder. Only another pegasus pony could have been able to see the magic running like wild through the condensing cloud matter.
It didn’t take a pegasus pony to see the result, however.
Queen Sarai’s wings flapped, trying to get her into the air, but she was too tall, too big. The cloudstuff clung to her, and with it came lightning and a crack of thunder. The formerly colorless mist turned roiling, murderous black and in a series of brilliant flashes, lightning ripped through the changeling Queen’s legs. Her wings seized up and dropped her like a stone, letting her sink deeper into the cloud trap.
“That’s right! How do you like that, huh?” Rainbow Dash crowed, smirking, her pegasus physiology protecting her from the thunderstorm at her hooves. “Feels good?”
“Pegasusss pony,” Sarai trilled through clenched mandibles. “I’m glad you didn’t fly away. Now you can die, too.”
Jumping straight up, the Red Queen flipped over, her hind legs pointing up. Not only did she clear the thunderclouds beneath her, her hooves hit the ceiling of the stately conservatory… and stuck. Like a bat or an insect, Sarai hung upside down from the ceiling, catching her breath. Her body continued to twitch and smoke, but she was far from out of the fight.
“What the hay!” Applejack yelled, pointing. “She can do that, too!”
“Oh, great!” Dash started to fly, but Sarai was already skittering forward across the ceiling. Pulling a black swath of cloud off of the ground, Dash hurled it between them like a shield or screen. Sarai parted it with a single slice of her deadly forelegs and closed the distance between the two of them, slashing and hissing in rage.
“A little help! A little help!” Dash cried, losing a tuft of feathers as one of a flurry of Sarai’s strikes nearly hit home. “S-s-shoot!”
She barely avoided a raptorial hoof that tried to pluck out her left eye and ducked under a slash. Tucking in and rolling forward, Dash sprang into a jump and flew across the ground, spinning in a tight spiral and drawing her clouds around her. Rarity and Applejack jumped over her, from potted plant to chairs to tables, keeping out of the way. Rainbow Dash left a trail of her namesake behind her as she pivoted, sweeping up her mass of cloudstuff and turning it around. Still, she spiraled in a barrel roll so dangerously close to the ground it would’ve been a severe infraction in any flight academy in the country.
“Trotting Thunderhead!” she yelled, spreading her wings wide at the last second and forcing herself into a stop so sudden she ended up expelled from the twisting tornado of thundering vapor. “Spitfire, eat your heart out!”
The thundering black cloud crashed into the upside-down Queen Sarai. Glass shattered behind her, raining down on the garden below. The twisting storm refused to be contained within the greenhouse and extended hundreds of hooves into the air before beginning to dissipate. All the while it roared and boomed with reverberating claps of thunder.
No splash this time; Sarai hit the ground…
And landed on her hooves.
“Bright lights; loud sounds… was that supposed to stop me?” she asked, a black membrane retracting from around her overlarge eyes. Her body was still crackling and smoking, but outwardly unharmed. Then, to her own astonishment, a crack formed in the chitin over her left eye, exposing a tiny trickle of green blood. It dribbled over her almond-shaped eye, but she didn’t blink. Her mandibles merely twitched.
“I am Sarai,” she stated, moving forward. “I am the Throat Slasher. The Bloodletter! Your death of a thousand cuts begins… now!!”
Stamping through the jungle underbrush, Sarai disemboweled trees and thick branches that stood in her way. She singled out one pony in particular for her vengeance. The one that had most wounded her, not just physically, but her pride - the cursed equestrian who had ripped her wings and made it impossible to vanish or fade. The unicorn.
Rarity galloped away from her friends, but Sarai refused to let her escape.
A bolt of that fabric from before tried to hit from what would’ve been any pony’s blind-spot. Sarai’s huge eyes saw the attack coming, just like she had promised, deflecting it with a slash of her forelegs. The desperate and drenched fashionista resorted to throwing a thick fern between them. Sarai contemptuously swatted it aside and took another slash at the equestrian herself. More fabric swept up to try and block the strike.
“You seem to take pride in your appearance,” Sarai stated, shredding another plant Rarity desperately threw her way. “I’ll keep a mirror in your room when I flay you alive!”
“By the Princess, if a cruel beast like you passes for a Queen--” Rarity said, nimbly jumping over and behind another potted plant. “--I truly feel pity for your foals.”
“I may have a little mean streak,” Sarai admitted, her mouthparts spreading into a rictus grin. “But every good Queen does.”
“It isn’t too late,” Rarity implored, crying out as a swipe drew blood across her shoulder. “Equestria has not wronged you; you can take your family and leave--”
Sarai’s foreleg brushed against Rarity’s and the mare quickly tumbled back, cradling it to her chest, hiding it from view.
“--we can still live in peace,” she finished, scampering away from two plunging raptorial hooves.
“Get it through your skull,” Sarai hissed, casually kicking Rarity in the midsection with one of her smooth hindlegs. “There will never be peace. Not before and certainly not now. Our future…”
She glared down at the unicorn mare, looming to her full height.
“Our future,” she repeated, breathily, “a future where the yellows do not kill the reds, where the reds do not kill the greens… where there is food and land and hosts for all to share…”
“We were driven into this land by the Inkanyamba!” Sarai told Chrysalis, her voice bitter and the admission made even sourer by just how helpless she had become, after defeat after defeat. “We could not share hosts. We killed you as they killed us, and now as you kill us in revenge. It is the way of things.”
“It does not have to be that way,” Chrysalis said softly, and Sarai’s ears twitched, never having expected to hear that sort of response from the Queen of the Greens. “Life does not have to be like this, and my children and I did not come here for revenge.”
“Don’t speak to me of peace!” Sarai spat, standing over her victim. “Your peace is death. Your peace is doom. Your peace will only condemn us for what we are. If the choice is peace… or war…”
She brought up her barbarous forelegs, spines slick with water and blood.
Rarity held up her delicate bare hooves, as if to ward away or block the strikes.
“I pick war!” Queen Sarai screeched, driving down her forelegs. Rarity’s hooves tried to stop her, to prevent her from being slashed in the chest or stomach. Sarai speared the mare’s hooves straight on, punching through soft pony flesh.
Rarity screamed as her own forelegs ended up pinned to the ground at her sides.
“I promised you an agonizing death,” the Red Queen reminded her, satisfied with this start, “and I don’t want others to think me a liar or an oath-breaker, now do I?”
The Baroness beneath her squirmed in pain, and Sarai started to lean back to strike a second time. This time, aiming for a more vulnerable area, like the belly. All she had to do was pull loose her forelegs…
Sarai grunted, straining to tear her serrated forelegs free.
“What are you made of?” the Queen snarled, unable to extricate herself. “And…” She only now noticed. “Why aren’t you bleeding?”
Rarity scowled up at her, and her chest began to move and squirm.
Sarai watched it in morbid confusion.
Rarity’s chest finally expanded and started to break apart, very clean and clear-cut seams becoming visible against the white coat. Like bandages, they unwound from around her chest. It was more fabric. White fabric. As the coils loosened, they revealed what had been squirming before: it was a pair of legs. An extra pair of legs!
Why did this pony have an extra pair of legs?!
“If your answer is ‘war,’ and only war,” Rarity said, her forelegs breaking loose from where they had been bound tightly against her chest. “Then you can’t complain when you take casualties, darling.”
Rolling backwards and out from under the Red Queen, Rarity hopped easily up onto four legs. What had been the legs Sarai had impaled were left behind, like a lizard discarding a tail to distract a snake. The Zilant Queen angrily tried again to free her own forelegs, to get free and trike out at this damned unicorn, but they were still stuck in place. She blinked and glared down at the detached limps in bewilderment.
For a moment, Rarity’s severed legs seemed normal… except for the lack of blood. Then they shimmered, and deflated. Hollow. They were hollow. They hadn’t been legs at all.
“More… cloth?” Sarai stated dumbly. “But… how…?”
It became clear in an instant. She had impaled a pair of fake legs, made of cloth. The real ones had been tucked onto the mare’s chest and covered up. Illusions and cloth magic! The taunts before, then drawing the Queen into a confrontation, using her forelegs to block…
“Three hundred degree vision,” Rarity said, throwing the Queen’s own boast back at her. “That is very impressive. But you couldn’t see much when Rainbow Dash hit you with that thunderstorm of hers, now could you? You also failed to see what was right in front of you.”
Sarai growled, an animalistic, trilling hiss rising up in her throat as the specter of fear entered her voice. She struggled to get her forelegs free, but the cloth that she had impaled had wormed into the narrow slits and holes in her legs. The rest of it had dug deeply into the concrete floor.
“You’re stapled in place,” Rarity explained, trotting backwards. “Or… sewn in place, I should say. Stapling is so very crude. Rainbow Dash. Applejack. As my own attacks ‘lack force’ would you do the honors?”
Sarai spun her head around to face her back.
The earth pony was in the air, being spun around in a tight circle by the pegasus. The pair built up more and more momentum, until Rainbow Dash finally stopped and threw Applejack down and towards the ground. Except… there was one thing between said sufficient-velocity earth pony and the ground.
Sarai’s head faced forward again and she trilled in helpless rage. A second later and Applejack’s hooves buried into the back of her head, bucking the Red Queen face-first into the concrete floor of the conservatory.
Her bright wings fluttered, spasmed, and went still.
- - -
“Remind me again why I have to carry this-here bug?” Applejack grumbled unhappily, a bundled changeling almost twice her size slumped over her back.
“I can’t believe she survived having her head planted in concrete,” Rainbow Dash commented, flying around with three distraught and speechless fillies in her hooves. All three were still wrapped up by fabric, but after witnessing the Queen’s defeat, they’d been struck mute… which was, admittedly, better than putting up with them yelling for the Queen or the changelings to kill their own rescuers.
“I can’t believe these stains!” Rarity stepped out from underneath the broken water tap, scrubbing furiously at her legs. “The mud came out easily enough, but who knew pulverized concrete was so… filthy? Awwh! Yuck! It won’t. Come. Outtttt!” she cried, waving her forelegs pathetically.
“Aw, come on, you look better with a little dirt, sugarcube.”
“I do not!”
“Rarity. For the love of the Princess. You look fine. Can we just get moving?”
“I feel like a dirty hobo! Everypony’s clothes are completely ruined! Even the armoring! My hooves are an utter mess! Need I go on?”
“No.” “Please, please don’t.”
“Some friend you are. Can’t you feel my pain?” Rarity asked, mid-lament. “Can’t you--”
She instantly stiffened and stood straight when a figure alighted on the roof of the conservatory near them. Rainbow Dash also turned, still flying, to regard the new arrival. Applejack, burdened by their captive and possibly brain-damaged hostage Queen, grunted unhappily and tried to see what was going on.
“You three elements certainly know how to make a mess.”
The mystery pony, wrapped in brown cloak and hood, revealed herself without flourish. Midnight blue hair and a starry mane spilled out of the hood and caught an unseen and unfelt breeze. A small black crown poked out from the ever-shifting mane behind a tall, straight horn. Aquamarine eyes looked down on the three mares.
“Is that really--” Applejack spoke first.
Rainbow Dash smiled at the familiar face. “Princess--”
“Luna?” Rarity concluded, and all three mares looked up at the dark alicorn.
“Aye,” the Princess of the Night replied, freeing her wings to rise in regal arcs behind her. “We are Luna, we three, and I have come to request thy aid.”