Act Three Chapter Fourteen - Bad to Worse
Peridot was falling and, for a fleeting moment, she didn’t care. In just a few horrible minutes, she had lost nearly every one of those dearest to her. Still, no matter how alone and betrayed she felt, Peridot would never let a friend down.
She craned her head to see Benevolentia, who trailed behind her. She wrapped the unconscious princess in an envelope of magic and pulled her in close. Wrapping her hooves around Benevolentia’s glowing body, Peridot tried something she had never done before, she extended the glowing aura of her magic out from her friends body to include herself. With a grunt of effort Peridot focused on her magic and pulled.
Levitation had never been Peridot’s specialty, she prefered to sooth pain and knit back together injured skin and bone. Fortunately though, she had inherited some measure of her grandmothers skill.
At least, she thought to herself as the wind continued to howl by her ears as she plummeted, I hope I have.
She looked down. The ground was still fairly far below her, but the ground wasn’t her immediate concern, she’d never get that far. Jutting out from the palace were numerous overhangs, terraces, and balconies, not to mention the gentle angle of the palace walls themselves. If she couldn’t move them farther from the palace, they would never even get the opportunity to hit the ground.
Peridot bore down and poured everything she had into her levitation spell. It surprised her just how hard it was to move herself and she began to doubt that she would be able to move them far enough but then, to her astonishment, they cleared a balcony. She would have whooped in elation had she not just lost her friends moments ago, but she did begin to harbor some hope that she might just be able to survive this. If only she could find a way to stop.
She redoubled her efforts as they cleared another terrance, forgetting about moving away in favor of slowing down. Her horn blazed as she poured more and more magic into it, bright enough that she could see it through eyelids clenched closed in strain and desperation. But she wasn’t slowing down. She began to panic, the ground was mere seconds away and there was no way she could stop herself, but she might be able to save Benevolentia. Peridot released her hold on herself and focused on the princess.
Peridot had never practiced medicine professionally. Her talents had alway been lent toward the discovery of new cures and treatments rather than actual application. Not that she didn’t do her fair share of volunteer work and disaster relief, as well as helping out the ponies at the hospital in her free time. In addition, she had been the acting palace doctor since the changelings first attacked, so she had plenty of practical experience. Like any good doctor, everything she knew was neatly cataloged in her mind, she could instantly recall the proper treatment or spell for thousands of illnesses and injuries but right now, there was only one spell on her mind.
Peridot released the magic she built in her horn and watched it wrap around Benevolentia as she held her. Normally used to immobilized injured limbs or even the neck during transport, the spell formed a temporary, crystalline, cocoon around the princess. With only a moment to cast it, she could could only it would be strong enough to cushion the princess’s fall.
A heartbeat from the ground, Peridot grasped the smooth surface of the cocoon in her magic and threw it upward as hard as she could, hoping to slow it down by whatever little she could. A moment later, she struck.
She should have been shocked to be alive. She should have been surprised that guards had so quickly managed to find a large blanket of some kind to catch her in like a makeshift firepony’s net. At the least, she should have been happy that the spell she had cast on Benevolentia had held. Unfortunately, Peridot saw none of that.
The guards were strong, Prince Dutiful had trained them well. Any one of them would have been the envy of every applebucker in Equestria, but they couldn’t stop Peridot from striking the pavement beneath the held-taut blanket.
Peridot's poor body had already taken a beating. First, she had torn the ligaments in her hind leg when Phalanx shoved her out of the way to save Benevolentia from falling debris, then strained herself further during her dash back to the palace and her subsequent leap over the guards’ barricade when she thought Lumine had been overcome by Chrysalis. A fall from such height, regardless of her efforts to slow herself, net or no net, was more than the limb could take, and she had landed straight on it, shattering the leg on impact.
The white hot pain in her leg translated itself into a sun bright blackness that blocked her vision and a screaming but silent ringing in her ears that overcame the voices of the ponies leaning over her in concern. Peridot tried over and over to cast her numbing spell, and over and over the spell collapsed in sputter of magic before she could finish it.
It wasn’t until somepony forced open her jaw and poured something thick and bitter down her throat that the pain subsided enough that she could cast her spell. As relief washed over her while the magically induced numbness spread through the limb, Peridot’s vision began to clear. Ponies dressed in the white smocks of the palace clinic staff where leaning over her. All bore expressions of deep worry and all sighed in relief when she finally spoke.
“Wh… where’s… Benny?” Peridot muttered, her mind still clouded from the memory of pain. She saw the look of confusion on the medical ponies’ faces. “The princess… Where is the princess?”
Phalanx burst through the crowd of doctors. “You’re okay! What happened?!”
“Phalanx.” Peridot felt the corners of her mouth edge upward a touch at the sight of her friend. “It’s Lumine...he’s changed.”
“Lumine?” the guard pony asked, taken aback. “What do you mean by changed? Peridot what has happened to the prince and princess?”
“Benny! Is she alright?!”
“No pony knows! She’s locked inside some kind of blue crystal.”
“It worked!!?” Peridot breathed a sigh relief as somepony stepped back, revealing a large translucent gemstone speared into the ground. Inside it was suspended the Princess, looking for all the world, fast asleep.
“This was you? Is she okay?”
Peridot wasn’t sure how to answer. “She…” her throat clenched, “no… she’s not. Lumine, he’s gone crazy. That harmony forsaken spell of his… it’s like it’s taken over his mind. He did something to her and to Dutiful...” Peridots eyes filled with tears, “... Dutiful.. he…”
Phalanx’s eyes widened as he understood, then they hardened, as cold and bitter as a sword edge. “Where is he!”
“He’s in the spire…” Peridot muttered. Phalanx turned to go but Peridot reached out and caught the edge of his armor and one of the medical ponies attending her leg hissed for her to remain still. “Please… Phalanx...it’s not his fault. It’s the spell. If we can snap him out of it I know I can help him.”
Phalanx gritted his teeth, his face grim. “We will try to take him peacefully. But if he could beat somepony as strong as the prince and as magically gifted as you.. I don’t know… We will have to do our duty.”
“Phalanx… just…” she closed her eyes, forcing out tears. “Please stay… I… I need a friend right now.”
He looked conflicted, obviously moved by Peridot calling him her friend but also driven to fulfill his oaths as a guard. “Well…” he said slowly. “The prince did order me to protect you…” he sighed. “I suppose.” He motioned over another guard and explained the situation to him. The guards eyes were unreadable as he heard of the prince’s fate and who was to blame.
“Thank you Phalanx.”
“Anytime, Lady Peridot.”
“Can you take me to see Benny?” Peridot asked.
Phalanx looked to the medics who were still binding a brace to her shattered leg. One of them nodded though he seemed far from sure. Peridot smiled thankfully and allowed him to lift her onto his back and carry her to where Benny was encased in her magic. He laid her down on the stone beside the princess. Fresh tears shown in Peridot’s eyes as she looked up at her friend.
“What did you do to her?” Phalanx asked.
“It’s a binding spell,” Peridot explained, wiping her eyes on the back of a hoof. “It should keep her safe for a while, but I don’t know how long it will last, a day or two… maybe”
“Can you save her?”
Peridot closed her eyes and let everything she knew about healing magics flow through her mind. She desperately tried to think of something she might have forgotten to try up in the spire. In the end she gave the same answer she gave the prince, “I don’t know how to save her.” Another bout of sobs wracked her.
“And Lumine?”
“I don’t know… He gets these attacks every so often… a side effect of the spell. He was only able to keep it up for so long because…. because I helped him.” She continued to cry as guilt began to grip her. The sound of galloping hooves drew her attention back up and she saw dozens of guards gathering by the palace gate, preparing to storm in and take Lumine into custody… one way or another. “There’s got to be someway to help him… I can’t… I can’t lose everypony.”
She felt a hoof draw around her. “You haven’t,” comforted Phalanx.
She looked up at him and forced a smile before saying, “Thank you.”
Peridot jumped as thunder boomed through the cloudless sky. She looked upward to see ribbons of eldritch green lightning lanced out from the peak of the palace spire. The guards preparing their assault hesitated, unsure what to do in the face of this new magic. She twisted her head to one side for a moment as her eyes snapped shut against the bright flashes splitting. When vision cleared she looked back up. Peridot rubbed her eyes, thinking, at first, that the after images filling her vision were playing tricks on her. Then she was sure, something was falling.
The guards called out warnings, thinking it was more debris shaken loose from the blackened and stained palace, but Peridot knew otherwise. It was smooth and black and didn’t fall like a chunk of rock would. It fell faster.
“We have to go…” Peridot whispered. “Phalanx!” she said, louder that time. “We’ve got to go! We need to get Benny out of here!”
Phalanx gave her a little squeeze. “It’s okay, Peridot,” he tried to comfort, looking up at the rapidly growing object. “Yout got her far enough away to protect her from falling debris.”
“No! You don’t understand!” Peridot pulled away and pointed a hoof upward. “It’s not debris! It’s Lumi-”
It struck the ground, blowing gouts of dirt and crushed rock in all directions as spiderwebbed impact fractures radiated out through the smooth pavement. A deep throated, humorless chuckle echoed out from the thinning dust cloud. Peridot, and a dozen or so nearby guards, were rubbing their eyes with the back of their hooves, trying to clear their vision as he stepped out of the settling debris. Lumine’s shadow.
When Peridot had last seen him,she could still see in him the friend she loved, tainted, and darkened, his palate warped, but still her Lumine. But this creature, this wasn’t her Lumine at all. He approached them slowly, deliberately. Each hoof fall triggered the growth of crystals formed of the same sickly black material that had over overtaken the foci and the palace.
“Hello Peridot.”
Peridot recoiled at the sound of his voice. Each syllable stabbed at her as it echoed the guilt she felt for having turned her friend into this. “Lumine… please..” she begged.
The humorless smile on his face vanished. “Lumine is dead,” he sneered before casting a knowing glance at the gathering guard, “as are the Prince and Princess.”
Phalanx sprang to his hooves, carelessly spilling Peridot to the ground. “Guards! With me! Attack!”
With a roar, every guard drew their weapons and charged with vengeance in their hearts. Lumine’s Shadow failed to notice and kept his eyes firmly leveled at his former friend. When Phalanx was mere hoof steps from goal he leapt high and brought the blunt of his spear down hard.
Without even so much as setting his horn aglow, Lumine lashed out with his magic, summoning a jutting shaft of crystal that thrust up from the ground and caught Phalanx square in the breast plate. The brave soldier slid to a stop and sprang to his hooves for another charge. A deep crackle vibrated through the ground as the rest of the guard advanced on what was left of Lumine. When they reached striking distance, razor sharp spears of of crystal burst out of the ground and lanced toward their unprotected faces.
Somepony screamed, expecting the worst. Instead, just as the needle tip of crystal struck home, it expanded outward, growing and enveloping the head, helm and all, of the attacking guards. Peridot watched in horror as dozens of imperial guards kicked and fought, muffled mumbles the only evidence of their screaming. In seconds, they stopped fighting and their crystal prisons released them. Peridot expected then to fall but they stayed on their hooves, heads lowered and eyes closed.
“You monster!!!” Phalanx roared, “You Discord begotten betrayer! What have you done to them?!”
“Done?” Lumine asked. “I have done nothing. I simply proved to them the rightness of my claim to the throne.”
“You have no such claim, traitor!” yelled Phalanx
“Thrones are held by those who are worthy of wielding power,” he answered hatefully. “Today, the line of Princess Winter Waltz ends and so begins the reign of King Sombra.”
Phalanx snarled “The Empire will never follow you!”
Sombra smiled cruelly as he wrapped his horn in its fell glow, the foci responding in turn. “They won’t have a choice.” He sent a bolt of flame wrapped magic upward where it burst over the city with a gout of spell fire. The spell turned pitch black and spread outward, doming the city in a forcefield of his twisted magic. “Guards…” he said cooly, “these ponies are traitors to the crown.”
The bespelled guard ponies twitched at the command. Their faces contorting as if in some final resistance to Lumine’s magic before falling slack. At once, their eyes snapped open, burning with the green flame of the black spell.
“Phalanx…” Peridot whispered fearfully. “Phalanx we need to go.”
“No, Peridot,” he shot back, drawing his spear. “We can’t leave the princess!”
“We’re not,” Peridot said as she crawled to her three good hooves. She raised her head and lit her horn wrapping it and the gem entombed princess in a soft blue glow. The magical lattice supporting the princess’s still form melted away like ice as Peridot levitated her over and draped her over Phalanx’s back.
The guards eyes widened, “You said she couldn’t survived without your magic.”
Peridot’s eyes hardened. “It’s not her survival I’m worried about,” she said.
“She’s your friend! How can you-”
“LATER! We have to go!”
“You can’t just trade her life for-”
“LATER, Phalanx!”
“If the Prince were here he’d-!!!”
“I’M KEEPING MY PROMISE TO DUTIFUL! NOW. LET’S. GO!”
Phalanx roared in frustration and spun around, dipping his head low to scoop Peridot onto his back as he galloped off into the darkening city. Peridot twisted to look back as her mount sped away. The dark king simply stood there, surrounded by his mind controlled guards.
“Why isn’t he following?” Peridot said through teeth gritted against the pain from her injured leg smacking against Phalanx’s side as he ran.
Phalanx answered between breaths, “Why should he? There’s no where we can go.”
Peridot bit her lip, he was right. Lumine… Sombra, she corrected, controlled everything; the remaining guards, the Heart, the Prism. With those under his control, he may as well actually be the king.
“Do you have a plan?” Phalanx asked, still putting distance between them and Sombra.
“Me? I… um… I suppose we need to get word to Equestria. I don’t know of anypony more powerful than the princesses.”
“Obviously,” he answered with a touch of bitterness. “I mean right now, about this princess.”
Peridot’s jaw worked as she looked at her friend riding behind her. She knew what was coming next, had known it since she and the prince found her in the tower. That didn’t make it easier. “We need to get to the medical center.”
“Can you help her?”
“No…” Peridot admitted. “But there’s a bunker there for the medical staff…” she swallowed. “And we might be able to help me save her baby.”
They made it to the medical center unchallenged and apparently unfollowed. Peridot couldn’t decide if that was because Sombra was too busy building his forces of mind controlled guards, didn’t think they were a threat, or was simply giving them a head start. She also couldn’t decide which was more worrisome. She pushed the thought aside as they barrelled through the unbarred doors to the emptied lobby of the medical center.
Discarded paper and scrolls littered the floor of the lobby. Peridot looked back and forth, trying to remember which supposed broom closet was actually the door to the hastily constructed shelter beneath the structure. She tapped Phalanx on the shoulder and pointed past a cluttered pile of furniture that had been shoved to one side to clear the way for the scrambling refugees that had no doubt flooded the building when the final changeling assault began. Phalanx trotted over, carefully stepping through the broken bits of trampled chairs and tables, and lowered himself so Peridot could slide off of his back.
She leaned against Phalanx for support as she rapped twice on the door before twisting the knob with her magic and swinging open the door before tapping three more times against the false backing of the closet. Peridot felt eyes on her as an unseen observer looked through the tiny peephole disguised as a screw on a mop hook. A moment later the back of the closet swung open to reveal a tired guard and several scared looking ponies peering around the corner behind him.
“Lady Peridot? Corporal Phalanx?” asked the guard. “Are we victorious?”
“Not quite, soldier,” he answered. “There’s been a complication, we require medical assistance immediately.” He turned to one side to reveal the unconscious princess on his back.
The guard’s eyes went wide. “Princess Benevolentia…” he whispered, “stars above…” He shook his head to clear away the shock and bellowed back over his shoulder, “We have wounded incoming! Doctor Bandage, get up here! It’s the princess!”
Phalanx and Peridot slipped through the narrow opening as the guard closed the door. Peridot felt a prick of pain in her tail and yelped. She turned to find the guard holding a two strands of hair, one Phalanx’s maroon and one her own shade of green.
“Sorry,” he said apologetically, “I had to make sure.” Phalanx nodded in approval and they continued into the underground shelter. The guard led them to a small side room where an older brown stallion in a smudged doctor’s smock stood waiting beside an examination table in the center of the room.
“Come in, come in,” stallion, who Peridot surmised must be Doctor Bandage, said hurriedly. “Put her here. How long has she been unconscious?”
Peridot levitated Benevolentia onto the table. “Not long, less than an hour, I think. I’ve done everything I can but I can’t bring her out of it.”
The doctor pressed an ear to the princess’s chest then held back each eyelid while holding a candle in the opposite hoof. “No dilation…” he muttered. “Do you know what happened and HOLY HEARTLIGHT! Your leg!”
Peridot startled at his outburst. Her leg throbbed, pain dulling spell or no, at the reminder of her injury. She looked back at the injured limb. It hung limply from her hip and was badly swollen, both joints bent at an unnatural angle.
“I jumped from the palace spire,” she answered, recasting her pain spell for good measure. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You… jumped... from…”
“I’ve already patched the skin, stopped the internal bleeding, and blocked the pain. I’ll be fine, we can fix it later. Right now we need to save the Princess’s baby.”
“The baby?” Bandage asked, surprised. “Miss, I know you know that in a triage situation the mother’s life must come first. Especially at this point in the pregnancy.” He shook his head. “We can’t risk the princess’s life for a child that might not survive anyway. I’m sure she and the prince will understand.”
“The prince is dead,” Peridot deadpanned. The doctor recoiled at the news and Peridot could hear startled gasps from the hall outside.
“How…?”
Peridot took a deep breath, “Long story short: the dark magic that Benevolentia’s life long friend Lumine was using to repel the changelings has corrupted him. It’s twisted him into something else, another pony altogether. He was able to defeat the changelings after they broke through the shield but then attacked the prince and princess and then crowned himself King Sombra. I… I couldn’t save them both so I grabbed the princess and jumped from the spire. I was able to protect her but… well I would have died if it wasn’t for the guards being able to break my fall. Well, before Lumine, or ‘King Sombra’ used his magic to take over their minds.”
Doctor Bandage touched a hoof to the princess’s shoulder, his eyes misting. “So the wound is magical then.” He looked up at Peridot, hopeful, “Don’t you know a counter spell?”
Peridot shook her head, “Magic isn’t that simple. Maybe, if I know the exact spell he used but this isn’t even normal magic, I could do something but… not this. She’d be gone already If I hadn’t put her into stasis earlier.”
“Stasis?” the doctor asked.
“It’s a spell I use in Equestria that gives us more time to get a pony to a hospital,” Peridot explained. “I’d use it again while I look for a cure but in her state… it won’t matter, I’d only be buying her a day or two and then it would be too late to save the child.” Peridot knew she was making the right choice, the only choice really, but still, it felt like she was condemning one of her closest friends to death. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hoof, and steeled herself. “She’s beyond our reach now, but we can make sure her baby lives.”
Doctor Bandage’s face was unreadable. “How far along is she?”
Peridot grimaced. “Only five months… I know,It’s too early, but I have a plan.” The doctor listened expectantly. “Lumine hasn’t had time to completely take over the Heart Prism yet, I think that’s how we were able to get away. As long as it hasn’t been completely corrupted yet, I should be able to tap into the nearest foci. If I can, I’ll use the Heart’s power to make sure the baby survives. I’ll have to put them into stasis to do it but that might be for the best anyway.”
“Is that possible?” the doctor asked. “You can just… force a baby to develop?”
Peridot answered honestly, “I don’t know.” She let out a breath, “I’m also pretty sure that Lumine, er, Sombra is going to know where I am as soon as I do.”
Bandage responded, “You said he controls the guards now, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then he’s going to find out hide-out anyway.”
“Are you sure?” Peridot asked.
“I am,” he looked at the princess. “We all loved the prince and princess. I know that every pony here would agree that its worth the risk to save their child.”
Peridot’s bottom lip quivered as she fought to maintain her self composer. Finally she nodded, “Okay then, let’s do it.”