Ten years and a half before the Canterlot Wedding, dozens of miles south of the Prance-Istalloña border…
They had left Maris for Maredrid the day before, following the main roads at a fast, but normal pace, to look unsuspicious after Gabrielle Pommel’s death was known, but also for the sake of their horses. Despite the anger boiling inside her, Chrysalis had followed Vigil’s advice on keeping it in check before she finally met two of her many tormentors again. The fact that Vigil had picked Mendax, and Clarion, two of the former’s best Executioners, to watch over them had helped a lot in that.
Vigil recommended to make them rest for a while after he spotted a small grove close to a river, a bit away from the road. Although Chrysalis was impatient to arrive in Maredrid, she didn’t disagree on the fact they, along with their horses, needed rest. As their mounts were busy grazing peacefully close to the water, Vigil leaned against a tree, against which Chrysalis was already sitting, to take a short nap. The Swarm Lord brought his hands behind his head before he noticed the woman sitting just next to him cocking an eyebrow in his direction.
“...What?” he asked in confusion.
“There are other trees,” Chrysalis remarked, waving at the grove around them. “Why do you sit next to me?”
“Maybe because I happen to like having a gorgeous woman next to me when I sleep,” Vigil replied, a mocking smile gracing his face when he saw Chrysalis faintly blush in response. “I’m just a man after all.”
A tanned hand quickly pushed his head away from its owner, making him fall on the side while Chrysalis muttered the word “moron”. Vigil chuckled lightheartedly before sitting back against the tree, only this time he was sitting opposite of his former protégée. Due to her time as a concubine, Chrysalis was really good at pretending to be at ease in men’s company. It was one of her strength as a Changeling: more than a few of her contracts were successful because she knew how to be extremely seductive even without changing her targets’ perception with her magic. Yet whenever Vigil would tease her, she would just get as flustered as a twelve year old girl after her big brother playfully mentioned her crush in front of her.
Grumbling about Vigil’s behavior, Chrysalis tied the horses’ reins to a nearby tree with her levitation magic, and two great lengths of rope. While she did that, Vigil pulled two blankets out of their packages after noticing the winds picking up in intensity as well as the skies becoming cloudier. While he estimated that it would unlikely rain, their break would probably be on the chill side of life. Both wrapped themselves in their respective blanket, and soon enough they were sleeping calmly under the trees.
************
It was a couple of hours later that Chrysalis opened her eyes, feeling that the winds had calmed down after clearing the skies of it’s greyish cover. She blinked a couple of times before noticing that two things were wrong: One, she hadn’t fallen asleep facing the river;Two, a strong arm was lazily resting around her shoulders. She looked to her right, surprisingly seeing Vigil’s sleeping face hang in her direction.
She blushed madly when she remembered she had groggily moved around the tree when she had been feeling too cold on her side. Vigil had groaned when she woke him up with a gentle poke on the shoulder before letting her sit right next to him without a word. Chrysalis remembered scooting closer to his side before they arranged their blankets to wrap them around both of them, and their sleep came back.
Chrysalis would never admit it to anyone, but she enjoyed sleeping next to her past savior. Her sleep was always peaceful whenever Vigil was close, akin to what she used to feel whenever she would sleep next to her mother back in her days in the slums. She knew that some, like her former trainer Red Carnation, thought that Vigil, and herself were a thing, but they all were wrong. Not that Chrysalis’ mind was totally against it as Vigil was quite easy on the eye whenever he took his Exoskeleton off, even though that rarely happened. To parody an often-used saying of her savior: she was just a woman after all.
Five more minutes… Chrysalis whispered in her head before snuggling closer against Vigil’s warm side. Mendax, and Clarion won’t mind waiting five more minutes if they know what’s best for them.
Unfortunately for her, a distant thunderclap brought her out of half-asleep state barely a minute later. Chrysalis pulled her head away from its resting place to look for any storm clouds formation that could be coming their way, only to be puzzled when the sky was as clear as a glass window. When she heard other sounds of thunder a couple of seconds later, she stood up, taking care of not waking up Vigil, to wander in the direction the thunderclaps came from. She walked through the grove until she caught sight of the road below the hill that flanked it. A distant column of smoke caught her attention.
“What do we have here?” Chrysalis let out quietly as she spotted a partially smoking carriage a couple of hundred meters down the road.
Her hand went inside a small satchel she kept at her belt, pulling a small telescope out of it. It took her a few seconds to get the lense focused enough to see what was going on, only let out a calm “huh” of surprise when it was done. Chrysalis instantly identified the coat of arms on the carriage’s flanks as the Crystal Heart of the Mi Amores, the ruling family of Istalloña. She zoomed out a little bit to witness the escort of the carriage fighting off waves of bandits that came rushing out of the two groves from each side of the roads. Chrysalis wasn’t all that surprised of the attack itself, as tensions between the nobility and the small folks were high since the building of the railways connecting Istalloña to Equestria has been put on hold for a few years now.
“....Should have given whoever is in that carriage a bigger escort,” Chrysalis commented professionally as the fifteen or so heavily armored soldiers pained to contain the onslaught of the badly equipped, but much more numerous peasants. “They’ll reach the carriage soon…”
Chrysalis’ prediction came true a few seconds later when a Jupitarian attacker flew to the driver seat of the carriage, which had been vacant after another Jupitarian tackled the driver off of it. He cracked the reins strongly, causing the four horses to lunge forward before anyone could stop them. The sudden start of the carriage broke the defenders’ formation, making it more difficult for them to fend off the raiders, and impossible to stop the carriage. As the carriage rode along the road, a couple of peasants managed to jump on it, one of them reaching for the right door of it.
“Ouch! That must have hurt,” Chrysalis commented calmly as she witnessed the attacker getting shoved off the carriage after a small case was thrown in his face from inside the door’s window.
A few moments later, the carriage passed closely to the grove from which Chrysalis was observing the scene. When it did, the passenger jumped out of it, surprising the three peasants still on it who jumped off the carriage twenty or thirty meters down the road while their Jupitarian driver was oblivious to that, and kept going forward. Pulling her telescope away, Chrysalis slightly hid behind a tree, her green gaze focused on the young girl who had jumped out of the carriage.
Her pink summer dress had been partially torn when she rolled over in the grass to soften her jump, and thus was maculated by brown, and green stains. She pushed her messy, long pink, cream, and purple hair out of her face before she pulled herself up, and ran up the small hill to reach for the grove. Chrysalis watched the girl, who looked to be not older than fifteen year old, running as fast as she could to the relative safety of the grove while her pursuers were slowly gaining on her. The Swarm Lady also noticed that carriage had been pulled to stop, and that its Jupitarian driver had taken off of it.
Chrysalis kneeled down in a nearby bush as the girl ran past her, zigzagging through the trees until Chrysalis lost sight of her. Soon after, the Jupitarian, and his three comrades rushed into the grove, muttering curses or lewd comments about the princess they were after. She was about to get back to Vigil when she heard a feminine voice shouting in distress.
“No! Let me go! Please!” the girl called in pleading tone. “Get off me! Get off me!”
Chrysalis stopped in her tracks instantly at those words. Those words were familiar, as she had said them many times on a ship that sailed to Nadira eleven years ago. She remembered clearly the four men that had surrounded her back then, but for a moment she forgot that two of them were in Maredrid waiting for her. She turned around, and rapidly walked toward where the screams came from.
Quickly after her change of direction, she found the three grounded attackers standing around a thick tree on top of which the princess was holding onto the branch while the Jupitarian was pulling her away from it. Chrysalis growled in anger at the sight of the terrorized young face, imagining it it had been hers once. A ball of green fire formed itself in her palm before she hurled it on the back of the winged attacker.
He screamed in pain, and fear when the emerald colored flames spread to his hair, shoulders, and to his feathery wings before he let go of the girl to fall on the ground. Chrysalis then demanded her Exoskeleton to form blade-shaped spines from her wrist-bands, which it did instantly. Before any of the other three could turn around, she plunged the one on her right wrist deep inside the closest’s back, making the blade come out in the middle of his chest.
Chrysalis aimed her left blade to the throat of another raider, slicing it open before he could completely turn around to see what was going on. She freed her right blade by pushing the impaled one with a strong shove of her leg, and then faced the last man who had chased the princess to the grove.
He scaredly threw a beam of Titanian magic that she brushed aside with one calm swift of her now freed blade. As she took one step in his direction, he jumped backwards before throwing another beam at her, which she deflected again as if it was nothing but a speck of dust. Once he had been driven against a thick trunk, he cast as many magic projectile he could, though none of them reached their target.
She crossed her arms against his chest when he raised his to surrender, making the blades graze both sides of his throat. Chrysalis raised her right eyebrow a bit when she spotted tears of terror in his eyes.
“.... I yield… Have mercy, please..” he whimpered in desperation.
“..... hmmmmm.” Chrysalis let out as she pondered over his demand for a few seconds, before she took her blades away from his throat by taking a few steps back . “You and your friend ganged up against a terrorized little girl…. I don’t give mercy to rapists.”
The glimpse of hope that lit up his face when he saw her taking a step back didn’t get the time to return to his fearful expression before the two blades cut his head off. She humphed disdainfully as her wrist-blades took back their casual wristbands appearance, turning back to the princess in the tree.
The fifteen year-old was about to let go of the branch that kept her in the canopy when Chrysalis caught her in green magic. Surprised by the levitation field surrounding her, the young princess screamed once again in fear, probably thinking it was another raider. Holding her ear in discomfort, Chrysalis levitated the girl down while making her look in her direction. As she stopped her spell, the girl saw Chrysalis, and the dead bodies of her attackers, and her screams came to a stop.
“....you...You saved me?” the princess asked in a shocked whisper.
“I guess so,” Chrysalis let out calmly before the young girl shoved her head against her chest. “HEY! WHA…”
“...Thank you,” the girl’s muffled voice whimpered in between soft sobs. “...thank you.”
Chrysalis was shocked to hear the girl crying against her chest in apparent relief, but what shocked her more was to see herself rest her hand on the girl’s head. Even more so when started to gently pat it comfortingly, but she brushed that shock deep inside her mind. Instead of acting shocked about it, Chrysalis said the words she had always wanted to hear in the past.
“It’s okay, little girl,” Chrysalis whispered in a gentle tone, hugging back the princess delicately. “You’re safe now.”
They remained like that for a good minute or two, Chrysalis waiting patiently for the young girl to calm down. It was obvious that Vigil had heard what happened, and was probably watching them from the shadows after having realized it would be best for him to do so. The princess softly pulled away from their hug, causing Chrysalis to look down in time to see her brushing the tears away from her purple eyes.
“...Sorry about that,” the princess sheepishly whispered. “I shouldn’t have done that with a total stranger….”
“I can’t totally disagree with you,” Chrysalis let out with a warm chuckle. “But believe me, sometimes you just need to be held by someone.” When the princess nodded with a small smile, Chrysalis continued. “Besides, if we introduce each other, we wouldn’t be strangers anymore, right?”
“I...I suppose,” the princess agreed softly. “I’m C…”
At that moment, Chrysalis heard the sound of a teleportation spell just behind her. She turned around quickly, only to have the end of a spear a few inches away from her throat. The spearman that was threatening was wearing a heavy suit of of armor without the matching helmet, which he had probably been taken off during the fight against the raiders, and carrying a large, round shield that bore the heraldic of a golden namesake surrounded by a faint halo. The spearman barely looked older than the princess herself, with two-toned blue hair cut military-short, and his dark brown face sporting a couple of discrete pimples.
“Step away from Princess Cadenza!” he ordered slowly, his voice cold, and threatening.
“Shining, it’s fine!” The princess apparently named Cadenza called as she stepped out from behind Chrysalis. “She rescued me! She’s a good person!”
Well, that’s usually a matter of point of view…. But, for the sake of the discussion, let’s roll with that, Chrysalis thought as she kept an unimpressed expression.
“Princess, please come here,” Shining demanded softly, his eyes narrowed at Chrysalis. “We don’t know who she’s… She could be part of the attack for all we know…”
“Shining please,” Cadenza let out softly as she rested her hand on Shining’s spear holding shoulder. “I know you’re looking out for me, but I can assure you she’s not related to those raiders… If she hadn’t intervened, I’d probably be off Gods know where.”
“Indeed,” Chrysalis commented softly, resting the tip of her finger on the end of the spear. “Listen to your girlfriend, Golden Shield boy. She’s got common sense at least,” she added as she gently pushed the weapon away from her. “And put your toy away, you’re going to poke someone’s eye out with it.”
Cadenza, and Shining’s cheeks turned red at what she had just said before they started mumbling incoherently about relationships not being proper, being too young, or too busy. When they calmed down, Shining insisted on them joining back the rest of the Princess’ escort, prompting Cadenza into inviting Chrysalis in her carriage after the latter mentioned she was heading for the Istalloñan Capital. An offer that Chrysalis accepted after a short reflexion.
“...You won’t mind riding alongside knights of the Golden Shield, right Vigil?” Chrysalis asked once the two youngsters were out of hearing.
“Considering you’re going to do the rest of the trip in a comfortable carriage, then yes. I will mind,” Vigil replied matter-of-factly as he stepped out from behind a nearby tree. “I wonder what those Equestrian Knights are doing here escorting that princess though.”
“Isn’t Istalloña under Equestria’s Protectorate?” Chrysalis asked casually. “That shouldn’t be all that surprising to see some of its military here.”
“It is, but the ruling Prince messed up when he cancelled the railway project after politely asking Princess Celestia to shove her rails where her glorious sun never shines,” Vigil explained softly. “According to the rumors, that is…”
“Why did he do that?” Chrysalis asked in confusion as they turned to head for their camp side. “Economically speaking, that can only be good for the Principality,” she added after passing by the burned Jupitarian
“No idea. Maybe you’ll find out more about it in your ride with his daughter.” Vigil’s boot glowed green before a dozen of sharp spikes appeared on its sole. “By the way, here’s a quick reminder…” he said as he slammed his foot on the back of the burned man’s neck, causing him to let out soft whimpers of pain that were muffled by his own blood. “Burning still doesn’t mean killing, Chrysalis.”
“I had to let you do something, right?” Chrysalis asked back with a shrug as Vigil’s boot took its original shape back. “You would have complained if I hadn’t left one for you.”
“Hm!” Vigil let out with a laid-back nod while the gargles of dolor came to a stop behind them. “I suppose you’re right.”