Glim

by Smayds

Chapter 13: Flying High, Falling Hard

The pink unicorn started in shock, coming to a halt on her wanderings through one of the parks she’d found in this strange and sprawling city. Keeping to herself and avoiding the many other ponies that were here, she was trying to get some enjoyment from the spring flowers that were blossoming everywhere around the land - she didn’t know why she ever bothered to look for enjoyment, she’d never managed to find any, but she kept trying all the same. But then, she’d seen it. Right there, right in front of her, all around her. Clear as crystal. Clearer. The park had disappeared and she’d seen it in a flash. For a brief moment it was real, more real than the actual real world itself.

A waking vision.

She trotted quickly over to a nearby park bench and sat down, closing her eyes and slowing her breathing. She’d had these awful things before, maybe once a century or so. At least it meant an uninterrupted night of sleep. Whenever she’d been awake and seen something that hadn’t happened yet, she always had a completely dream-free night that evening.

Wonderful, she thought. That’s like, instead of having rotten grass for dinner, there’s nothing for dinner instead. Hey, cheer up, at least you’re not eating rotten grass. Stupid thing to think anyway. She’d eaten rotten grass more than once, a long time ago when there was nothing else. If she just stopped eating she wouldn’t die of hunger, of course, and she never felt any hunger pains, but if she didn’t eat she’d start to feel so sick, she’d get sicker and sicker until she couldn’t stand it any more and then, grub’s up, rotten grass. But food was everywhere nowadays. Had been for centuries. And it was all free, which was good, because she wasn’t even sure she understood money properly.

She thought vaguely that the promise of a single night’s respite from dreaming the horrors of the future should make her glad, at least. It didn’t. It never had before and it certainly wouldn’t make her glad this time either. She’d spend the next few days feeling miserable, she knew it, because the waking visions were different. They were even more horrible than what she saw while she was asleep, not because of their content, but because she knew she’d never be able to prevent them.

When the future changed, usually with very important results, she saw what would change it. Perhaps only a minute or two before it happened, with no time at all to figure out who the ponies involved were or where they might be found. Something was about to change the future in a very, very important way, something she’d never seen before, something that the Element hadn’t seen coming either.

She had seen the strange creatures in this vision before though, seen them with her own eyes as well as inside her head. It was a very long time ago. She’d forgotten about them until now. She’d been very young, maybe only a hundred and sixty, maybe a hundred and seventy, back when the whole world had got dark and cold for almost a year, back when her dreams were even colder and darker. But she didn’t know why an unseen pony would have said ‘It’s nothing serious, and you’re certainly not in trouble’ at the same time, because she’d definitely heard somepony say that when she’d seen the... The whatever-they-were’s. She sighed sadly.

She put the vision out of her mind and tried to forget it had happened, though she knew she wouldn’t forget. She already felt miserable, and she’d feel like this for days. Whatever that vision was, it would happen in a minute or so, probably somewhere very far away from here. And so she could do nothing to help, could do nothing to warn. She got back to her hooves and headed down the path, looking sadly at the ground.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” a sharp voice said. She jumped. She looked up.

A pegasus pony was standing right in front of her, wings spread, as if to try to keep her where she was. This pony was wearing armour and he had a very piercing look on his face. The pink unicorn jumped again at that look.

“Whuh-what?” she stammered. “What? What do you want?” She was frightened. She’d spoken to thousands of ponies over the years, had had thousands of very short, mostly one-sided conversations. But nopony, ever, had spoken to her before she started speaking to them.

“Ma’am, is your name Pinkie Pie?”

“No,” she said, then paused. She knew that name. Did she? Pinkie Pie... Pinkie Pie had been Rarity’s friend. That pony who had died just before she woke up. Had she? Had Pinkie Pie been Rarity’s friend? “I don’t know. It could be, I guess. I don’t think I have a name. I think I know that name, but I don’t... I don’t really know.” She was getting more and more frightened by the second. She’d never seen this, she’d never dreamed this. “What do you want?” she asked again, panic in her voice now. She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know what to do or what...

“Ma’am, would you please come with me?” the guard said in a much softer tone, and then her panicked look disappeared. But not because of his change in tone. “It’s nothing serious, and you’re certainly not in trouble, but I think you might be the unicorn that we’ve been looking for for nearly ten years. Some ponies just want to talk to you. They want to make sure you’re alright.” She didn’t really hear him. She wasn’t looking at him. She’d sat down on her haunches and was looking straight up into the sky.

This was the waking vision she’d just seen, it was how it had started. It was about to happen, for real this time, right before her eyes. She could see them, she could see the start of the vision. The words that the gold-armoured pony had spoken, she’d heard those words as she saw what would happen. And she could do something about it. For the first time ever, she could warn somepony about a waking vision.

“A little winged unicorn’s about to be attacked. Up there. I think you can help.” Those words weren’t in her vision. Should she had said that? Well, they were her visions, she figured she could do what she pleased with them. And so she did something else that she hadn’t just seen before it had happened. She pointed at the small figures high above. Other figures were streaking towards the three airborne ponies. Many, many, many other figures. Black, angular, dangerous figures. They were appearing from nowhere, just popping suddenly into sight like raindrops on a window.

The puzzled guard followed her gaze skywards. He saw the small figures high above. He gasped as he recognised them and saw what was going to happen. “Princess Glim!” he yelled in horror and shock, leaping off the ground in a cloud of dust and feathers, pulling two long, sharp swords from twin scabbards, unbuckling his armour as fast as he could.

The pink unicorn didn’t need to watch. She knew what would happen. But she watched anyway. She felt strange. Something weird and warm was happening inside her chest. She’d just changed one of her visions herself. She’d never done that before, just repeated them as she saw them. Maybe when she dreamed herself telling certain ponies certain things, she was seeing herself repeat them before she actually repeated them? She shook her head. She didn’t like thinking about it like that, it made her dizzy.

Right now though, the thought that she really would get a very good night’s sleep tonight made the warm feeling in her chest spread. Bits and pieces of the guard’s armour clanged to the ground around her as she saw hundreds of other ponies, some near, some far, start racing high into the sky, discarding their own armour for extra speed. The many other ponies in the park had started to notice. Exclamations, the sounds of hooves, a few screams reached her ears. There were a lot of those strange black shapes in the sky high above her now, and it looked like the pegasi were fighting them. A lot of those ponies were already starting to fall...

Then she remembered how the vision had ended. She yelped, springing to her hooves and looking madly around for some cover. There wasn’t anything nearby, nothing close enough -

With a sudden flash of silvery-pink light, she found herself standing under a tree at the edge of the park. She always hated when that happened, but right now, she was thankful for the branches and leaves over her head. She jumped as a ringing crash echoed all around the park, causing a brief wave of surprised screams from the panicking ponies everywhere. There’d been a sudden hot pulse of light over by the bench she’d sat on. Just above it. Whatever that was, it had blown the bench into splinters and set the grass on fire around it. The stones of the path were all hot and red and cracked, too. Weird. That hadn’t been in her vision either. What had that been?

She looked up through the tree branches. More and more of the creatures were appearing up in the sky. There were a lot of little pops and flashes of light up there, some of them were red and purple and some were golden. There had been some blue ones before but they’d stopped after a really big silver flash. Some of them were the same colour as that big bang that had happened near the ground. The pegasus ponies that had all flown up to help were disappearing with some of the puffs of light, and then that really bad thing happened. She threw herself to the ground and covered her ears and eyes. She’d seen this once and she didn’t want to see it again.

Ponies all around the park, already panicked and fearful, started screaming in terror as the blue sky above flashed white-hot with an alicorn’s unstoppable rage.

The pegasi had pulled out all the stops today, that was sure. Well, everypony would have been surprised if the day hadn’t been perfect. It was a national holiday, after all. Little Princess Twilight Glimmer had turned eight.

Twilight smiled around at the memorials as Starburst spread out the picnic blanket and plopped the basket he’d been levitating down squarely in the middle. The little winged unicorn instantly set about straightening and smoothing the wrinkles and creases in the cloth. Her father sure was messy sometimes...

“Well, a graveyard’s not a very nice place to visit for somepony’s birthday,” Twilight said. “But this isn’t a graveyard, even though there are some very important ponies buried here. It’s a memorial garden. It’s where I come to remember my best friends.”

“I wish I knew them,” Glim said. “They all sound like such cool ponies, Momma.” She’d finished straightening the cloth and had sat down at the basket, pulling plates and bread and lots of lovely food out, stacking everything neatly into little piles.

Twilight smiled at her daughter. “Yes, they were all pretty cool. Especially Rainbow Dash. You know that rainbow-haired pony in your class?”

Glim looked up. “Firefly? Yeah, she’s really cool, Momma! She can already fly and everything! I wish I could fly,” the little pony said a little sadly. She turned back to her unpacking.

Starburst winked at Twilight as he sat down next to their daughter and started making sandwiches. Twilight winked back. Oh, their little filly had no idea what was in store for her today. “Yes, Firefly. I know her father very well. Shockfront’s head of the Ponytopia weather team. He’s got a rainbow mane as well. And he’s just as cool as his daughter.”

“How come you almost never see a pony with hair like Firefly’s? Like, all the colours of the rainbow? It’s pretty.” Glim looked up at her own hair, long and straight, deep-purple with a dozen cherry streaks. “My hair’s boring.”

“Your hair’s lovely, Sweetheart. It looks like your great-grandmother’s.” Though just a distant childhood memory, Twilight Sparkle could still remember her grandmother’s mane. “But there is something very special about ponies with rainbow manes, you know. They’re all descendants of Rainbow Dash, and they’re all the best flyers in the world.”

“Wow, I wish I had a rainbow mane so I could be the best flyer in the world. Hey, Momma? How come only some ponies have wings? Like, pegasuses -”

“Pegasi, Sweetheart,” Starburst said as he shredded a lettuce.

“Yeah, pegasisers... Pegasigns... You know!” she said. “Why are some ponies pegasus ponies and some ponies are unicorns? And how come I’m both? None of my friends are both. And how come some ponies don’t have any wings or horns?”

Starburst popped a thick tomato sandwich down in front of the little purple filly. “What do you call a pony with no wings or horn, Sweetheart?”

“An earth pony, Daddy,” she said. “Why earth? What’s that mean?”

“It’s another word for the ground,” Twilight said, levitating a sandwich off the pile that Starburst had been building and putting it onto a plate. “They’re in charge of the land. They’re the only ones who really know how to take proper care of it.”

“Yeah but, um, what about me? What about pega... pega... Why is that word so funny? There’s pegasus, and then there’s pegasisisis...” Her mouth turned down. “How do you say it?”

“Pegasi,” Twilight and Starburst both said together, chuckling.

“Pegassy,” Glim said. “Pegasussy... Oh... I mean, um. Am I a pegasus or a unicorn?”

“You’re a winged unicorn. Your Auntie Cadance was one as well, remember?”

“Yeah Momma, I wish I coulda met her. She died a long time before I was born, right?” The filly had finished her unpacking, and she picked up her sandwich and started to munch as Starburst finished building another impressive one. He picked it up and took a bite. “I like that picture of her in my room, she was so pretty. How come she died so long ago?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Sweetheart. Hmm,” Starburst said. “You know Momma and your Aunts are very, very old, remember?”

She swallowed her half-chewed mouthful. “But Daddy,” she said, giggling, “Momma looks younger then you!” Starburst laughed as well.

“I keep telling your Mom that she doesn’t look a day over thirty, but you should’ve heard her complain when we celebrated her nineteen hundred and fiftieth,” he said, smirking at his wife. “The cake had to be ten feet across to hold all the candles, and we had the fire brigade on standby in case they set fire to the Castle -” He caught the sandwich that Twilight had thrown at him with his magic and levitated it back to her plate. Glim started laughing her head off, while her mother glared at her father. Twilight was trying to look cross, but she couldn’t keep the smile out of her eyes.

“So, um, if I’m a winged unicorn,” Glim asked after the laughter had petered out, “that means I’m a unicorn, really. Right? A unicorn, with wings?”

“No, not really,” Starburst said as he finished his second sandwich. “It doesn’t sound like much but there’s an important difference. You’re half-unicorn and half-pegasus, but a very special one. It’s normally only one of the traits that come out, not all of them at once. You would’ve got the pegasus side from Mom because my whole family are unicorns.”

“Ah... Huh?” The little pony just looked bewildered.

“Sorry, Sweetheart. What I meant is that no, you’re not a unicorn with wings. You’re a pegasus and a unicorn at the same time. All in one.”

“Um, like Momma?” Glim looked at Twilight.

“Almost. Momma used to be just a unicorn, just like me, but now she’s all three kinds of pony,” Starburst said. “All three together. She has the magic of the unicorn, the wings of the pegasus, and the connection to the land that the earth pony has.”

Glim put down her sandwich and scrunched up her nose. “The connection to the land? What’s so special about that?” she said. “They don't have wings or a horn, they’re just ordinary ponies.” Twilight smirked. Starburst actually laughed. “What? What’s so funny, Daddy?” she asked, sounding a little put out.

“Oh, Sweetheart, that’s simply not true at all,” he said, smiling and shaking his head. “Unicorns are ordinary ponies. Pegasi are ordinary ponies. It’s the earth ponies who are extraordinary.”

“But how?” she asked. “If you can’t fly and if you can’t do magic -”

“They can do magic,” Starburst said. “They can do the most amazing magic.”

“But I’ve never seen an earth pony doing any magic! The Earth Princesses can’t do any magic! Well,” she said, a little quieter now, “I can’t do magic either. But one day I will! And one day I’ll be able to fly! What can earth ponies do that I won’t be able to do?”

“Hmm,” Twilight said, tapping her chin. “Here, I’ll show you.” She opened Glim’s half-eaten sandwich and levitated one of the fat, juicy slices of tomato inside. She brushed off the mustard and picked out a single tomato seed, stood up, walked off the checked cloth onto the grass and sat down, studying the patch of grass in front of her. The blades of grass flicked this way and that as she peered at the dirt beneath. Glim and Starburst followed.

“Now, watch this carefully, Sweetheart,” he said. “I can’t do this, and neither can you. It’s something only earth ponies can do, and it’s amazing.” She looked up at her father with puzzled excitement and anticipation in her eyes. “This is why Equestria is such a fantastic place. It’s not because of the unicorns or the pegasi. It’s because of the earth ponies. When they found out how to do this, everything changed.”

Twilight had evidently finished studying the ground. “Yes, this’ll work. Good soil. And I can use some of the grass, too.” She dropped the tomato seed onto the grass in front of her. “Auntie Celestia and Auntie Luna can do this too,” she said, “and me as well. Because we’re as much an earth pony as a pegasus or a unicorn. And this is why earth ponies are the most respected out of the three tribes.”

She stomped her front hoof directly down on the seed. Her entire foreleg sank into the ground, right up to her shoulder.

Glim’s eyes opened wide. So did her mouth. “Momma! How’d you do that? You nearly buried your leg!” The little winged unicorn stomped the ground herself a couple of times, as hard as she could. She barely dented the grass.

The ground was trembling for about six inches all around Twilight’s buried foreleg. The thick blades of grass were retracting, leaving a small bare spot of dirt. “This is what earth ponies can do that nopony else can,” she said, winking up from the ground at her wide-eyed daughter. She sat suddenly upright, yanking her hoof from the ground -

- and pulled a fully-grown tomato plant straight up out of the hole her foreleg had made. Its branches were laden, practically dripping with ripe, red, juicy fruit.

“Wow!” Glim squeaked, clapping her forehooves and waving her wings madly. “Momma, that was cool! I’ve never seen anypony do that before!”

“We never took you to an orchard,” Starburst said as he picked a tomato with his magic and took a bite. “We really should, one day,” he said thickly.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Daddy,” Glim giggled. As her parents laughed, she suddenly squealed and bounded over to the picnic basket. She yanked out a small punnet of strawberries. “Momma! Momma!” she cried as she came bouncing back, holding it up. “Strawberries have seeds! Can you do it to strawberries too?!” Twilight Glimmer was a particularly maniacal fan of strawberries.

“I don’t know,” Twilight said. “There’s plenty there for you to enjoy, you know.” She was grinning. Glim didn’t notice the grin.

“But Momma!” she cried, nose wrinkling up. “But Momma! It’s my birthday!”

“Yes, it’s your birthday. And you already opened your presents.” Well, most of them. Starburst and herself had one more surprise for her. “And there’s already a really big lunch over there,” she added, pointing at the picnic. “Don’t be so ungrateful, Sweetheart.”

Glim sat down and looked at the ground. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it, I-” She was cut off as Starburst sat down and put his foreleg over her shoulders.

“We’ve always tried to bring you up properly, Sweetheart,” he said. “We always knew it would be hard, because we’re some of the most famous and important ponies in the world. But neither Mom or me were famous when we were little like you. We were ordinary ponies. But you know that you were famous before you were even born, and we want to make sure you understand what that means. We want to keep you grounded. That’s why you go to an ordinary school in disguise. That’s why your guards are disguised to look like little colts and fillies.”

Glim looked up at her father. She started to smile when she saw the expression on his face.

“I don’t think that Mom knows how to make strawberries grow,” he whispered with a smirk.

“Fine,” Twilight said. Father and daughter looked over at her.

“It is your birthday, and it is a pretty cool thing to see. And they are tastier straight off the bush.” She rolled her eyes. “Watch this.” She grabbed the top of the tomato plant with a hoof.

“Hold on,” Starburst said. He picked a few more of the fat, ripe tomatoes. “These are really good, Sweetie. Don’t want to recycle them all,” he grinned.

“You know, you can be as bad as her, sometimes,” Twilight grinned back, as Glim started giggling. “Okay. Here we go.” Twilight pushed the entire tomato plant straight down into the ground and patted the soft, damp earth where it had just stood.

Glim was the picture of awe once again. She started squeaking as Twilight plucked a single strawberry seed off one of the fat fruit in the punnet, laid it on the rich, brown dirt, and slammed her foreleg down into the ground again, paused for a second, and then pulled a completely different plant straight up from the ground. Like the tomato plant, it looked like it had been tended by a particularly caring gardener for years. Her daughter was already squealing in delight, eating fat, red strawberries directly off the bush.

“Don’t eat too many,” Twilight said. “You don’t want to get too full.”

“Yeah. We have one more present for you, Sweetheart,” Starburst said. His horn flashed bright scarlet and a small wrapped package appeared out of thin air at her hooves. The strawberries forgotten for the moment, she squealed again, clapped her hooves, and started to rip the paper to shreds.

“Oh thank you, Daddy! Thank you, Momma! What... What is it?” she asked in bewilderment. She held up a pair of large, round goggles. “What are they?”

“That’s not the present,” Twilight said, “but you have to wear them. We’re going to teach you how to fly.”

Twilight had to actually suppress the urge to cry. She hadn’t seen such an enormous smile since Pinkie Pie’s hundredth birthday.

“Alright,” Twilight said. “Daddy’s going to help keep you straight and level. He won’t really be lifting you up, he’s just going to help you keep your balance. You’re going to have to keep yourself up in the air, Sweetheart.”

“Okay,” she said, wiggling her nose to get the goggles seated properly. “Hey, wait. If we’re gonna be flying waaaaay up there” - she swept a hoof across the sky - “how’s Daddy gonna help me? He hasn’t got wings. Can he do a spell?” She looked at her father. His horn was flickering as he checked the wind above. “Daddy, can you do a spell to give yourself wings? ‘Cause I want you to come too, I don’t want you to stay down here on the ground!”

He cocked his head. “Just let me finish reading the wind, Sweetheart, then I’ll show you.” His horn flickered for a few more seconds then he looked at Twilight. “There’s a nice calm band up at about five hundred feet, it runs up to nine hundred or so then it gets a bit choppy.”

Twilight nodded. “Sounds good. Glim, Sweetheart, we’re going to go up pretty high but you don’t have to worry about falling. You don’t ever have to worry about falling. Daddy and me are going to be right underneath you and you can ride on our backs if you get tired.”

“But how’s Daddy going to fly?” the little pony asked, starting to get frustrated. “Daddy, you said you’d show me!”

“I don’t have wings, but I can fly,” Starburst said. His horn flicked into life and he reached for his own magical aura. It was always a bit weird doing this, it was like picking your hoof up with... itself. A faint reddish-purple glow spread from it and completely covered his body, and he bobbed up off the ground and hovered motionless about five feet in the air.

“Daddy!” Glim exclaimed. “You’re flying! Did you use magic to make wings? I can’t see any wings! Are they invisdible?”

“‘Invisible’, Sweetheart. I’m not really flying, I’m levitating. Like picking something up with magic. Like this.” He levitated the picnic basket and waggled it. “Except I’m picking myself up. It’s easy,” he fibbed.

“Wow, that’s really cool!” his daughter squeaked. “Momma, can you do that too?”

“Not as well as Daddy, but I don’t need to, anyway,” Twilight said as she spread her wings. “I have these, remember?”

Glim giggled as Starburst said “Levitating isn’t the same as flying, Sweetheart. I can’t levitate as high or go as fast as a pegasus can, and I have to keep using my magic to do it. And your Mom’s just being modest, as usual. She can self-levitate a lot better than I can.”

Twilight checked her daughter’s goggles again. “We’re all set. Ready to fly, Sweetheart?”

They’d managed, finally, to get somewhere up around five or six hundred feet. Glim was still shaky and nervous but with her parents directly underneath her, smiling straight up at her, she was managing pretty well for her first flight. Starburst had been using his telekinesis to tweak and correct her balance, though she seemed to have mostly got it now.

“Loosen up, Sweetheart!” Twilight called. “Your legs are too stiff! Just let them fold up under you!”

“Like this,” Starburst said over the wind. He zipped up next to her and tucked his forelegs up. “You fold the front ones like this, it keeps them out of the way but you can still move them for balance. Stick your back legs straight out!” Glim wiggled in the air as she adjusted her pose.

“When you’re flying fast, you put one or both of your forehooves straight out in front of you,” Twilight called up. “It helps you to push through the air when you’re going really fast. Like this!” She tucked one foreleg, extended the other, and raced ahead of her husband and daughter.

Everything got dark.

She halted, looking around wildly, surprised and confused. She was completely surrounded by a thick swarm of strange creatures, hundreds of them, they’d just appeared out of nowhere...

She recognised them. Her heart almost stopped.

Starburst was blinking furiously, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Twilight had roared off ahead, a couple hundred feet or so, and then that rippling ball of black smoke had just appeared around her, out of nowhere. It had just faded into sight. He felt her surprise, and she must have been feeling his confusion. He looked over to his daughter who was wearing a puzzled expression.

“Daddy, what are those things?” Glim asked. “What are they doing? Is Momma okay?” She sounded a little bit fearful.

“Things?” He looked again and yes, he could discern individual shapes amidst the smoke. Legs, strangely-shaped heads, long bodies... There were a lot of them, must have been hundreds of them in a big ball -

He jerked and yelled in surprise and pain. Something had grabbed him around his neck. He yelled again as he felt claws cut into him, and he wheeled around in the air, breaking his assailant’s grip...

He was staring into a face that wasn’t a face. It was big. It was as black as midnight. It didn’t have eyes or a nose, but it did have a mouth. A huge, wide, yawning mouth filled with rows and rows of long, sharp, serrated fangs. It raised a clawed foreleg and swiped at him -

- and it exploded into dust as he fired an enormous blast of wild, unfocused magic directly into the centre of that mouth. His levitation spell vanished with a pop and he fell. Reigniting his horn, he started glowing again and flipped upright in mid-air, looking around madly for his wife and child.

Twilight was just above him, about two hundred feet away. Well, he assumed she was there. The swirling cloud of creatures had completely surrounded her, and he could feel her increasing panic in his own heart, flashing back along their magical bond. The ball of smoke pulsed and writhed, and then suddenly, there were so many more, hundreds and hundreds more of them increasing the size of the swirling cloud of blackness -

His Daughter. Twilight would be fine, what could harm an alicorn anyway, where was Glim, he looked, he found her, she was falling. She was screaming her head off as she fell straight out of the air, unable to fly in her terror and blind panic. Flight wasn’t instinctive to her yet. Half a dozen of the wispy black shapes were diving straight towards her. They shrieked madly as they closed the distance rapidly.

He teleported the hundred-or-so feet down to his daughter and caught her with his forelegs, almost knocking the wind out of him. She screamed again, in pain now as well as in terror. He’d heard - and felt - something snap when he caught her. He could feel one of her wings crushed against his chest. He pushed it from his mind as he prepared to teleport to safety, even though he’d never been able to take anypony else along when he translocated before.

Mass was important in magic. Mass and size and distance and magical ability. His daughter was small and light but she might still be too large for him to teleport. How far? They were about a mile from the Castle’s high towers. Close enough. But did he have the skill, the power? No. He didn’t. Not a chance. And those things were almost upon them.

He killed his levitation spell and they dropped like rocks.

At least they were now outpacing the monsters. They’d been about five hundred feet in the air, so maybe five, maybe six seconds to the ground. The monsters that had been approaching them screamed almost as loudly as his daughter was. As they fell away, he saw the sun behind the creatures, almost directly overhead as it approached the zenith. He squinted at it. The sun. Could he use the sun? Years ago, Twilight had taught him how to use it to power his own innate magical abilities, to strengthen magical attacks and defenses. He didn’t know if he could channel sunfire into a translocation spell but he was out of options and out of time. The ground was less than two hundred feet and two seconds away.

He reached for the sun with his magic and felt a roar of white-hot power flow through his mind and into his horn, leaving pain in its wake, blindingly hot pain. Using the sun for magical fuel was like staring directly at it with wide-open eyes. It hurt like a son of a bitch, and he shuddered, almost dropping his daughter. Fumbling with her, gripping her tighter, he built a translocation spell in his head, tracing the magical shapes with his mind’s eye, funneling the brutal magic of the sun directly into it. If it didn’t work... He spared a tiny drop of magic to fire a telesonic spell at the squirming, rippling black ball high above, where the monsters - hundreds of them - had completely surrounded his wife.

I’VE GOT HER, he screamed at Twilight with his magic. He felt his wife’s heart leap from frustration and worry and panic to sudden relief, and then more worry and panic again. The tops of a few tall trees seemed to be shooting up into the sky all around him like leafy-green rockets. Holding his screaming daughter very, very tightly, he cast his spell and vanished in a burst of yellow sunfire, less than ten feet above a park bench.

“Guards!” he shouted. He was bent over his daughter, almost sick with the pain from that spell. It had been so strong that the carpet underhoof was smoking from the shock of their arrival. He squinted through the pain, tried to ignore it. Glim shook and sobbed on her bedroom floor, and he was running tactile magic along the bones in her left wing, the entire limb glowing bright red from his nervelessness spell... There. He winced. Radius fracture. Greenstick. He manipulated the bent bone into something like a straight line and magically froze it in place. She’d need medical attention - or Twilight - but it would do for a few minutes at least. One more nervelessness spell. “GUARDS!” he bellowed. Where were the guards? Hadn’t they heard him? They knew she was out with Twilight and himself this morning, they were probably at the end of the corridor instead of right outside the -

The doors banged open and two pegasi raced in. “More! Get every guard you can find! Unicorns and earth guards too! Weapons out!” he fairly screamed at them. One of them wheeled and vanished back through the doorway while the other jumped into the air and drew the two long swords that every pegasus guard carried these days, holding one in each forehoof.

The guard flew over to the balcony doors and kicked them open, splintering the locks, looking outside, up and down, then he whipped across to the bedroom doors and repeated the process. “All clear outside, Your Highness,” he said as he whirred across to the balcony again. “You’re wounded, sir.”

“Don’t care. No time.” Starburst picked up his sobbing daughter. “Glim. Glim! Daddy has to go. No!” he said as she started shaking her head and wailing. “Don’t cry. You’re safe. Daddy has to go and help Momma.” Like Twilight needed help. But he still had to go. He could feel her terror and anguish - and building rage - in his heart. “Don’t move your wing, Sweetheart. We’ll be right back!” He carried her over to her bed and sat her down. Tears were streaming down her face like twin rivers.

“Daddy, I do-don't want you to g-go! Whuh-what happened, Daddy? Wha-what were those...” she sniffled.

“Stay here, don’t go anywhere, this is important, Sweetheart,” he said urgently as, with thunderous hooffalls, dozens of guards started pouring into her room. Some of those hooffalls were very heavy indeed. Good. Earth guards. “We’ll be right back!” Ignoring her squeaking, tearful protests, he whirled around and glared bloody murder at the guards. A lot of pegasi hovering in the air, all of them with golden blades upraised and ready. They wouldn’t land until they were told to resheath their swords. A lot of unicorns standing with feet wide, horns already ignited for instant, deadly use. A lot of earth guards, narrowed eyes glinting from the deep slits in their helmets, all of them in armour far too heavy for any pegasus or unicorn to possibly wear, all of them having strapped on their steel hoofmaces. They looked like they were wearing huge spiked balls on their hooves instead of boots.

There were fourteen other young earth, unicorn and pegasus Princes and Princesses in the castle at the moment, and the guards would defend any of them to the death, though such a possibility was laughable in Equestria. But such possibilities were deadly serious in this case. Every guard knew of the Royals’ fears. There was absolutely no screwing around at all when it came to this particular little Princess.

“We’re above North Castle Park. Order One.” Starburst vanished with a flash of light so bright that the patch of carpet where he’d been standing was left black and charred from his spell.

The guards moved like lightning. The fastest pegasus there barrelled out of the open balcony doors to alert Celestia and Luna while the rest of them formed a circle five ponies deep all around Glim’s bed, all facing outwards. The pegasi were circling above her bed with blades held ready. A unicorn, a pegasus and two earth guards raced out into the corridor to give advance warning, and another small squad did the same on the balcony. The remaining unicorns opened every cupboard, every drawer, every closet and even her toy chest, checked everywhere for any possible intruder. Satisfied there were none, they slammed the doors and windows shut and held them tightly closed with magic. It had only been six seconds since the Prince had left, and the Princess was secure.

They trained and trained every day for just this situation, though none of them ever thought it would happen. That didn’t matter, because it was happening, right now. As the little Princess started wailing behind them, every guard’s face took on the same expression, an expression transcending anger, transcending fury. They knew their orders, and they’d all follow them gladly. Without hesitation. And with no regrets afterwards.

Order One. Something had tried to attack their beloved little Princess.

Anything that tried to step inside this room would die before it could blink.