Sergeant Major Cold Steel, 10th (Imperial Crystal) Hussars, knocked open the crystal door with a single kick of his emergency edible boot. As a gust of cold wind blew a miniature blizzard of snowflakes into the brothel, a dozen prostitutes looked up from their clients to the tall, broad and muscular Crystal Pegasus filling the door frame.
A middle-aged Unicorn mare leapt up from the desk where she was counting bits and waved her hoof. As she sidled over to Cold Steel, four nubile, young Crystal Pony mares lined up in front of him.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Major,” said the madam pleasantly in a Mustangian drawl. “Thank you for patronising our establishment. A stallion of your rank is surely worthy of something particularly special. Please, these are my best girls, the choice is yours.”
“Ma’am,” barked Cold Steel through a bushy moustache. “First, I am married! Second, I am risking my integrity merely being near your ‘establishment’! Third, and most important, where is Captain Flash Sentry?!”
The madam took a step back. “We take client confidentiality seriously here,” she said haughtily. “And even if he was here, which I cannot tell you, it is our policy that those who have paid for a session receive the full...”
The Sergeant Major marched past her, through the common room and into a corridor leading into the back. He paused at the third door along, which had an officer’s bicorne hanging on the doorknob. It opened before another kick.
Inside, a pretty, shocked-looking Crystal Pony mare lay on a feather bed. She stared at him in terror. A fur-trimmed pelisse was draped loosely over her shoulders. At the dresser at the side of the small room, Captain Flash Sentry looked up nonchalantly from the glass of wine he was pouring. The flap of his cavalry trousers hung open. “Don’t you know the meaning of a closed door in a whorehouse?”
Cold Steel gritted his teeth. Just because the war was over every soldier seemed to believe that discipline no longer mattered. What nonsense! How would they prepare for the next one?! It was bad enough trying to keep the rank and file in shape, but when their officer insisted on frequenting brothels in his uniform...!
“We have orders to investigate a border disturbance, sir,” growled the Sergeant Major, barely restrained from shouting. “A farmer reported banging sounds in the Crystal Mountains.”
A flicker of alarm seemed to pass over Sentry’s face. “Banging?”
The whore on the bed giggled. “Perhaps that was just you!”
The madam burst into the room. “Captain Sentry, I apologise, but this stallion...”
“Nothing to apologise for, Mrs Charm,” said Sentry, quickly recovering. “Alas, my duty calls.” He threw a handful of bits on to the dresser. “For any lost custom, and for the doors.”
A few moments later, Sentry and his new Squadron Sergeant Major strode out of the brothel, their pelisses buttoned up against the winter chill. Cold Steel grimaced as several Crystal Ponies stared at the uniformed Hussars exiting such an establishment. They took wing and fluttered down the street, lined with jagged crystal buildings.
“Sir,” said Cold Steel sharply. “With all due respect, you are a cad.”
“Those girls need work, Steel,” said Sentry simply. “Jobs are scarce up here; you know that as well as I do. Some did what our boys did and put on the uniform. Others do what they do. Everypony gets paid at the end of the day.”
“You disgrace the uniform, sir.”
Sentry guffawed. “Spirits above, Bright Ice was more fun than you, the poor bastard.” The old SSM was still convalescing with a missing leg at the Imperial Infirmary. “You weren’t with us down south, not with my squadron. I did everything the uniform requires of me: I led and I fought and I killed. I was quite good at it too, ask the lads. Hell, ask my medal rack next time we’re on parade.”
Cold Steel gritted his teeth again. To boast of one’s decorations was almost as bad as to lie about them. Sentry’s Pegasi might love him, but they loved him as they might a brother, not as a leader who might command them to go to their deaths. One day, Sentry would face an order he could not give, and for want of that, a battle, a war and a kingdom might be lost.
***
The patrol fluttered slowly through the Northern Marches, threading its way through the foothills of the Crystal Mountains. The winds and snows were not as strong here as they were deeper in the mountain range, but the power of Princess Cadance’s magic to repel the blizzards faded as they went ever further away from the Empire, and the chill was still biting. A few hardy trees, mosses and lichens clung to the rocks, but most were scoured bare. Patches of old snow collected in areas of shadow.
But more than the weather, it was the patrol’s attitude that set Cold Steel’s teeth on edge. The twelve Crystal Pegasi were new recruits, raw Troopers sent out to get a bit of experience in a safe environment. They had not been set a good example: they complained about the wind, swapped jokes, grumbled about how tight their boots were, and were generally an undisciplined, un-stealthy rabble.
“Quiet,” growled Flash Sentry from the front of the patrol.
Sentry’s usual casual, flippant tone had vanished again. There was iron in his voice, and a tang of worry. Steel had heard that voice, seen that look in the eyes, before from other officers. Sentry did not just expect a fight, he feared one. That quickly silenced the rest of the patrol.
The wind gusting around them, the patrol crept to below the crest of a rise. At the point of the column, Steel halted to check his map. This hill should put them overlooking the Howling Pass, a narrow gully winding through the Crystal Mountains to the taiga beyond. It was the perfect route somepony – or something – might take to attack the Empire.
Suddenly, he heard a ringing sound behind him, like coins rattling in a pocket. “Steel...”
The Sergeant Major turned. Flash Sentry was staring down at something by his hoof: his boot had disturbed a rough pile of what looked like thick metal tubes, nestled in a crevice on the hillside. Sentry knelt to pick one up. It looked to be made of rolled brass foil with a solid base.
Steel took the tube. The edges of foil were tattered and the inside was blackened. Judging by the smell, something had been burnt inside it, but he could see no residue. He could see no spots of rust on it. It had been dropped there recently. Perhaps even today...
Then he spotted a gleam in the corner of his eye. Barely three yards away to his left was another pile of metal tubes, and beyond that, he could just make out another. He swallowed and looked to his right, and saw another pile three yards away, and another beyond it.
What in Tartarus is this?!
“Steel.”
Sentry was standing atop the crest, staring down into the Howling Pass. His voice was iron. “Get the boys back to the Empire. Raise the regiment; the Guards; the cops as well. We need this place cordoned. And get the Prince.”
***
Prince Shining Armor, Princess Cadance at his side, galloped at the head of a company of Crystal Guard as they raced down the dirt track heading north from the Empire into the Howling Pass. A motley collection of Guards, Hussars, and police of the Crystal Constabulary in bottle-green uniforms and kepis flanked the road.
They came to a turn in the road that was sealed off by police tape. “Your Highnesses,” grunted the policepony standing guard. He opened the cordon and Shining Armor and Cadance passed through. They rounded the hill, and looked down into the Pass.
“Spirits above!” gasped Cadance.
Shining Armor gritted his teeth. Not even during the war had he seen such a field of butchery. From the surrounding hills, Guards and Hussars stared down into the Pass, while below forensic investigators worked their way through a gully carpeted with the corpses of hundreds of Diamond Dogs. Some gazed up at the sky with glazed eyes. Others were face down in the dirt. All bore deep, gaping holes in their bodies that still wept blood.
Colonel Silver Star, her face pale, strode up the track towards Shining Armor. “We’ve counted two hundred and fifty already, sir. We think this poor bastard here was the leader.”
Shining Armor knelt down in front of a body at the head of the horde. The Dog was powerfully-built, and within a crudely-wrought iron helmet, Shining could see a fierce jaw and sharp white teeth. He wore a broad torc of old, dull gold around his neck, graven with runes, and fastened below it was a thick white cloak.
Cadance gently turned the body with her magic so it was on its back. As she did so her hoof brushed the cloak. She had thought it greasy wool, taken off some unwary Mountain Sheep, but instead it was softer, warmer and fluffier than anything she had ever felt before. The finest cashmere of the Yak Republic was not as soft as this.
She examined the brooch on the cloak. It was hexagonal and of blue metal, with a crystal set in the centre. “Crystal Pony made?”
Silver Star nodded grimly. “Might be the same pack that was involved in that raid earlier this year.”
Bronze Star crossed over from a pile of corpses that was being tagged and documented. “If only it were that simple. Look at this.”
He led them over to the pile. Like the leader, some of the bodies wore neck bands, though theirs tended to be of iron or bronze. Others, however, wore no decorations at all, but instead had shaved the fur on their forelimbs into elaborate zigzag patterns. Another group had distinctly shaggy tails.
“Different packs working together,” growled Shining Armor.
Nopony needed to be told the significance of that: Diamond Dog packs simply didn’t work together. During the war the Crystal Constabulary had made a series of deep patrols into the Crystal Mountains and had reported the Dogs to be more likely to be fighting each other, whether in the open or down their holes, than preparing to raid the Empire. But something had changed. Something had driven them to cooperate.
Cadance swept her gaze over the rises that flanked the gully. “They chose this route for speed, not stealth. Whatever ambushed them must have hit them from these slopes. Did you find anything up there?”
“Captain Sentry!” barked Bronze Star.
Flash Sentry and his patrol were milling around on the edge of the corpse field. The Captain’s head was down. He walked over to them slowly, his face pale and drawn. “Sir, Your Highnesses.”
“Flash,” said Cadance softly, laying a hoof on his foreleg. “Tell me, did you find anything on the hills?”
Sentry’s jaw was shaking. He opened his sabretache with a wing and pulled out a hooful of the foil tubes. “These,” he muttered. “Twenty-five piles on each hill; anything between ten and twenty of them per pile.”
“We’ve got no idea what these are, sir,” said Bronze Star darkly “Worst case scenario, those piles could point to fifty soldiers defeating a force five times their size.”
“Impossible,” said Silver Star decisively. “These slopes aren’t steep enough to stop a charge. Not even our best line infantry could maintain a rate of fire high enough to break up a rush.”
Shining Armor looked at Flash Sentry and realised they were both thinking the same thing. “Unless they weren’t using spears. Captain, give me your knife, please.”
Sentry drew a utility knife from his belt. Shining Armor took it in his magic, knelt next to the nearest corpse and dug the knife into the wound.
“Sir, the police need these for examination!” cried Silver Star.
“They have plenty of other bodies to work with, and if I’m right they might not need to.” Shining Armor wiggled the knife in the wound until he felt something give way. Grimacing, he put the knife down and focused his magic on the wound. With a sucking pop, the thing embedded in the Diamond Dog’s body came free.
“Oh, Spirits,” croaked Sentry. Floating in Shining Armor’s magic, still spotted with blood, was a small, slightly-flattened, acorn-shaped piece of lead. For a few moments the Pass was silent but for the freezing wind.
“That settles it then,” growled Shining Armor. He looked up at the darkening sky. “Collect what bodies and evidence you can then pull our patrols in. I don’t want anypony in these hills after nightfall.”
***
Cadance and Shining Armor received the police report that night in their private solar in the Crystal Palace. There was no need to cause alarm by holding an official emergency council meeting, but by now everypony in the Empire was aware that something was going on. Something that was bigger than mere Diamond Dog raids.
“Every one of the Dogs was hit at least three times by these lead slugs,” said Chief Inspector Blue Line of the Crystal Constabulary. “They and the wounds they caused are basically identical to the one we found on Gold Aurora last year. Some of them seem to have shallow grooves engraved into their surfaces, but we’re not sure of their purpose.”
“Are they much more powerful than our spears?” demanded Shining Armor.
“Difficult to say given the different mechanisms of injury, Your Highness, but whatever was used to fire these things is accurate. If we assume that these foil tubes we’ve found are integral to the firing of these weapons, then out of all the rounds fired, one out of fifty scored a hit.”
Shining Armor sucked in air through his teeth. A good pony soldier with a standard-issue spear might be expected to make one hit out of five hundred shots fired; the spears were individually so inaccurate. This, though; this was beyond them.
“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” said Cadance. “Could you please bring up the officers from downstairs?”
“I will, Your Highness.” Blue Line bowed and left the room.
Shining Armor took a deep breath, scrubbed his face with both hooves, and stood up from the sofa. He crossed to the dresser, unstopped a decanter and poured himself a large brandy. “Want one?”
“I probably will after this meeting,” sighed Cadance, curled up on the sofa. She stared into the fire crackling merrily in the grate. Somehow the room still felt cold.
Shining Armor swallowed half his glass in a single gulp. “We can’t avoid it any more. It’s humans. It has to be. These slugs are identical to the ones that wounded Aurora and Sentry, and the only way a force of Diamond Dogs that large could have been taken out by such a small group is if they were using weapons like the ones Sentry saw in the south.”
“But if they’re in the north and the south?!” said Cadance urgently. “If they are aggressive, Equestria will be attacked from two sides!”
Shining Armor finished the other half of his brandy. “If they try to come up from the south, they’ll have to cut their way through the Lynx Territories first, and frankly, they’re welcome to it. It’s the ones on our doorstep that worry me.”
He set his glass down and crossed the shag-pile carpet to his wife. “They’re driving Diamond Dog packs against us, and they might be moving against us as well for all we know. We have to find out what’s going on out there, with or without the rest of Equestr...”
He stopped suddenly. He spun around, staring down at the thick white carpet he had just crossed.
Cadance stood up slowly. “What?”
We don’t have a shag pile carpet, he thought. He gently brushed a hoof over it. The thick white rug didn’t feel like wool; it was far too soft for that. It felt, he suddenly realised, just like the cloak on that Diamond Dog earlier that afternoon.
“Pft blb thbtb...”
“Shining!” gasped Cadance. The carpet had started making noises, and it began to ripple. Shining stood in front of his wife, trying to get their backs to the door.
Shining Armor’s heartbeat quickened. His throat was dry. In front of them, the carpet rippled ever faster, and it grew. It balled up, slowly rising almost to the height of a pony, before it resolved itself in front of them.
“Pft blb thbtb.”
Shining and Cadance screamed. Before them was a creature of myth and folktales, a demon that parents threatened their foals with if they didn’t eat their hay or go to bed on time. But the thing before them was very real, from the soulless shine of its ice-blue eyes to the long white fur that almost concealed its hooves. Its face was almost hidden in the ball of fluff that totally coated its body.
The Fluffy Pony stalked towards them, silent but for the gentle pad of its hooves on the crystal floor. Shining Armor’s heart was hammering in his chest. With a shaking hoof he drew his sword and brought it up into a hanging guard. “Who are you?! What do you want?!”
“Pft.” The Fluffy Pony stuck out its tongue, as if it was tasting their fear on the air. It took a pillow from the sofa in its hoof and stepped forward.
Shining roared and plunged his sword down. It thrust through the Fluffy Pony’s body. The point erupted from the other side so quickly, Shining felt like he had cut at the air. He pulled out the blade with no resistance. It was totally unstained.
The Fluffy Pony swung the pillow at Shining Armor. It was almost lazy, but the hit catapulted Shining Armor off his hooves. His sword flew across the room. He flew through the air and smashed into the dresser on the other side of the room. He lay there, quite still, amid the rubble.
Cadance snarled at the Fluffy Pony sent to kill her and her husband. Her horn glowed and she fired a blasting spell straight at the apparition. The jet of pink energy shot straight through the ball-like, fluffy body and struck the chimneybreast behind, blowing it to smithereens. Dust and smoke filled the room.
There was a hammering at the door. “Your Highness? Your Highness, is everything okay in there?!”
The Fluffy Pony squeaked and launched itself into the air, spinning head over hooves as it flew. Cadance didn’t even have time to scream before it landed. Fur completely covered her muzzle and legs wrapped tightly around her neck.
She battered at the Fluffy Pony with both hooves, but her attacks just disappeared into the fluff. Her eyes began to darken as fluff filled her mouth and throat. Her lungs screamed for air.
Head spinning and his vision a blur, Shining Armor dragged himself groggily out of the wreckage of the dresser. “Cadance?” he spluttered. The room was filled with smoke and dust. His hoof slid across the floor and hit something cold and smooth. He looked down to see the brandy decanter, half-emptied after being knocked from the dresser.
Then he saw it: his wife lying in the centre of the room, shaking as the Fluffy Pony atop her tried to suffocate her. Behind them, the doors rattled as somepony tried to buck them open.
Shining Armor snarled, snatched up the brandy decanter and hurled its contents at the Fluffy Pony. Gold-brown liquid splattered the assassin, staining its fur. It looked over at him, and for a moment Shining swore that he could see confusion in its eyes. “Pft blb?”
Shining seized a burning coal from the fire in his magic and heaved it at the Fluffy Pony. The brandy soaking its coat erupted into flames. Screaming, the burning pony rolled off Cadance. Burn. Spirits please, let it burn.
The solar’s doors crashed open before an emergency edible boot. Bronze Star and Beryl de Topaz burst in, swords drawn. A horrified-looking First Minister Jade Stone raced in after them. “What the...?!”
Hacking and spluttering as she sucked in smoke-filled air, Cadance struggled to get to her knees. As her vision cleared, she saw the flames burning off the screaming Fluffy Pony. It emerged from the flames with its fur blackened and scorched, and malice in its eyes.
Shining summoned his sword from across the room and raced into line with Topaz and Star. Cadance leapt up with her horn glowing. Silver Star and Flash Sentry charged through the ruined doors with swords in hoof.
The Fluffy Pony’s eyes flicked from blade to blade, and Cadance thought she saw doubt there. Tough to harm it might be, but it did not think it could take six ponies.
“Pft blb thbtb!” it hissed. It took off from its hooves, whirled through the air and smashed through a crystal window. Cadance stared in disbelief. That was a one-hundred-and-fifty storey drop.
“Raise the Guard!” yelled Silver Star.
As officers and staff raced around to extinguish the fire that was slowly consuming the solar, Cadance staggered over to the crystal decanter lying by the sofa. A few drops of brandy still swirled in the bottom. She seized the bottle and drained it to the dregs.
***
“Enough of that!” snapped Shining Armor, batting away the medic dabbing at the cut on his forehead.
Shining, Cadance, the officers of the Crystal Guard, and First Minister Jade Stone reconvened in the Crystal Council Chamber. The solar had been utterly destroyed, much to the Butler’s horror – the furnishings had dated from the time of King Vardamir nearly two thousand years ago.
Sitting at the end of the long, pale blue crystal table, Jade Stone shut the file she had been given to read by Shining Armor.
“Well,” she said, with forced calm. “First Fluffy Ponies and now humans. Looks like I need to re-evaluate my worldview.”
“Do you doubt us, First Minister?” asked Shining Armor.
“I saw what could be called a Fluffy Pony, without a doubt, Your Highness,” said Stone. “But humans? We have Captain Sentry’s testimony and the dying words of a Diamond Dog raider, and only similar-shaped pieces of metal to link them. I don’t doubt that something has the Diamond Dogs worried, but we cannot take this before the ponies of Equestria and expect them to see at as a threat.”
“It’s more than just something,” said Cadance. “It’s powerful. You saw what we needed to do to chase off that Fluffy Pony. Whatever is out there managed to force a perfectly-adapted and -camouflaged creature out of its habitat.”
Shining nodded grimly. “Powerful enough to drive feuding packs together as well, and to start cooperating with another race, if Colonel Topaz’s report is anything to go by.”
The last Hussar patrol before nightfall that day had found the remnants of a hastily-abandoned Diamond Dog marching camp five miles to the northwest of the Howling Pass, ideally positioned to reinforce an attack on the Empire. It was only now that they grasped its true significance.
“That party in the Howling Pass was never just a raiding force,” continued Shining Armor. “It was to sneak that Fluffy Pony into the Empire to kill us. In the confusion, the second force could attack and break through the Empire to escape. That’s how spooked they are. They’re willing to risk desperation attacks like that to get out homes they haven’t left for millennia, and we have to be prepared for it. We need to know what’s out there: humans, Diamond Dogs and Fluffy Ponies alike.”
“I’ll double our patrols...” began Beryl de Topaz.
“No,” said Shining Armor decisively. “The humans have already shown a willingness to attack our patrols. Poor Shielded Blitz found that out for us. I will not have our strength bled away in bit-boxes in the Crystal Mountains. No, we need to reconnoitre in force if we’re to find out their strength. And whatever that strength is, we’re going to need numbers to face it. Far more than we have now. Probably even more than we took south.”
“The War Office is preparing new mobilisation plans, sir,” said Silver Star. “We already have cadre units organised to be filled, and we’ll have the recruitment and training infrastructure in place by the end of winter.”
“That’s not enough. We won’t be able to get the numbers we need from volunteers alone. I can’t legally introduce conscription across Equestria, but as Prince of the Crystal Empire...”
“Absolutely not!”
Every head spun round to face the end of the table. Jade Stone had spoken, and a horrified expression covered her face.
“I beg your pardon?” demanded Shining Armor icily.
“Your Highness,” said Jade Stone seriously. “We cannot countenance conscription. The Crystal Ponies will probably go for it, but I know off the top of my head that for it to have any effect we’d have to enforce it in Imperial Ponland, and the Ponish will never accept it. What with Ponyatowski siding with the Parliamentarians, they’ll have a voice in Parliament to oppose it, and if the rest of Equestria thinks that they’re going to be conscripted, that could destroy Princess Celestia’s government.”
“Are we going to have to wait until humans overrun the Empire before they see sense?!”
“We might have to, sir, because we don’t know it’s humans. We could have a body to put before them and it still wouldn’t be enough to justify conscription. We don’t know their numbers. We don’t know their intentions. All we can do is wait.”
Shining Armor ground his teeth together. He couldn’t deny the logic. “Very well,” he growled. “We’ll hold off for now, but I want the infrastructure put in place. If we need to call a draft, I won’t be caught unready.”