Doing His Duty

by Dick McKickEm


Chapter the Seventh: I Dream of Sentry

Doing His Duty

A My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fan fiction

by Wolfram and Hart

CHAPTER SEVEN: I Dream of Sentry

"Unacceptable!" the blonde unicorn screamed as loudly as his lungs could muster, the white-robed hoofmaiden trembling under his seething gaze.

"I- I- I um-" Her eyes darted to everywhere but the snarl of her prince. She couldn't look him in the eye, no matter how much he invaded her personal space.

"Don't speak!" Blueblood poked her demure shoulder with a-

Wait.

Flash had seen this before.

The guardspony somehow found himself in the middle of Canterlot Castle’s grandly decorated ballroom. Every word spoken and every move made echoed off of the polished marble walls as if they were all standing in a great cavern, only not nearly as dark thanks to the glass dome ceilings, bright colors, stained glass windows, and chandeliers that gleamed with beams of sunlight refracted into tiny rainbows.

The two ponies arguing was the centerpiece of it all. Even up close, they seemed like little dolls in a playhouse a little too big for them compared to the wide open space of the ballroom.

"Oh really?" Blueblood said to the teenage filly with a mocking tone, snapping Flash’s attention back to them. "Because those plates and silverware just scream "Winter Solstice is here!" And look, they match the decor perfectly!"

The prince was violently gesturing to the longtable at the other side of the room. What was wrong with it, Flash couldn't tell, but it sure made Blueblood red in the face.

Blueblood went on ranting about something, but Flash kinda tuned it out as he tried to figure out just what the problem with the table actually was.

“Well, did it?!" He was practically screaming at the little white-robed mare by now.

"No, Your Grace, it didn't." Her voice was barely audible.

“My Prince, if I may interrupt...” Flash tried to draw attention from the filly, but Blueblood ignored him completely.

"I can't believe-" he started to rant, but words were lost on him. "Such a travesty. It will all have to be redone, all of it. This is Aunty's first Winter Solstice in a thousand years and I'm going to look like a fool for mucking up the celebration. Oh, of all the days the help decides to check their minds at the door..."

“Sir, if I may, just what has gotten into to you?” This wasn’t the Blueblood he’d seen these past few days. The normally calm and cool pony looked as if he were about to have a mental breakdown.

It was like he hadn’t heard the guard at all.

Blueblood sighed. The way he waved his hoof at the hoofmaiden gave Flash an eerie feeling of dejá-vu, like he had seen the prince do exactly the same thing just yesterday. “Get out of my sight. Jus- just go clean something before I fire you."

The filly bolted out of the room like the floor was on fire.

Blueblood shook his head in frustration, mumbling to himself. “A nightmare, just a nightmare. The rest of my life will be a nightmare if I royally screw this up…”

“Blueblood, I don’t understand what’s going on.” Flash moved to put a reassuring hoof on his prince’s shoulder, but he didn’t. He tried, but failed. The hoof merely passed through him as if he were thin air.

All of a sudden, Flash Sentry was frightfully aware just how transparent and ethereal his foreleg had become.

He gasped at first, as one with a normally would in such circumstances, but then he followed up with a tired sigh. "Oh great, am I dead already? Bowels of Tartarus, I knew this job would be the death of me."

"You are still very much alive.” the dark figure lurking just beyond Flash’s peripheral vision said.

“Ahh!” The guard nearly jumped out of his armor.

Standing before him in all her see-through glory was none other than Princess Luna, Warden of the Night and second member of the Triarchy. The alicorn towered a head higher than her pegasus subject, though it was partly due to the fact that Flash had nearly buried his face into the floor when he registered her presence in his brain.

“I did not mean to startle you.” Her voice wasn’t soft and sweet like her sister’s, nor was it dripping with dry humor like her nephew, it was quite hard and authoritative, even as she apologised to him.

“The fault was mine, Your Majesty!” Flash replied instantly. “I should have paid more attention to my surroundings.”

“There is no need to kiss flank here, Flash Sentry.”

Here, Your Grace?” Flash rose, but his gaze was trained straight ahead, not meeting Luna’s at all. “In the Royal Ballroom?”

Flash didn’t see the lunar princess roll her eyes. “In a dream. Your dream.”

Flash’s rigid stance faltered for a brief moment. “Good to know I'm not dead, heh. But why would I be dreaming about Blueblood? I think I’d rather be in a swanky hotel room filled to the brim will all kinds of beautiful mares clad in those colorful fuzzy socks.”

His eyes went as wide as dinner plates the moment he remembered just who he was speaking with. “...Y-your Majesty.”

Luna’s retained her expression of emotional distance. “I’ve seen weirder.”

“The reason you are dreaming of such things is because I allow it to be so.” she said. “I have taken your subconscious mind and delivered it into my realm as your conscious body slumbers aboard The Intimidator. You have entered a dreamscape that is molded by my own thoughts, allowing me to bend your perceptions of reality to my will.

Flash hummed with mild interest. "Far out."

If one were to pay close attention to the princess’s face, they would see a faint ghost of a smile in the corner of her mouth. “You have changed little in one thousand years.”

Flash had to force himself not to grin like a buffoon. “I am honored,Your Majesty, that you would remember a single lowly guard from a time so long ago.”

“You remember me quite clearly, why would I not remember you?”

The guard cursed himself internally for saying such foalish things in front of royalty. Perhaps his time with Blueblood had already begun to dull his guard instincts. "Apologies, Your Grace, I have underestimated your memory. I will not do so again."

Luna allowed herself a barely audible chuckle. "Have you begun understand why I have brought you here, my subject?"

Flash was hesitant to answer. He chose his words carefully. "Something to do with your nephew, I presume. Was this truly how he behaved before I had met him?"

"Aye. All of this and, as they say, a bag of potato chips."

Flash whistled, all pretenses of watching his manners around the princess flying out a particularly well-crafted stained-glass window. "Wow. The tales were true then."

He glanced up, expecting the midnight princess to share his mirth. Her face was was as easy to read as a dissertation on theoretical arcane physics. She must kick flank at poker.

"Some of them are the truth, yes. Some of them were fabricated gossip. He was not a particularly kind equine being, that much everypony knows, but you are one of the few who do not judge my nephew for his unfortunate reputation."

The princess paused briefly, watching every move on Flash Sentry's face as she spoke.

"Tell me, Flash Sentry, do you know why my sister and I call him nephew?"

Flash furrowed his brow. "Because you're related?"

"I have no siblings, save for Celestia, and neither of us have bared foals in all of our long lives. He certainly isn't Cadenza's kid, nor Twilight Sparkle's for that matter."

Flash nodded slowly. "So he's adopted?"

"Aye. I am surprised that nopony has realized this before."

Luna nodded her head toward the dining table, which bared one forlorn prince sitting at the very end of it, idly pushing around a gilded chalice with his hoof.

She stared long and hard at the dream-Blueblood before turning back to Flash.

"Would you like me to tell you something that you would not believe?"

"I'm a thousand and twenty something years old with a full-time job guarding the most promiscuous stallion in Equestria from a legion of angry exes." Flash deadpanned. "I'd like to see you try."

"Blueblood was once a street urchin."

If Flash were drinking something, he would have done a spit take."I rescind my previous statement."

Luna smirked. "It is true. Not even I- one who can see the deepest secrets of a pony in their own dreams -know who his true parents are. My theory that he is the bastard child of a stallion who lived his life one naive mare at a time. His mother may have been a noble who could not bare the shame of having a child on her own, and abandoned him to the streets of Canterlot. It would not be the first time such a thing has happened. Perhaps it would be better if nopony knew."

Luna smiled to herself. “Of course I was not here to see with my own two eyes, but one day the guards caught this bony little colt with his blonde mane in tangles and his white fur stained with filth. He had been stealing food and the finer silverware from the castle kitchen.”

The two watched fake Blueblood hop out of his seat, skulk across the ballroom floor, and slip away quietly.

“And after that, Princess Celestia took him in?” Flash asked.

“Aye. She plucked him right out of the dungeon, had the servants bathe him, gave him a room, and he’s lived in Canterlot ever since. She started introducing him as nephew at some point, as being essentially the adopted son of Princess Celestia herself would draw far too much attention. It was likely for the better. He already has more than he can handle.”

Flash started to say something, but he shut up when Luna’s instantly went rigid, like one of the deerfolk when they get spooked.

Flash put a hoof on his sword and swiveled around the room, looking for anything out of place. “What is it?”

She blinked like someone had shone a bright light in her eyes.

“Blast. Another pony is having horrid nightmares.” the princess said solemnly. “I must intervene. It seems we have little time to continue our chat.”

“Sooo…” Flash hesitantly loosened up from his battle-ready stance. “You can sense nightmares. Where the hell were you when I had that one about the chickens coming after me last year? I couldn’t sleep for like three nights after that.”

She shot Flash an annoyed leer. “It was a busy night. I was backed up. I’m only one princess, you know.”

Luna’s long horn was set alight with a magical aura that shone like silver. Then out of freaking nowhere an arcane portal as black as the darkest of abysses materialized right in front of the two, prompting the guard to take a few steps back. He sure as Tartarus didn’t want to come near anything like that.

“Farewell, Flash Sentry, perhaps next time I will finish what I have to tell you.” And with that, the whole world melted away into a-

* * *

-a jarring yank back into the land of the waking.

Flash Sentry’s thrashing nearly caused the rope hammock that he slumbered in to turn over, but he calmed down in time for his face to not have an impromptu rendezvous with an unswept wooden floor.

The guard soon regained his senses. He peered through the darkness at the dozens of sailors surrounding him, all fast asleep in hammocks just like his.

Flash let out a long breath as the memories of Luna’s uninvited visit to his subconscious came back to him. He slumped back into the swaying comfort of the ropes. “Alicorns.” he muttered, then turned over and shut his eyes. “Alicorns are weird.”

The rhythmic snores of the sailored lulled Flash back to sleep. He was thankful that it was a dreamless sleep.