To this day, railroads still make me nervous. When I can grow wings on demand and take flight, the necessity to ride a train just doesn't come up that often. In a way it was convenient, though. I was nervous anyways, and this gave me time to work through it.
"I thought the meeting with Princesses Twilight Sparkle and David Silver Lining Stars went very well, father, do you think otherwise?", my son asked. At least he had had the humility to shapeshift his horn away on the train, so that we simply looked like a family of pegasi. That was odd enough to see on a train, but not the glaring attention grab that his favorite form, a male alicorn, was. 'Prince Alexander Gabriella Stormbringer the First', was half human, half changeling, and bore a nanospider subnet since conception. This had.. created some rather unusual issues, such as our child being intelligent and 'talkative' enough in utero to get too impatient with our indecision and name himself. Yes, 'Prince' was part of his name, not just his title. Alex, as I preferred to call him, was a natural shapeshifter, and never wore his natural form in public. Or anytime he could get away with it. If compelled he would sooner wear the form of an ordinary changeling as a disguise. I don't think he ever learned to walk in his natural form. He learned to shapeshift before he learned to crawl, and never looked back.
"It went smoothly enough," I answered, "but they have the least clout of any of the Princesses. They were the warm up. This is the real thing. The first, anyways. Besides.. this one is personal."
Alex nodded knowingly. Our family had a history with the rulers of the Crystal Empire, even if they were blissfully unaware. And there was something personal we wanted to ask them, once all the business was taken care of. As long as said business didn't blow up and leave us fleeing the country. Or, you know, blown away in a massive love-fueled shockwave of doom. That was a possibility we were far too familiar with. Just one reason to be worried about Princess Love-bomb, and Prince Shining Trigger.
The other was her alleged ability to 'see' love connections. It could well play in our favor, but if she were ever to become our enemy... I loved every one of my subjects, and they loved me. Not every one of them was a romantic or physical sort of love, but she was known for being able to sense all forms of love. And, the Kingdom had learned to wield love as a sort of weapon. I could draw the love from all of my subjects and push it into any one or group of them, empowering their magic, be it a unicorn's horn, a pegasus' wings, or an earth pony's might. My subjects lived throughout Equestria and beyond, hidden among normal ponies in much the way the changelings had before their invasion. While we were much more benevolent in intention, we had made a habit of taking matters into our own hooves in matters where we didn't trust the local authorities. Speaking generously, you could call us 'vigilantes'. There was a very real risk that if Cadance became a serious enemy, she would use our connections to hunt down my subjects. And while I had faith in our abilities in combat, 'winning' fights against the Princesses' forces was unlikely to make any form of improvement for us.
My thoughts continued to trouble me, until the train pulled into the station. The Crystal Empire was the end of the line, which afforded us a little more time to prepare. We gathered our belongings up quickly. I nodded to my companions, and we made our final preparations.
I was to take the lead, as any king should. I even had an over-the-top, regal looking red cloak with white trimming for exactly this occasion.
Wind Chaser would take my left flank, and nervously she assumed her natural form, that of a changeling drone. She was well fed, without a single hole in her body nor exposed ribs, and I thought she had actually grown a fair bit since I met her. The thought that she might be filling into a full and proper queen was tempting to believe, but probably overstated. After all, queens were queens from conception, right? As far as either of us knew, that was the case. But we had been wrong about her inability to conceive, at least under rather unusual circumstances. Maybe those circumstances had opened other possibilities as well?
Bardrick took my right flank. The elder griffon looked to be about a year my junior, having used his spiders to reverse his physical aging perhaps a little more than strictly necessary. His ceremonial armor had the insignia of his former nation removed, and a simple, scratched in "IK" on each side to show his new allegiance. We agreed that he would speak up on any military matters that might enter the conversation, with the advantage of our mental link hopefully avoiding any contradictions.
And Alex took up the rear, reverting to his favored male alicorn form. The fact that there was no such thing as male alicorns made the choice audacious, but he insisted that being audacious was a big part of being a bard. And for this, he needed to be the spooniest bard Equestria had ever seen.
A couple of earth ponies quietly picked up the rest of our belongings, planning to find a safe place to stow them while we made our grand debut. All the pieces were in place, and it was time to begin our number.
I... honestly can't recall any of the lyrics, which is very disturbing for someone with technologically enhanced eidetic memory. But it was always this way where Song Magic was concerned. As Alex began singing, we stepped out into the main hall of the train, and then out into the station, and out into the main road. Ponies joined in his song, compelling by musical cues, and otherwise stepped out of our way or looked on in perfectly choreographed harmony. Alex was the conductor, and the other ponies were mere notes. Nopony stopped us, or questioned us, indeed they acted like they knew who we were, or at least respected our obvious importance.
Even the guards in the palace were dragged into the song, and forced to sing along. And so, the guard at the door to Cadance's court stepped inside, sung out our introduction, and waved us in. A pegasus claiming royalty, a ceremonially armed griffon, an openly declared changeling, and a biological impossibility. All within striking distance of the reigning Princess and her husband, with only the barest of warning.
You couldn't ask for a more dramatic entrance.