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Prologue1,280 words
Chapter 13,453 words
Chapter 22,918 words

Chapter 2

Darkest Ambitions
Chapter 2

Dawn came all too soon, and with it the first sounds of the castle stirring to life. Dash rolled over in bed and tugged her pillow down tighter over her ears, trying to ignore the sound of hooves passing by her room. She’d finally got back to sleep after flying to near exhaustion sometime in the early hours of the morning, stumbling back to her room and only bouncing off two walls on the way. Her sleep had been fitful and while the nightmares hadn’t returned she had slept badly and she looked it.

“Ponyfeathers.” She grunted as she stared at her reflection in the full length mirror, noting the shadows under her eyes, mane even wilder than usual and wings in desperate need of a proper preening. “This is just getting stupid.” She trotted into the ensuite bathroom and wasted no time in dunking her head into the sink, letting the cold water pour down over her head and neck, stifling a most un-cool squeak as some trickled into her ears. She snapped her head back up, briskly shaking her mane and shivering from head to tail. “Alright. That’ll do it. “

More serious grooming and preening could wait, she had something to do this morning, the same thing she did every morning. Stepping back into her bedroom she took up her stance in the centre of the room, her wings partly spread as she let her eyes close, drawing in a deep breath and slowly letting it out. Focus. The cold water seeping through her mane was a good test of her concentration, making it all the harder to block out the world.

She let her thoughts slow and her awareness narrow till she could feel her lungs expanding and contracting with every breath, feeling the subtle tension in the muscles of her legs, neck and shoulders along with the dull ache of the muscles in her wings.

She could smell the slightly unfamiliar fragrance that filled the room, the crystal ponies using their own particular local flowers in the guest chambers; she could hear the soft voices in the corridor outside as the palace staff went about their duties, hear the faint chatter of ponies through the open window. One by one she tuned out every distraction, letting them fade into the background until there was only her slow, steady breathing and the darkness behind her eyelids.

She let her wings extend fully, aware of every feather, feeling the air currents from the open window caressing over the flight surfaces but it wasn’t enough. Still further, still turning inward till she could almost see the patterns of her magic in her mind. Unicorns weren’t the only magical ponies in Equestria, their magic was simply the most visible. Magic gave Earth Ponies their strength and endurance and gave pegasi their ability to fly and walk on clouds.

The routine began simply enough, but quickly gathered pace. First she flared her wings wide before taking a quick step to the side, ducking her upper body down as if avoiding a blow, snapping around and sending her hind legs lashing out in a quick buck. Before her hooves had even touched the ground she was in motion once more, forehooves slamming down onto the floor as she flipped head over tail, wings fanning to quickly spin her around so she could bring her forelegs to bear in a quick one-two jab that turned into another spin in place, wings working hard to bring the pegasus around to again buck out at her imaginary opponent

She didn’t even wait to touch down this time, instead launching herself into a tight curve to land behind her shadow opponent, bringing her head snapping forward, following up this strangely inelegant part of the routine with another set of jabs from her forehooves, quickly dancing back and away from an imagined counter-attack.

“You know you make me tired just looking at you.”

Dash reacted on instinct, spinning around to bring her hooves lashing out towards this intrusion, her eyes still closed even as she attacked. There was a sharp exclamation and suddenly her hooves slammed up against a hastily erect shield, the feel of unicorn magic tingling through her legs finally enough to break through her trance.

“What the hay is…? Shining? What’re you doing in here?” She dropped back down to the floor, feeling her hind legs smarting from the impact against the unicorn’s barrier.

“Nearly getting my head bucked in, apparently.” Shining Armor, co-ruler of the Crystal Empire, grumbled as he dropped the magical shield that had appeared barely an inch from his wide-eyed face. “Damn, Dash, I didn’t know you’d studied Falling Leaf style.”

She shrugged as she turned away from him to casually tug the blankets into some semblance of order on the bed. “Falling Leaf is the one I’m best at. I’ve studied a little Krav Pega, even some Gale King, that one’s crazy difficult and more than a little risky. You need to use your wings as part of the pattern and not many pegasi are comfortable with that. It doesn’t take much to mess your wings up good and proper. So, what brings the Crystal Prince to see me at this Luna-forsaken time in the morning? I’m guessing it was for something other than discussing my form, as spectacular as it might be.”

“Yeah. I, uh… I need a favour, Dashie.”

“Okay, we can discuss a favour, but first thing’s first. Never call me that again,” she growled. “Only Ditzy gets away with calling me that.”

“Fair enough, Dash.” She could almost see him fighting the urge to call her it again and damn the consequences, the corners of his lips twitching as he fought back the smile. Funny, when she’d first arrived here he’d seemed like such a starched collar. He’d been so uptight, coming across as a real by-the-book kind of stallion, but then she supposed her chances to get to know what he was like had been rather limited. First he’d been under Chrysalis’ influence, and then they’d been busy holding off Sombra, neither of them situations that let you get to really know a pony.

Turns out he had a bit of a prankster streak in him and had been delighted to find a co-conspirator in mischief and mayhem though they’d been careful never to let their pranks affect Fluttershy, the yellow pegasus rather too high strung for such things. He was also surprisingly easy going for a former Captain of the Guard and now co-ruler of a kingdom and despite her initial reservations they’d soon struck up a fast friendship.

“I need you to go take a look into something for me,” he said, slightly hesitantly, “and I need you to do it quick and quiet if you can. The sooner the better.”

“Very cloak and dagger. Lemme guess, Sombra’s back and you need me to go pound that horn of his back into his head? Chrysalis has sworn her undying love for you and is currently right outside in the hall and you need me to pose as your secret lover?”

“Firstly, gross,” Shining deadpanned. “Secondly, no, I don’t need you to pound anyone anywhere with anything. What I do need is a pegasus because the Crystal Empire, as you may have noticed, is entirely made up of earth ponies and it’s going to be a lot easier for you to leave the city without being seen and go scouting for me.”

“Scouting for what, exactly?”

“Less a what and more a who. His name’s Ardent and he was supposed to report back to me two days ago.” Shining’s voice remained casual, but there was a hint of worry in his eyes, “Even with the bad weather we’ve had lately he’s well overdue and I need you to see if you can find any trace of him.”

Dash shrugged as she stretched her wings out one more time, then flicked them back to her flanks, “Sounds easy enough. You want I take Flutters as well? She’s not as fast as me in the air, not that anyone is, but having two of us means we can cover a whole lot more ground than just the one.”

Shining hesitated, “No.” He decided at last, ”Not this time, anyway. The fewer people we have involved in this the better, and right now speed and discretion is more important than anything else.”

“Again with the cloak and dagger, Shining. What’s this Ardent guy supposed to have been up to?”

He shook his head curtly. “Need to know, Dash, and right now you just don’t need to know.” He held up a forehoof to cut off any protests, “I’m not trying to mess with you, you need to trust me on this. Right now finding any trace of him is all I need.”

“Ugh, fine. Keep your secrets. Can I at least get some breakfast first?” Dash flexed briefly, flicking her tail, “Maintaining all this awesome burns up calories, y’know.”

“Sure. That was the other reason I came by, to invite you to have breakfast with Cadence and I. Fluttershy’s already said yes.”

Dash pulled a face, “This isn’t going to be like that dinner you threw when we arrived…? I swear to Celestia, I didn’t know you were meant to dip your hooves in that instead of drinking it! And how many ponyfeatherin’ knives do you need for one meal?”

Shining bit down on his bottom lip, doing his best to stifle another smile that was desperately trying to escape and spread across his face, “Nothing like that. Just you, me, Fluttershy and Cadence in our private rooms. We thought it might make a nice change for all of us to eat together. Cadence also wanted to say thank you for all the work the two of you have been putting in with the athletes.”

“Lil premature there, Shining. We’ve got a whole long way to go if you want to be ready for next year. You might wanna hold off on the congratulations till I can at least convince your relay team that they really do need to hand the baton off to another pony if they want to win.”

The stallion nodded, “You can tell me more as we walk. I know you’ve sent a couple of progress reports through but I, uh, haven’t really had much of a chance to look at them yet, kingdom to run and all that. Are things really that bad?”

They stepped into the hall, closing the door behind them, “Yes and no. The individual athletes are great. Crystal ponies have no problem at all with those sort of things when it’s everypony for themselves, but asking them to work together? I just don’t get why it’s such a big problem for them. I mean they all banded together to use the Heart to kick Sombra’s flank, why go all to pieces now?”

“Because I suspect that without the threat of Sombra, a lot of ponies just don’t see why they should work together and after a thousand years or so of slavery I can’t say I’m that surprised.” He paused to turn and look out one of the windows as the sun slowly rose up and over the city, seeing the first few ponies going about their business, forehead furrowed in a frown, “We’ve had trouble with civil disobedience, some ponies acting out, nothing too serious but it’s something we’re keeping an eye on in case it escalates. When it comes to things like the Equestrian Games I guess they have trouble understanding that it’s not just about looking out for number one anymore. They rise and fall as a team. Trust, I understand, was pretty hard to come by under Sombra’s rule.”

Dash snorted softly as she heard an echo of her own words leaving Shining’s lips, “But that’s why you called us in, right?”

“Yup. Couldn’t ask for two better ponies to get these guys working together than the Elements of Loyalty and Kindness, and the fact that you’re a top class athlete helps them respect you when you tell them something.”

“Yeah, I am pretty in shape.” Dash almost absently buffed one of her hooves against her chest, “I only had to run two of them into shuddering wrecks before they started taking me seriously.”

“What about Fluttershy?” Shining turned and continued walking down the hall, nodding absently to two guards that saluted as they passed, “How have they been with her?”

“Less awesome,” Dash admitted with an expression akin to biting into a lemon. “Flutters was nearly in tears the first time, not because they were lashing out at her, but at each other and they were ignoring everything she said. Till she busted out the Stare,” the pegasus’ grin widened as she remembered the scene that had greeted her when she’d come to investigate what all the shouting was about. “You should have seen it, Shining. These four ponies all on their knees in front of her, blubbing their eyes out and falling over each other to apologise the quickest. She sure can kick butt when she wants to. ‘Course, then she had to ruin it by apologising for making them cry. She’s too damn soft-hearted sometimes! Those ponies deserved a whoopin’ for upsetting her.”

“Whoa now, Dash! Easy up there.” The pegasus had risen higher in the air as she’d gone on, her ears pinning back to her skull, “Sounds to me like Fluttershy took care of it just fine. You can’t go around threatening to beat up everyone who upsets her. You’d be picking fights from now till the world’s end.”

“Well,” Dash dropped back down to the floor, grumbling under her breath. “Still doesn’t excuse them being so mean to her.”

Shining barely resisted the urge to reach over and ruffle Dash’s mane, “She’s a big filly, she can take care of herself. It’s very sweet that you care about her, though.”

“Oh stop.” She threw a mock punch at the Prince who danced back out of the way with a snort and a grin. “I’ve known Flutters since Flight School, been looking out for her most of our lives. Wish that mare would grow a bit more of a spine, some days.” She stopped and snorted, “Hey, did Twilight ever tell you about the whole “new Fluttershy” thing?”

Shining shook his head, “Twiley’s not the best at letters, believe it or not. I tend to get a lot of my news second hand though I usually hear about anything big that’s happened around Ponyville direct from Princess Celestia.”

“Huh. Well, I guess that doesn’t totally surprise me. Until you and Cadence got hitched she’d never even mentioned you! She’s a weird one, that filly. Anyway, this minotaur called Iron Will came to Ponyville and-“

“Iron Will?” Shining interrupted, “I bet I know how this story goes. He came to Canterlot a couple of years ago to put on one of his supposed motivational seminars. A couple of the guards went to attend and-“

“Hey! This is Rainbow’s story time! It can be Shining’s story time when I’m done!”

“Yes Ma’am!” He grinned, accepting the inevitable punch to his shoulder without complaint.

“As I was saying. Yeah, he decided that Fluttershy would be a great example of his techniques and in a way he was right. She took to it like Applejack to bucking trees, but she didn’t know when to stop. She turned into an utter terror and a bully! Rarity even saw her beat one poor stallion up over a taxi cab.”

“Wait, FLUTTERSHY got into a fight? We’re still talking about the same pegasus, right? Yellow? Pink mane? Still flinches when her own shadow catches her by surprise?”

“Oh, Flutters is a lot tougher than she lets on. Did you hear about how she made a dragon cry? Had him all but eating out of her hooves!” She grinned to herself, “Crazy filly, that one. Truth is, though, I wouldn’t change her, and how the hay did we get on to talking about Fluttershy so much?” She eyed Shining up warily. “You been using some of your wife’s weird magic on me?”

“Now why would you be worried that I was using love magic on you, Rainbow Dash?” He enquired in a voice near dripping honey. “Unless, of course, there’s something going on between you and Fluttershy that you don’t want people to know about? You certainly don’t seem to be short of stories about her exploits! I dunno, Dash, it’s almost starting to sound like she might even be as awesome as you.”

Dash was reduced to near incoherent spluttering as Shining went on, her eyes narrowing, “Oh that’s it. It is ON now, Mr Former-Captain-of-the-Royal-Guard. When I’m done with you, the Crystal Empire is gonna need a new Prince!”

Shining laughed as he galloped off down the hall, Dash in close pursuit.

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