Letters From a Little Princess Monster
Dominos - Part Three
Sunburst was lost and terrified, and it was getting worse. The northern tundra around him was filled with a clinging damp fog, making all of the surroundings a vague world of indistinct shapes that could have concealed any number of monsters. The only thing he knew for certain was the shadowy rump of the Princess of Love, which bobbed ahead of him just barely within eyesight despite him galloping just as hard as a bookish unicorn who lived above a bookstore could manage. He did not even have enough breath to call out to the princess to slow down from her punishing pace, a speed that a greatly pregnant princess should not have been able to make.
For just a moment, Sunburst almost lost the princess in a waft of denser fog, but when he emerged out of it he nearly ran into her oversized rump where his cloak was beginning to slide off.
“Wait up… Your Highness…” he managed to gasp while wheezing for breath in the snow. The rest of the surreal landscape around them was a bare suggestion of reality amidst the thick fog, with little puffs of his own breath adding to the obscuring mist by clouding up his glasses. “Why… did you run?” managed Sunburst after a few moments of desperately needed oxygenation and at least three mental promises to start exercising again.
“Home,” breathed Princess Cadenza. She leaned forward with a low glow beginning to dance across her horn and reflect from the surrounding fog. “Need to go home.”
“Good idea, Princess.” Sunburst looked down at the ground and searched for hoofprints, which brought up a very peculiar observation. The slushy snow showed their hoofprints, which was not all that odd. The puzzling observation was the two mismatched sets he could see a bodylength away from the end of the princess’ glowing horn, that headed in their direction but vanished at a nearly razor-sharp line just out of reach.
Literally out of reach, because when Sunburst tried walking over to the strange pony/griffon prints, he could feel something impeding his progress, a something that faded away as Cadenza’s horn glowed brighter and brighter until he could not longer look directly at it.
“Home,” she whispered, setting one hoof in front of another and plunging into that treacle-like resistance with Sunburst right behind.
“That’s not home, Your Highness,” he said while following anyway, because staying behind would have left him alone in this creepy fog. He held himself close to the warm, cloak-clad flanks of the princess until Sunburst recognized the spastic twitch that traveled down her barrel, held for a time, then went away.
“Labor?” he squeaked. “Oh, sweet stars above, let that be a false labor pain. Your Highness, I don’t know anything about birthing foals so maybe we should go somewhere with a hospital and ponies who do this kind of thing for a living and oh stars there’s another contraction are they supposed to be coming this fast?”
Using a quick burst of magic, Sunburst arranged his warm cloak over Cadenza’s back with an unspoken prayer that maybe she was just cold in this strange fog that concealed…
Buildings?
The slushy snow under their hooves had transitioned some time ago into hard crystal, much like the abstract crystalline structures that surrounded their path. As a researcher, Sunburst wanted to examine every angle and facet of the crystals, but the way that Cadence had begun to breathe in short pants and gasps took primary precedence.
“We need to get you to a hospital, Your Highness,” he said while looking frantically for anything that might vaguely resemble such, or even another pony he could ask directions from. There was a towering structure they were approaching, with giant spires and high walls which did not look very hospital-y at all, even though Cadenza began to slow her punishing pace, then came to a stop in the building’s cold shadow.
“Home?” she asked, her eyes still closed as she lifted her nose and sniffed, then breathed in a huge lungful of the surrounding scents that Sunburst had been ignoring. Strange plants. The sharp tang of freezing air. A dusty feeling that could only be described as crystals in the nostrils. The scent of… ponies. Many ponies who had walked these streets and lived in these buildings for years until—
“Home,” breathed Princess Cadenza with her legs slowly collapsing beneath her until she slumped up against some sort of triangular plinth that seemed to be missing the object which should have been displayed there. “I’m home.”
Sunburst looked down at the sudden surge of moisture around his hooves and added, “Your water broke. Oh, my.”
~ ~ Ω ~ ~
Trixie looked at the cards on the table, then looked around the ice cream shop. There was no sign of the odd counterpony, and she could not for the life of her remember just what he looked like. The three cards remained, silent and unmoving, without the special code Trixie had marked on the back of all of her trick deck so she could not tell what they were.
One was a coincidence. Three was not.
“Ice cream is over,” declared Trixie, tucking her deck of cards away and giving a tug to the three cards on the table, which Twilight had one small hoof on top of. “Come on, Twilight. Give me the cards.”
“No.” It was a very small word, spoken by a very small alicorn, but it gathered the attention of all of her friends, both large and small. Trixie’s table rapidly became the center of a dozen ponies, all of whom were patiently waiting for the next move.
Well, most of them were patient.
“Hey, a card trick,” said Rainbow Dash. “Let’s see how this works.”
“No trick,” said Trixie, fighting back her reaching hoof. “Discord.”
“Discord?” Rainbow Dash flipped the first card over anyway and gave the equal sign it revealed a skeptical look. “That’s not very threatening. Unless you’re afraid of math.”
“Now hold on a second, RD.” Applejack picked up the card and peered at it. “This looks a lot like the cutie mark of the mare that mah brother’s been visiting.”
~ ~ Ω ~ ~
Starlight Glimmer wiped away a trickle of sweat and regarded the crystalline cutie mark storage boxes she had just finished, one with an image of a sun on it and the other marked with a moon. It was time.
~ ~ Ω ~ ~
“Our town. Starlight Glimmer,” said Twilight, trembling enough that Trixie took off her cloak and floated it around her thin shoulders. “She’s dangerous,” said the little alicorn after a few moments of trembling and bunching part of the cloak over her head. “Powerful.”
“Heck, that Sugar Belle mare didn’t seem too afraid of nuttin’ in her town,” said Applejack. “Well, ‘cept baking.”
“Starlight Glimmer takes away cutie marks,” said Twilight very slowly, and continued despite the anguished gasps of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. “Makes ponies weak. All the same. Can’t fight that.”
One small hoof flipped over the next card, and a general sigh of relief swept around the table.
“Princess Cadenza’s cutie mark,” said Rarity. “I can’t imagine what kind of trouble she could get into in Canterlot, unless she’s finally foaling.”
~ ~ Ω ~ ~
”Don’t push, Your Highness,” gasped Sunburst as he lit his horn and struggled with a task that he never thought he would ever face, even hiding in another room while a qualified doctor dealt with all the bloody mess and mucus. “There’s a loop of cord over its neck that I need to slip… Got it! You can push out the foal now.”
“I’m trying!” snarled the Princess of Love in a raspy voice that made Sunburst swear to a life of abstinence in the back of his mind.
~ ~ Ω ~ ~
“She’s probably surrounded by a hundred doctors and Prince Shining Britches holding her hoof,” said Trixie. “What’s this last one?”
She flipped over the card, looked at the bloodstained cutie mark, and turned pale.
~ ~ Ω ~ ~
“Come out, little pony.” Duke Plummets ran the edge of his serrated knife down the edge of the servants quarter door with a rasping noise that made the two ponies inside the small room rattle and clatter around in a panic. “I know who you are now, Lord Green Grass. Come out and meet your end like the Canterlot coward you are.”
The griffon licked his beak and got a firm grip on his lengthy knife. The two ponies were weak and powerless. Their blood would feed the Flock, and bring power to the griffon’s attack upon the helpless ponies of the valley. Rivers of blood would flow once again and return the noble race of griffons to the heights of glory they deserved. Starting with the deaths of the sniveling unicorn and the pregnant servant who had been pretending to be his wife.
~ ~ Ω ~ ~
“It’s Green Grass,” whispered Trixie, her field wavering while it held the card. The cutie mark of a stubby unicorn horn with little sparkles around it glinted red from a long smear of blood down the center, looking almost like a sword in the light of the ice cream store. “He’s in trouble in the griffon aerie. I’m too young and beautiful to be a widow. We have to save him.”
Twilight’s magic scooped up the three cards and laid them out on the table, face up: Equal sign, crystal heart, and unicorn horn. “Discord is going to win. I can’t do this all by myself,” she whispered, only to have Apple Bloom put a foreleg across her back.
“You don’t have to.”
“Yeah,” said Twist. “We’re all your friendth.”
“We’ve got this together,” said Applejack.
A general round of cheering swept around the ice cream store as Twilight and Trixie’s friends gathered together. The only exception was Pinkie Pie, who seemed glum enough for Trixie to take her to one side and ask privately, “Pinkie, what’s wrong.”
Pinkie Pie looked back with mournful blue eyes. “It’s the end of the arc.”
And so it begins.
Poor Sunburst. I can only imagine with his luck ponies are going to think that some part of this is a kidnapping.
Are you gonna wrap up four seasons worth of villians in one single arc?
I generally dislike Pinkie being used as nothing but the 4th wall breaking comedic relief, but this one is delivered perfectly.
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Why, oh why did I imagine heath ledgers rendition of the joker saying that, with mark hamill's Joker laughing afterwords?
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Hearing that phrase in the right voice adds whole extra levels of creeping doom which makes this whole series of situations seem ten times worse... and I didn't think that was possible...
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Everything has consequences:
Could saving Green Grass lead to war with Griffonia?
Starlight is tricky, she does tend to escape and seek a bigger revenge...
Sombra is just 1 of the Umbra, what would foaling an Alicorn do to thier prison under the city?
It can't be coincidence that the cards - and what they represent - encapsulate the three most important moments in a pony's life: birth, death, and finding their mark.
Who they will be, who they were, and who they are.
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The hiatus begins?
and everything comes together, green grass is going to die because everyone ignored his warnings, I kinda figured that would happen with everyone ignoring his letters and what not.
Well, I will cheer if Greengrass dies, that's what he gets from dumping his wife.
Oh I like this Discord. He seems to be playing the part of an Oracle here. Looks like he took one look at the massive amounts of chaos that was already happening what with 3 alicorns pregnant and decided "Can I really make this more chaotic? "
Might be that he's decided to mature into a true trixter spirit.
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Or he just outright decided that making them aware of all the bad happenings was far easier to set off a bit of chaos than cotton candy clouds and chocolate milk rain ever could. Not to mention that the chaos would likely be ignored in favour of the larger problems anyways once discovered.
Dat ending!! Gah.
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I can't wait to see how our heroes team up to solve all three emergencies they have to deal with. But Green Grass is the one I'm worried the most about, Sunburst is at least under cover with Cadence and hopefully, Shining Armor and some guards are coming up behind soon. Plus, you'd think the Changelings would be swarming to help their queen.
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He probably also realizes that Luna, Celestia, and Cadence wouldn't hold back to protect their foals and would make everything too serious for him.
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Cliffhanger
To be fair, a paper cut from a spellbook probably comes with its own share of complications...
In any case, the stage is set, the hand is dealt, alea iacta est. Now to see how well the assorted heroes can multitask... and whether or not Sombra noticed the rightful heir dragging his stolen kingdom out of stasis.
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Oh well that's fine, we all have an opinion of them.
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Update soon please, or am I going to have to pull out the cattle prod?
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Corrupting and generally screaming "More! You can add more! And quit writing in passive voice, and I will completely lose it if you put a period where a comma should be one more time..."
[The day I write about Celestia laying an egg is the day you know Georg's corruption is complete. :)]
Interesting set-up.
Awww, cheer up pinkie
So, next chapter?
*in caveman voice and poking with stick* You write. update story. *starts making ape noises*
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<taps watch> Are you... Are you sure?
9585336 There is this little thing called the real world :)
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*in caveman voice* You write. make next chapter. update story.*makes ape noises*
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Then begs the question. How hard it is to at least put the story on hiatus? You were online 25 minutes ago, and this story was last updated... 26 of August last year, this making a hiatus diration of... over 8 months.
They're going to need to split up into four groups. SG is planning to target the Princesses while Discord is going to escape. Without their powers gone, the Sun and Moon will be out of control. SG will doom Equus.
Just finished reading the book. Sadly, nothing more has been posted since then.
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aye, and Doctor Who makes a good second place. ...mostly.
Georg, you rotten liar! You never told us what an Urlock was in the last story!
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Hey, if I see an opening for shameless self-promotion, I'm going to take it.
14 minutes ago. Why is this not on hiatus or cancelled? And yeah. further reasoning would be nice...
Love this story keep up the great work
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and here I was thinking that I was canary of Twilight (/Monster).
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Why of course! There was even one study that found that even thinking about money made people more greedy, and, typically, the more money you have the less likely you are to give it away, and the less you have the more likely you are to give it away, which does explain a lot.
This was great, I hope you update soon!
Hey, so, you doing alright? I don't want to come off as being that guy, but I really, really like this story, especially since I can usually contrast it with other stories you've written, which I just think is really cool and stuff.
Oh. Right. Anyway, how goes writing in general? And, more specifically, the next chapter?
I did it... Ha... Haha... I got through both stories! HAH! Take that ya behemoth! Sure it took a week and some sleepless nights but I got through it all! Oh God I got through it all... Now I'm stuck and wanting to know what's happening next! Georg, sir you are very good with the hooks. Please know I'll be waiting patiently for the next arc!
10060871 9988866 10075229 Working on it, working on it. Next arc should be 4 chapters or so, and I've got 2 in the bag.
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Seriously, no rush, this has been a fantastic, heartfelt, tearful experience for me. You're a wordsmith of the highest caliber and I'm not at all fearful of admitting how many times I teared up or cried from these two stories. So take all the time you need and good winds follow with you!
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Yay! That's great to hear! I hate it when the muses screw around with my favorite authors (and me, if I had any creativity)
NOOOOOOO THIS IS THE. WORST. THING. EVERRRRR... A CLIFF HANGER
Something I’ve been thinking about for a couple months, the changeling and the Crystal Empire could really help each other. The changelings, as infiltrators in pony society should, in theory, at least, know a fair bit about pony society. They could therefore help the crystal ponies adapt to modern Equestria. And of course, the crystal heart is essentially a bottomless cup for them to sup from. I don’t know if you’ve already planned how things will unfold for those two groups, or if this would even work, but I thought I’d throw it out there, just in case.
10333085 You mean like cheerful, innocent Thorax, who learns about friendship from Starlight Glimmer. This Thorax is a little... different