But You Also Get Some Sun

by Exilo

Chapter 4: Twilight Sparkle

Chapter 4: Twilight Sparkle

I am proud to say I have read two hundred and seventy-two books about warfare, military tactics, and historical conflicts. Of those, one hundred and three had sections detailing close quarters and hoof to hoof combat. Of those, seventy-two documented various forms of fencing.

Unfortunately, as I have been forced to learn many times: reading a book about a subject is different than living it. The fastest speed a rapier has been documented moving is 7.4535 hooves per second, but the speed of the rapier now assaulting me is moving twice that, I swear! Feebly I try to ward off the stinging tip, sharpened to a diamond’s point (why we need to practice with sharp points is beyond me!) but it’s like trying to follow the flight of a swarm of fireflies. I try backing away, but my rump hits a wall, or I trip, or I just freeze up. In the mere moments it takes for me to look behind me and look back, the rapier is jammed forward, and I feel the coolness of the steel sifting the fur on my neck. For several agonizing moments, my breath, my heart, my mind, they all just shut down. The magenta magic that embraces my own sword shatters like strained glass and I am defenseless as the steel remains at my throat, chilling me like the kiss of a wendigo. I want to cry. I want to scream or shout or use my magic to teleport a thousand miles from this place but I can’t even think straight let alone perform a spell and I’m scared and I’m about to cry and-

“Princess Sparkle,” Blueblood says, lowering his sword, “are you alright?”

I can’t speak. My heart is pounding so hard in my chest, I’m afraid my ribs are going to shatter. My lungs burn, but I can’t remember how to breathe. I think I am shaking, or I’m not shaking at all. I don’t know.

“Princess Sparkle,” Blueblood says, touching my shoulder with one of his hooves. “Take a deep breath,” he says, and takes one himself. Following his example, I breathe through my nose. “Now count to 5. Count with me. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Release the breath.”

I exhale slowly. My heart begins to slow in its pound. I take another breath, hold it to the count of five, and exhale. OK… I’m breathing right now.

“H-how… bad was I?” I ask, trying to ignore the tears behind my eyes. By the sun, I probably look like such a foal. What was I thinking? This was a horrible idea! I should just leave and never bother the prince any further with my dumb requests.

Blueblood looks down at me and shrugs his broad shoulders. “I have seen worse, I have seen better. Considering you have never held a rapier before in your life, I think you performed quite well.”

“I thought you were going to kill me!” I blurt out, and immediately bite my lip. It… would be bad to purge his memory, right? Purge just that little stupid thing I said? Heck, at the moment, I wouldn’t mind wiping this whole damn training session from my thoughts. And the idea of it.

Why am I here, getting a lesson on how to use a rapier from Prince Blueblood? It was Shiny’s idea. OK, so I can’t really say it was a bad idea either. I mean, he basically pointed out that I’m a princess now, which probably means there are some ponies who don’t like me too much. What would happen if somepony slips me some Poison Joke? Or, casts a spell that dampens my magic? Or, Celestia forbid, cuts off my horn? Well, it’s just nice to know how to use something a bit more physical, you know? I dread the point where I actually have to mount a sword onto my hoof and fight like that. For now, at least, Blue is letting me use my telekinesis, but he says eventually I’ll have to wear some sort of ring around my horn that’ll cut off my magic.

On the other hoof, he promised to teach me the Magnetism Spell he innovated. Words cannot express my excitement about that prospect! He penned an essay back when he was in the Point about magnetism and… oh, it was breathtaking to memorize every word! To finally see it in action though, and from the master no less!

I have to admit, I was shocked when Shiny said I should ask Blueblood about lessons. I heard that, before I was born, Blue was a pretty well respected cadet at the Point, and it’s certainly in his blood when one considers his father. I mean, he did manage to go find Princess Celestia too, but I just can’t shake what I thought of him after the Gala all those years ago. Rarity gave me an earful about all he had done when we went to the spa later that week. It’s actually quite jarring that the same prince who used her as a shield against attacking confections is the one who saved Princess Celestia, and who just now nearly ran me through with a blade.

Blueblood uses his magic to retrieve my discarded sword from the ground. He slips it into a sheath, and places the sheath over his shoulder to wear it at his side. I have to admit, he’s actually rather handsome like that: looking all noble and proud, with his head turned up and a sword worn at his side.

“Why do we have to use sharpened blades?” I ask. “Is the weight really that different?”

“We use sharp blades because if we are ever attacked, our enemies will not be using toys.” Blueblood tilts his head up and turns it slightly to the right. He uses his magic to part a few tufts of creamy fuzz on his center neck. All of a sudden, an old, faded, but still quite ghastly scar is exposed to my eyes, and I stumble back. Blueblood stares at me, a look of amusement on his face.

“I… I uhm… I was not aware you ever saw actual combat,” I stutter.

“Oh, this was given to me by my father,” he says with a sort of nonchalance that makes me shudder. I am so happy when he lowers his head and allows his fur to cover the scar again. “It was my own fault,” he continues. “I failed to parry in time.” Just like that, my fur is back on end.

My affinity for Prince Blue has grown exponentially in these past few months. Sometimes he’s insufferable, and sometimes he’s arrogant, and sometimes he’s very, very quiet and withdrawn, but beneath all that, he’s a good stallion at heart. He still scares me, though. I can’t put my hoof on it, but, sometimes there’s just something off about him. I tried telling Rainbow Dash about it, that Blue scares me sometimes. She laughed in my face. I get that a lot. Ponies figure alicorns are special. They figure we are goddesses. The fact is, we can bleed, and we can break, just as easy as anypony else. And I may have the power, but I don’t have the stomach to really use it. That’s what a lot of ponies just don’t get. The truth is, when you get right down to it, I’m not really that brave, and what little power I do have scares the living daylights out of me. Blueblood isn’t like that though. At least, I don’t think he is, and I think he would be alright hurting some pony else if he had to.

I worry about him though. Princess Celestia told me a bit about his foalhood. Not all of it, which I am infinitely thankful for. Just that, well… for how highly Blueblood speaks of his father, he really wasn’t all that great at being a dad. The prince sets the rapiers on the “weapons wall” of the training room. From out of his duffle bag, he takes a flask with an ornate P.H. chiseled over the side. I imagine he is going to take a gulp, but before he even unscrews the top, his eyes fixate on the delicate curve of the script letters. Coming beside him, I place a hoof on his shoulder. He offers me a drink from the flask, but I wave him off. Just the smell of strong spirit, radiating out, makes me want to puke. I remember when I got tipsy off champagne and… well, I don’t desire reliving that escapade that ended with me stealing Princess Celestia’s crown.

“What do you remember about your father?” I ask. “I have read a great many books about Commander Purple Heart’s battlefield tactics and strategies, but there is very little about his personal life. Most of the books don’t even mention he has a son.”

Blueblood’s eyes open wide, like a colt on Hearth’s Warming Day. “My father?” he asks, quite excited. “Oh, my father was a stallion like none before, and none after.”

“Tell me about him,” I say with a soft smile. Well, I try to. The truth is, I’m feeling dreadfully nervous.

“My father,” he starts, though his voice trails off. “My father was a stallion like no other. That’s all I can really say about him.”

“Any specifics?”

Again, he looks perplexed. “He was a stallion of strict morals, and strict honor. The chivalry that is lost on the peasant who call themselves noble was a fact of his life, something that governed his every action and thought. He never moved without restraint, he never… he never did a single thing that could be thought of as crude or dishonorable…”

“What about this?” I ask. With my magic, I sift the fur on Blueblood’s neck, parting it, and once more exposing the old scar. I know this will anger him, but I just need to ask. I guess, maybe, it’s the mystery of Purple Heart, but it’s also… I just think this will help Blue. “Was this the act of a noble stallion?”

Blueblood responds like I would expect him to. One of his hooves swats at me and he takes several steps back. His guard is back up. His eyes are focused. How happy I am he doesn’t have a rapier, since in this moment, I think he would run me through. “I should have kept my guard up,” he says.

He’s mad, and I know I should stop, but… He has these delusions about his father that are nearly impossible to crack. “I had not parried,” I said. “You had every right to cut me. Would it have been honorable if you did?”

Fear flickers in his eyes. Fear, or doubt, or… “My father’s actions were under different circumstances. You have never even held a rapier.”

“Did your father not die when you were still a colt? How old were you when he cut you? How well trained were you? Were you just a foal?”

His thoughts are racing. I can see it in his eyes: he’s trying to make sense of a path he has never trotted down before. No one ever questioned what his father did, probably not even Princess Celestia. Not that she approved of Purple Heart’s actions! But just… because it hurts Blue, to think about this, she probably let him lie to himself.

“I was old enough to know better,” he snaps.

As I take a step forward, I calculate the range of a rapier swing. He could cut my throat with the sharp blade if he wanted to. Not that he would… I think… But I need to be close. I just need to be.

“He hurt you a lot, didn’t he, Blue? He said it was because you didn’t guard, or you didn’t defend yourself. He said it was your fault, didn’t he?”

“It was my fault!” he screams. His hoof stomps into the ground, sending ugly spider webbing in all directions.

“And if I had failed to parry, would it have been my fault?”

“No! You don’t understand. It was different when… you just don’t get it!” He leans down, very close to my face. I can feel the anger flushing towards me, feel the bile and rage rising. “Let me assure you, princess, I have never failed to keep my guard up since that day. Perhaps if I nicked you, you would understand the value of a proper defense.”

There are tears in his eyes. There is fear in them too, in the baby blue. To be honest, I want to hug him. I settle for saying, “I’m sorry.” He sighs and looks away from me, closing his eyes so hard the tears can’t drip away.

“As I said, for a first time, you performed quite well. I have seen worse, and I have seen better. I am free this time next week for your next lesson, and I will teach you the various stances of a fencer. Would you mind leaving me alone, though? I would like to brush up on my own skills before I start teaching you.”

“Of course,” I say quickly. I bow my head, but he doesn’t notice. He seems purely focused on the rapier he is now holding. As I trot backwards out of the room, I keep my gaze locked on him. His eyes are closed. Perhaps he is fencing with imagined phantoms or simply going through the familiar movements of memory. Slipping out of the room, I close the door behind me and give a long sigh of relief. Then I hear a crash. Quickly I peak my head in, just in time to see him throw all the weapons off the wall and onto the ground. I close the door.

I take a train to the Crystal Empire. I want to see Cadance. I want to talk to her. I want to hang out with her. And, maybe, I want to ask her one or two questions.

I’m not inside the regal throne room for more than a second before Cadance leaps and lands before me. “Sunshine sunshine, lady bugs awake,” she sings. I’m pretty sure I sing too, but to be honest, the greeting we share is as natural to me as magic or breathing. I don’t even think about it, my hooves simply clop and my voice sings and I feel the happiness from my foalhood sweep through me. We laugh, long and loud. We hug, and she smells like lilacs and fancy shampoos, and I’m that little foal she took care of again. I press my face into her pink, bubblegum fur and breath deep.

“How you been, Cadance?” I ask.

“You remember those story books I used to read you? About how, once a princess finds her Prince Charming, everything just works out?” She giggles. “Well, I’m starting to realize running an empire isn’t all champagne and social gatherings. It’s a lot of work, a lot of details, a lot of budgets and numbers, and a lot of… blech. And now, Princess Celestia wants our borders open to the griffons in the north. The crystal ponies don’t like that though. I guess the war with the griffons is still quite fresh in their mind. You know, I am actually starting to miss Sombra. I would really enjoy obliterating him right about now.”

I giggle. “We should swap places,” I offer. “I can handle all the budgets and numbers, and you can obliterate whatever threat has decided to waltz into Ponyville.” She giggles too, which is such a wonderful noise, I can’t help but smile.

We trot out to the balcony, the same one that I stood before after all that Sombra stuff. The view is beautiful. The Crystal Empire is… I guess the word might be “modernizing.” It’s probably for the coming Equestria Games. Some of the older buildings are being torn down, and replaced with new architecture. The older buildings that remain are being renovated, as much so they look pretty as because architecture has advanced in a thousand years. Some of the newer buildings, they resemble the works of Ray Hoof and his Art Deco style. I’m not a huge fan of it myself, but I know Cadance absolutely adores his works. I guess the crystal ponies enjoy the fusion of old and new.

“That tower,” I say, gesturing to the one that’s being built in the very center of the great city. “The one with the spire…”

Cadance smiles. “It is our newest project. The crystal ponies lost so much time, and though I don’t want them to forget where they came from, it’s my hope that by introducing something new, it might make them more enthusiastic about the future. I want them to have a symbol of this new age, and all the wonders and magic that comes with it.”

“That’s beautiful, Cadance.”

She giggles softly and looks to me. “Now, enough about my silly projects. What are you really here about?”

“W-what do you mean?”

“Twilight, I know that inquisitive look of yours. Something is on your mind. Talk to me.”

I can tell I’m blushing by the warmth I feel on my cheeks. “Well… I was sparring with Blueblood, and things took a weird turn. I was wondering if we could talk about him?”

Usually, Cadance is the picture of elegance and beauty. Oh, she’s so beautiful. I wish I was even half as gorgeous as she. She’s not smiling now though. She looks a bit solemn, and it’s a little unnerving. “What about him?”

“Has he always been… uhm… has he ever not… Well, you grew up with Blue, didn’t you?”

Cadance rests her upper body on the railing of the balcony and stares off at the tower that stretches to the sky. “Yeah. After Celestia adopted me, he kinda became my brother.”

“What was he like back then?”

“About the same he is now… He has always been pretty withdrawn. His mom died giving him life, and his dad died a little before Celestia adopted me. He never really liked hanging out with other ponies. He could spend hours and hours locked in the library, reading maps, reading books about maps, reading books about books about maps. If I could ever get him out of the library though, and I mean I physically had to drag him out… we went on adventures all through the castle, the yard… and he acted like a real colt… That’s how I always won our games of Hide and Seek. I already knew all the good hiding places.”

“Cheater…” I say, but I can’t stop the giggle.

“He was quiet, sure, but you were quiet, and there was never anything wrong with you. You just went at your own pace. The biggest change came when he was at the Point.”

“The military school, righ?”

“Yeah. We tried to keep in touch through letters, but I was working under Celestia and his schedule was pretty intense. We just lost touch.”

I want to hug her, since I can see she’s getting upset at the memories. I decide to, and softly wrap my forearms and my wings around her, holding her snuggly and close. She puts a hoof on my back. “It happens though. No matter how close you are to somepony, sometimes you just drift away. By the sun, I had not spoken to him in years by the time Celestia disappeared. Even then, when I was at the castle, all I could really think about was Celestia. I don’t think I said two words to him. Then he comes back, with Celestia no less, but my responsibilities here dragged me away. It’s been years since we really sat down and talked.”

“Did he do good at the Point?” I ask. I already know the answer, but a change in subject may help her out.

“Very good. He was well on his way to shattering all prior records, but then one day, he just dropped out. He wouldn’t say why, he refused to go back. He spent his days drinking.”

I think to myself. I’ve always liked mystery novels, and… I hate to admit it, but I guess I think of this as some big mystery that needs to be solved. If I solve it, maybe I can really help Blue. And something occurs to me. “Did his father go to the Point?”

Cadance shrugs. “I guess.”

“His father probably set a few records of his own, didn’t he? And, Blueblood was on his way to beating those records, to beating his father, when he dropped out.”

Cadance’s eyes widen a moment, before that solemn gaze creeps into her eyes. “Yeah, I guess he was…”

Comments

[TheyCallMeBeanz]

So glad this story updated.
Excited to see some of the mysteries surrounding BB and his father coming to light.

[Exilo]

4319712 Thank you. I am going to try to release the final three chapters fairly soon. It's nice since I had this story mostly planned out even during Prince Blueblood vs. the World. It's also nice to finally have Purple Heart's name in my canon.

And, after this, I would actually like to do a fic set in the Griffon Kingdom that would be continuing this franchise. And deconstructing a lot of the... horrible tropes that have been popping up in regards to the griffons as of late.