Chapter XII: War Room
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0630 HOURS
WAR ROOM
CANTERLOT CASTLE, CANTERLOT, EQUESTRIA
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Shining Armor bolted upright in his seat, his ears raised while shivers raced up and down his spine. Old instincts, hardened by his time as a guardspony, kicked into overdrive. For a second, the urge to grit his teeth and growl like a rabid schnauzer welled up within his chest until he forced it back down. Somewhere, something terrible was happening. He knew it, could feel it in his gut.
“Captain Shining Armor?” Somepony asked. The unicorn turned to face Luna, the Night Princess looking at him with her brow furrowed in concern.
“Perfectly fine, Princess,” he said, placating her with an easygoing smile and a nod. “But it’s ‘Prince’ Armor now, remember?”
“Ah yes, my apologies,” Luna said, returning both the nod and the smile. “Old habits die hard, and can even find new life during times of stress.”
Shining smoothed his fur down in the places where it was standing on end and breathed a soft sigh through his nostrils. “Couldn’t agree more, Princess.”
He didn’t turn as his wife slid into the seat next to him, though he did stick his hoof out for her without even thinking about it. She smiled thinly on seeing it, accepting it into her grasp. His grip tightened, just as automatically as offering his hoof had been. Around them, each of the remaining Element Bearers took their seats at the massive table. Once everypony was seated, the glow off the magical torch sconces lighting the room dimmed, casting them all in darkness. The lack of natural lighting did feel rather stifling, but he could understand why it would be so. After all, not a lot of chances to put in a window when one is opening up pocket dimensions with massive bursts of Alicorn magic. The room was a marvel of Equestrian engineering: a tiny pocket folded over in the rift of spacetime, created with humongous amounts of magic built up over half a decade from the most powerful unicorns in Equestria, himself and all four princesses included. Still, it was hard to feel proud of himself when he couldn’t even protect the ones he loved…
For what felt like hours, but could only have been a few minutes, nopony spoke. Those who didn’t have their eyes cast on the floor were holding them shut to try and hold back the flood of tears still threatening to break through. Shining grimaced at the sight. To see such ordinarily cheerful faces holding such terrible sadness felt wrong, like a peaceful-looking field before it exploded with enemy fire, or a nasty-looking thunderhead just before it spawned a killer tornado, or Pinkie Pie a split-second before downing a chocolate bar and a few bags of raw sugar (though that last one, at least, had led to the most exciting post-wedding banquet in Canterlot’s long history). Either way, this feeling was a sign that something needed fixing, and as a high-ranking official in both the Royal Guard and the Equestrian royal hierarchy, he was used to fixing these things. Or, at least, relaying them to the Princesses if he couldn’t handle them himself.
But what if it’s even bigger than the Princess? He wondered. What if she’s part of it, and in need of our help? There, he drew a blank. Something bigger than her was so far beyond his pay grade it made him want to gag. Simply put, he didn’t know what to do, and that scared him worse than a Tirek/Discord/Chrysalis/Nightmare Moon team-up. He scoured the faces around him, as if searching desperately for some sort of answer, but only found worried glances, hooves on shoulders, and half-hearted attempts to meet his eye that ended as quickly as they began.
At long last, Luna stood and cleared her throat. “We all know why this meeting has been called,” she announced (though not at Royal Canterlot Voice levels, thank Celestia). “I doubt there is any reason to discuss the dire circumstances we find ourselves in, is there?”
One glance around the room with her steely, blue eyes gave her the answer. “Verily well,” she nodded, taking her seat again. “Now, the reason for this meeting is to discuss how this government is to deal with certain…recent developments.”
“I’ll tell ya how,” Rainbow Dash said, her voice cracking as she suddenly stood and slammed her hooves into the table. “We head into that portal, beat down the freaks that took our friends, and get our ponies back!”
“Rainbow,” Shining sighed. “I get that your heart’s in the right place, but…”
“But what!?” She screeched, pointing a hoof in the direction of the field that, until yesterday, had only known excitement during last year’s pumpkin celebration, when a misplaced goop of pumpkin innards had wound up in Miss O’Bannon’s mane, which she’d mistaken for a bat and nearly caused a riot with her panicked shrieks. “Every moment we sit here is another moment those things could be doing who-knows-what to our friends! Why the hay are we even sitting here when we should be…should be…”
Applejack’s firm hoof on her shoulder caught the pegasus off-guard. Rainbow whipped around, glaring at her friend. AJ just met her gaze with sad, tear-streaked eyes, only breaking eye contact to give a slow shake of her head. It took a few moments, but Rainbow’s glare eventually broke into a defeated sigh as she sank back down into her chair, burying her muzzle in her hooves.
Shining stood, and though his voice was proud and strong, he kept his hooves on the table, like an old man leaning for support. “We don’t know anything about these creatures or their world. For all we know, the air they breathe is poison to us. Add that with the fact that before their attack, they were able to drain our magic, and it’s obvious that a full-on assault could only end in disaster. We all saw their weapons. We all know what these things are capable of.”
Fluttershy gave a frightened squeak. All around him, ponies’ eyes widened with the memories of what they had seen in that field. Yes, the group was all too aware of what the things that had stolen their friends were capable of. Most of them had at least been coherent enough to watch that stallion fall dead without even being touched, from a weapon that made a massive noise and was brought to bear in a single, fluid gesture. Shining thought it sounded a little like one of those cannons the Royal Guard would shoot off during ceremonial events, or perhaps the black powder weapons a few of the Griffon fiefdoms used in their armies. Except the Griffons’ weapons were big, cumbersome, wildly-inaccurate things that took ages to load and luck to keep them from just blowing up in your hand. They probably had nothing to do with the long, elegant weapons the attackers had carried, right?
“Well,” Applejack said, breaking Equestria’s newest prince from his thoughts. “Is there anythin’ we do know?”
For the first time in over twenty-four hours, a genuine smile crossed Shining Armor’s face. Applejack always had been the practical one. “Actually, that’s part of the reason we called you all here,” he said. He turned to the night-blue princess at his side and smiled, a tiny piece of his heart soaring with hope when she smiled back. There’s still hope, he realized as she stood once again, her gaze passing over the ponies around her.
“Over the past night, we have spent a massive amount of energy throwing our subconscious through the anomaly and into the world on the other side,” Luna said, a flicker of hope dancing in her eyes. “We are happy to report that we have discovered a dreamscape similar to what exists in Equestria, allowing us to explore the collective subconscious of the beings on the other side.”
Everypony sat up in their seats, scooting right towards the edges, nopony more so than Shining Armor. Before the meeting, Luna had in fact told him she had some discoveries to announce, but nothing as incredible as this. “Oh my gosh,” Pinkie said, speaking for the first time since walking in, her deflated, straightened mane regaining just a single bit of poofiness at the end of one lock. “Didja figure out how to get Twily and the Princess back!?”
“Sadly, no,” Luna said with a defeated sigh, and the tiny flicker of hope at the table dimmed a little bit. “Whatever these creatures are, they apparently have nopony to guide their dreams. As a result, what I encountered was a level of chaos to make Discord’s head spin.”
“Hold on,” AJ held up a hoof. “There’s an idea! Discord! He might be able t’help!”
But Luna just shook her head. “Even if we wanted to contact that creature – and I personally don’t think we do – he appears to be unavailable at the moment. At least, to my magic.”
All eyes settled on Fluttershy, who simply shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered with sadly. “I haven’t seen him since our last tea party.”
“’Tis not like we ever thought Discord would be a reliable way to handle major crises,” Luna shrugged. “Though it was worth a try.”
“So we’re back to square one,” Cadence mumbled. “Great, now the only thing we know is that these things have brains so messed up we can’t even learn anything from their dreams.” Shining gave her hoof an extra squeeze.
“Actually, we did determine a basic body structure,” Luna said, and as she spoke, a few wisps of her magic entered the air. Her horn glowing, she directed the wisps of night-blue dust with an expertise that could only come with a thousand years’ experience. As they all watched, eyes wide in wonder, the tiny wisps of dust coalesced into a strange form, starting with a pair of feet, a set of stout legs, an elongated torso, a pair of strong arms, and finally, a head with a single, small bulge in the middle dividing a pair of tiny, oval-shaped spots of light blue, supposedly representing eyes.
“This is what took our friends, huh?” Rainbow Dash said, a hoof still on her muzzle, her eyes rolled up to look at the magical construct.
“Yes, and while there is a female variant, this creation is a good basis for what took my sister and your friend.”
The group fell silent for a while as everypony paused to look the figure over, analyzing it, perhaps hoping they could see some gaping weakness to exploit. The minutes ticked by, Shining’s own search growing desperate. “Perhaps,” he put forth cautiously. “It can’t see very well? Those eyes seem awfully small.”
“Um…that’s not actually true,” Fluttershy said. “Owls and tigers have smaller eyes too, but they have some of the best vision of any creature.”
“Oh,” Shining sighed, slumping in his chair, defeated. After a while, the rest of the ponies joined him, realizing that the vague outline of some creature just didn’t give them enough data to work with. The sense of malaise and hopelessness began to descend on the room once again. Snorting in frustration, Shining turned back to the lunar princess. “Luna? Is there any way you think you could head back into those creature’s dreams and perhaps learn more?”
A shiver passed up the princess’s spine. “Apologies, Prince Armor, but we highly doubt such an endeavor would bear any fruit. Besides, I really do not wish to revisit that chaos. The last attempt was rather like a roller coaster without brakes or seatbelts, made up of nothing but hairpin turns and loops for hours on end.”
Shining Armor cringed at the description, but was grateful that it at least explained the hours of retching he’d heard from the Princess’s bedroom a few hours before. And he had been worried it might have been morning sickness, oh Celestia above forbid.
“Just what kind of creatures are we dealing with here?” Rarity asked aloud, her voice shaking throughout the room. “If their dreams are that chaotic, what are we really up against!?”
“Well, this has been productive,” Luna sighed, dropping to her hooves. “As it stands, it doesn’t appear as though we can do anything but maintain a heavy Royal Guard garrison around the anomaly and pray it will be enough.”
“I’m iffy even about that,” Shining Armor replied. “If those things launch an attack coupled with those weapons and their ability to drain our magic, we might as well offer those guards up to a feral hydra.”
“It’s all we can do, Prince Armor,” Luna sighed, her breath coming out in shaky sighs. “We have to protect our little ponies from another attack, it’s what…what Tia would want…” her lower lip trembled, and for a moment she wasn’t the Princess of Night, but instead a mare terrified for somepony she loved. Shining could relate. Except for the mare part, of course. Then, all at once, the mare was gone and the all-powerful Lunar Princess was right back. “That’s all we can do. At least, until we can learn more about what we’re up against or come up with another plan.”
“In that case,” Cadence said, hopping down alongside her aunt as the group strode out of the room. “I believe the only thing we can do for now is try to keep the populace calm.”
“Easier said than done, I’m afraid,” Luna snorted as the group filed out into the hallway. To drive her point home, the Alicorn promptly seized one of the windows in her magical grasp and shoved the curtains aside with a loud rustle. A massive crowd of ponies greeted them, their voices coalescing into a dull roar that shook the glass in its pane. The rest of the group stared, their jaws on their chests, before Cadence spoke.
“Blueblood?” She asked.
“Apparently, he wasn’t too thrilled about my ‘forgetting’ to invite him, and has spread a rumor of Celestia’s disappearance amongst the aristocracy,” Luna sighed, shaking her head. “We love and cherish our nephew, really we do, but sometimes he can be so…”
“Boorish?” Rarity said, a tiny smile on her face. “Pig-headed? An irritating dolt?”
“All of the above,” she said, a smile on her face. “I swear, between this and the ongoing hunt for the Changeling Hive and the economic stimulus going to the Diamond Dogs…”
“We’re good at keepin’ ponies calm, Princess,” Applejack winked. “Dontcha worry none. We got this, right girls?”
“YEAH!” The other Element Bearers shouted, but there was something missing in their tone. Some small hint of listlessness in their shout. It was easy to know why: somepony was missing from their number, and until she was there again, it wouldn’t quite be the same.
“Captain Armor!” Luna called, and the Prince looked up, his eyebrow arched. Luna sighed and rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. A word, please?”
“Of course, Princess,” he replied, giving Cadence a quick peck on the cheek before trotting to join with the Princess. She motioned for him to follow, and he obeyed, keeping pace at her side as the voices of the other ponies faded away behind them.
Shining Armor looked uneasily over his shoulder, then back at the Princess. “Princess Luna? What…”
“That’s just Luna to you now, Prince Armor,” she said with a weak smile tugging at one of the corners of her mouth. “We are of the same status now, are we not?”
“Right, right,” he said, returning the smile as best he could. “What did you need, Luna?”
The smile disappeared from her face, though in all fairness, it hadn’t really been there in the first place. Luna sighed, her shoulders rising and falling with a trembling breath. “It’s the anomaly, or portal, or whatever you wish to call it,” she replied, shaking her head sadly. “It’s growing.”
Shining Armor’s stomach dropped into his hooves, hooked up with the gum stuck to his keratin, got a few numbers, dropped some E, then slammed right back into its old home to crash. “Oh dear sweet Celestia, what?”
Luna sighed again. “This morning, when those things…took our sister,” her voice shivered, but she took a deep breath and recomposed herself with a technique learned through centuries of practice before her imprisonment. “…the southern flank of yon anomaly reached to just within twenty yards to the southern fence of the field it occupies. Now, it’s within hoof’s reach of the fence, if one leans out enough. We haven’t made any accurate measurements yet, but the portal is obviously expanding, and doing so at a high rate.”
“Celestia and Luna above…”
“Yes?” Luna said with another half-hearted smile.
Shining tried to return the smile again, failed, and settled for shaking his head. “How big is it gonna get?”
“By our estimates, it will encompass the entirety of the farmland it resides in sometime tomorrow evening,” she replied, and then shrugged helplessly. “After that, there’s no telling how far it will go. All of Canterlot may well be encompassed and become directly accessible to the creatures on the other side. I don’t think I have to tell you how bad that would be.”
“Does Cadence know?”
“Cadence was the one who recommended we tell you next,” Luna said. “Take no offense to the fact that I went to her first, if you please. She is a fellow alicorn, after all.”
“Of course, of course,” he said, still shaking his head. “We can’t let this out. Just Celestia being gone was more than enough to stir up a near-riot. If Equestria learns that its capitol will soon be vulnerable to enemy attack…”
As if to emphasize his point, the sound of glass breaking followed by high-pitched shrieking echoed from outside. Shining shivered at the thought of what might happen if this got out.
“If anything, this makes the rescue of our friends even more of a top priority,” Luna said, her tone still holding at that cold, political low. “We need the power of both my sister and the Elements if we are going to stand a chance.”
“Whatever you need, Princess,” he said, rearing up, the soldier he once was standing at attention in his eyes. “Anything at all.”
“Anything?” She asked, and all at once she arched an eyebrow coldly at him. “Tell me, Prince Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire, how far would you be willing to go to save your nation and get our ponies back?”
The image of those mares back there, smiling but not really, passed through his mind again. The most cheerful, loving mares he knew, approaching tears because of what they did. Took his sister. Took his princess. Now, they were about to take his country as well. His jaw clenched. “As far as is needed,” he replied.
“Good,” Luna said with a curt nod. “Because we have a plan, but it will require some time to prepare, and when it’s ready, you will be asked to place your life on the line. You will need to go behind enemy lines, allow yourself to be captured, be taken to the heart of whatever constructs the enemy may have built to contain our kind. It’s dangerous, nigh-suicidal, we know, but if it works, our ponies might just have a chance to escape back to us.”
Shining let a large breath in through his nose, and exhaled it slowly. Then he bowed at Luna’s hooves, a mask of stoic determination on his face which hopefully hid the way his shoulders wanted to quiver with his every movement. “Whatever is needed, I will provide,” he said.
Luna smiled back, a weak little smile, then reached out, squeezing his shoulder like an old friend. He didn’t raise his head, instead leaving it where it was as images of wretched, black creatures on two legs simply bashing his brains in the moment he appeared with his hooves up danced in his head. “That is good to know, Captain Armor.”
This time, he didn’t correct her.
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OH, shit. Regular Shining Armor is going to meet TCB!Shining Armor. Shit just done got real, son.
4982358
Yar!
One of these times us humans are going to have to step back and actually talk to one of these ponies. TCBShining meeting Celestia. TCBShining meeting Twilight. TCBShining meeting Shining.
Dear god. . . it's the Barrier in reverse. . .
Why do i get the feelin' this plan will bring back the WRONG sun ruler.
Good chapter!
4982397 please... no.... that's what's going to happen isn't it?
"Except the Griffons’ weapons were big, cumbersome, wildly-inaccurate things that took ages to load and luck to keep them from detonating in one’s grip. Surely, they had nothing to do with the long, elegant, black weapons the attackers had carried, right?"
Bit heavy-handed, there.
It's certainly a pleasure seeing the pony side of things and how they're fairing.
Oh, and kudos, since I think that this is the first time I've seen Luna exploring the human dreamscape brought up. I mean, It's fairly common to see Luna taking a peak in on a single human when you have a standard HiE fic, but I don't recall Luna ever doing so for the sum total of humanity. And certainly an interesting description of her experience with it.
4983280 Agreed. Make fun of older weapons at your leisure, but they were liable to tear your arm clean off if you actually got hit. Increasing accuracy was why they had those formations in the first place.
4984023 Unless you're talking about some of the first pistols. A bunch of paper folded up a couple of times can stop those bullets.
And so we have another situation where everything could be resolved in a matter of hours if just two people on either side would decide to fucking talk. I mean seriously, I get that it adds tension, and they're both hyper-wary of the other, but after being used so many times in fiction it gets grating.
4997036 Aye! Got you there mate! This thing will end up in a bloodbath if it keeps going on, but if they both want war, then so be it!
DISCORD! I just found the chekov's gun that went off in the latest chapter!
...Bring Luna through? That should show them that Celestia's not a crazy who kills everyone else who vaguely challenges her power.
Hell, they KNOW that Celestia killed Twilight in their alternate universe, and They have twilight in captivity. That should tip them off that something's not right.
Hell, fucking interrogate Twilight! The humans would trust her - she rebelled against celestia! But no, keep on interrogating the one you HATE and DISTRUST, surely you'll believe what SHE says, and not this other pony who is the living epitomy of the fact that YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT CELESTIA.
So . . . Luna's asking Shining Armor to become. . . a Trojan Horse? (Dodges rotten tomatoes)
Are the planets merging or something?
5840127
I mean you have a point
But then again if what is essentially super Hitler showed up on your doorstep it would generally go the same way
4997036
I agree, even Tho they took two heads of state and attacked the new Equestria, they would at least send a group to see if talks could be taken place, even if its just to see if everything is fake and it's a trap
TWO PROBLEMS
1# Our Equestria is preparing for a 50 chance war.
2# The portal is expanding