Rekt by Fuzzyfurvert
She perched on the window sill, beak slack and talons gripping the masonry tightly. Inside, beyond the glass and iron bars, hidden behind thick curtains two magic sources sat in companionable closeness. She could taste their magic on her tongue but that wasn’t what had drawn her here. She could feel the love coming off the two ponies on the other side of the wall.
She breathed in, pulling in the scents of the little alley and the flavors of mixed magic and affection. It was well aged, that emotion, but it held the sharpness of freshness to it. A couple then, these ponies. Lovers, perhaps.
It did not matter really. Once she was done with her snack, the hunt would resume.
Cadance groaned softly and her eyes fluttered open. Not for the first time she woke and had no idea where she was for a moment, until it all came flooding back. She was in Equestria again. In a safe house. In the the hooves of Twilight Sparkle.
Her guardian breathed steadily next to her in the huge bed of the master bedroom. Twilight’s spellbook still lay open , face down on Twily’s chest. Cadance smiled as she recalled letting her eyes rest for a moment while Twily rattled off a complex formula for casting battle spells that would let her mix elements and control the shape and power of her combat magics. It might as well have been in draconic haiku for all it made sense to her.
Cadance snuggled into Twily’s grip and rested her head against the unicorn’s chest. She was safe here, even if the Royal Sisters believed assassins were in Canterlot and after her again. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t in the Minotauran Collective sweet talking traitorous merchants for state secrets. She wasn’t in the northern waste spelunking the ancient cairn of long dead sorcerer-kings. She wasn’t in that fetid, Zebrican jungle running from the sounds of drums and hisses.
Cadance was home and with her Twily and everything was right in the world.
“Something’s wrong.”
Cadance groaned and lifted her head slowly. “What?”
“Something is wrong, Cadance.” Twily was awake and alert, her eyes darting about the dark room. She eased out of the tangle of their legs and slipped out of bed, her spellbook snapping closed and flying to join the rest of Twily’s equipment. “Stay here, I’m going to get Spike.”
“What’s going on?” Cadance rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she felt groggy and weak from far too little rest.
“I just felt the defensive spell batteries start charging. Something, or someone tripped the early detectors. Hopefully, I’m just being paranoid.” Twily flashed her that smile that made her knees weak and told her everything was going to be ok. “I’ll be right back.”
Cadance nodded numbly as Twily slipped out of the room, her staff at her side. She heard the door lock when it closed and she shook her head to clear it. She wasn’t going to sit around and just wait, she hadn’t lived this long by being passive. Cadance rolled out of bed and trotted into the bathroom. She splashed water from the basin sink into her face and with a thought she activated her horn to open a small tear in the fabric of reality and retrieved a sturdy oaken chest from the æther.
She popped the lid and reached inside to pull out her peytral and flipped it around to check the charge levels on the embedded crystals. Each one read full so she slipped it on and felt it’s defensive enchantments activate and surround her in a skintight personal force field.
“Hopefully, this is just a false alarm and this is all I’m going to need.” Cadance reached for the chest’s lid when there was a series of loud bangs as the reinforced shutters on every window in the safe house slammed shut. “Ok...not a false alarm. Better grab it all.”
Arcane power continued to flood the area, washing out all other traces of the target’s trail and it left a sour taste in her mouth. It didn’t matter though, she knew this was the place where the princess hid with her sole bodyguard. The walls were laced with enchantments anchored to rods of crystal set into the stone. It was a simple system, but brutally effective. It drew power from the ambient heat and weather and stored it in the rods. When the enchantment was triggered, it would release that stored power as directed electricity and hurl lightning bolts at any intruders.
When it worked.
She worked her mandibles into a smile and ran her antenna over the exposed crystal at the top of the wall. The weakness of such systems was their automated nature. She didn’t have to break the crystal or drain its power when she could simply disrupt the chain of faint cuneiform symbols and prevent the power buildup from activating the discharge enchantment. If that lead to a catastrophic and explosive failure later on…
Oh well, she’d be long gone by then.
Cadance slipped on her bracers and grinned as they faded to the same color and texture as her coat. It would take a very discerning eye to even see them should she be searched. Under her wings, her holsters were loaded with her usual assortment of short blades and the brand new “hull breacher” she’d been gifted by the Minotauran council.
She hoped she was sufficiently equipped to deal with whatever was hunting her this time.
There was a muffled noise from below and Cadance slammed the chest shut and banished it back to the void between worlds. If they were truly under attack they weren’t going to find this princess cowering in a tower. She rushed back toward the bedroom door and sank to her belly to level the lock with her eye. It was a simple deadbolt and she didn’t sense any enchantments from her side so Cadance lifted a slender strip of metal from a hidden spot in her peytral and gripped in her mouth. She wasn’t going to need magic for this.
Her carapace made a wet, snapping sound as it split along her back and slick ebony feathers erupted from within and spread out to catch the air and lift her over the wall. By the time she had a line of sight on the building within, her form had resettled into a blackbird against a black sky. A few wing beats and she landed, unharmed and unopposed, on the rooftop.
The inner building was no less defended than the walls had been, but the magics swirling off of it were purely defensive abjurations. She could sense the magics searching for a trigger but whoever had placed them had never anticipated a shapeshifter and the arcane patterns flowed over her feathers harmlessly. The roof had no access she could spot, however. The only doors and windows seemed to be on the ground floor and were already sealed. Is she wanted in, she was going to have to ask nicely.
And no one ever liked that.
She hit the ground a moment later on all four paws and arranged herself in a bedraggled state before letting out a plaintive meow.
“Seriously?”
“I’m serious, Twilight, it’s just a cat. It looks like it had it’s tail handed to it in a fight too.” Spike shrugged as he craned his neck to look over the couch he and Twilight must have moved to barricade the door and out the peephole.
Cadance remained silent and unnoticed on the stairs. Twilight and Spike had set up a defensive position in the main room below her and flipped tables and chairs to provide cover in the case of a fire fight. That might suit them fine, but it had always been her experience that the best defense was staying mobile and unseen. She lit her horn for a moment and nodded toward Twilight and Spike. Now, even if they became separated she could whisper to them and stay in communication. Assuming the assassin didn’t blanket them with anti-magics, of course.
“I think we’re getting worked up over nothing, Twilight.”
“We have to be careful, Spike, this could be a trap or an illusion.” Twilight tapped the end of her staff against the floor. “Princess Luna said the assassin was a powerful magic user. We need to be ready for anything.”
Spike leveled a stare at Twilight. “It’s a cat. If it is a trap, I’ll just eat it.”
“If this blows up in our face, you are the one who has to apologize to Cadance.”
Cadance grinned and shook her head slowly. If they were lucky, it was just a cat. But then again, she never believed in luck she didn’t make for herself. She tapped her peytral and activated its Chameleon enhancement as she reached up and pulled herself into the high corner of ceiling where she could see the the whole room.
She meowed again as the door unlocked and then slumped dramatically on her side as it inched slowly open. Ponies never seemed to learn, did they? It was all she could do to not smile and chuckle as one of the literally oldest tricks in the book worked yet again.
She was about to meow again when a clawed hand, easily bigger than her current form slipped out of the door and around her body. She froze and held her breath. They had a drake in there‽
Where was her intel on that?
She relaxed after a moment when the hand didn’t crush her and instead pulled her inside and past the building’s defenses. All was not lost, she should still be able to accomplish her mission and kill Princess Cadance, dragon or no dragon.
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4925085 palaikai completed what we termed the Royal Grand Slam earlier. (Twilestia, Twiluna, Twidance, Twysalis). We could use another!
4933823
Wait, there's a Twysalis collab?
4935231 yep, behold: Tainted Love
4933823
I need to get around to that myself. I have so much to write...