Chapter Fifty : Losing the Daylight
(50)
- - -
“Clear!” “Move move move!”
Luna leaned heavily on Fury, one of her most trusted Night Guards, as his comrades swept over the pillar flanked hallway ahead of them. The Doric architecture provided a great sense of majesty and open space, but it also provided ample opportunity for changeling ambush. Light streamed in through stained glass windows on the east wall, faint spears of rainbow light settling on the seemingly empty hallway. Great banners and flags representing Equestria and her many noble houses hung from the walls and rafters between clusters of shields and murals of the rising and setting sun.
Half a dozen long tables decorated the floor of the hall, bedecked in gold-and-china platters. Heaps of food and drink lay un-gobbled on both tables and open larders. This had once been the commissary and feast hall of Celestia’s Solar or Dawn’s Guard, and a few of her sister’s noble retainers were still in attendance. Kept from collapsing by Fury’s stalwart bulk beneath her, Luna watched as two of her guards moves swiftly among the tables… and bodies.
“All dead, your highness,” one of her bat-ponies reported, leathery wings folding up as he landed in front of her. “It appears most were stabbed in the back while they ate and drank. It looks like there may have been a party going on, or…” He grimaced, trying to describe the carnage. “Or something,” he finished, lamely. “We may never know for sure.”
“Stabbed in the back,” Luna regarded him. “Just as I was…” She shook her head weakly. The poison had been left with another Luna, but she had to bear with the physical wounds she had accumulated since her awakening. “Carry on, Lieutenant. Sweep the room. Then we press onward.”
“Yes, your highness!” He flew off, leaving her with her small immediate escort.
“Highness?” Fury rumbled beneath her.
“Those responsible for this slaughter will pay for it in blood,” Luna swore, and gestured forward. He resumed carrying her. Two other trusted bat ponies flanked her left and right, ever alert for attack or ambuscade.
Though she did not speak it aloud, Luna was privately less concerned with her own efforts at regenerating and more with leading her guardponies out of the death trap that was the Equestrian Royal Palace. There were changelings everywhere. Most seemed to be focusing their efforts on Celestia’s guardponies, seeding chaos among the ranks and preventing any sort of coordinated response to the invasion. If what she had seen in the Palace was repeating itself all throughout Canterlot, the nobility would be decimated come morning. The ranks of the Dawn’s Guard were made up primarily of aspiring young noble stallions of good breeding and worthy name: an entire generation of them had been thrown into a meat grinder by this debacle.
Her own Night Guard had, thankfully, been far less infiltrated. After escaping her observatory, she had quickly gathered together and purged her guard. Virtually all were at roost nearby, instead of spread out across the entire city, and their number was relatively miniscule in comparison. A short but violent altercation as Luna spread terror and nightmares among her guard revealed the traitors easily enough. No true Night Guard would give into fear and nightmares so readily. It was purgation long overdue.
“Clear!” “Clear!”
Pressing forward through the feast hall and into the high security inner wings of the Palace, it wasn’t long before Luna and her entourage came across another scene of combat. This time, however, the victims were not entirely Day Guards. A pegasus in golden armor did lay still on the floor, a serrated changeling knife in his ribs… but his killers had in turn been killed.
No less than three changelings lay scattered around the T of the hallway’s intersection. One had been smashed into the wall hard enough that it was still upright in a slight indentation. Another was snapped in half like a dry cracker or a piece of cardboard, the head and the hindlegs touching. A third simply had no head on its withers.
Its wings continued to twitch as if trying to fly away and escape.
“They must’ve been discovered,” Fury guessed, helping her forward and past the carnage. “Serves them right. Bastards.”
“We found the head,” another bat pony announced, pointing far down the left turn of the intersection. “I can see it all the way at the end, there.”
“Few are the ponies who could kick a head off a living body more than a hundred hooves,” Luna observed, adding a guess of her own to the speculation on everypony’s minds. “Twas not royal guards that did this.”
“Highness?” Fury asked, sensing more on her mind.
“What lies down this path?” Luna asked, pointing to the right.
“Archives. Dry storage. Some vaults?” Fury answered, knowing the Palace well, like few of her other guards. He had served here for years, even before the Dusk’s Guard reformed. He was also of noble birth, while most of Luna’s servants were of middling or lowborn background.
“Which vaults?”
“Ceremonial items, I think,” he replied, searching his memory. “I’ve never been inside any of them. Antiques. Still valuable, but… Highness?”
“This way,” Luna commanded her forces down the right hallway. “Be alert,” she warned them. “Do not rush ahead.”
The wound in her back ached, then, resisting her efforts to close it up with magic. She cursed the changelings. Their poison had been bad enough. Their weapons were well designed to defeat magical healing as well. Not that it ultimately mattered, even if this particular body died. She was certain the Luna with the poison in her was already gone. What mattered most was really getting her guards out of the Palace now that the infiltrators had been revealed and destroyed. That and… maybe… looking into this new mystery.
A few turns later, and the mystery deepened.
“Clear…” “C-clear.”
“By the night,” Fury whispered, his body tensing enough that Luna could feel the change in him.
“Most interesting,” Luna said, narrowing her eyes.
There was a hole on the wall up ahead.
A hole, normally, would not be much of a surprise. A strong earth pony could kick a hole in even a solid wall. This one was not just solid stone; it was reinforced by iron bars within the masonry, all to no avail. The hole itself was not the ragged and messy result of a kick either. It almost looked like it had been melted through. The edges of the hole flickered and twinkled with residual magic.
“Did a unicorn do this?” Fury wondered, coming to some of the same conclusions she had, even at a glance. “Princess, perhaps you should not…”
Luna eased herself off his back, staggering towards the hole.
Just beyond it lay what her nephew would probably jokingly refer to as an abattoir. Most ponies would just call it a slaughterhouse. The room beyond the hole was clearly a changeling holdout of some sort. The walls had been painted in their vile wax and there were a hoof-full of stasis cocoons. Half were still empty. Half had been violently ripped open.
Slain changelings covered the floor and walls in various degreed. It was a scene Luna did not relish describing elsewhere. The sight of it caused her no particular concern, personally, but her guards did look on in worry and disgust. Luna had to keep from sighing. For all their courage, bravery and dedication, her Night Guards were still Equestrian. They were still ponies. This unsettled them. They had overcome the natural and proper inhibition ponies had against violence or even killing, but this…?
“Remain outside until I summon you,” Luna ordered, and her guards gladly did as she wished.
Holding her side with one hoof, Luna paused at the edge of the hole in the wall. Lowering her eyes to the edge, she forced her free hoof away from her midsection and over the sundered masonry. This was no ordinary unicorn magic. It almost looked like… aether? But that was impossible. Nopony in the modern era could control aether. Even in ancient times, it only responded to a select few. To even call that “control” of the primal element of magic from beyond the veil was being generous. A weapon or artifact using aether, however…? That was within both the capabilities and inclinations of modern ponykind.
Gingerly cresting the hole and entering the changeling strong room, Luna glanced over the fallen. All changelings. All of the dead were changelings, except one. Moving slowly towards the one Equestrian among them, a battered and beaten Royal Guard, Luna was a little shocked to see the prone figure take a breath.
He was alive!
Not just alive. Could it be that this pony had been rescued by whatever blasted a hole in the wall? Luna turned briefly to the cocoons that had been opened. Each one had the top-half ripped front ripped off. There were more Royal Guards, one in each cocoon. They were unconscious… but breathing, too. The fact that all the changelings here had been mercilessly destroyed and all the guards set free… it looked more and more like a rescue. But by who? And why had their rescuer just left them here to fend for themselves?
There was one way to find out.
Luna stood over the unconscious guard, the only one who hadn’t been cocooned. Nuzzling him, she confirmed that he was both unconscious and sleeping. He was the only one who may have been awake when whatever happened here, happened. The truth of it was locked in his dreaming mind. Fortunately, she was the one mare with just the key needed to get at this knowledge.
“Show me, dreamer,” Luna whispered, lowering her horn to the unconscious guard’s forehead. “What happened here? Who…?”
She flinched, finding the memory. It was right on the surface, too, but far from clear. The guard had been dragged in by the changelings. Kicked. They wanted him weak and hurting so there would be less resistance to putting him in the cocoon. At that point, things became fuzzy. So much was a blur. Then…
And then the blast, and…
“Darkness and starlight,” Luna whispered, opening her eyes.
Darkness and starlight? What could it mean? Just what was going on?
- - -
(50)
Losing the Daylight
- - -
A fat droplet of mineral-laden water fell to the floor, but ended up splashing against a serrated foreleg studded with cruel spines and barbs. The leg belonged to Queen Sarai, mother and master of the Zilant Hive of changelings, and the droplet evoked a wince like few blows could. The Queen’s almond eyes squinted in the lack of light, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing on edge. Her companion had led her far from the Sunkissed Desert; far from the rolling, merciless savannahs her children had hunted, far from what had been home and the lands of her upbringing in which she had felt safe and secure.
Chrysalis, unlike Sarai, did not seem to mind the dank cave they now meandered through. The moisture from wet stone overhead trickled down onto her smooth shoulders and large, round head – her features and the features of her Greens childlike to Sarai and most Zilant – and ran through the limp green membranes that were her mane and tail. Her eyes were wide and watchful, but not afraid or even uneasy. She seemed, if anything, anxious to get where they were going and fascinated by what she saw along the way. Chrysalis would be, Sarai supposed. They were close to their destination, now, or so the Queen of the Biscione insisted. Sarai was neither so sure, nor so convinced she even wanted this mad quest to succeed.
Their escort trudged ahead, leading them on, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth. It was a strange creature, like nothing Sarai had seen before in her native land. It was a beast of these westernly lands in what Chrysalis and a few zebra traders called the “New World.”
Instead of confronting the Inkanyamba with their combined forces, as Sarai had hoped… especially after seeing how Chrysalis’ swarm slaughtered her own in open battle… they had gone back to the coast. They should have swiftly turned on the hated Yellows who dominated all other changelings and were at the root of so much strife. It was a vengeance long coming and long deserved! Instead, back at the coast of the glittering sea, Chrysalis and her swarm began building. Building! As settled zebra do! What kind of changelings built things?!
Sarai sniffed disdainfully but kept her feelings private.
Their century of exile had made the Bisicone strange and made them adapt strange ways. They built walls of wax and wood and metal rods; they smelted steels and used foreign magic. They did this on the coast where they had first appeared, and for the first time, Sarai beheld their ships. Huge beasts, they were, like wooden whales to cross the stormy sea from Old World to New. Equestrian ships, she had heard. Some of the crew there were not changelings, but ponyfolk, a few like zebra, but others with wings like birds or long horns like rhinos. Or like the Bisicone themselves. While the Greens constructed some sort of… port or harborage… on the coast to set anchor, Chrysalis took her new ally back west on enchanted winds.
Weeks had finally led them here, to this warren of dank, dark, disgusting, claustrophobic caves, to be led around by some strange half-blind beast. Sarai trilled unhappily, craning her neck when their escort paused to scratch itself on the rump with a meaty claw…or claw-like paw. The itch sufficiently scratched, it shuffled forward again. The spear it carried over its shoulder swayed back and forth behind it. It was no ordinary spear, however, like Sarai had seen in Tanzebra. This one had a large, gleaming metal tip that was spear-point, axe-head, and cruel meat-hook all in one. Some sort of hybrid spear? The hook looked especially dangerous, like it could find the gaps in even her chitin armor.
“How much farther, if I may ask?” Chrysalis was polite, as she had often been in their trek.
“Mmmrm. Not much,” the dull beast grumbled. Sarai got a look at its squat, canine face. It scratched its rump again, near the base of a stubby tail, and resumed walking. Or leading, supposedly. Sarai suspected it was either lost and walking in circles or leading them into a dead end and trap. Any minute she expected it would break into a run as the ceiling came crashing down, the tons of rock burying the two foolish Queens alive. Sarai cursed inwardly. The gods did not create changelings to live in caves!
“I am ill at ease,” Sarai finally gave voice to her reservations. “These warrens go on and on without end… or rhyme or reason. Where is this creature leading us?”
“Our guest is leading us to his mother,” Chrysalis replied, smiling confidently. “I know you don’t like caves, Sarai, but I will need you with me.”
The Red Queen trilled again, her mandibles twitching. “Yes. So I have heard.”
“Take heart. It won’t be long now.”
“Won’t be long until what, I wonder? These caves are not natural.”
“No, they’re not,” Chrysalis agreed, and Sarai stood up straighter in surprise. “Because,” the Green Queen continued, grinning and gesturing with her hooves. “Any minute now, we will get to the end of the cave and see a mouth full of teeth and realize we are – in fact – inside the belly of the beast already!” She mimicked the scene by inching her hooves closer together. “Followed by a mad rush to escape as the huge jaws slowly close! Then out we go, into the open, while the monster snaps at our tails!”
Sarai gaped for a moment at her fellow Queen. “W-what? Such a thing can’t be!”
Chrysalis tittered, holding a hoof up to her mouth as she laughed. “A joke, Sarai! The look on your face was too much to resist!”
Sarai growled low in her throat and stalked forward a little faster to remain ahead of Chrysalis. “Inventing such a frightful tale… to scare me, when you know I hate caves? I won’t forget this.”
“There is no need to be so deathly serious,” Chrysalis insisted, trotting up to keep pace. “A little laughter can help you overcome your fears, I have learned. And as for the story, it was actually no invention of mine. It came from a book.”
“A book?”
“’Daring Do and the Empire Strikes Back.’ One of my favorites. It was also made into a radio-play. In the story, Daring Do and this roguish smuggler are--”
“More of your scribblings,” Sarai realized and shook her head.
“I’ll let you borrow a copy from me once you’ve learned to read,” Chrysalis promised.
“I am learning,” Sarai replied, and it was grudging. “But I see little in these marks on paper you love so much.”
“Writing, paper, books... you will learn to appreciate these things, in time, as I have,” Chrysalis lectured, and not for the first time, to those changelings from the Old World who did not know of such concepts. “They are marks of civilization. They are tools of great power. Great power, Sarai. Some ponies say the quill is mightier than the lance.”
“From what I’ve seen, your ‘written word’ has the power to burn and keep me warm on a cold night,” the Red Queen hissed, but had no interest in another argument.
All the damned Biscione could read and write in the Equestrian fashion, she had learned on the trip between continents. Every single one of them! It was strange and un-natural, un-changeling-like and un-healthy, just like this horrible cave!
As if reading her mind, Chrysalis dropped the subject and told her, “Besides, you’re right: not only is this cave unnatural, it isn’t a cave at all.”
“Oh?”
“Look at it,” she asked her fellow queen, and ran a hoof along the curving sides of the cave-wall. “Look below you, above you, around you. No cave is circular, and no natural cave has such smooth walls. This is a tunnel.”
“A tunnel?” Sarai looked around with her flexible, segmented neck, in a way Chrysalis could not. Up, down, behind. “What sort of creature can make such a tunnel?”
“The kind of creature I want fighting for me,” Chrysalis answered, both honest in her desires and evasive in her details.
“Here,” their guide grumbled, gesturing around a bend in the tunnel.
Walking past him, or her, or it, the two Queens were treated to a breath-taking sight. The tunnel led to a spectacular underground grotto. Sparkling streams of waver cascaded down rough, rocky walls thick with green and red vegetation. Cracks provided similar streams of light through jagged slants in the ceiling high above, bathing the grotto in an eerie glow. Dozens of other holes were punched in the walls, as well, Sarai couldn’t help but notice.
They stepped down a smooth ramp and onto the floor of the grotto, heading towards a great pool in the center. By ‘they’ it was more accurate to say Chrysalis led and Sarai followed. A few more of the armed and armored bipedal canines milled around the lair, two of them tending to leathery satchels. Changeling nymphs or even grubs were bundled inside, Sarai guessed. It was hard to tell from a distance, but the smell was in the air. The temperature and humidity of the grotto was, despite the strangeness, what she herself sought out when the time was ripe to brood. If this was a nest, it was a sparse one and an otherworldly one… far removed from the muddy spawning grounds of the Zilant.
A “New World” this was, indeed, and this land was at the very fringes of it.
“Make no sudden moves that could be perceived as hostile,” Chrysalis whispered. “We are very much surrounded on all sides.”
Sarai had already guessed as much from the movement in those wall-burrows. “If you have led us to our deaths, I will curse you with my last breath.”
“Have some faith,” Chrysalis suggested, grinning again without a trace of fear. She trotted confidently towards the central pool.
As they neared the edge of the water, ringed by stones like a shrine, bubbles broke the surface. The two visiting Queens paused at the water’s edge. Something large moved beneath the water. A painted frog croaked and swam away from the crown of bubbles that disturbed the amphibian’s Lilly pad. After a few seconds, the crown of bubbles parted and a figure began to emerge.
A small, lithe changeling rose out of the water, amid a trio of wavy black tentacles. Brown streams colored her chitin around her stunted forelegs, crossed in prayer over her chest and upper torso. Like Sarai, she seemed to prefer to stand upright, but this Brown Queen was far thinner than either of the mothers Red or Green. Only her long, slim upper body crested the surface to float slowly towards her peers. Sarai privately wondered how well she could even see them, with her squinted, weak-looking eyes, unaccustomed to the light of the surface world. Strange, sharply angled jewelry hung from her ears and neck and beaded through her wispy brown mane.
The Queens repeated the Royal Ritual, sniffing one another in a manner reminiscent of a kiss on the cheek. First, the Brown One met Chrysalis, and then she did the same with Sarai. This stranger creature was genuinely a Changeling Queen, despite her appearances. The smell was there. She had the Royal Jelly that made a changeling a Queen and a Mother.
“Chrysalis of Biscione, you have sent me many gifts to sate my desires and dispatched children to visit My Greatness with… words instead of weapons,” the Brown Queen stated, beginning their conversation as their host. “I, Tlanextli, Queen of the Underworld, shall restrain mighty Mictlantecuhtli the Abyssal Devourer and entertain your humble request for an audience!”
‘Quite the voice on her,’ Sarai couldn’t help but think in annoyance. ‘Tlanextli, ‘Queen of the Underworld?’ And here I am, content with Throat Slasher and Bloodletter. I didn’t even know there was another hive overseas… and if they are changelings, why aren’t any of them in disguise? I thought those bipeds to be their hosts, but…’
“Mighty Tlanextli,” Chrysalis boldly omitted the ‘queen’ part, a fact Tlanextli noticed given the slight curl of her lip. “The gifts I sent you are only a taste of what I can offer you beyond these caves and beyond this wasteland. Your hunger, and the hunger of your Mictlantecuhtli, is without compare…”
“Your flattery is nonetheless true,” Tlanextli admitted with an arrogant chuckle.
“…as such, I wish to invite you to my feast,” Chrysalis continued without missing a beat due to the interruption. “All changelings will be there, and we will eat and drink our fill. You simply have to be there. You must join us.”
A dark and terrible look passed over Tlanextli’s frail features.
“A… feast?” she asked, intrigued. She glanced over at Sarai, tempted just a bit more by curiosity. “Tell me more, Chrysalis. I do love feasts.”
- - -
“You’re beautiful!”
“I love to make new friends!”
“Exter-min-aaaa…tt…e…”
The heavily damaged alicorn mannequine sputtered as it fell apart, puffs of pink flame spurting out of its damaged mouth as it ambled forward on three of four legs. Falling onto its face, it whined and finally deactivated. The two remaining ponyquins, still animated by the Princess’s magic, continued to stomp around the center of the Crystal Hall, taking potshots at any changelings that entered their field of view.
Keeping out of sight, and grimacing at the charred body of the last changeling courier that had been sent on her mission, one changeling managed to find what she was looking for. The scent trail was still fresh. Now it was just a matter of escaping.
“Spectacular!” one of the alicorn mannequines cheered, firing off her killer pink beam. “My wings are so pretty!”
The drone silently cursed not only the pony Princess, but the changeling who had left her report in such a Queen-forsaken horrific drop-spot. What had that mucus-for-brains been thinking? Her carelessness had already gotten the Queen only knew how many changelings killed.
Biting down on the report, the drone waited for just the right moment to slink off.
Only when she was far from the two alicorn mannequines did she feel safe to take to the air. It was a long trip around, but at least it was devoid of any pink beams or balls of fire. Stopping near a large marble statue, also of the same darn alicorn Princess, the drone paused to catch her breath. Looking up at the stone edifice, she could almost imagine it suddenly coming to life and stomping her flat. Finding a less intimidating spot near an abandoned café, she rested for a moment.
Curious, and seeing no harm in it, she also took a little peek at what was in the folded paper.
A 9 5 0 0 A
Ambush failed. All Targets Remain.
Continuing towards Wireless Broadcasting Tower.
Recommend either greater application of force in future or demolition of radio tower.
“There’s an ID code, but it isn’t even encrypted,” the drone chittered to herself, folding the letter back up. It sounded important, though. She made double time to get it back to their Princess. She wasn’t an alicorn, but she’d know what to do. Even if Princess Exuvia didn’t, one of the Queens would. Taking another deep breath, she took off and into the smoke-choked and embattled air above Canterlot.
- - -
Through a pair of goggles, a stern faced and pegasus guardsmare watched the changeling fly away, highlighted by a field of bright blue. Even as it vanished into the distance, the spot of azure light remained behind like a faint trail, making it easy to track. The guardsmare snorted, a little impressed that the plan had worked.
A second guardsmare crouched low next to her. Though normally wearing the uniform and crimson blazon of Lord Brass’ Terre Rare guard, this assignment called for inconspicuousness and deniability. To this effect they had both discarded their normal attire for the duration of the mission. It was just as well. Unlike almost all of Brass’ guardsmares, they were normal-sized ponies, not big, cold-eyed Amazonian murder-machines.
“It worked?” the other mare asked. “I hate to think we’ve been waiting here all this time for nothing.”
“It worked,” the first replied, “just as Lady Eunomie said it would.”
The sans-goggles guardsmare grunted in acknowledgement and rested her head between her hooves. “I don’t like all this waiting. I wish Lord Brass was with us again.”
“We all do,” the first mare agreed, raising the goggles off her eyes and into the tangle of purple that was the bangs of her mane. “We must have faith in Lady Eunomie and Lady Euporie.”
“We don’t even know what Lady Euporie is doing. Or even where she is.”
“Yes, and those who work for Lady Euporie don’t know where Lady Eunomie is or what we’re doing.”
“Slinking about in rubble is the answer.”
“Gathering intelligence is the answer,” the first corrected her comrade and retrieved a paper scroll from beneath her right wing. “We’ll head back to the safehouse as soon as I finish my event report.”
“Hey…you remember when Lord Brass had those changelings incinerated, right?”
Unfurling the scroll, the first guardsmare started to write with pencil-in-mouth. Still, she was able to respond. “We were all there, so, yes, I remember. Hard to forget something like that. Why?”
“Do you think... maybe we… that we could’ve done something to…”
“They were the enemy.” The first mare hissed, interrupting her comrade, the pencil almost falling from her mouth. “Don’t feel sorry for them. Or any of the ones here, either. They aren’t like us. Remember: there’s only us and them. No middle ground.”
“You’re right, of course. Orders are orders.” The supporting guardsmare sighed and shook her head, watching as the mare with the goggles wrote something down on the paper. “What’s the point of doing that now, anyway? Lady Eunomie is out with Lady Sparkle and the others. She won’t be able to read it until after we all get back home.”
The first mare continued writing her brief report. “Like you just said: orders are orders. We do as we’re told.”
- - -
Placing the quill down into the inkwell, Alpha Brass put aside one sheet of paper and slid a second out in front of him. It had been kind of Antimony to leave him with pen and paper to record his thoughts on. Sitting behind the neat wooden desk in his private magical prison, enclosed by shimmering magical barriers on every wall, the floor and even the ceiling, he found it hard to complain about the amenities. As befitted a pony of his rank, his cell was well furnished and his needs well cared for.
The stack of paper, though, that was most appreciated. It would have been degrading to pretend to be writing on the floor like a madpony in an asylum, all to get what updates from the field trickled his way. Then again, Antimony’s rigid belief in how her family should be treated with dignity – regardless of her own strong personal feelings or animosity – made a cell with a pen and papers a foregone conclusion. Even if it had not been provided from the get-go, Alpha Brass felt confident he could have simply asked for it, as he had asked for a change of wine, zap apple cider, and a six-thirty PM three-course meal.
There were precious few things one could count on, in this chaotic world, but his baby sister remained as predictable as clockwork. Just as he had known her reaction to his letter in sending her to Ponyville. Just as he had known, from the start, that she would never admit her defeat to Chalice in the Sister’s Duel. Antimony’s sense of honor meant she had to respond, and she was the sort who only knew how to respond in one way. Not that she couldn’t see alternatives; just that the code she lived by demanded she dismiss those alternatives and do what was ‘right.’ Brass scoffed.
Words appeared backwards on the sheet of paper, ink moving of its own accord. What one distant pony wrote on the front was repeated here, on the back, due to the power of his magical seal. Reading the newest addition to the tangle of different hoofwriting styles on the note, he allowed himself a small smile, his thoughts drifting away from his sister to another remarkable and talented unicorn mare.
Twilight Sparkle.
According to the latest report, she was well, unharmed, and very close to the Wireless Tower after crossing half the city of Canterlot. Eunomie was with her, of course, and supervising things as well as he’d expected. Twilight Velvet continued to give their position away, meaning at least one more attempted ambush, probably at the tower itself. Very good. It would be certain to end up destroyed at the end of the day, either by changelings, by Velvet, or by Eunomie herself. Overall, everything was going quite well. As he had come to expect, Eunomie had not let him down. He had no doubt that she had the Twilight situation and numerous others well in hoof.
He didn’t even have to be present, either for Twilight Sparkle’s adventure or for anything else.
Euporie was already ready and literally chomping at the bit to be unleashed. He didn’t need to read a report to guess at that. She had already tested her amplified magic on that village in the Frontier, provoking the skirmish between Buffalo and Equine. It had been a purely physical skirmish ponies should have had no chance of surviving, much less winning, yet the results had spoken for themselves. Her job was much easier than Eunomie’s… her setup in Canterlot was just a matter of unpacking a few items. There was nopony to babysit, no spy to feed information to, no convoluted plan.
All Euporie had to do was wait.
The potential problem was that Euporie hated waiting around. Alpha Brass tapped his hoof on the desk, mildly worried about that fact. The biggest worry at present was definitely his sweet little hedonist of a step-daughter jumping the gun. Euporie did not always do as she was told, he had learned, especially when she wanted to impress him with her initiative. Initiative and creativity were certainly admirable traits, but so was patience. Euporie, hopefully, would remember that and wait until the time was ripe.
Of the two other conspirators in their little group… Cadance had to have escaped by now, though that operation was almost entirely in the dark as far as he knew. His only real source of intelligence was from the captive Princess herself. Lyra had been inserted into the bridesmaids as planned, billed as the weakest of the group and thus the least likely to end up at the wedding fighting Celestia. It was in Cadance’s hooves whether she used Miss Heartstrings to affect her escape.
All he could do was to provide the means of her escape. Picking a window of opportunity was left to her. He doubted the young alicorn could do much against Chrysalis herself, at least in a direct confrontation, but she would undoubtedly be a costly distraction, and if she accomplished more…? He was not averse to it. Princess Cadance, as much as anypony, had earned the right to strike back at her tormentors. Brass wished her luck. Miss Heartstrings as well.
Lastly, there was no word from Chalice, yet… which was mildly disconcerting. Her job in the chaos and confusion of the immediate wedding fallout was simple but absolutely critical, not to Euporie’s plans, or Eunomie’s plans, not to Cadance’s plans, but his. Then again, this was Chalice… and her assignment did not call for subtlety or doing anything more than breaking down some doors in the palace and finding a certain something. She would not fail. Not at tasks like this.
A momentary flicker in the magical walls of his prison prompted Brass to glance up from his work.
“Nice of you to drop by,” he said, the small, placid smile still on his face from before, “mother.”
“Alpha.”
Twinkling Star Light wore a white labcoat over her white natural coat, partly concealing her body, but there was no mistaking the first-lady of the Terre Rare clan and Duchess of Prance. Especially not with her unique spectrographic goggles resting over her forehead, the lenses and gears and switches of it sticking out like a mess of glass and piping. Her natural, violet eyes scanned the walls of his prison.
“So this is where you were hiding. This cell was meant to contain extra-dimensional entities,” she stated, her attention briefly passing over the four unicorn mages who powered the prison. They were Antimony’s loyalists, but for the moment, rendered senseless. Each one stared forward, mute as statues.
“When your father had me recalibrate it to hold a pony, like Twilight Sparkle, for example, I never expected Antimony would appropriate it to hold you, instead,” she continued, facing him fully again and reading him as only a mother could. “More curious still is you letting yourself get caught.”
Alpha Brass shrugged, folding up his papers and giving his mother his full attention.
“We both knew she would retaliate in some fashion,” he replied. “Tell me, mother. I haven’t seen my little sister in some time now. Is she well? Has she left the Lion’s Den?”
“Off to relieve Canterlot,” Star Light answered, plainly. “The city is besieged, or so I hear.”
“The Princess herself has fallen,” Alpha Brass stated in the same calm, leisurely tone, “or so I hear.”
Star Light’s brows actually furrowed just a little at that news. She was, after all, a former student and apprentice of said immortal Princess. It had always been a remote possibility that she would come to her old mentor’s aid, despite her frequent distractions and bi-polarity. Brass wondered in that moment just what was running through his mother’s mind. Was it fear? Had she really considered just what it would take to destroy those she loved most, as he had? Could she run those scenarios through her mind without emotional bias or investment, as he could?
It seemed unlikely.
“Princess Celestia is not easily beaten,” his mother finally said, her dismissive tone never quite reaching her eyes. “She is even less easily killed.”
“Yes, I’m sure she’ll pull through,” Brass replied, folding his hooves over the desk in front of him. “Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but how did you find me here?”
Twinkling Star Light briefly rolled her eyes.
“Oh, that…” She pointed a dainty white hoof in his direction. “In case of an emergency, I injected all of my children with a solution of magical phosphorus isotope. Ninety percent of it was filtered out after the first month, but approximately ten percent of the isotopes from the original injection were incorporated into your bone marrow, giving off a very faint but still measurable signal that I can track across large distances.”
Despite his well cultivated demeanor, Alpha Brass felt his features shift slightly in shock. As the possibilities behind this revelation truly set in, the tremor of surprise and fear only grew, roiling beneath the surface of his façade. Bare hints of it reflected in his turquoise eyes: the imperceptibly widening pupils, the twisted emotions threatening to bubble to the usually placid or amiable surface.
If what his mother claimed was true… then she could have found him at the Hanging Gardens just as easily as she had found him now, here. Magical barriers clearly did not work to hide the radiation signal. It would have been as simple as confirming his location at a given time and then cross-referencing that with her spell. Alpha Brass found he needed a second to think and to keep himself composed. Not only hadn’t his mother done that, even if she had detected the irregularity in the Gardens’ location, it was something he could have salvaged. There was no need to be troubled, not over what could have been or what almost was, because it simply had never been.
“I see,” he said, softly. His racing thoughts slowed and the mask returned.
Still, there had been a slip. It was not a great change in expression, but it was clearly enough for his mother to notice. She laughed softly, using her hoof to cover her mouth, a slightly unhinged “ehehehe” that was both playful and a little terrifying.
“So, you injected radioactive phosphorus into your infant foals,” he stated, for clarification. “What am I saying?” Brass shrugged helplessly, remembering who he was dealing with. “Of course you would. So all this time, we’ve had radioactive material inside us?”
“If you had ever been foalnapped, you’d have thanked me,” Star Light answered and waved her hoof chidingly. “Besides, it was perfectly safe! I did the same to your father and I tested the formula thoroughly when I was pregnant with your older sister. We… we…”
The mad scientist-Duchess of Prance paused mid-explanation, narrowing her eyes.
“Wait a moment,” she said, more slowly. “You weren’t really concerned about your safety, were you? You know I would never use untested magic on you. No.” She tilted her head slightly, examining her only son. “I know that look. You’re more worried that I could track you down at all. You must have expected I would find you eventually, but not how.”
Alpha Brass closed his eyes and didn’t dare open them. “A miscalculation on my part,” he admitted.
“Alpha,” his mother said, adding a bit of parental reprimand to her tone, “Little Twilight alluded to some trouble in your marriage to Olive Branch. Is this related? Just where have you been, that you don’t want me tracking you down?”
“Nowhere important,” he lied, and was for once obvious enough in his attempted prevarication that Star Light’s expression darkened. He blamed himself. He really did try not to lie if he didn’t have to. It was better simply to distort the already existing truth. He was much better at that. Opening his eyes again, he tried to change the topic. His mother would no doubt track him now, if he left. Her curiosity would demand it. This was turning out more troublesome than he had originally thought.
“You’re here for my blood and body, are you not?” he asked. “To help bring father back?”
“I am,” Star Light replied, a hypodermic needle rising up alongside her. “Some clumsily, foalish, inept pony--” she all but spat the words. “--contaminated my stock of circulation solution. The very thing your father needs most at this stage in his recovery. What a coincidence that it would happen now, of all times?”
“Coincidences by nature seem statistically improbable,” Alpha Brass reasoned, weathering his mother’s angry glare. “Did you catch the poor pony responsible?”
“I did,” Star Light’s response was strangely light and airy, given her scowl.
“You weren’t too hard on her, I hope. Or him.”
His mother continued to glare at him through the magical barrier, this time in silence. Of course, he knew that she knew, and she knew that he knew. It didn’t mean he had to actually admit to it, however. That was just how the game was played. Though, granted, Twinkling Star Light hated schemes, preferring the simplicity of science and magic over the fickle vagaries of high society. Twilight Sparkle was the more adaptable of the two astute academics in that respect.
Still, he mused, this was not the timing he had expected. In all honesty, he had anticipated being locked up another day, maybe even more. He was even comfortable being confined for the entirety of the crisis in Canterlot. Being free was as much a liability as it was a luxury at this point. He knew who had done the deed, of course, but not the reason why. Such was the caveat of being so reliant on one’s well cultivated subordinates. There was always the unexpected element of surprise.
It was somewhat tempting to just remain here but…
Alpha Brass found he wanted to be there, to see it with his own eyes. Not just Chrysalis’ death and suffering, which he had a vested interest in. Not just the crushing of the changeling species and their consignment into oblivion. There was also her. He wanted to see her, and what she would become. Would she end up like the others? Or would she be something truly special? Or would she die? Despite his normal caution, he wanted to be there. It was a strange impulse. One he had trouble placing or reconciling. It was an emotional, self-destructive impulse, his rational mind insisted. Why was it so hard to just dismiss?
‘Twilight Sparkle…’
“Suffice to say, as a result of the ‘unfortunate accident’ here,” Star Light finally found her voice again. “I had to throw out the entire contaminated stock and look for a replacement. For a normal pony, this would be as easy as visiting the hospital in Ponyville.”
“Mm,” Brass murmured. For a normal pony.
“Or even poaching some from a close relative.”
“Indeed.”
“In the case of your father, however,” Star Light considered, the edge of her hypodermic needle scraping threateningly along the magical prison barrier, leaving purple sparks in its wake. “I needed blood with the activated Curse of Arsenic, which even I don’t possess or have the means to synthesize. Only a main branch member would do, so it was fortunate I had four loving foals to choose from. But… in another strange coincidence, I soon realized that Chalice was in Canterlot. Somewhere in the Royal Palace, I believe. Polished Jewel just so happens to be pregnant, with a mild case of anemia no less, and can’t possibly donate… and Antimony…”
Alpha Brass’s expression remained the same as it had been all throughout his mother’s explanation of events. And Antimony?
“Antimony is the least compatible of all of you,” his mother concluded, “due to the gorgon mutation in her eyes. That leaves only you. But then,” she added, off-hoof. “You were always most compatible, Alpha. You were always our first choice.”
‘Our first choice,’ he thought, not fond of the compliment.
Both mother and father had said the same when they reviewed his marriage prospects, it being clear by then that there would be no Blueblood heiress born in this generation. There would be no Princess for the clan’s perfect little Prince; best to settle for a Duchess instead, one three times your age. You are our first choice. It was a true honor.
‘I am your first choice in meat,’ Alpha Brass thought, but never let the vinegar seep out into his placid outward smile or soft spoken words. ‘I am the prime rib and choice steak of my noble family, to be haggled over and served and traded for favor and position and power… you learned one right thing from us, Chrysalis, in all our years together. We ponies all just meat. Just like what your mother took for herself on my wedding bed, telling me to enjoy it, that she could be anyone I wanted. That I had every choice but to say ‘no.’ I’m no exception to the rule. I was her first choice, too.’
“I’m only happy to help, of course,” Brass said, getting up from behind his desk to trot over to the shield-wall that separated him from his mother. “But you have a problem: as an intrinsic part of me possessing my magic, my blood won’t be allowed through this magical prison any more than I am. In part or in whole, I simply can’t leave.”
“Alpha. My son. Who do you think built this in the first place?” Star Light asked, twirling the needle around in a field of her magic. “If there was a way out it wouldn’t be a very good prison cell, now would it? No. I’ll just free you and take the blood and tissue I need.”
“And Antimony?” he asked, a little teasingly.
The needle stopped in mid-air, pointing right at him.
Star Light concluded, snorting unhappily. “You clearly don’t seem worried about being imprisoned here or in any particular hurry to escape so, by all means, stay. Or leave. Antimony locked you up to keep you out of her mane, but frankly, that isn’t a concern of mine. Getting your father back on his hooves is what matters to me, above and beyond anything else.”
“Like I said,” Brass repeated, holding out a foreleg as the shields melted away all around him. They ran down into the grooves in the floor like a receding tide. He inhaled the fresh air, but found it no different than it had been inside the cell. A shame. The smell of freedom was no smell at all.
“I’m happy to cooperate,” he assured his loving mother. “I want him to be up and able to see it, after all.”
“See what?” Star Light asked, dabbing a spot on his foreleg with disinfectant gauze.
Alpha Brass’s small smile returned after a momentary slip and fixed firmly in place. “Equestria’s… triumph… of course. With the Princess gone, at least for now, it will fall on us normal ponies and mere mortals to raise the sun and create our own dawn, unlike all those that came before.”
The needle plunged into his foreleg, drawing poisonous Terre Rare blood.
“I’d like all of you to be there to see it with me,” he whispered, turquoise eyes smiling.
It felt good, thinking about what was to come. It felt right. An act of unprecedented heroism necessitated an act of unprecedented terror. It felt like a cosmic balance. Let them see it, and feel it, and live through it… if they lived through it at all.
- - -
Global Hawk clutched his reconnaissance folio, as tightly as if his life depended on it.
Tucked protectively under his right wing, the brown parcel was partly concealed from sight by his gunmetal-gray feathers. No matter what, there was no way he planned to risk dropping it, or losing it, or having it taken from him. Not until he had delivered it. This was, without a doubt, the most important mission and the most critical data he had ever gathered in his entire career – no, in his entire life.
Global Hawk swallowed nervously, already flustered by the pair of emotionless Cloudsdale Companions standing implacably to either side of the doors he knew he was about to be invited to enter. They were Cloudsdale’s version of the Royal Guard, and their lineage was even longer than that of their counterparts in the Royal City. The Companions had a darker reputation, too, to go with that esteemed ancestry.
They alone of all pegasi still wore ceremonial bronze muscle cuirasses and intricately enameled Phrygian and Corinthian helmets, just like in the distant past. The helmets also served to hide their faces, leaving only their eyes to peer out from behind the metal. The bronze panoply was rumored to give them an impossible and unnatural control of lightning. Whether that was true or not, it definitely gave them an imposing aspect, like living, breathing statues. Patterns on their cheeks and skullpieces depicted storms, lightning, and fury made manifest. In modern Cloudsdale, Companions did nothing but guard the Congress of Four Winds, enforcing the will of the ruling body of the pegasus community in Equestria. There were only thirty in all and membership was invite-only and for life.
Global Hawk averted his eyes from the pair of Companions, trying to remain less than conspicuous, despite the fact that he was nearly alone in waiting to be allowed inside the chamber. The other pony present seemed less than intimidated, but that didn’t make it any easier on the recon scout. The presence of a genuine celebrity reclining on a cloud-bench nearby – shamelessly munching messily on a half-full dish of pie – only made him more nervous. Two Companions and a Wonderbolt. It was lofty company.
He turned his eyes on the bronze door between the two Companions. Like most pegasus ponies, Global Hawk had been through these great vaulted doors before, just once. As a little colt, his class had gone here on a field trip to learn about pegasus civics. It had been empty then.
It wasn’t empty now.
The Congress of the Four Winds was in progress, and nopony was permitted to enter except with permission from one of the Weather Lords. Especially not some lowly recon flyer straight out of flight school! The bronze inlaid doors opened with a creak and the softly spoken command came to enter. Global Hawk nodded and did so, keeping his eyes tactfully lowered.
Once inside, with the door closing behind him, he dared to look up slightly. The first thing he noticed was nopony else but THE Spitfire of the Wonderbolts, standing rigidly at attention to his right. Global Hawk quickly tried to emulate her perfect posture, striking a good military pose. Another pony, a stallion in a military uniform, also stood nearby. The black clip on his wing indicated he was a spook from the secretive Department of Weather and War. A uniformed aide soon took his folio, and Global Hawk waited to be excused. He waited… but the order to leave never came.
He glanced up some more.
The first thing he saw, which he remembered well from his visit here as a young colt, was the five-times life-size golden statue of Pegasus and Equus. Pegasus was the only constellation worshipped by all ponies in the most ancient times as the Mother of Ponykind. This depiction of her was of a beatific, physically perfect pegasus mare, her great wings spread like the canopy of the sky itself. Clutched to her side was her foal, Equus, sometimes an earth pony, sometimes a unicorn, sometimes an alicorn. Among pegasi, Equus was naturally another pegasus, though the alicorn-Equus was also very popular. Nopony minded this contradiction. Equus was all-ponies of all genders, and defied true categorization. The appearance was merely one of taste and tradition.
Surrounding the base of Pegasus’ statue were metal bars. Each one, Global Hawk knew, bore a name and a date. Each one came from the melted down weapons of an enemy vanquished by the pegasus race over two thousand years and more of history. A hundred bars had been brought to Equestria by Commander Hurricane to preserve their single greatest cultural accomplishment. They did not bring books or telescopes or flags or heraldry. What was most important was to preserve the pride of the pegasus nation in the new world. To those hundred bricks, almost another hundred had been added over the last thousand years, most in the first two centuries of Equestria’s difficult and violent colonization and the EUP Era immediately after Luna’s banishment.
In a curved balcony behind Pegasus, overlooking the shrine, were four ponies. Each had a hollowed seat that none other could take. Not a throne, but a simple seat. A pearl-white banner hung from in front of each private box, bearing the old sigils for ‘North,’ ‘South,’ ‘East,’ and ‘West.’
The four elders murmured quietly amongst themselves as they reviewed Global Hawk’s folio.
“Scout,” one of them asked in a motherly tone, and Global Hawk realized he was being addressed directly. “These creatures are shape-changers. Identity-thieves? You saw this power of theirs in action?”
“Y-yes, Lord South!” Global Hawk answered, loudly and clearly.
“How many are patrolling the perimeter of the city’s shield?”
“When I made my pass… I counted at least twelve squads, with two wings of four flyers in each. Many more set up base on the mountainside.”
“Wings of fours? Deployment in squads with these numbers? Add this to the other evidence we’ve been presented. It cannot be a coincidence that they use our own operational doctrines against us.” Lord South gestured with her hoof towards her fellow pegasi. “We know Canterlot to have been rife with traitors, including Shining Armor himself, but who else has been helping these creatures, here or abroad? We must not charge forward only to be knifed in the back!”
“Cloudsdale has already been shocked by acts of sabotage all throughout the day,” the elderly Lord West, one of the technically non-military commanders, spoke softly but with great authority. “It will be some time before our own home is completely secure again.”
“All this paints a dire picture.” Lord East, a mare and the youngest of the four, sighed softly. “It is a credit to the ponies of Canterlot that they were somehow able to put up an organized resistance, but according to this, half the city is in ruins. The traitor’s shield is still up, preventing us from inserting operatives in stealth or in small units. Opposition is heavy both inside and outside. Except for the radio broadcasts insisting the wedding is still underway, communications remain completely cut off…”
“Nonetheless, my fellows, we cannot permit an attack on Canterlot to go unopposed,” Lord North took over, his voice the grizzled tone of an old monster-hunter and former Wonderbolt Captain. “It is not only our honor to respond, it is not only our duty to respond, it is our pleasure. What true pegasus shirks or doubts in jumping to the defense of a friend and ally? And Canterlot is no mere friend or ally, she is our sister.”
The assembled Weather Lords murmured, but seemed to agree in principle.
“The situation is also not as dire as it seems.” Lord North stood and walked past his peers, showing them something none at the floor of the chamber could see. “Canterlot fights on, even against impossible odds, tying up vast numbers of the enemy and preventing them from fully fortifying their hold on the mountain. Look at all these gaps! If they can but take the sky harbor, we can park a cloud fort directly on top of it, solidifying our control of the airspace there.”
“What of the outlying areas?” Lord South asked, leaning back in her seat. “Captain Spitfire, on your own initiative, you sent one of your subordinates into an active warzone to gather reconnaissance. Why?”
“It was a judgment call, Lord South!” Spitfire answered without hesitation. “Ponyville is of vital strategic importance.”
“Was of importance,” the graying war mare stressed the past tense.
“It remains so,” Spitfire argued. “Though the town fell very quickly, and damage was heavy, Ponyville has been destroyed a few times over the last few years. It always bounces back. Fortunately, most of the population appears to have been very quickly evacuated outside of the town. Fleetfoot made several passes over the Blueblood manor house, and you can clearly see a large number of powerful barrier shields in place and civilians being herded by the Dove and Cross, a capable Free Company under the employ of the Baroness, Lady Rarity.”
“That would have been some time ago,” South replied in kind, waving one of the recon photos in the air with her hoof. “How long can such a meager redoubt hold up against an enemy force of this size?”
“How did such a large force even materialize so quickly?” Lord East wondered. “Where did they get all these weapons? I understand that many came from the armories and arsenals of Lady Cadenza, but still…”
“My friends and fellows, is Ponyville truly a priority?” Lord West asked. “The elements of harmony aren’t even in the town. All six are in Canterlot. Including your youngest daughter, North, or have you forgotten? Don’t we have bigger problems?”
“The fact that the bugs have pulled together their single largest force to take the citizens of the town implies that they think it is vitally important,” Lord North said, taking his place again at the far left of the quartet. “While surely only a fraction of the overall forces in Canterlot, these photos show a concentrated enemy expedition at least a thousand strong. The town itself was clearly not their objective, as there appears to be little effort being made to hold the position.”
Lord South tapped her lower lip with her hoof. “Then this provides an opportunity for us.”
“Indeed it does,” Lord North replied. “Cruciger’s wardogs are already spreading down from the north. The Wonderbolt reconnaissance shows them engaged in some sort of sapping and digging… it is possible that the enemy is moving their forces underground and out of sight. Other units are cutting through the collapsed metro tunnels. This force is heading to relieve Ponyville.”
“What do you propose, Lords North, South?” Lord West asked. In purely military matters, the West and East lords typically deferred to North and South. In civilian matters, the reverse was true.
“Spitfire, ready your team for heavy combat,” Lord North commanded. “When the opportunity presents itself, when you see a decisive moment, you are to strike the enemy forces from behind. Take out their leader, if they have one. Decapitate their chain of command. Then assist Lord Cruciger or whoever he left in command. I want to know what everypony is after in Ponyville.”
“Yes, sir!” Spitfire barked.
“Until you strike, keep your presence a secret,” Lord South warned. “We do not know who else we can trust.”
“As for the other matters, we are already calling up the reserves…”
“We cannot leave Cloudsdale defenseless. Why not hold back the seventh and eighth of the Territorial Air Guard?”
“We can send the first and second guard on light-kit to immediately support Canterlot at the harbor. We have specialists to bring down the shield, but they’ll need protection, and funneling troops through a small gap like that is a recipe for disaster.”
“There is also the matter of Fillydelphia and Manehattan. How fast can those earth ponies organize to assist?”
“The earth ponies? Oh, I’m sure they’ll send a courier any moment to assure us that they’ve voted to form a committee to elect a chair to head an inquiry on what to do next.”
“More seriously and more pressingly, we must also send another – sterner – warning to Lords Yama and Blueblood that this threat is real. By the Princess, what if that whole incident was manufactured by the enemy?!”
“Ah, Captain,” Lord North only then noticed Spitfire was still at attention and waiting for permission to leave. “Dismissed. Good Winds.”
“Thank you, sir!” Spitfire saluted the four and quickly made her exit. Her pace quickened as she trotted past the two stoic Elite Companions outside the council doors. Light hoofsteps indicated her companion had finally gotten off his lazy butt. And finished his pie.
“Well?” Soarin asked, “How’d it go?”
“I don’t know how Captain Thunderhead handled this kind of thing; my heart feels like it’s about to explode,” Spitfire admitted, and smacked her partner in the chest. “But you better not tell anypony that. Ever. Understood?”
“Absolutely, Captain Hardass!” Soarin grinned, and she rolled her eyes. Not that he needed to hear it, but she was glad he’d come along. Her first meeting with the brassiest of the top brass, and the topic had to be this.
“So,” Soarin wondered aloud, “War?”
Spitfire nodded. “Yeah…” She sounded like she could hardly believe it. “War.”
- - -
Princess Instar trotted proudly through the abandoned husk of Ponyville.
The foremost of her mother’s mature daughters, Instar had earned the right to consume more royal jelly than any two of her sisters combined. An almost spitting image of her mother, Instar towered over her lesser drone-sisters, her long legs permitting an easy, confident stride down the cratered main boulevard of the small town. Her India-green mane, just a little darker than her mother’s jungle-green, was kept trimmed short, the membranes carefully cropped to part to either side of her delicate face.
While just a cosmetic change by pony standards, the shameless display of her own individuality was striking among her kin. Instar was the foremost of the entire Biscione Hive sisterhood, and she knew it. Moreover, she never let anyling else forget it.
Flittering up and onto the top of the abandoned town hall, she gazed down at the ranks of changelings marching ahead through the village. Almost all of them had been separated from the Canterlot assault forces for months now, training by themselves in the guise of guardponies and mercenary groups, all while the fair ‘Princess Cadance’ built up their hidden stockpiles of weapons. As such, they were uniquely well equipped and prepared to fight out in the open, to achieve with brute force what could not be taken with guile.
Raising a pair of equestrian-made binoculars to her eyes, she surveyed the last point of resistance.
Blueblood Manor.
The foolish sister who had taken the Prince’s place should have completely undermined its defenses. It should have been a changeling bastion, not an equestrian holdout. Instar quietly cursed the incompetence of the missing ‘Prince Blueblood.’ When she had left to confront the Neighponese, Lady Rarity – not nearly as ‘under control’ as everyling had been led to believe – had taken complete control of the manor household. It had been turned into a fortress on a shallow hillock overlooking the town. That damned mare must’ve been planning for this for weeks.
A buzzing sound preceded the landing of a lesser Biscione Hive changeling alongside her. Instar continued to inspect the battlefield ahead through her glasses. “What news?”
“Princess Ecdysis requests that we move to aid her in securing the mountain,” the drone answered, staring up at her with large, hopeful eyes. “The crimson ponies are attacking us on all fronts, both above and below ground. The dogs are fighting alongside them and they are collapsing our tunnels!”
“Tell Ecdysis to dig more, then,” Instar huffed.
“Almost all of our War Worms have been sent into the city to gather captives and spread terror,” the little changeling argued. “Ecdysis asks only that you come to her aid when you can.”
Princess Instar rolled her bright green eyes.
“I have battles of my own to wage,” she reminded the drone. “Remain by my side for a time, sister, rest your wings, and when you return to Ecdysis, tell her I will gladly aid her… but only after I have secured my own objectives. Until then, I cannot spare a single drone. She will simply have to hold the tunnels as best she can.”
The changeling courier lowered her head in proper obedience, and Instar called over one of her swarm lieutenants. The changeling who landed appeared no outwardly different than the courier or any other drone, except for the black helmet she wore where most drones had none. What was different was a factor only changelings could sense: this drone had the pheromones of command. Though, naturally, she was still far subordinate to a Princess who had supped on the honey of royal jelly.
“Lieutenant,” Princess Instar commanded. “Review the battle before us.”
“As you wish, Great Instar!” The drone bowed quickly, dipping her eyes in respect. “We expected to face resistance in the town, but found it evacuated and heavily booby-trapped. Most of the traps were harmless, but the streets were flooded and turned to mud, making it difficult to move our cannons. We believe all this was to buy time for the town’s evacuation. The entire town is held up inside the manor yonder.”
“Raiding parties were launched to try and disrupt the defenders, but they were quickly repulsed,” the changeling lieutenant explained, pointing up in the air. “Grenadiers were brought in to try and set fire to the building, but they have… they must have multiple shield-casters within. Including a shield type we’ve never encountered before. The outside of the building is covered in ‘bubbles’ that allow the defenders to fire at us from between the gaps with spell and bolt.”
“Attack from the air is suicide,” she concluded. “Even when we pop one of the bubbles, before we can properly exploit the opening it closes up again. Attack from the ground means crossing concentric layers of magical mines and runes, and they have pegasi sortieing to pick off minesweepers.”
“We’ll soften them up with cannon fire and then try again from the air,” Princess Instar vowed. “It may not even come to that. I have another force making an assault from underground even as we speak.” The confident changeling commander and Princess grinned, revealing her prominent fangs. “We’ll take them from below and attack from above in concert.”
“What of the enemy coming down from the north?” The changeling courier asked, and looked up at Instar. “Pardon, Princess, but they threaten all of us...”
“Yes… the Germanes were supposed to have been neutralized,” Princess Instar grumbled. “But we never pinned all our hopes on it. We’ll take the manor here and then receive their attack with open forelegs. I have guns and changelings on every piece of high ground.”
“Except that one,” the courier observed, staring at the shimmering barriers of the Blueblood manor, perched on the highest hill in the land.
“Yes. Except that one. But soon, it will be mine as well, along with everypony inside it.”
- - -
Every colt and filly in Ponyville sat silently in the underground panic room attached to the manor’s wine cellar. It was the safest place in the entire building, but it wasn’t soundproof. The distant thud of cannonballs hitting spell shields combined with a steady stream of explosives dropped from high altitude made it impossible to forget that they were under siege, despite the best intentions and preparations of many. The sound of adults yelling and giving orders just a floor up and a growing number of wounded being kept in an adjacent part of the cellar only made it worse.
The board games and toys that had been left in the panic room, clearly intended to keep the young ponies distracted, went completely untouched. Miss Cheerilee had tried for more than an hour to get her students to relax in the cramped quarters of the armored room to little success. None were crying, thank the Princess for small favors, but they were clearly frightened, especially since the attack hadn’t just started, fizzled, and then gone away. It seemed never ending.
The monsters just kept attacking and attacking, over and over, wave after wave.
The pained cry of a pony from outside the room tore her away from her class, and she looked out the open door to see a strong, familiar presence. “Big Macintosh!”
“Cheerilee,” he greeted her, in his usual laconic way. He was carrying a unicorn stallion in a steel cuirass and curved morion helmet: one of the guardponies from the Dove and Cross.
“What’s…? Oh!” Cheerilee gasped as she saw what was wrong. The surface of the unicorn’s horn had split and cracked, and the hole in his helmet it protruded from had melted in place. She turned around and promised her class she would only be gone a moment before helping Macintosh carefully move the body over to the makeshift infirmary.
Nurse Redheart identified the problem at a glance.
“Over here! Over here!” she ordered, pointing to a table that had been brought in from upstairs. The unicorn free companypony hissed in pain as he ended up on his back.
“Couldn’t… keep the shield up…” he whinnied, the most primal sound of pain a pony could make. “My horn… Sweet Princess, I can’t feel my horn…!”
“You’ll be fine!” Redheart assured him, holding him down with her hoof as she gripped a knife between her teeth. “Once we remove the helmet this will start to hurt, but I’ll be as gentle as possible, I promise.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Cheerilee had to ask, though she knew she had to go back to her colts and fillies… all of Ponyville’s colts and fillies, really.
“The unicorns upstairs need to keep their horns hydrated!” Redheart told them, cutting into where the helmet had melted into the horn. She paused only to add, speaking around the hilt of the knife, “I’ve never seen so many cases of magic-burn! Splash them in the face if you have to!”
“Eyup,” Mac replied, and with a hefty hoof he nudged Cheerilee back with him out of the infirmary.
Left standing in the wine cellar between the two rooms, Cheerilee had to ask, albeit it quietly, “Big Macintosh… you’re been up there, right?”
He nodded, looking more haggard than she had ever seen him before.
After seeing the sacrifices of the injured, she almost hated to ask. “Are we… are we going to be okay?”
“Eyup.” It was probably as much an answer as she should have expected, but pondering things for a moment, the stallion of few words spared just a few more, for her sake. “Ain’t nopony up there gonna give up. Even them Neighponese ones.”
Cheerilee nodded warily, heading back to the panic room when the ground rumbled, too low and slow to be the result of an explosion. Nearly stumbling, she caught herself by grabbing onto one of the wine racks. Seeing her in trouble, or maybe driven by earlier curiosity, a couple of her students even peeked outside the room to see what was happening. Cheerilee wasn’t sure herself. Was it an earthquake? That it was happening now… it couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?
One side of the wine cellar suddenly collapsed and a trio of black tentacles shot out, flailing indiscriminately. Cheerilee screamed as one nearly hit her, and then she saw that her companion hadn’t been so fortunate. Big Macintosh had been knocked onto his side by one of the whip-like tendrils. Others knocked free barrels of vintage wine and other spirits. The collapsed end of the cellar deepened as whatever dug it pulled back slightly.
“Zzhzhzhzh!” Changelings immediately poured in through the gap.
“Help!” Cheerilee screamed up at the nearby stairs to the first floor, one of the black tentacles finding her left hindleg and dragging her down. “We’re under attack down here!”
“Miss Cheerilee!” One of her students – Scootaloo, of course – rushed out of the panic room. Grabbing hold of a fallen wine bottle, she tossed it with all her strength towards one of the invading changelings. The bottle cracked open on the creature’s skull, knocking it unconscious. More quickly squeezed past what appeared to be a huge worm to try and press the charge.
“Let go ah Miss Cheerilee!” she heard Apple Bloom yell. “Everypony throw somethin’!”
They were joined by a trio of walking wounded from the infirmary, and then, to her relief, by Big Macintosh, who got back on his hooves and punted an entire wine barrel down at the invaders. The sheer amount of leaking alcohol down in the pit the worm had dug seemed to disorient and sicken the changelings. They staggered and pushed one another forward.
“Enope!” Big Mac yelled, kicking one heavy oak cask down into a cluster of the stunned creatures. “Yer not gettin’ in here!”
It was heroic, but even Cheerilee could see it wasn’t enough. Maybe if they set fire to…
No, what if it spread to the rest of the floor or the rest of the manor?
“Down here, lads! Time to earn your bits!”
To Cheerilee’s relief, their momentary distraction of the enemy had bought enough time. Storming down from the first floor like a tidal wave of metal and muscle were armored earth ponies in steel cuirasses. Heavy metal gauntlets around their legs made a thundering sound as they raced down the stone steps into the basement. The tentacle around Cheerilee’s leg withdrew to try and engage the new threat, but in moments the battle was already joined. The companyponies hit the changelings with a roar that was almost joyful. Maybe seeing their unicorn and pegasus compatriots get all the action had fired them up?
Then the ground began rumbling again, and another wall in the wine cellar began to tremble.
“Macintosh!” Cheerilee called out to him. “Help me get the children upstairs! It isn’t safe down here anymore!”
He nodded, and together they began to herd the colts and fillies back upstairs, Mac taking the rear. The rooms upstairs were cramped – even more cramped than the panic room had been – but with adults. One or two fillies saw their parents and broke off to be with them. Others clearly wanted to do the same, but couldn’t find their parents, spread out as Ponyville’s populace was across the lower floor of the stately mansion.
Cheerilee sighed in exhaustion as she tried to decide what to do next. There was no way they could go back to trying to keep all the foals hidden in the basement now. Even if they just closed the door to the panic room and locked it, they’d be trapped down there. The idea did not sit well with her.
“Miss Cheerilee?” a little voice asked, and she glanced down.
“Thank you for helping me back there, girls,” the out-of-her-element teacher smiled at her three most precocious students. They had been the first to do exactly what she had told them not to do and leave the panic room, all to help her.
“There’s gotta be somethin’ we can do ‘ta help,” Apple Bloom insisted, speaking for her fellow Cutie Mark Crusaders. “Besides,” she added, eyes squinted and more than a little shifty, “maybe if we help out, we might get our you-know-what’s.”
“Not exactly a priority, but it would be nice,” Sweetie Belle decided, nodding eagerly.
“We can totally help!” Scootaloo declared with an over-large grin.
“You three are nuts,” Diamond Tiara pushed her way through her fellow students. “Miss Cheerilee, permission to find the biggest pony in the room and hide behind him?” She didn’t even wait for permission before turning back to add, “Come on Silver Spoon! You can hide next to me, or better yet, in front of me!”
The usually obedient filly shook her head. “S-sorry… I want to help, too… my mom’s the Mayor, so… I kind of feel like I… should help if I can?”
Tiara just stared at her, mouth aghast.
“What!” The rich filly finally managed to blurt out. “Really?!” She hung her head, fighting her own impulse to leave. Her tiny body trembled for a second before she looked back up, defiant. “Fine! Okay! I guess I’ll come, too, if only to keep you blankflanks from messing up and getting us all killed. Somepony has to supervise.”
“Grab some cups of water,” Cheerilee finally told them. “Maybe you can help a little, if you promise to be careful. As for the rest, come with me. We’ll find your parents if we can.”
- - -
Princess Instar sucked on her left fang as the news came in.
Failure.
“There were… too many, Great Instar,” the wounded changeling rasped, one wing broken and the other twitching painfully. “They killed our War Worm. We sent in a second wave, and they were repulsed. A third attacked at the same time a fourth made another hole. That worm was also killed. They had flame and steel… and there have to be hundreds of earth ponies in there, all of them armed to the teeth.”
The changeling shook her head in dismay, shuddering at the memory of the battle, but only repeating: “Hundreds… must’ve been hundreds… that’s the only answer…”
“How many times did you attack?” Princess Instar asked, quietly.
The drone lieutenant coughed painfully. “Five. Five times. We attacked five times, Princess.”
“Then attack six times,” Instar recommended, narrowing her eyes at the defiant manor house that stood in the way of her victory. “And if that fails, try seven. Or eight. Or nine! Or twelve! Get me that cellar, lieutenant. Alive or dead, I don’t expect to see you again with more bad news.”
“Y-yes, Princess.” The wounded changeling limped off, clearly in no rush to fulfill her orders. She left behind a half dozen other lieutenants, all buzzing eagerly around the Princess.
“Continue the bombardment! Sooner or later, those shields will break, or the unicorns generating them will collapse. We just need to keep up the pressure. Direct our skirmishers out to harass the advancing Germanes and then send in the next wave of bombers,” Instar ordered, looking up at the setting sun on the horizon.
The sun was still slowly setting, even with Princess Celestia taken care of by the Queen.
“We are losing the daylight,” the changeling Princess hissed, unhappily, and turned to look over her immediate subordinates. “I want that house taken, gentlelings. From below. From above. From all sides. I want a parade of captives in chains to march before the arriving Germanes. We broke entire armies in the Savannahs of the Old World. We will not be stopped here.”
- - -
Luna was in her chambers.
Princess Celestia had always been a very light, lucid dreamer. She recognized instantly that these were their old chambers, in the keep before their old Castle of the Sisters had even been built, and this Luna was her sister back when they had still been young. Luna’s chambers were abstemious then, with little more than a warm pallet as befitted guest-right, and her astronomy gear. Her telescopes and optics and charts rested by the window, gifts from Starswirl and half-a-dozen now-deceased or exiled nobles and courtiers. Almost all the rest of the square block of a room was bare. The walls were the most basic plaster over stone. Unlike Celestia, Luna had made no attempt to paint them or make her chamber livelier. She was still mourning, in her own way.
“Good morning, sister,” Celestia said, trotting towards Luna on legs that felt just a bit too short, strides that seemed less than comfortable, unpracticed, immature. Hers was the body of a young alicorn: slim and leggy, but small. There was a certain comfort in always being the tallest pony in the room.
“Tis no’ good morning’,” Luna replied, keeping her back to her older sister. Her mane was shorter, though still possessed of the ethereal glow that they had been taught represented their otherworldly birthright. She, too, was little more than a young mare, at the very end of her teenage years.
“We received summons from Puddinghead this moonfall,” Luna went on to add, her voice low and angry. “He invites us to attend the celebration and execution.”
“It is not an execution; we all know he won’t die. He can’t die.” Celestia’s correction did not bring solace to Luna or brighten her morning mood. “The new petrification spell will work. He won’t feel anything. It will be like a long, never-ending sleep.”
Luna did not respond at first.
Celestia remembered the ‘summons.’ The letter had been waiting by her bedside and signed by all three members of the regency and small council, but it was clearly penned by Puddinghead himself. The fact that he had gone out of his way to mention that there would be ‘cake and cookies and Cerberus rides’ at the sentencing only rubbed salt in a still-open wound. It was hard, sometimes, to tell when the earth pony leader was acting like an obtuse ass to disarm others as part of a brilliant political gambit… or when it was genuinely being an obtuse ass because he could get away with it.
“Is that not worse, then?” Luna asked at length. “An eternity chained, drowned, impaled, and sealed. What if this dream that never ends is a nightmare? This was not what we wanted. We would…” She hesitated, mindful enough of the circumstances to lower her voice. The walls had ears. “…we would not have listened to you, had we seen this injustice come to pass.”
Celestia approached her, worried, but torn, because she had doubts herself at times. Ones she never dared give voice to, not in these halls.
“What we were doing was wrong, Luna,” Celestia raised her voice, imbuing it with confidence and authority. “It had to stop. This was the only way. You know that. Auntie--”
“Your dear ‘Auntie’ is a kinslayer,” Luna snapped, angry and hurt and confused. “There is no pony so damned as a kinslayer, Celestia! That is what she is, and that is what she has made us. It is said that the curse of kinslaying will hang over our head, and the heads of our family, so long as we draw breath. Which will be a long time, now, won’t it? Already, all our old friends and allies have betrayed us and left us, fleeing to their redoubts and northern holdfasts. They hate us and despise us. They curse our names in their cups and in their dreams.”
Luna turned slightly, looking over her shoulder at her sister. “Do you doubt us? We have seen it, sister! We have heard it. Even my old friend’s dreams grow increasingly dark and clouded in his exile. The crystal witch is too weak to rein in his darker natures and his betrayal eats at him… as it eats at me.”
She slowly shook her head, returning to the lonely view out the window.
“He betrayed the cause to protect me, and I betrayed it to protect you,” the dark alicorn marveled, shaking her head in helpless dismay. “I should have left with him, like he asked. This Equestria of the new world has no place for somepony like me...”
“Things will get better, sister,” Celestia promised, lifting a foreleg and wing to drape over her younger, darker sister’s form. “We have lost family, yes, but we have reclaimed lost family as well. Equestria and the other small ponies will warm to us in time. We are their sun and moon, now. Until then, Auntie and Lord Blueblood are kind and understanding guardians. Auntie is with foal; soon we will have young cousins to play with. Life will get better. The second council, led by Smart Cookie, will be better than this. It will all get better. I swear it.”
Luna remained silent, brooding, even in her sister’s embrace.
“We will not attend this farce,” she finally whispered, stepping away from her sister. “We refuse.”
“I will represent us both,” Celestia assured her. “Hurricane will glower and Puddinghead will jest, but they will understand. Auntie has her new Platinum Crown. She will wear it to remind them they have nothing more to fear from us. Just give everypony time, Luna. Please.”
“Time,” Luna whispered, more to herself than to her only sister. They had time. They had all the time in the world, now.
Celestia tried to crane her neck and nuzzle her sister, but Luna spread her wings half-way to prevent the comforting gesture. Her mood was still dark and sour. Nor, it seemed, did she want succor in the first place. Time – Celestia only hoped – would help her forgive and learn to love again. Half-in and half-out of the dream, still lucid, Celestia realized her folly. This, Discord, Sombra… time had not been her sister’s ally. Time had not healed the wounds in her soul. Only the Elements of Harmony had managed that.
“You will watch, as they condemn him to that watery tomb?” Luna asked, after a long silence. She hid her face, but Celestia could see the unshed tears building in her eyes. “He was our father. He loved us.”
Celestia hung her head low. “He was. He did. But he still had to be stopped. Harmony,” she tried to explain to her poor, lost sister. “Harmony, not domination, must rule in this new world.”
-
The harsh smelling salts dissolved the dream, and brought back a world – a veritable kaleidoscope – of pain. The old Platinum Keep melted away, taking the thousand and more year old memories with it. Replacing it, Celestia saw the bright stained glass windows and colorful murals of her throne room. The murals were as yet untouched, but the windows were being steadily rimmed and marred by a layer of vile looking green wax.
“Back amongst the living, are you?” a voice asked, feminine and taunting. Celestia felt a hoof under her chin, forcing her eyes front and forward.
Chrysalis.
“There you go! Still alive,” Chrysalis marveled, letting her jaw go, “I am impressed.” Celestia felt her cheek limply hit the tiled floor beneath her throne. She could only watch, her body unresponsive, as Chrysalis strode up the steps towards the royal throne. “Even I wouldn’t survive what I did to you. A little horsefly told me once: ‘don’t worry so much about actually killing her. Try to kill her, and you’re likely to just subdue her. Celestia and Luna are not normal ponies or even normal alicorns.’ I had been skeptical at first, given how weak Cadance was, but it was sage council. I’m glad I listened. For once, that little horsefly wasn’t lying to me.”
Queen Chrysalis reached the rose and gold Throne of Equestria and leisurely draped herself over it, settling into the cushioned seat with a contented sigh. She spared a second or two to make herself comfortable, stretching her legs and easing into the pillows. Shining Armor sat next to the same throne, an imperial-purple and alabaster cloak over his shoulders and Celestia’s own crown on his head, the golden tiara decked in tangled green ivy from the garden. He gazed mindlessly forward, his horn still aglow, not even batting an eye when Chrysalis reached over to languidly play with his chin and then his mane.
Celestia tried to speak, but all that came out was a wheeze. Her entire body felt like it was barely being held together by duct tape and a hasty prayer. Forcing away a rising panic, she focused on feeling her extremities. They did not readily move, but they were there. Her spine was intact. She was not a cripple. Her body was regenerating, not as undying as father’s had been, but formidable nonetheless. She was restrained in a cast of sorts, and held down by chittering changelings, but the greatest threat was her magic. Her horn was thrice-sealed, and even if it wasn’t, her magic was completely drained.
And… there was… something else…
She felt hot. Burning hot. Like a fever, except… that was impossible…
“We are fitting you for a new, extra special cocoon,” Chrysalis explained with a self-satisfied smirk. “You will have the privilege of watching, helplessly, as your city slowly becomes my city. Once both alicorns are in my hooves, the rest of Equestria will have to submit or sue for peace, and we will devour them piecemeal. You will get to watch it all play out, Princess. I want you to know you were beaten by the better mare… by the better species.”
Celestia groaned, her face and cheek rubbing into her limp mane, the aurora colors turning sickly.
“Are you listening to me?” Chrysalis asked, her smirk becoming a sneer. “Princess? You will NOT tune me out! Do you hear me?!”
As quickly as she had taken the throne, Chrysalis bounded down. Her hoof came down and she slapped the Princess of the Sun across the face for her apparent insolence. The Queen was moments away from a second blow, chitinous hoof tensed and raised in the air… when she hesitated. Gingerly touching the back of her hoof to Celestia’s forehead, the changeling Queen recoiled.
“She’s… growing hotter…?” Chrysalis realized, confusing playing across her features. “What…” She rankled, suspecting the cause. “Is this some sort of trick? Some last second gamble? Is that it?”
Chrysalis glared down at her captive Princess for a few seconds, considering it. Something caught her eye, then, and reaching down into Celestia’s mane, she brushed up against the Princess’s horn. When her hoof lifted back up to eye-level, Chrysalis scowled at it. There was a faint blush of blood there.
“Could it be… the wounds?” she wondered. “Are they infected? Or… is it some reaction to the poison?” Chrysalis growled, bearing sharp teeth. “No! I will not let you die. Not yet!”
She stood tall and addressed her assembled changeling court.
“Healers!” Chrysalis commanded. “Find me healers! And one of Yejide’s witches. Now!” The Queen of Queens frowned, looking down at her victim again. “You weren’t like this just a half hour ago. What is going on…?”
- - -
A rust red mare stood over the burned and smoking remains of the reinforced vault door. Starry black magic ebbed and flowed around her, briefly taking on the outline of Sagittarius, then fading away, only to return a second later. One of her orchid-red eyes was consumed by onyx-black; the other looked dazed and distant, as if staring into the horizon.
The vault within was in shambles, less from the destruction of the vault-door and more from the breaking of the magical wards that further reinforced it. Stepping into the vault, crackling lines of power dissipated away from Chalice’s body, harmless from within the cloak of living aether. Her mismatched eyes scanned the vault and the dozen or more fallen artifacts, knocked from their cases and shelves. Most were not true artifacts at all, but keepsakes: scepters and crucigers and golden regalia for offices and seneschals long rendered irrelevant or ceremonial.
This was, or had been, the coronation vault.
The Platinum Vault.
A silver crown rolled by Chalice’s hooves and she turned her eyes on it. It was beautiful and majestic, with four leaf-like acanthus petals curving away and outwards, studded by precious gems: rubies and opals, spinels and sapphires, volutes of table-cut diamonds in pink and aqua, precious pinpricks of cabochon jade and inlaid tourmaline. It was closed up top in velvet and purple. The gems in the crown alone were flawless, unique, and probably worth a fortune, even in Equestria where the raw gem market was ridiculously saturated. The silver and gold alone could buy a small mansion.
“Is that it?”
“No.” her voice changed, distorted and dissonant, played over the original, but louder and harsher. “Do not see with your flawed mortal eye. Use mine.”
Chalice twitched, her head jerking as if struck; the Aether around and within her right eye swirled violently.
“So this one is a… fake…?” she said, softly. “You know using your eyes hurts my head. Just tell me where the real one is… please.”
“There.”
Chalice stepped over the crown, approached the pedestal it had fallen from, and raised her hoof. With a single, sweeping motion to the side the reinforced platform came apart, sheared in two. Tucked safely within the base of the steel podium, she could see two more crowns, one beside the other, resting on soft cushions.
The first crown resembled the fake on the floor.
The second was a simple metal band, like a circlet. Chalice leaned in for a closer look. She saw intricate bands of silver, wrought in indestructible night-iron, aqua ice-jewels glittering like relics from ages past. Through her other eye, Chalice could see the powerful enchantments etched into the circlet. They struck a chord in the unicorn and in her companion. She could feel it through the body they momentarily shared, each one half-in and half-out of their home realm, half-on and half-off the throne in the starry vault.
This band of metal…
It was like the torc… the Star Key… that had sealed and given contractual form to their union.
“There it is. Platinum’s Star-Forged Crown. Can you sense the echoes of ancestral magic within it, Chalice? You are descended from her, after all. Her blood is your blood.”
Chalice stared at the Inner Crown. She stared long and hard, but couldn’t detect anything but normal magic of some unknown but generic sort. It was magical, yes, but still seemingly mundane once placed within that category.
“No,” she answered, dejected. “I can’t see or feel anything.”
“In that case, I would recommend you not don this crown. Even enveloped in my protective shroud as you are… it could kill you.”
“Brother already warned me about that,” Chalice said to herself. “Only a worthy mare is deemed fit to wear it, he said. It would reject the unworthy, like the last four Blueblood Duchesses.” She raised a hoof, as if to touch the circlet, but hesitated.
“I did want to wear it,” she admitted, her hoof wavering in the air, aether shifting around and away from it and then enclosing it again, in a turmoil that echoed her own thoughts. “Once… when I was young… back when I thought wearing it would make everypony proud of me, even though I wasn’t talented like Antimony, or smart like brother, or beautiful like Polished Jewel. Now I know, even if I had won, even if I married the Prince, I still would’ve been rejected. Brother says so.”
“So you know you cannot wear it,” the voice in her head realized, and even in her own mind, it was a warped distortion of her own voice, alien and unsettling. “Good. Then what will you do?”
“Can I pick it up?”
“It will try and reject you, but yes, you can.”
“You’ll protect me?”
“I will protect you. We have a contract, and you have given me what I asked of you. I will always be here, to do what you cannot. You will never be useless or weak, Chalice, as long as you have me.”
Chalice nodded, took another step forward, and reached for the Inner Crown with her hoof. The moment it made contact, a magical shock tried to repulse her. Ultimately, it pricked her hoof, nothing more. It could not penetrate the aethereal aegis of Saggitarius. Not, supposedly, unless she had the hubris to actually place it on her brow.
No mare could wear the Platinum Crown, not without its consent.
“You saw when this was forged, didn’t you?”
“We all did. It was your kind’s renewed contract with Lord Sun and the Lady Moon after the defeat of your Star Caller.”
“He was not our anything.”
“He was mortal. You are mortal. His crimes are your crimes, and your children’s crimes, and their children’s crimes, unto eternity.”
“A daughter should not be held responsible for the sins of her mother,” Chalice argued.
“And yet they are, regardless of your philosophy.”
“Aah,” Chalice winced, a spike of Sagittarius’ alien emotion flooding painfully into her. “Please stop. Don’t you realize… this is why nopony worships you anymore…?”
For a moment, Sagittarius was silent, mulling over her reply. Chalice knew the concept of cruelty had no meaning to him. Nor conscience. Nor morality. Nor sanity. His concept of reality was not her concept of reality. Without really meaning it, without even intending it, his thoughts and motivations were cold and alien and incomprehensible. It was a reason why she didn’t often converse with her better-half in this way.
She wondered if her thoughts and feelings were as strange to him as his were to hers.
Wreathed in aether as she was, her partner’s cold embrace invading her body and mind, inside and out, Chalice sometimes felt like a tiny flickering candle swallowed up by a titan’s shadow, surrounded by darkness so vast it may as well have been infinite. It was as if, at any moment, her life could be snuffed out and extinguished. It might have been the reason she could manifest so much more of her partner than anypony else.
The helplessness and disorientation of being possessed… most ponies railed against it. Chalice accepted it. It was why she existed. It was her… special talent. She was both the trapped bird and the gilded cage that was her cutie mark.
“What will you do with that crown?” Sagittarius asked again. “The fate of your entire race is literally in your hands. Or… hooves. What will you do with this great power? Will you hold it hostage?”
Chalice stared at the crown held in her hoof, one eye equine… the other aethereal.
Lifting her other hoof and standing upright, holding the crown between her starry black hooves, Chalice began to twist. The circlet, made of nearly indestructible night iron, resisted. But Chalice’s horseshoes were enchanted night-iron as well, unearthed from the ruins of the Old Kingdom by Terre Rare archaeologists. They glowed hot and hateful, and so did the crown. Maybe it knew already? If only it could talk, what would it say? Would it even matter?
“What will I do?” Chalice asked herself.
Her body shuddered beneath the starry shroud; it was an insidious question. It was the sort of question brother would ask, but only when he knew a pony had already made up her mind.
What will you do? What can anypony do?
With a scream that echoed throughout the vault, the voices of dozens of mares crying out as one, the Platinum Crown of Canterlot bent and snapped in half. A blast wave of sundered primal magic escaped from the halves, tearing ragged gashes in the vault walls and melting golden regalia into runny puddles. Artifacts twisted and contorted in agony and painted murals on the walls howled and burst into flame. Glass displays shattered in the echoing screams. Amid the raging phantom fires and the chaotic magical storm, Chalice stood, unharmed and protected by Saggitarius’ starry embrace.
“I’ll do,” she stated, letting the broken halves of the Platinum Crown fall to the floor, “the only thing I can do.”
“So be it. The contract is broken.”
- - -
“Princess?”
“Yo, Princess! Hell~llo?”
“Princess Luna? Are you alright? Applejack, Rainbow, give her some room, please.”
Luna’s breath came in ragged, choked gasps for a moment as she returned to consciousness. Opening her eyes, she put faces to the voices. The earth pony helping her to sit upright was the Element of Honesty. Applejack. The pegasus mare to her other side, currently engrossed in looking up at the perch Luna had abruptly fallen from, was the Element of Loyalty. Rainbow Dash. Then there was the Element of Generosity, still soaking wet from washing herself off after fighting the Red Queen of the changelings. Rarity.
“Hey! She’s back!” Applejack exclaimed, a look of relief on her face. Luna found it odd. She did not know these ponies well. She did not know anypony well, except her sister and her nephew. Yet, the concern seemed genuine. “You had us scared for a second there, yer highness!”
“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash agreed, facing Luna but pointing back over her shoulder. “One second you appear and act all dramatic, even finding a high spot to perch on and something mysterious to say, like Batmane or something, and then you collapse! What the heck?”
“Batmane?” Luna asked, and the question was probably not the first matter that needed to be addressed. But, still. Batmane?
Dash opened her mouth wide to start to explain--
“More importantly,” Rarity interrupted, trotting a little closer. “Princess, are you alright? Are you hurt? That was quite a fall…”
“The fall caused no real harm,” Luna said, sitting up and flexing her wings out behind her. Dash and Applejack let her go and inched backwards to give the alicorn some room.
“Twas merely a momentary loss of consciousness,” Luna went on to explain. A trickle of red dribbled down her forehead and over one blue eye, forcing her to blink. Reaching up to her horn, Luna brushed away what she had thought to be a trace of moisture. The ruined greenhouse and a half acre of property here had been soaked in the battle with the changeling Queen, after all.
But it wasn’t water. It was blood.
Just a trace, but it had come from the base of her horn.
“We see,” Luna whispered to herself, and seeing the worried expressions of the three mares she had come to ask for help, raised her voice. There was no point keeping this a secret. After all, she needed them. “This is a different sort of wound… the re-opening of an old scar, you could say…”
“Huh?” Dash asked, tilting her head in confusion. “An old wound?”
Luna nodded, watching the trio from beneath her starry mane. “We know not how, as yet, but our connection with both sun and moon… has been severed…”
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Did...I...what?
Is that what the Platinum Crown does? I don't think that's what Brass wanted to happen.
Multiple Lunas? Was this mentioned earlier and I've just forgotten? Being able to split yourself up among a bunch of clones and tossing/jumping between them like that sounds useful.
Chrysalis has pony crew for her ships? I guess that's something else her alliance with Brass has gotten her.
I'd like to see more of this New World.
Alpha wants to be there when Twilight fights Chrysalis and something tells me he wants his whole family to be there too, just to show them what "he" did, what "he" found. He gets to have a princess for a wife and gets to have Chrysalis ended in a very bad way. Yes the destruction of the crown wasn't in his plans, but he's got so many backups and alternate plans seems like it'll be just a hiccup. While I can see where a lot is going in general how you've gotten to it has been really interesting. How and why Twilight ascends, how Chrysalis gets what's coming to her, Blueblood's eventual return , Celestia getting free, Cadance finally "really" showing up. I know these things will happen, but waiting to see how is exciting!
4223608
Brass mentions looking forward to an age where normal ponies control the sun and moon... this most certainly must be part of his plan.
O-ohhhhh snap!!
Er, quite literally! That's a twist I'll admit I did NOT see coming at all! Leaves me to wonder just what ARE your plans -- and Alpha Brass's plans -- for Twilight / potential eventual Twilicorn. 
Either way, a fascinating look at what's going on elsewhere. Have Luna and Celestia's pasts been discussed prior to this and I forgot, or is this a new peep into long, long ago? Because that also is some srsbsns going on there. Either way a MARVELOUS chapter! It is always such a treat when a new one comes out! 
Oh dear. This could end exceptionally poorly.
On another note, the way you write Alpha Brass makes him the most interesting character in any work of fiction i've ever read, watched, or known. I'm extremely curious as to what happens next.
... Okay... I just need a moment t-to just- WHAT THE HECK?!
Did not. See. That. Coming.
I'm... guessing that wasn't in the plan. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and all that.
There are so many things I want to say but I'm not sure if they'd be spoilers, if I keep them light can I say some things Cap'n?
Well. That right there is a twist. Loving it, can't wait for the next installment.
4224589
Spoilers, eh? Did I ever give you any definitive spoilers? Hmmmm. I can't recall.
But sure! If ye dare. I love crazy speculation/thoughts/insights, though don't expect a guarantee of me to confirm or deny this or that.
4225072
Some readers may recall that this isn't the first time we've seen multiple Lunas... certainly, this is something Blueblood would remember. He found the side effects of it rather amusing in the last scene where he spoke with her.
Chrysalis here is as concerned that Celestia is trying some sort of secret spellwork (though her horn is triple-suppressed) as she is that the Princess she's worked hard to beat down and catch is going to die right when everything seems to be going well. After all, the tricky part for Chrys is over. Her one fight in this conflict was to beat Celestia, preferably without killing her, and she did it, albeit with difficulty. This should be the part where she kicks back and watches the show as the rest of the wins pile up. She wants Celestia alive and cocooned so she can imprint new changelings on her, just like Chrysalis was imprinted on a young Cadance.
Chrysalis, like Brass, is fully capable of saying one thing and thinking another. In TPC, only the narrative is sacrosanct. I can say Chrysalis does truly believe in the value of many aspects of Equestrian civilization: their technology, their social organization, their magic, much of their culture. She sees how these things make their lives better. How they make ponies powerful. She wants that. Yet she hates that it is still out of reach in so many ways: that she, the Queen of her hive and race, must live in the shadows, always afraid of being discovered. She hates that it was, in the first place, Equestrians who came up with all this, and that changelings have to content themselves with just copying everything ("for now," she always adds, dreaming of when they can come into their own).
You can oppose something, even hate something, and still admire much of it, I think. Especially when you think you could do better, "if only I had the chance."
Tlanextli. Sarai is definitely based on the praying mantis in design. 100% there. Tlanextli as a leech is fine. Or maybe a shriveled tick? But there's actually a one specific little isopod she and her kind are based on in design. I can't say what yet, though, not here. That would definitely be a spoiler.
Hoorah!
Okay! Now in regards to Chalice breaking the Platinum Crown on Brass's orders, think....who is in his way for many of his possible plans? That's right the Princesses but mostly Celestia, with her out of the way Alpha can make use of the nobles infighting to create harmony(remember Alpha Brass is Twilight's opposite), that's why he gave Chrysalis that hint on how to deal with the Princesses.
I got to admit this chapter is incredible. I didn't expect that the one trapped by the Crown was Celestia's father. The dream scene was very interesting. It shows the extent of Celestia's belief in Harmony, as she betrayed her entire race for her ideals, as well as Luna's conflict about choosing to side with the tribes and Celestia over her father and friends. I also found Star Light's and Brass' interaction to be very thoughtful (and funny due to Light's commentaries). It seems that Brass is regaining or at least expressing more emotions given his reaction to the "first choice" comment and his growing interest in Twilight. Anyhow, this chapter was exciting and cant wait for the next one. BTW, did the four Blueblood baronesses killed by the crown include the current Blueblood's mother and Arsenic's Bluebelle? Also, does Luna still resents Princess Platinum? Dream Luna seems to hate her for making her and Celestia betray their race but real Luna spoke neutrally about her when referimg to her in front of Sweetie Belle. What did Celestia meant that time didn't help Luna? Finally, would the breaking of the crown release the Alicorn? Sorry for the overload of questions.
I still hate Alpha Brass.
And DAMMIT, the crown's destroyed! This will not end well...
Well, I'm sure the crown being destroyed was all part of Alpha's plan all along, as is breaking Luna and Celestia's ties to the Sun and Moon.
After all, everything else has been.
Now he can declare that he is awesomesauciest of all and they don't need alicorns anymore and they can all rule themselves... well, except he'll be setting himself up as supreme Dear Leader and anyone who talks back to him will be executed.
He's a 1st-degree megalomaniac.
Oh how I wish Discord would show up and PWN that smarmy little ass.
4223608 The splitting is something she did as Nightmare Moon (The Shadowbolts). I think the author did something else with it as well in Best Night Ever.
Hmm... Lord North is the father of one of the Mane Six... his "youngest daughter." Recalling some of the world building chapters many, many words ago, would I be wrong in assuming that this is Fluttershy? I seem to remember Ritter being her older sister, which would fall in line with that statement, since I don't recall Rainbow Dash having any siblings.
Of course, this is also assuming that Lord North is a pegasus, not that there's much of a reason to doubt that...
The second-person singular-pronoun “Thou” is singular. Princess Luna addresses multiple Lunar guards, so she should use the second-person plural-pronoun “You”.
4225181
One specific isopod that the Brown changelings are based on? One that could explain why there were no drones to be seen, just actual diamond dogs serving a changeling queen?
I suspect I know the identity of this mystery arthropod, but you might say I'm tongue tied.
Another incredible chapter. I can only dream of being able to write this well.
The coming deaths of Celestia and Luna will be sad to read though.
4225887
4227612
You're right in recalling that. Ritterkreuz and Fluttershy have the same father but different mothers ("same cock, different hens" as Ritter explained it, in her usual polite fashion). We also got a name back then: Winter Bora. He is, indeed, Lord North of the Congress of Four Winds. He is quite aware of Ritter's betrayal of the Wonderbolts, but other than that, there's no information. Ritter implies that Fluttershy has always been his favorite, but she also admits to Scootaloo that she has "daddy issues."
Since I don't think it will be addressed in-story, I can feel free to answer the question about pegasus views of unicorn politics without spoilers. Just like the Winds were dismissive of earth pony republicanism, they'd view unicorn dynastism as also tending to be petty and indecisive. Pegasi favor action, decisiveness, and loyalty to one's team rather than to one's family. Note, though, that there ARE pegasus lords and nobles (and earth pony ones), so they aren't a monoculture. The differences in Equestria are akin to any large nation state, like the US, where we have overall political and cultural trends in the north-east, mid-west, far-west, south, etc.
Ritter mentioned by the time of her fight with RD that she was, as you described, an enemy to basically everpony, and that there was nothing left for her in Equestria. This actually echoes some of Luna's past sentiment in this same chapter. As a very harmonious society, Equestria can be hard for outcasts and those who can't or won't fit their social mold. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Ritter never seemed to really hate anypony, though, or even Equestria as a whole. She described Celestia as the strongest of all ponies and that, if everything else failed, being incinerated by her would probably be a good way to "go out."
4227623
4227537
Nature is damn scary. Before you go mouthing off, it seems you may know of what I speak. Chrysalis' changelings, you'll find, may actually be some of the most pleasant to have around, compared to their cousins.
4225265
Brass, like virtually everypony, didn't see the return of Luna coming. So whatever objectives he had wouldn't had to be adapted to deal with the new Princess. But, yes, taking out Celestia was clearly critical to whatever his end game is intended to be. She is and would be the biggest obstacle to... many things.
OTOH, the nobles being decimated or even devastated by the changelings also seems to be something he's letting happen. Aside from Euporie and Eunomie, his step-daughters, what other nobles actually seem to be working with him in any trusted capacity?
4225313
Brass is indeed "showing" a bit more impulsiveness and genuine emotion since being around Twilight. I should elaborate, however: the four prior Baronesses Chalice mentions were rejected by the crown, but not killed by it. It didn't let them wear it. All four - the last four mares who were Duchess of Canterlot - never once wore the inner 'true' platinum crown. Just the outer one. This also fits with Celestia's lament, back when she visited the crown many chapters ago, that the crown hasn't been worn by anyone worthy in centuries. The rejected Baronesses:
Blueblood's mother - Vernal Equinox - REJECTED
Blueblood's paternal grandmother - birth name unknown (Bluebelle 50th) - REJECTED
Blueblood's great-grandmother - birth name unknown (Bluebelle 49th) - REJECTED
Blueblood's great-great-grandmother - Ruthenium III (Bluebelle 48th) - REJECTED
Blueblood great-great-great-grandmother - Bronze I - ACCEPTED
(Lady Bronze was the mother of both Arsenic and Ruthenium (who became Bluebelle on her crowning), and thus the common ancestor of several characters: Blueblood, Antimony, Twilight...)
This is all actually more important than it seems at first glance. It has been said several times that the Bluebloods since the Arsenic-split have been exceptionally weak. Celestia privately worries that not a one has been able to wear the crown, when the Blueblood mares basically exist to wear it. The Terre Rare actively style themselves the true inheritors of the title, since they became the strongest family of unicorns while the Bluebloods stagnated, to the point where they became obsessed with proving their worthiness to take over. It is literally at the root and stem of all the problems and conflict in modern Equestria now.
4225313
Actually, I see now I didn't answer all of your questions...
Young!Luna did indeed resent and even hate Platinum for her role in things, back then. She says she did what she did (helping Equestria) because of Celestia, not anypony else, and she blames Platinum for basically ensnaring her sister and turning her traitor. She outright admits if she could do it again, she'd go with "her friend" (Sombra) and take over someplace else, in that case, the Crystal Empire. Remember that this is also the same Luna who is closer to Nightmare Moon than modern!Luna.
Modern Luna is older, more mature, and more clear headed when looking at the past. She has a better understanding of what others have sacrificed and done. Like anyone, your views can evolve over time, and Luna has had ample time (plus getting zapped by the Elements helped a great deal). Hence why modern Luna has a more respectful view of Platinum and objects when Blueblood mentions their family's history of betrayal and kinslaying (though it was also a dig at Luna herself, as she once tried to kill Celestia). Basically: the experiences of the last 1000 years gave Luna a different perspective that was more sympathetic to Platinum.
Celestia meant that time didn't heal Luna's wounds, after that incident. They festered and the jealousy, resentment, loneliness and anger turned her into Nightmare Moon.
Lastly, breaking the crown... well, I'll explain that in-story, so there's no need to here and now. So far, we know it broke the contract between "Lord Sun and Lady Moon" and Celestia and Luna. Other reviewers have speculated (correctly) that it also took away the sisters' immortality.
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4227645
I think I've said before that, at least in my interpretation of things, Discord didn't escape because of the CMCs fighting, but because his imprisonment was "set" to only last roughly 1000 yrs. Just like Nightmare Moon's. Hence why Celestia could plan for it to be countered like she did in the show. None of that would've been possible if he could escape any time someone argued in front of him. I adopted this for TBNE, too, as Blueblood notes that Discord's seal is almost entirely broken, enough so that he could set Discord free himself.
Discord is freshly re-sealed by the Elements of Harmony and remains in that state in canon, despite the changeling invasion, and that remains so here. However, Discord DID do something Brass curses him for back when he first broke free, we just don't know what. Only that it coincided with his lifelong bodyguard (Sirocco) leaving him and taking the broken torc with her. So Discord's role in TPC will have to be covered in flashbacks only, I'm afraid.
4225481
Exactly so. I've made the assumption that most everything Nightmare Moon did, Luna herself can do. That includes the multiple-body Shadowbolts trick. Earlier in TPC, for example, Luna uses it to multitask. She sends one body to talk with Blueblood about their plans, keeping one in Night Court. She's used it again, here, the implication being she can use it to foist her wounds off on her doubles. One seemed to remain poisoned, the second one wounded (this is the one in the first scene), and the third in perfect condition (the one that goes off to find the EoH).
4226123
I mixed that up, did I? Odd. I thought it seemed right...
Antimony's wards allowing that communication seal through seems like a bit of a major oversight. It doesn't especially matter now that he's been broken out anyway, but major points off on the prison design.
And up until now I'd expected him to want Twilight or Chalice to wear the Crown. It seems he'd rather a world without alicorns?
Well, I hope she's very certain of that.
Well, that was a
.
Are Celestia and Luna mortal now?
Not good. Apparently Alpha's plans include regicide. At least we got an interesting look at the Princess's backstory. Star Caller is their father, and apparently he had immortality greater than theirs. Will he be released in the course of the story? If the sun and moon are no longer connected to C/L, do the Bluebloods hold the spell that can be used to raise them?
What did Star Caller do?
Mictlantecuhtil is Tlanextli's host, then?
4228548
¡It is all the fault of France!:
The is known as the V/T-Distinction. Basically, in most Western European Languages, the Singular Second Person starts with T and the Plural Second Person starts with V. It was nice and simple.
In France, in the Early Modern Era, the King began addressing himself in the First Person Plural because he spoke for the whole country and insisted on being addressed in the Second Person Plural because talking to the King is talking to all Franks. This spread to other nations and lead to the modern T/V-Distinction:
In most Modern European Languages, One uses the V-Pronoun for the Second Person Plural Pronoun, and in formal polite address in the Second Person Singular to someone of superior social rank. One uses the T-Pronoun for the Familiar Second Person Singular when addressing someone socially familiar.
In England,, In Early Modern English, in the time of the King James Bible and Shakespeare England just switched from the simple T is singular and V is plural Chaucer knew, in Middle English, to the more complicated V/T-Distinction of most Modern European Languages which started in France. Then T died from politeness:
In order to avoid offending, the rule of thumb in English became, “When in doubt, ¡use you!”. This lead to the loss of the T-Pronoun, even in the Familiar Second Person Singular when addressing social inferiors.
Now thou canst speak how Princess Luna speaketh.
4228843 Anyway, this is yet another example of why you kill the villain rather than putting them in prison.
If you put them in prison, they ALWAYS escape. You have to kill them, burn their bodies to ash, scatter the ashes through 12 dimensions (at least), then trap their soul, tear it apart, feed the shreds to Ammut, then send Ammut into the inescapable void.
Then mayyyyyybe the villain won't come back. Until they retcon the whole thing because they realize they've written themselves into a corner.
4230442
I wouldn't expect Antimony to kill her own brother, simply that if dealing with Alpha Brass, communication magic would be the absolute first thing I would jam. While she might not know the extent of his planning, she has to know by now that he accomplishes goals primarily though others, and so stuffing him in a jail cell with the ability to send messages is effectively identical to letting him walk around freely.
4231552 I choose the solution that best eliminates the problem
Logic! *slaughters all life in the universe* There we go! No more problems!
You broke it...
You broke the crown.
You broke the ancient artifact of power that so many have fought over... that bound Celestia and Luna both to the celestial spheres and to their mortal plane... that this entire STORY was named for...
Bravo.
This isn't the first bombshell that you've dropped on us that left me unable to brain for several minutes afterwards, but this is the biggest.
It's interesting, how Chrysalis has become so interested in and excited by everything the pony civilization has created, while also seeing the actual ponies as nothing but ambulatory, talking food. It's like she wants to truly replace the ponies with her changelings; to go from parasites and predators to totally supplanting them.
Alpha Brass continues to be devious and smug; but, for all of his cleverness, he can miss things and be surprised, too. I expect his final comeuppance will come about because of something like that.
Finally: holy shit, she broke the Platinum Crown! I got to admire your audacity at breaking the titular McGuffin right after we finally get to see what it is.
Okay...I knew that crown was a main focus of the story and all the political hubbub, but damn...I never expected it to be THAT much of a game changer. And now it's broken. Holy shit...
And damn you, Alpha Brass.
Ah, this chapter was great, but left me wanting to know more about some things touched here.
Wow, that's a strange twist. I don't know how longer the final arc will go on for, but I think the consequences of whatever Alpha Brass is planning will warrant a fair bit of writing. I'm continually conflicted about Alpha Brass, as I'm not exactly sure if he's a genuine villain, a anti-heroic antagonist or one of the secondary protagonists. His plans do seem to include throwing a lot of people under the bus but I always assumed he was just really intent on crushing the changelings. Now it seems his plans extend much further beyond that, probably to the ends of seeing himself on the Iron Throne... I mean the throne of Equestria. Or at least controlling it from the sidelines, which is where he seems to be most comfortable.
Yikes, that many dead guardsponies? So much for my very faint hope that we wouldn't rack up too big of a pony body count.
Darkness and starlight, eh? One guess as to who that is.
Hmn, so a changeling queen who as a part of her introduction makes comments about restraining a "Mictlantecuhtli the Abyssal Devourer"? That seems like a meaningful detail.
Wild ass guess time, Brass' guardsmares are subverted changelings. Second guess, they are the same individuals as the changeling detecting dogs he had in a flashback oh so many chapters ago.
Twinkling Star Light dosed all of her children with magical radioactive phosphorus so that she would always be able to track them?
Makes me wonder how much it would have screwed up everything if she had tracked him down while he was off playing with changelings.
Good lord, just what is he planning for Twilight?
Hmn, I wonder if Star Light will be able to revive her husband in time for him to help out with some part of the overall fight? He is a serious heavy hitter, after all, I'm sure there's some appropriate changeling queen that needs a castle dropped on her. Or maybe some Abyssal Devourer?
Ooooooo, pegasi lore. Awesome.
And it really was awesome. Just goes to show, Twilight may be best pony, but pegasuses are definitely best pony race.
Oooo, I am quite happy to see that question asked. I imagine any number of intelligent ponies will be putting all sorts of pieces together over the next few hours and days.
War Worms, hmn. Maybe that's the Abyssal Devourer connection.
Shield bubbles? I had forgotten, but I suppose that means that some of the captured Neighponese ponies are still on hand to help out. And I'm really curious about just what is in the cellar that Instar wants so badly, it must be a pretty important target for her to spend so many resources to acquire it.
Now that flashback dream was just fascinating. So many interesting hints.
Holy crap, I did not see that coming. And it severed Celestia and Luna’s connection to the sun and moon? But in the flashback:
Did being bound to the sun and moon make Celestia and Luna more powerful, or less? Chrysalis may be in for a world of hurt if Celestia is turning back into some primal inferno form right there in the throne room. I can't wait!
I can't tell whether Star Light's conversation with Brass was adorable or creepy.
What is the deal with Celly and Luna?
Did Luna reincarnateor use shadow clones or something?
Is this one of those stories where the sisters are gods or something?
4231552
The cell is very effective at blocking 'direct' magic, including things like teleportation. Brass happened to have a way to partly get around that. He could continue to receive, if not send, messages through his "flip-side paper entanglement" spell. As he himself thought, if not for the writing materials Antimony provided him as a courtesy, it would've been very suspicious to use the floor or other items for the seal. A bunch of backwards-writing would've been noticeable.
But it was also predictably in-character for Antimony to afford her brother a measure of luxury and comfort when she imprisoned him. "He is, after all, Terre Rare," and therefor must be treated with due dignity. That was her weakness, much more than a flaw in the cell design.
4233018
It was hardly an unusual suspicion to think everyone would be after the crown. Nopony in the setting would've predicted it either. I'm glad I'm catching people by surprise though!
4233253
If you imagine, for a moment, a post-Equestria changeling nation run by Chrysalis, it would, to outsiders, seem very Equestrian. She would have changelings with pegasus powers managing the weather, and changelings with earth pony powers taming the land and nature. She would have changelings with unicorn magic as a sort of quasi-elite, mostly intended for war. There would be changelings, probably Princesses, to deal with the sun and moon. She and her children would end up co-opting Equestrian language and writing (as they don't have their own), and a lot of superficial Equestrian culture. The only remnant a visitor or alien from the future would see of those-that-came-before would be the terrible, hidden facilities where the changelings feed on what would be an almost extinct pegasus and unicorn population, with earth ponies bred as fodder and treated like cattle. This being before Chrysalis extends her dominion to the rest of the world's sentient races that she perceives as a threat. At that point the visitors/aliens would also realize that in the hundreds of years since the ponies were replaced, the changelings haven't invented or changed a single thing they copied, or come up with anything truly original. That this is just a stagnant society of shape-shifting Dark Eldar parasites feeding on generations of victims and deluding themselves.
Let's just file that under "Worst Possible Platinum Crown Ending"
Basically, she would make one of those grimdark Equestrias, where it is Equestria just on the surface, and breathtaking horror beneath. That's the Chrysalis Future.
4234123
We're inching closer to revealing it, now that Brass is free. As you can guess, our little Twilight factors into it more closely than any other mane, so we'll find out through her POV when the time comes.
4234911
Oh my. You noted something very interesting and unexpected back there.
And if Star Light HAD used that location spell of hers at a bad time, things would've been pretty darn different. Alpha Brass can't naturally plan for everything, nor does he try to. Even if he had been killed, say, in the duel back there, not a single thing that has happened in these chapters would change. Writing for him, I imagine him less as Xanatos (who I do love as a character), and more as a terrorist leader loosely managing several different compartmentalized cells. Where Brass excels above others is in taking two or three or four mares, who wouldn't otherwise work together or even work at all, and turning them into dedicated leaders who share his goals. In that respect, he's more like an anti-Celestia than anything else. Which might give you an idea or two of what he wants with Twilie.
Pegasi kick ass. Unicorns have a lot of combat power, but in general that's mitigated by them being ponces. Pegasi are the warriors at heart. They're born to fight the elements of nature, after all.
The Neighponese are there, helping with the defense of Blueblood Manor. Even after everything they did, remember that Rarity specifically maneuvered things so she and her guard would hold onto them, NOT the changeling-Blueblood's royal guards. You could say there's a debt of honor there. Not a one of them (even Suzukaze) are going to let the changelings fall on the residents of Ponyville. Admittedly, this is ALSO one of the reasons why I tried to write them as basically good ponies, so it wouldn't seem odd when they end up helping Rarity and her forces at the end, here.
4235449
Luna will explain it all in the next chapter. I'll sum it up by just calling it "creative use of an earlier demonstrated magic."
But Celestia and Luna are far from gods in TPC, despite their power. Cruciger and Star Light are also immensely powerful but still entirely mortal unicorns. The "gods" in TPC are outright called that. Sagittarius would be considered a god, in that he/she/it is deathless and bodiless and often incomprehensible in motivation. Celestia and Luna can both die (the 5-allit spell Celestia uses would have killed anything in the story, herself included), and their mortality is in full force now that the Crown has been broken.
4235218
Star Light would probably be a pretty terrible mother to have, but never a dull one. She does care, but she has weird ways of caring and a topsy-turvy moral compass. Twilight, for example, clearly admires her genius but also swears to herself never to be like her.
4235916 Dang, that's what I get for leaving comments of such length, I really have no idea which note of mine you could be referring to. Not sure if the Celestia emote is a hint or a red herring...
I had actually completely forgotten that Rarity still had the Neighponese in custody. Well, until the bubble shields were referenced that is, after that they came to mind pretty quickly.
I just thought of something. Did Luna turned into Nightmare Moon while Platinum was still alive? How did her relationship with Celestia soured after sealing Sombra away? Will there be a flashback showing an alternate scenario of the Celestia/Nightmare Moon fight such as actual conflict between the sisters or a war between armies as oppossed to the canon events?
Great chapter again, up to now the whole Platinum Crown concept was really nebulous but now I'm really interested on what the deal with it is.
Alpha mentioned returning control of the Sun and Moon back to the unicorns, but apparently the Crown was there to protect the ponies from the sisters. Was there some kind of horrible miscalculation or did Chalice finally decided to act against his brothers wishes just as a silly act of rebellion? That scene seemed to hint at her not being happy at whatever her original intention for being there was. If the crown was meant to somehow provide worthy ponies control of the sisters, why was undoing that a good idea?
Can't wait to see how this resolves.
I just thought a hypothesis. Celestia and Luna turned against their alicorn father and I think that alicorns were both common during their youth and in conflict with the other tribes based on Iridium's original reason for creating her destuctive spells. Does that mean that Celestia and Luna turned against their own species for the sake of Harmony? Also, if the alicorns were the enemy, then why would Sombra be affiliated with Luna and the alicorn cause?
So, Celly and Luna are mortal now? Damn, that's not good. :O
As a side note, I wonder how Luna and company will deal with their Red Queen POW. She's too valuable to just kill, but too dangerous and evil to be shown any real mercy...
Ouch. I suppose that's one way to end conflict over the Platinum Crown, although I don't for one minute imagine that's the only, or even among the various reasons Alpha Brass orchestrated that.
It also strikes me that Horn Ointment should be viewed as a strategic resource. After all, it seems to me the three tribes are balanced on endurance/power ratio. Unicorns will hurl around Phenomenal Cosmic Power for a few minutes, Pegasi can kick butt all day, while flying, with help from the weather, and Earth Ponies can pound you into the ground for weeks without stopping. Unbalancing that by letting the Horny Ponies do their thing for longer? Definitely something I'd want to have piles of when the excrement hits the rotational air impeller.
Alpha Brass breaking the crown means the power disparity separating the sisters from their subjects just dropped significantly. Anything that increases Alpha's chance of seizing more power is a good thing in his book, so I must assume that all is going according to plan.
Celestia has been neutralized, Luna is battered, Cadence and Chrysalis are going to go at each other pretty soon, and I can guess that the unspeakable horror the Brown Queen has in check is going to get real personal with a certain constellation.
Ponies and changelings are going to break themselves apart, and guess who'll be there to pick up the pieces?
And if the pact is broken, could a new pact be formed? By a certain blonde stallion?
I'm just hoping that the forces of friendship, love, and harmony have enough gas in tank left over to prevent Brass's endgame.
4235916
Sounds promising, though in all likelihood Twilight's going to get her heart broken when Alpha's plan comes into fruition; she's been warming up to him considerably and it seems like he's going to pull a fast one on everybody.
dear christ on a pogo stick i was SCREAMING at my computer whhen the the bleeding title finally made its appearance... and then was promptly destroyed!!!
what the everlasting buck chalice! also so......the platinum crown is what transferred control of the sun and moon from the unicorns as a whole to Celestia and Luna? am I understanding this correctly?
Oh dear, things are getting quite serious. Seems Alpha’s plans are indeed extending well beyond just killing all the changelings. Seems he wants to put the power of the sun and moon back in the mortal ponies’s control, if not outright kill Celestia and Luna. They both seem set to be thrown under Brass’s bus, along with potentially a huge chunk of the nobility sans maybe members of his family.
Now I have to wonder to what ends Brass is planning on screwing over Twilight’s plan…
And an interesting note, Brass was most concerned with Star Light finding out about his sky palace. I believe that is the first thing that’s we’ve seen really shake him up. Very noteworthy given how stoic he’s been up to this point. Most interesting. Wonder where it is, and why he would be so worried about that. There is at least one superweapon he has hidden up his sleeve...
I always wanted to think that the changelings are just misguided and can be reasoned with. Then I read the offical comics where it leaves little room for doubt that they are evil and that their love draining kills the victim eventually. I do still hope that the show will bring one or two of them back as "renigades" but its not likly.