Chapter Fifty Four : Brass
- - -
(54)
Brass
- - -
“Damn that mother of mine,” Alpha Brass murmured under his breath. “When I said she was free to take the ‘pound of flesh’ she had come for, I didn’t mean it literally.”
The Prince of the Terre Rare stumbled through the acre of half-grown corn plants, the broad leaves slapping him in the face in rebuke and making a mockery of his attempt to avoid detection. He had specifically avoided being anywhere near the road in order not to be seen from the air, either by changelings or by Antimony’s loyalists. Unfortunately, without flying himself, he couldn’t be entirely sure his effort had worked as his meandering through the corn fields surely wasn’t as subtle or stealthy as he would’ve wished. It certainly wasn’t as clandestine as it could have been under better circumstances.
A stray spark bled off his horn, pricking his skin as it tumbled down across his face.
Mother’s offer of anesthetic had seldom been more appealing. Of course, at the same time, she had to have known he would decline. What would be the point of escaping only to fall asleep three steps outside your cell? Or lose all remaining coordination when the morphine really kicked in? He had politely declined and she had not asked a second time before going to work. Four minutes later and Mother had simply taken what she needed and ushered him out the door with a jaunty ‘be careful out there.’
The ache where part of his rib had once been was all that remained of it, along with a band of white linen wrapped tightly around his flaxen coated torso. In a way, the wound was self-inflicted. By arranging for one of his own operatives to sabotage his father’s recovery, in destroying Star Light’s biological supplies, he had made it certain she would seek him out. It would be hypocritical to complain overmuch of the result of one’s own efforts.
What was important now was finding a place to rest and recover.
Star Light’s operation had taken a toll, not just physically, but magically. The body was a wondrous machine, but in this case it was his magic, or lack thereof, that posed the biggest problem. Until his star field stabilized from his mother’s extraction surgery, high level unicorn magic would be impossible... including teleportation any more intricate than a blink spell. On top of that, the thought had crossed Brass’s mind as to whether he should teleport to the Gardens at all. If Mother could track him before, she could now. She would find out where it was. She had to have seen his discomfort when she had let slip the news.
Things were set up to run without his presence. The most prudent and cautious route would have been to lie low for the entirety of the invasion up to and including the... ending. Yet undue caution could be as detrimental as undue bravado, and after so many years of work, Alpha Brass found he wanted to see it all come to fruition. He wanted to see, with his own two eyes, what everypony became, especially his newest and most powerful puzzle piece. He wanted to see it, and decided to see it, in the flesh, even if it meant being a little incautious in the process.
“A wise pony cultivates powerful friends like a farmer cultivates crops,” Mother had once said, when he was very small and about to be introduced to his young peers in Canterlot. Brass snorted and pushed another corn stalk out of his way. “Put effort into them, and you will reap the rewards all throughout your life. Even the Princess herself needs friends.”
It was sage advice, tempered somewhat by her next words.
“This should be especially easy for you, Alpha.”
“Because of my special talent,” he whispered to himself as he moved through the field. At the time, it had been phrased as an innocent question, from dutiful son to idealized mother. He had not fully understood then just what he was, and just what his special talent meant. He had the cutie mark and he grasped the basics, but he was too young and too small-minded to fully understand the ramifications.
Because of what you did to me. Because of how you trained me and how you made me. Because of the blood in my veins. Because I am Terre Rare. Because we are all just soldiers in the army of the family.
“Because of your special talent,” Star Light had explained, looking down on her only son with a smirk.
“Do you have powerful friends, mother? I’ve only seen you with apprentices.”
“Oh, I have powerful friends. Just a few of them. Your father is one… my best friend.” Twinkling Star Light trotted away, then, he remembered. She left him to fend for himself with those parting words. “As for my powerful friends, maybe I’ll introduce you to some of them someday… if you become impressive enough. Your father and I will visit you in eight months, Alpha. Don’t forget to have fun!”
Alpha Brass stopped to catch his breath, remembering that conversation from years past. It was rare that a pony really remembered something with such crystal clarity after time had its way with it. That one conversation had been significant, however. Not simply because of the advice he had taken to heart about ‘cultivating powerful friends.’ Time and circumstance had revealed the identities of mother’s ‘special friends.’
And their secrets.
- - -
- - -
“What a precious little colt! Could I hold him, Twinkling?”
“We’d be honored, Princess.”
“Come here, little one!” Celestia lifted the tiny pony out of Star Light’s lap and into the air with her magic. Alpha Brass was an adorable little foal, but always so quiet. He hadn’t made so much as a peep during the entire baby shower. Most foals were much noisier and fussier.
“Look at this! What precious little horse-shoes!” Star Light exclaimed, holding up the newly opened gift for all to see: four tiny shoes for four tiny hooves, made to be clipped in place rather than fixed by nails. The quartet shimmered in the light of the chandelier.
“Are they made of tin?” a mare in an intricate white gown asked. Like most of the noble mares present, her husband was sitting next to her in a tuxedo, his bristly moustache twitching in bemusement.
“They are made out of a new metal,” Countess Black Gold explained, fanning herself and enjoying being at the center of attention as everypony set eyes on her. Her light blue dress matched her darker blue coat. She was one of a minority of earth ponies in the room, just as she was one of a minority of earth ponies who happened to also be titled nobility in Equestria.
“Alu-minum, they call it,” she tittered at the name. “Some say it will be a new wonder metal to replace iron and steel.”
“My dear, nothing will ever replace steel,” another noblepony, a stallion, gave a hearty chuckle at the very idea. “This alu-minum is a passing fad, I assure you.”
Countess Black Gold leaned forward, grinning. “As Lord of Fillydelphia and Bittsburgh, the Steel Cities, we would expect no less from you, Cast Iron. I’m surprised your gift today wasn’t a miniature I-beam.”
“Well I never!” Cast Iron busied himself stuffing his pipe with fresh tobacco.
“It is a lovely gift, Countess,” Twinkling Star Light spoke up, forestalling any further argument.
“Hrm.” Next to her, Cruciger grunted his agreement.
At least, it was probably agreement. Celestia had to admit it was hard to tell, even for her, and he had served as head of her Royal Guard for years. Only one pony seemed able to entirely translate his preferred grunts and growls.
“Oh, you!” Star Light giggled, batting her husband playfully on the foreleg. She reached for the next gift and her eyes lit up. “Oh! This one is from the Bluebloods!”
Celestia, still holding onto the baby Alpha Brass, smiled at the warmth between the two rival families. Not far from Cruciger and Star Light, Prince Blueblood and Lady Vernal Equinox were sitting on plush cushions and holding hooves. Despite being an arranged marriage, they loved each other; it was obvious to everyone in the Palace. No magic required. The two couples were alike in that respect.
Blueblood, fifty-first of his name, held up a glass of liquor in respect and greeting. He and Cruciger had spent years together in the Royal Guard, serving under the same roof, eating the same food, undergoing the same trials. Their assignment was hardly a coincidence. Celestia had privately and secretly arranged for the colts to spent time together in the hope that they would form a budding friendship that would finally bridge the divide between Blue Belle and Arsenic’s feuding descendants.
To Celestia’s private delight, the little scheme had actually worked! The two ambitious young colts, now grown and handsome stallions, remained close companions, often going on hunting trips or other adventures together… even as they competed just as much in tournaments and other public contests for the small ponies. The rivalry turned friendship had brought out the best in both of them, in the Princess’s opinion. All thanks to a little manipulation behind the scenes.
“Hrm,” Cruciger grumbled.
“I wonder what it is!” Star Light held the package aloft and inspected it before starting to delicately unravel the festive blue and silver wrapping. Held in her forelegs, Celestia felt the infant son of the Terre Rare clan fidget just a little. She held out her hoof and he grabbed onto it, pulling gently but not trying to bite or suck. Then he found her mane and started to play with it. He truly was a cute little foal!
“We hope you like it.” Equinox, unlike her husband, had only a glass of punch to drink. That made her and the new mother just about the only ponies in the room not at least a little bit inebriated in celebration. Which was strange, as Vernal Equinox was hardly a teetotaler. Celestia recalled that one of Equinox’s more vexing vices was her love of drink.
“It looks like…!” Star Light removed the last of the wrapping paper, revealing a model kit of some sort. “A toy castle?” She held it out for Cruciger to get a closer look. “I don’t recognize this one.”
“Camlann,” Cruciger spoke up, to her and to his old friend. “Isn’t it a ruin?”
“A bit of a run-down spot in Canterlot these days, but yes. Camlann Castle! You recognized it right away!” Blueblood smiled cheerily and took a sip from his drink. “We are rebuilding it and intend to give it to your young Prince. This way he will always have a home of his own when he comes to visit fair Canterlot, and his friends and cousins the Bluebloods.”
Cruciger growled again, but returned the smile and nodded in thanks. “A fine gift.”
“We also have an announcement,” Vernal Equinox spoke up. One of her hooves rested on her stomach. “We are also with foal! If it is a filly – and we pray to the Princess it will be – we intend to betroth her to young Alpha Brass and finally unite our houses. That is our second gift!”
“Oh!” “Congratulations!” “A match made in harmony, truly!”
“If the Princess approves?” Equinox cut through the deluge of well wishes to turn towards Celestia. So did Star Light and many others.
Celestia raised her head up to affect a proper regal posture, most of her mane flowing in a non-existent breeze. “So long as the children agree to it when they are of age, I approve.”
“Wonderful!” Equinox’s whole face lit up with delight. She rubbed her midsection lovingly, having been trying to conceive for several years now. “It will be a filly. A fifty-second Blue Belle. I know it.”
“And if it is a colt?” Cruciger rumbled, spoiling the good mood of his guest somewhat.
“You have a daughter already, don’t you?” Blueblood answered for his wife. “I’m sure something can be arranged.”
- - -
After the shower, the stallions quickly excused themselves. It was no secret where they went. Cruciger maintained a legendary stock of wines and other alcohols at all of his estates, and before they left, Celestia caught sight of her nephew, Blueblood, opening a box and winking mischievously. It was very likely to be full of those awful Saddle Marabian cigars he insisted on smuggling into the country. Which meant another night of drinking and smoking and – very likely- gambling, then.
Celestia rolled her eyes at the thought.
The noble mares, meanwhile, adjourned to various rooms to occupy themselves with their own games of chance and cards. Servants flocked into the parlors to attend to them with trays of sweets and expensive drinks. A band played in one of the four adjoined parlors and a comedic play was scheduled for later in the evening. Many ponies were also taking to the gardens outside, to enjoy the warm Prench summer and to see the white roses in full bloom.
Celestia remained close to her former student. Star Light had been eager to catch up on who was ‘hot’ among the next generation of gifted unicorns, and just as quick to prove that not a one of them could hold a candle to her. Celestia humored her and listened intently as Star Light shared some of her own adventures in friendship and magic up north. The Princess knew she was fortunate that her former student was in one of her better moods. Star Light could and did dip very suddenly into depression when she was an apprentice. It had made for an often trying time.
“We’ve been over this before, Twinkling--” Celestia lifted her teacup, poured in a bit of milk and a rough cube of cane sugar, and mixed it with a small spoon. “--we are not sending another expedition into that mirror world.”
“But – but think of everything we can learn!” Star Light argued, cutting a piece of sponge cake off her plate with a fork and bringing it up to her lips. “I’m sure nopony… or no-human or whatever they are… will even notice a few missing bodies!”
“Twinkling,” the Princess asked, deadpan. “Are you seriously suggesting that the state and country of Equestria sanction inter-dimensional grave robbery?”
“We’ll never know what they are unless we can bring a body back for testing and analysis,” Star Light insisted. “How else will we know if they’re the creatures the old legends spoke of? They could be the Titans that gave us magic! I’ve taken genetic samples from twelve different cave trolls across both the old and new world. If I could just--”
“How did you even…?” Celestia very nearly spat out her tea. “From cave trolls? Why? How--” Celestia shook her head and a hoof to cut off her old apprentice’s argument. “On second thought, nevermind explaining how; I think I’d rather remain ignorant.”
“Plausible deniability?” Star Light giggled, holding a hoof up over her mouth to conceal her smile. “I get it. Don’t worry! I can do everything under the table, so to speak! Remember that time we had to deal with zombie-Equestria? I can be super-subtle!”
“You blew up the castle,” Celestia reminded her.
“I blew up their castle,” Star Light corrected her.
“Then you set up a giant fan blade in front of the mirror,” Celestia further reminded her. She sipped her tea, savoring the interplay of sweet and sour. “Do I need to describe what that room looked like by the time the convergence ended? Or how it smelled?”
“First of all, it was called an ‘Iris.’ Not a fan.” Twinkling Star Light nibbled on another fork-full of cake. “Second, I enchanted those critters to clean up the mess and they did the job just fine.”
“You infested the castle grounds with flesh eating chipmunks.”
“And nopony even noticed until they tried to eat Mister Green Thumb, and he was hardly mauled at all!”
“No, Twinkling.”
“Awww!” The mother of two pouted and looked up at her Princess with doe-eyes. “Is that a ‘no-no’ or a ‘no-yes-do-it-behind-my-back?’”
“No-no. Puppy eyes don’t work at your age,” Celestia informed her, and both mares broke into giggles. “I remember you sent Green Thumb an especially heartfelt apology.”
“Does he still work at the Palace?” Star Light asked. “He was old even when I was a filly--”
Their chat was interrupted, rather surprisingly, by a foal’s grumbling. Princess and Duchess quickly looked over at the little gold-coated infant that had been sleeping by Star Light’s side. Alpha Brass had been just about the quietest foal Celestia could recall, but something was bothering him now. He started to nudge his mother with his head.
“I think our new lord is hungry,” Celestia observed with another laugh. She scooped up a bit of Star Light’s cake while the other mare was distracted.
“It is about that time, I suppose,” Star Light admitted with a grumble.
Celestia sighed and made as if to stand back up. “Would you like some privacy?”
“No, no. There’s no need. I do so hate interruptions and we don’t get to talk much anymore.” Star Light’s magic flared and a window opened in mid-air. The master mage and noblemare held out her hoof, and a crystalline bottle took form.
“Oh! Formula?” Celestia wondered, craning her neck to get a better look. “Most nobles use wet nurses…”
“We have one of those on retainer as well,” Star Light replied, taking out a slip of paper. She dipped the nipple of the bottle against the paper, producing a splotch. It was white – being milk and all – but then the splotch turned green.
The paper then burst into flame.
“Here you go, Alpha,” Star Light said, holding the bottle in place, upside down. Celestia almost stood up when she saw the milk set the paper on fire, but the tiny colt caught the bottle’s nipple in his mouth and began to drink without hesitation.
“Twinkling.”
“Hmm?” Her old apprentice looked totally unbothered. She had already gone back to her cake.
“What’s in that bottle?” Celestia asked, her calm tone belying her thoughts.
“Formula,” Star Light answered without missing a beat.
“And what’s in the formula?” The Princess narrowed her eyes just slightly.
“Chemicals,” Star Light answered just as easily.
“Twinkling Star Light!” Celestia’s use of her full name prompted the Duchess to shrink back a fraction. “You will tell me what you are feeding your foal, and so help me, if you say ‘atoms’ or ‘molecules’ or anything like that--”
“Does it really matter?” Star Light asked, but complied with her old mentor’s demand just as quickly. “Fine! If you absolutely, positively, abso-tively have to know… there might be… a little…” she muttered the next word. “--mixed in.”
“A little what?” Celestia asked, pointing across the coffee table at her hostess and former apprentice. “Out with it, young lady.”
“Blood,” Star Light admitted.
“Blood doesn’t burn paper.”
“Arsenic’s blood does.”
Celestia lowered her hoof to the edge of her couch. Arsenic’s blood. How was such a thing even possible? Arsenic was dead.
“The formula is a synthetic substitute of my own design based on feedback from when I nursed Polished Jewel,” Duchess Star Light explained, cutting off a piece of cake and biting into it with a defiant smirk. “I’ve had a few years to refine the process since then. It’s completely safe, I assure you.”
“Safe?” Celestia inquired with a disapproving frown. “So if I were to put a drop or two into my tea with the sugar?”
“You’d be fine!”
“And if I gave that tea to one of our guests?”
“…he or she would be fine…”
“And if I used, say, half the bottle?”
“He or she would be fine for… many… many… hours.” Star Light’s eyes made a point of avoiding her mentor’s glare.
“Twinkling!” Celestia snapped, and the mother and Duchess at least looked a little chastened. “I had thought this horrible practice to have ended with Arsenic!”
“It is a family tradition to quote-unquote ‘test’ our foals with a bit of poison,” Star Light argued, her ears folded back against her head. “Better my way than the way they did it before. I’m not Arsenic. I won’t have another Gallium. You know about--”
“I was there,” Celestia answered, and in her anger, she realized she misspoke. Her eyes widened for just a fraction of a second, but Star Light saw it.
“You weren’t there,” Star Light corrected her. “The family records say you weren’t there.”
“My point is, Twinkling, that there is no need to do this--” Celestia pointed accusingly at the bottle held over little Alpha Brass. “--anymore. You aren’t one of Arsenic’s daughters or grand-daughters.”
“That is exactly why I do have to do this,” the Duchess argued. “Before my husband, the line was matrilineal. I don’t have Arsenic’s unique attributes in my bloodstream, but my foals do. There is nothing to be done about that… in fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way. They are their father’s children, after all. My formula is precisely designed to activate the powers that are their birthright. Please don’t mistake it for the crude ‘tests’ of generations past.”
‘Activate’ the bloodline, was that what they called it, now?
Once again, it all came back to Arsenic. Watching Alpha Brass suck on the poisonous bottle, Celestia recalled another infant foal. This one had been an earth pony, pure white like snow. Gallium, her mother had named her, before casting her out for ‘unforgivable weakness.’ Arsenic had proven to be many things in her long life, but few claimed she was a kind or loving mother to her four children. Her hardness had carried over to Bismuth, her chosen successor and second daughter, and Bismuth II had gladly carried on the tradition. Celestia had secretly hoped that breaking the female line with Cruciger would soften the family’s darker ways.
“Was this Bismuth’s doing?” Celestia asked, her voice quiet. If so--
Star Light shook her head. “My mother-in-law approves but, no, it wasn’t her idea.”
Princess Celestia winced at the revelation and fixed her former student with a hard stare. “You should know that I do not approve.”
“Princess,” Star Light replied, bowing her head, “respectfully, I am your loyal servant and student. I love and respect you. We all do. But do not ask me to choose between you and my husband.”
Because, Celestia understood, Twinkling Star Light would pick her husband every time. She would pick her husband over her Princess. She would pick her husband over her country. Over everyone and anything else. Celestia knew the sentiment flowed likewise as well: there was nopony Cruciger put ahead of his wife. She only wondered where their high-born foals fit in. What future did little Polished Jewel have? What future did this newborn colt?
“And what does your son want?” she asked, softly.
Twinkling Star Light pressed her son to her torso with her hind leg. “Alpha Brass? He will want what we all want, of course: to serve and advance the interests of the family. It is why he exists.”
- - -
Alpha Brass stood before the bubbling pool.
His body had been scoured and cleansed. He had fasted according to tradition, just as Arsenic herself had, purging his body and taking only water and salt for the last three days. He had followed the family rites to the letter. He was, he knew, as ready as he could ever be to take this plunge. This was his baptism as a full-fledged member of the main branch of the Terre Rare.
He was six years old today, and he was ready.
The water in the bath bubbled and roiled under the influences of unseen forces. It was red, like blood, and at the far side of the pool a great statue gave life to a battle between a gorgon and a dragon. The Bull of Terror had gored the dragon’s underbelly with its horns, but the dragon had its tail around the gorgon’s neck, and raked a terrible gash in the bull’s side with its claws. They were locked in a deathly embrace and the hollow pits where their eyes should have been burned with a hellish green light. The red water that filled the pool flowed gently from the wounds inflicted on the statues.
The walls to the left and right sported more statues, but of ponies. There were Bismuth, Kamacite and Neptunium, the three great sisters who formed the foundation of the Terre Rare family and house. Proud unicorns all. All three had undergone the rite, though only Bismuth had gone on to lead the family as a whole. There was the stern visage of Bismuth II Brand-en-burg, Alpha’s grandmother. The statue was almost as stern looking as the mare herself.
Alpha Brass had few memories of his grandmother. She stood now among the rest of his family, waiting to see him enter the crimson pool. Mother was with her, and so was Polished Jewel, his older sister. The little blue filly had already passed this test, and she looked down on her brother with a callous, aloof expression. Brass forced himself to turn away from his family and face the pool again.
It smelled of sulfur and copper.
It smelled of death.
“Are you afraid, boy?”
Alpha Brass ducked his head as his father strode past to stand between him and the pool.
“You should know,” Cruciger whispered, leaning in close and speaking softly so only his son could hear. “I was afraid when I underwent this ordeal. Our great founder stood where my mother stands now. She smelled my fear and laughed.”
“You were afraid,” Brass realized, and he had a hard time imagining his father as a little colt, much less being afraid of… anything, really. “You were afraid, but you still went in?”
Cruciger growled deep in his throat and stood up straight, towering over his only son.
“My boy, do you know what will happen if you turn away now?”
Brass looked up at him, trying to keep calm in the face of his fear. “What?”
“Nothing,” Cruciger answered.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
As his father turned to leave and take his place among the rest of the assembled family, Brass considered his words. If he turned back now, nothing would happen. He would not be privy to the family secrets. He would not fully activate his bloodline – a hint his mother had passed on when nopony else was around to hear. He would not be a Terre Rare. Not really. That was the ‘nothing’ his father described. That was the ‘nothing’ he would be, in the eyes of his family.
But at the same time…
‘I’m afraid,’ he thought, shamefully. ‘I’m a coward. I don’t want to go in there. I don’t want to see what it will show me. Besides, what does it even matter? I was born to marry a Blue Belle, and there are none. I’ll never inherit the family, not with Jewel and Chalice and now Antimony being born… why not just turn away? Why not choose to be nothing?’
“Alpha,” Father said, a few hoofsteps behind his son. They stood, back to back. “There is wisdom in caution, and you are right to fear what is to come. Fear is the first emotion. Before kindness, before generosity, before happiness, before loyalty, before honesty, there was fear, and fear is at the root of all things. It can be wise to fear, but it is noble to conquer that same fear. If you let fear rule you, you are a coward… and this family does not suffer cowards. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Alpha Brass answered, and listened as his father’s booming hoofsteps led him away. All too soon, he ascended the steps to the gallery to join mother, grandmother, Jewel and little Chalice and Antimony. The latter had a visor over her eyes. Chalice seemed confused and a little lost as to what was going on. Polished Jewel smirked. He suspected she was looking forward to seeing what would happen to him.
“Our grandmother, the Great Duchess Arsenic, slayed a gorgon for its eyes and for its power,” Grandmother Bismuth roared, her voice echoing within the sacred walls.
“Our grandmother,” she repeated, a few seconds later, “the Great Duchess Arsenic, slayed a dragon for its longevity! We follow in her example! Our dreams are her ambition! We are Equestria’s strongest unicorns! We are Equestria’s most pure unicorns! Born in blood! Hardened by magic! Tempered through conflict! We are the Iron Hoof of the Princess, unleashed to trample Her foes into the dust of history. We exist to rule. We exist to serve the Princess. We exist to prove our worth!”
“We exist to rule!” the family chorused. Some, like Polished Jewel, did so enthusiastically. Others, like Chalice, barely understood the words she repeated. “We exist to serve the Princess!” Brass remained silent and let their words wash over him, repeating only the last line under his breath. “We exist to prove our worth!”
“We shall return to Canterlot in triumph!” Bismuth vowed to her descendants. “We shall show them the power of the blood they spurned. Our founder will have her due. Arsenic will have her due!”
Arsenic. The millstone around all their necks. She wasn’t even alive, by all accounts. She wasn’t even here to watch his baptism - to bear witness to his ordeal. Brass stared down at the crimson pool that awaited him. No: maybe Arsenic did still live. In a cauldron of sulphur and blood and hate, she lived on.
“Ours is a family built on merit. Ours is a family where all must prove their worth,” Grandmother concluded, stamping her hoof down on the stone gallery above. “Prove yourself now, grandson. Prove that you have a place among us. Or die.”
What choice was no choice?
Closing his eyes, Alpha Brass stepped into the bubbling pool. Just as he had imagined, it was sulfur and blood and death. It was both womb and tomb, and as the water covered his eyes, the visions came, and with them screams. His own, he realized, distantly. Father had been right. It was right to fear what followed.
But it was noble to overcome it. There was no other way forward.
‘I won’t be nothing,’ one last rational thought raced through Brass’s mind as the water choked the breath from his lungs. ‘I won’t be nothing! I won’t ever be nothing! So long as I live! I won’t ever be nothing!!’
- - -
- - -
The farmhouse had looked abandoned from the outside.
Naturally, it wasn’t.
“Zchecheche!” a chittering changeling laugh could be heard from inside the house. “What was that just now? Celestia? Prayers won’t help you. Your Princess is dead, little pony! Slain by our Queen! She won’t be swooping in to save you!”
Alpha Brass sighed softly to himself. It really would have been too much to ask to just find a nice, empty house to rest an hour or two in. Seen from the corn fields, the farmhouse was a rather typical earth pony home: two floors including a small attic, thatched roof, painted cheery red and bright white to stand out against the gently rolling waves of gold and green that surrounded it.
It would’ve been an idyllic little farm, right out of a bucolic rural painting, if one could just ignore the sound of sobbing from within. Wincing and holding his bandaged left side, Alpha Brass did just that – ignored the sound – and kept himself hidden behind a surprisingly tall pile of logs and firewood. There was a large cart parked alongside the house close by, but unhitched. Bales of hay were half-piled up on the cart while others were strewn on the ground, broken open.
Most likely, somepony had been loading the cart when the changelings swept in.
“See, now--” the sibilant changeling voice within the house spoke up again, and Alpha Brass rested his head against the wall, ears alert and listening in. “--look at this family picture, here? I see one, two, three, four of you ponies in this. But there’s only one, two, three of you here. The numbers just don’t add up. So which one of you wants to step up and help me reunite your little family?”
“My son is staying with a friend,” a male voice – a father – answered the changeling. “They’ve probably left by now, you’ll never--”
Brass’s ears twitched at the sound of a thud, interrupting the farmer.
“Wrong answer,” the changeling within the house hissed. “What about you? Don’t mothers keep an eye on their children?”
“I don’t know anything!” a mare’s voice replied. “Please! Please, sir!” She sounded terrified.
As she should be.
“Three out of four isn’t bad,” another changeling spoke in the short pause that followed. “Princess Instar won’t care if we miss a few in our sweep.”
“Did you forget that the Princess said that the young ones are worth twice as much as the big ones? Besides, this is a matter of pride. I won’t do a half-thoraxed job! Which is exactly why I’m a lieutenant and you’re just a regular drone.”
“But--” the second changeling was worried. They were not totally alien, after all. As much as they preyed on the emotions of others, they possessed those same emotions themselves. Love. Hate. Jealousy. Shame. Sadness. Fear. It was how the Nidhogg Hive survived, after all, the reclusive blue changelings who fed on their fellow shape-shifters.
“What if the fighting gets closer to here?” the second one asked. “Shouldn’t we--”
“Trust me, we’ll wax up these three and be gone long before any trouble arrives. But if you’re that worried, then go back outside and keep watch.”
“Gladly.”
Alpha Brass tensed to either retreat back into the fields or find some other place to hide. A fight here and now was not in his best interests. Not with his magic still in flux. His horn was only capable of basic magic in the state Mother had left him. Granted, he did not rely entirely on his horn, unlike most unicorns, and there was always his voice… but using that would be potentially dangerous with a scrambled star field. The prudent thing would be to leave or just hide. There were some basic unicorn cantrips that would be useful in doing so; tricks that poor earth pony farmers would not have available. There was no need to take unnecessary risks.
“Hey,” a small voice whispered, and Brass glanced down.
“The missing son,” he reasoned, seeing a small brown-coated earth pony colt with wide blue eyes. The child was in the crawl-space under the house, only accessible on one side of the building.
Without another word, the colt disappeared back under the farmhouse.
Falling flat on his stomach and crawling, the rather larger Equestrian Marquis followed the boy’s example. Luckily, he was lean for a stallion, and certainly no large workhorse. The wooden joists of the crawlspace scratched Brass’s back as he crawled, and the actual space itself was dry, but dusty and thick with spiderwebs. The family had used it for extra storage, and there were ample beams and old wooden scraps to hide behind. Clever boy. This wasn’t a bad hiding spot.
“You’re not one of them,” the little brown colt whispered, once they were in a corner of the crawlspace. “I saw you trying to keep hidden. And listening in. One of them wouldn’t bother doing that.”
“They already disguised themselves to try and lure you out?” Brass asked, keeping his voice low.
The colt nodded and wiped his forehead with his right hoof. “Yeah. Mom… Mom and Dad said to run if I could… but I can’t leave them or Sunny…”
“Sunny?”
“Sunny Sweet. My dumb sister,” the little colt grumbled. “She was supposed to hide, too, but--” He sniffed and shook his head, defiantly, even in the face of his fear.
“Sisters can be worrisome,” Brass said softly, and smiled. “I have three.”
“Three?” the colt boggled at him. “Do they drive you crazy, too?”
Alpha Brass just nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Kernel.”
“Alpha Brass.” He held out his hoof, and the colt tentatively bumped hooves with the stallion. It occurred to him, in that moment, that this colt was old enough to be his own son. Had things been so very different.
“Do you think I should’ve run away?” Kernel asked, glancing up at the floor of the house that was above their heads.
Alpha Brass silently watched the colt for a few seconds, considering his words carefully.
“What do you want to do?” he finally asked Kernel.
“They’re my family!” the boy answered, trembling but remaining resolute. “I can’t leave them! I won’t! I just gotta find a way to save them!”
The Equestrian noblepony closed his eyes and nodded once. “I see.”
“Sir…you’re a Lord, right?” Kernel’s identifying him for what he was so easily prompted Brass to sigh. Was it really that obvious? “I know, you… you look hurt, but – but can’t you do something? Plus you’re a unicorn! Don’t you have magic--”
“Everypony has magic, not just unicorns,” Brass explained, and when he opened his eyes again to look at Kernel, the colt shrank back a bit. “You want to save your family?”
Kernel steeled himself and looked the noblepony in the eye. “I do!”
“Very well,” Brass decided, “I won’t do it for you, but I can help you.”
- - -
- - -
Gaskinring Castle
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Joyeuse Tidings was not a young mare. The esteemed Governess and disciplinarian had not been a young mare for decades, and her service to Lady Twinkling Star Light and the new Terre Rare lords of Prance had done little to aid her complexion as she neared retirement.
“Answer me!” she demanded, stopping a frantic nurse from plowing into her as she entered the castle’s nursery complex. “What is going on? Has something happened to the foal?”
“M-mistress Tidings?” The younger mare, dressed in a white frock over a cream-yellow coat, stopped to straighten out her posture and compose herself. She was an earth pony and a heavy case had been belted to her left side onto a pair of saddlebags. It appeared to be stuffed with papers. Her mane was a frazzled and stressed mess of bright red, held partly in place by the goggles resting on her forehead.
“What. is. going. on?” Joyeuse asked again, letting her impatience and unhappiness seep into her reproachful tone of voice.
She knew she looked little better than the young mare. There had been precious little time to get changed into anything proper. Her coat was still a healthy coconut-brown, but the years had started to bleach her once bright orange mane. It had started with raising young Twinkling Star Light to be a proper Lady, a set of lessons that the mare promptly threw out the window the moment she inherited the Duchy from her mother, and gotten worse after young Polished Jewel, Alpha Brass, and Chalice entered into her care.
Each had started out as proper little noble-fillies, at least. Polished Jewel retained the refinement, poise, and appearance of a proper Lady, but it was spoiled by her growing too arrogant and prideful for Joyeuse’s tastes. The aged mare soon realized enforcing discipline on a hormonal young unicorn was rather difficult when said unicorn learned she could – and more importantly would – flick another pony clear across the room with her unnaturally powerful magic. Chalice was by all accounts even stronger than her older sister, but she had a naturally gentle nature that led her parents to be disinterested in her development, and all of Joyeuse’s efforts to fill that void in her charge’s life had failed to varying degrees. She had tried so hard with Chalice, too, pleading with the Duke and Duchess to weigh in and help, but neither were attentive parents in the conventional way.
Then there was their youngest daughter…
“Antimony--” the nurse babbled, fretting her front hooves together nervously. “--there’s been a problem in the nursery. I – I don’t know the details, but…”
“Oh sweet Celestia, another ‘problem’?” Joyeuse shuddered and stepped aside to let the nurse go.
She hurried off, leaving Joyeuse Tidings to move past her. The room beyond was split by a magical screen that tingled the follicles of her mane as she stepped through it. A wide set of stairs led upwards and Joyeuse followed it at a quickened pace. The siren that had woken her up grew louder and then quieter as she entered through the doors of the nursery watch center.
The watch center itself was a rectangular structure of wood and iron that extended partly over the nursery room. The nursery lay in a recessed and repurposed dining hall below. The youngest princess of the Terre Rare, the infant Lady Antimony, had all the former dining hall as her playcenter. Star Light had stocked it with all manner of toys and games to stimulate the magic and intellect and creativity of her young daughter. An entire staff of nurses and caretakers were hired to watch over the tiny alabaster foal.
Most tried to keep to the watch station whenever possible and away from physical contact.
Up here, looking out over the nursery, was a tinted window. Most of the time it was clear glass…
This time, the glass was tinted a scarlet-red.
It was not a good sign – as if the siren hadn’t already made that abundantly clear. Something had obviously gone very, very wrong with little Antimony. Joyeuse felt a shiver of fear run down her spine at the thought. Her personal apprehension aside, and her feelings towards the little foal, too, for that matter, if anything did happen to little Antimony…? Nopony would want to even contemplate what Star Light and Cruciger would do. Joyeuse was very aware of the fact that the Black Duke could cup most ponies’ heads in his hooves. She was also well aware that he had a reputation for crushing things with those same hooves.
Inside the watch center, two nurses in white frocks were still present. One just happened to be tending to the other. The one on the floor was a pegasus mare curled into a fetal ball. Her whole body was wracked by intense shivering, despite the blankets below her and that she kept slapping off her torso with her wings.
“S-so c-cold--” she cried softly. “--w-where is everypony? Help me. Help me. Somepony please help me...”
“Is she…?” Joyeuse asked, snagging a pair of goggles from clips near the door.
Two other ponies were also present in the room.
The one who answered her often went by the name ‘Blueberry.’ It wasn’t her actual name. Twinkling Star Light simply tended to call her that and so she adopted it as her work-name. She was one of the Duchess’s three top mage-guard apprentices, now having grown and graduated to the point where she had students of her own. The Terre Rare Mageguard, once simply the three apprentices of Duchess Star Light, now numbered more than a dozen.
‘Blueberry’ was the apprentice usually identifiable by her decorative metal mask; though she had taken it off in this case to don a pair of tinted goggles. They covered her eyes, but with the mask gone it was easy to see she was an eggshell-white colored unicorn mare. Her two toned pink mane was cut short, like a stallion’s. The only thing that was ‘blueberry’ about her was the color of her magic. A number of papers and other technical instruments swirled in the air around her.
“The idiot wasn’t wearing her goggles, even after hearing the crying,” Blueberry explained, motioning dismissively towards the quietly sobbing pegasus nurse. “From what I can tell, she’s reliving being lost in the cloudbanks when she was a filly.”
“We are... safe up here… are we not?” Joyeuse asked, turning very cautiously towards the blood-red tinted glass overlooking the nursery. The other pony in the room was facing the window without worry, his back to the adults. “She can’t get to us behind this glass, yes?”
“The glass blocks her view, and the walls are warded against phasing, teleportation, you name it,” Blueberry answered, snorting unhappily and starting to pace the room. “But this isn’t like before; the rest of the castle…”
“Could you please simply explain what has gone wrong?” Joyeuse asked, fretting and calming herself with a slow breath. The slow, droning warble that had woken her up in the middle of the night sounded again, prompting her ears to flatten against her head.
“Antimony’s eyes and--” Blueberry started to say, but coughed into her hoof. “--and certain family rituals have been causing her discomfort. We thought the worst of it was over last week, but tonight, she started crying, so the wet nurse entered her chambers to feed her…”
“Miss Nutrix, yes--”
“She didn’t wear her goggles, either. Or maybe they slipped off. We aren’t sure..”
“So she’s still in there?” Joyeuse asked, and approaching the window, looked down into the nursery. “Can’t we just send somepony in to get her out, then?”
In the nursery, Joyeuse could see Miss Nutrix on the floor, drooling out of the corner of her mouth. She appeared to be unconscious, and sure enough, her goggles were nowhere to be seen. Baby Antimony was also on the floor and seemingly unhurt. She was crawling around her fallen wet nurse and crying. Despite that, Joyeuse couldn’t hear anything from inside the room.
“You killed the sound?” she asked Blueberry.
“For our own safety,” the mage replied with an unhappy grunt. “There’s been some sort of change in Antimony’s magic. What do you think took out Nurse Bloom over there, even with her being inside this shielded and tinted watch center? The monster’s eyes somehow affected her without her making eye contact. Uncontrolled magical manifestation is natural in unicorn infants, but what we have here… is simply on a whole other level.”
Joyeuse looked down on the crying foal in the nursery. She was nudging her unconscious wet nurse with the little horn on her head and crying. It was a pitiable sight, but then she turned around, faced the raised area that was the watch center, and stared right back.
The red-tinted glass began to audibly thrum.
“What are you saying?”
“My own knowledge of this pales in comparison to Lady Star Light’s, but we had been operating under the assumption that this foal’s eyes were conduits for magical projection. Like a horn.” Blueberry chuckled darkly at the red-tinted glass that protected them. “But how wrong we were! Eyes are totally different from horns, or wings, or hooves! It makes sense that they conduct magic differently as well. A gorgon, to say nothing of a Greater Catoblepas, has the innate ability to control this. A pony does not! The mechanisms are simply not there!”
“A total loss of control,” the pony who had been quiet through all this said.
“Exactly so, young lord,” Blueberry agreed. “It is entirely possible that Lady Antimony will never control her monstrous eyes. Not as an infant, not as a filly, not as a teenager, not as an adult.”
Joyeuse felt a bead of sweat trickle down her neck. “That is terrible news, to be sure, but…”
“What is the cause of the current crisis?” Blueberry interrupted her, pacing away from the window and across the observatory. “Her eyes are projecting raw, unfocused magic into any surface in the room. The effect on most materials is minimal, but magical items… including magical creatures, like ponies… are absorbing the magic. The last two ponies we sent in there were driven back, either by the burns or by the nightmarish hallucinations.”
“B-burns?” Joyeuse slowly backed away from the window. “Lady Star Light and Lord Cruciger are still away… when they return--”
“There isn’t time for that, though, is there?” Alpha Brass asked. He was just a colt, himself, yet he had his cutie mark. He had gotten it earlier than any little pony Joyeuse had ever heard of. There were some who whispered he had been born with it.
The ouroboros.
Joyeuse smiled warmly at the young colt. “Young master, please, let us handle this…”
Unlike Jewel and Chalice, Brass was a perfect study, though he had many of his own tutors to teach him the roles stallions played in high society. He was always quiet, attentive, bright, and polite. The perfect student, really. Teaching him, it was almost… empowering. Joyeuse Tidings wasn’t sure how else to describe it. If he had been born a mare...
“If you send anypony else in right now, they’ll just get hurt,” the young lord reasoned, not having moved from his seat in front of the window. He turned his attention from them and back down into the nursery. “I understand your reluctance, but I know what I’m doing. I was created to help my sisters. Let me do that.”
- - -
Antimony’s crying assailed their ears in the brief instant they opened the nursery door. Joyeuse Tidings and Blueberry kept their eyes averted, even with their goggles on. None would risk exposure. Alpha Brass wore goggles as well, and they tinted the nursery a scarlet red, filtering out the infant Antimony’s illusions. They were notably less effective at protecting the rest of the body.
The dreams of infants and foals were a collage of wild emotions and abstract fears.
Stepping into the nursery, for just a moment, there was a sense of raw nothingness. Then Antimony noticed somepony in her room and turned to him. Her little face was scrunched up and wet with tears. She held out her tiny hooves to be picked up.
It was then that the magic kicked in.
The room plunged into darkness.
Waves of fear and loneliness, confusion and frustration, nascent infantile anger…
Hunger, sadness--
Then the fears, made manifest. The shadows pulled and stretched and reached out, twisting to give them eyes and teeth. The nightmares of foals rose up and surged towards him to tear him apart. Pausing only to reach up to his face, he lifted off his protective goggles. The tidal wave of nightmares swelled and advanced.
Alpha Brass trotted past them – through them.
“Antimony,” he said, staggering only when a blast of magic sent licks of smoke washing over his chest. “You don’t have to cry…”
The foal held out her chubby little legs, and Alpha Brass reached down to pick her up. He sat back on his haunches and held her up in the air. Her eyes were bright and wild, swirling, shifting pools of alien red. They were a monster’s eyes.
That was what everypony said: a monster’s eyes.
“You just want somepony to play with you,” he said, and held her to his chest until her cries turned to inarticulate, wordless murmurs. The roiling emotional magic and warped shadow creatures receded, faded, and finally lost cohesion entirely.
Grabbing onto his left front hoof, she brought it to her mouth and started to chew on it.
“Even if I’m the only one to ever tell you this, sister,” Alpha Brass whispered, smiling lovingly down at the baby in his lap. “Believe me. Believe your brother. Your eyes… are beautiful.”
- - -
Miss Nutrix wasn’t hurt, thankfully. They wheeled her out on a stretcher to the castle infirmary, just to be sure. Alpha Brass emerged from the nursery with her and promptly handed his goggles to Blueberry. Joyeuse could do little more than breathe a sigh of relief. The crisis had been averted by some miracle. Additional precautions would have to be undertaken until Lady Antimony grew out of her infancy.
“You’re immune to the gorgon’s eyes, young lord?” the mage-guard asked, impressed. “I suspected as much, but--”
“I’m not immune,” Brass cut her off, trotting past the two mares.
“Then how did you do that?” Blueberry asked, her earlier expression morphing into a frown. She was clearly not the sort of mare to like unanswered questions, especially not when it came to magic. “If you weren’t immune, then how…?
“I’d very much like to know that as well,” Joyeuse added. She, too, had been under the impression that he had some sort of immunity. It was the only reason they had allowed him into the nursery.
The young colt stopped, halfway to the door to the castle apartments.
“I was safe in that room because I love my little sister.” He turned, slowly, eyes narrowed at the pair of mares. “I love her and she knew it. That’s all it was. Good night, Miss Tidings. Miss Blueberry.”
He bowed his head, polite to the end, and took his leave.
“Was he right?” Joyeuse Tidings asked, her voice low and conspiratorial. For the first time in some time, she felt… guilty. Her eyes wandered over to the observatory window. It was terrible to admit, but the infant within the nursery below still terrified her.
“Alpha is Lady Star Light’s son, yes, but he’s barely out of magic kindergarten.” Blueberry scoffed, summoning up her metal mask to cover her face and assume her favored persona as a mysterious mage-guard. “Most likely he doesn’t understand it himself, but who knows?”
Blueberry nodded her head once and disappeared in a blink.
Joyeuse Tidings was left in the nursery observatory. Brass’s last words still haunted her: I was safe in that room because I love my little sister. Not a single pony on the staff had been able to get more than a few steps into the nursery. Not a single one. The implications were… unsettling.
- - -
- - -
“Kernel!”
“What are you doing here!?”
“Kernel…!”
The three cries came from three ponies, all held against a wall in what had been their very own living room. Out of the three earth ponies, Sunny Sweet, the straw and gold coated daughter, impulsively tried to get up. She was forced back down by the changeling watching over the family, and none too gently. With a pained oomph, the farmgirl ended up sprawled on the floor.
“Nopony move!” the changeling, not even bothering with a disguise, snarled at them. “You’ll get worse if you try that again!”
“Well, well!” the second changeling, the one in charge, cackled with a raspy ‘zhezhezhe.’ “All this effort trying to find out where they hid you… and you come right to us?”
It was a moment or two before the changelings realized the colt had trotted right in through the front door.
“Zchhche?” the leader chittered, and repeated the inequine name. “Zchhche! Sister!”
The second sneered and took a step towards the little brown colt. “Wait. There’s no way this little pony could’ve--”
“Zchhche!!” the leader yelled, stomping right up to the colt, green fire rippling along her chitinous armor. “This better be some dumb joke of yours! Zchhche!”
“Leave my family alone.”
The lead changeling, on the verge of calling for her comrade again, instead glared down at the little colt. “You…”
“Don’t hurt him!” It was the older mare of the family, the mother. “I know he didn’t do anything! He’s a good boy!”
“Shut up!” the changeling watching the family cuffed her roughly on the foreleg, causing her to cry out again, half-sob and half-yelp.
“You. You did something to Zchhche?” the changeling leader snapped, grabbing Kernel by his mane and tossing him off his hooves and onto the ground. “I’ll make you pay for that! Nopony hurts one of us and gets away with it!”
“Leave him alone!” The father, this time, tried to move forward. “Don’t you dare lay a hoof on my boy!”
“I said keep back,” the lone changeling guarding the family growled. Her crooked, black horn flashed, a bolt of magic knocking the dark-brown earth pony father onto his back. “You brought this on yourselves! Stupid ponies!”
“No!” A blonde mass caught the changeling around the legs, tackling her. “I won’t let you--”
“Won’t let you hurt--”
“Get away from--”
“Stop! Stop! Get off MEEEE!”
- - -
Sitting on the patio of the farmhouse, Alpha Brass tentatively touched a hoof to the bandage around his midsection. It wasn’t bloody or anything. Star Light was, if nothing else, a masterful doctor and surgeon. The flesh and magic she needed had all been removed… remotely, using magic. It was all very clean. By tomorrow, everything would be back to normal, such as normal was.
“No! NO! Please!”
A blood-curdling scream filled the air.
“Get your hooves off me! What are you doing? I’ll--”
Only a few seconds passed before a second scream followed the first.
Alpha Brass continued to look out over the farmland from the patio, not making a move, not even when the sound of stamping hooves outlasted the gurgling second scream. His mind was already elsewhere. In particular, it was on how close his sister’s guards could be when it came to tracking him down. Gewitter, in particular, would likely be leading the chase, looking to find answers as to what happened to her sister Sirocco. It would only be a matter of time before they happened by this place. It would probably be hoping too much that they concentrate entirely on the changelings… especially given the grudge Antimony had against him.
“Soon,” he promised, glancing over at the dead changeling on the patio next to him. It was in no position to respond, however. Not with a broken neck.
“Soon,” he said again.
Alpha Brass sat and watched the sky darken until Kernel’s family invited him inside. Flint Corn and his wife Masa, to his surprise, brewed a rather passable blend of black coffee.
- - -
- - -
Antimony closed her eyes.
“It is done,” she intoned, turning away from the crystalline grotto below. A faint wisp of smoke squeezed out from between her eyelids. “Do with them as you will.”
“You heard ‘er!” a shaggy, pugfaced dog barked, and a phalanx of diamond dogs marched forward. “Cross-ees to da front! Poke da sparkly ones first!”
They were covered in seemingly crudely-hammered plates of iron or steel, some over chainmail or stitched over with boiled leather. It was a motley assemblage of canine musculature, utterly devoid of the aesthetic sensibilities of ponykind. Nonetheless, it did the job Rarity had boasted it would.
Each canine cave-dweller hefted a huge steel-bowed arbalest, took aim down over the lip of the tunnel and loosed bolts at his or her pleasure. They made a fine mess of the enemy in the grotto beyond, taking full advantage of the chaos caused by the use of her Gorgon’s Eyes. And so the slaughter began anew, blood staining pink crystals a ruddy, rusty red.
“First line over da top! Chop em up! CHOP EM UP GOOD!” the same dog howled, and row after row of canines surged past Antimony and into the breach in the grotto. Many paused only to fire another flurry of iron tipped bolts into the illusion-addled changelings below before diving into the growing, growling, furious melee.
Behind the diamond dogs came her own forces: blade winged pegasi with gritted teeth, conscripted to fly into changeling infested caverns and rain down lightning and freezing rain, grim earth ponies who had already seen combat for hours on end, pushing back changelings and a growing horde of other monsters, and finally unicorn spellcasters with filthy robes and smoking horn-rings. Every single step forward had been contested with a savage fury, further compounded by the confusion of changelings adopting the guise of allies. Celestia alone knew how many ponies or diamond dogs had fallen due to friendly fire.
Bit by bloody bit, inch by hard-fought inch, they cut and smashed and blasted their way towards Canterlot.
Antimony did not mind the filth that covered her Terre Rare crimsons. Her waistcoat clung tightly to her slim torso, corset-like, the straps and stitching frayed from fighting. Her gold and carmine cloak was crusted in brown mud and ruddy, dry red streaks. Seeing the original outfit, Antimony remembered how Rarity had judged it ‘sufficiently fabulous on your figure and color scheme’ but wondered if it was ‘any real protection.’ She also questioned the coiled-snake motif, patterns of which were stitched into the ensemble. The dressmaker might have changed her tune on that, had she accompanied her friend Twilight to meet Lady Arsenic.
The sight of one of the family Mageguard coming to a stop before her brought Antimony’s thoughts back to the here and now. There was no point dwelling on Arsenic or Rarity, anyway.
“My Lady,” the unicorn mare greeted the Baroness with a formal bow. “There is news of your brother!”
So it wasn’t a telegraph from Yumi. News of her brother? It could only be one thing.
“Ah.” Antimony opened her eyes again, but only half-mast. “Let me guess: he’s escaped?”
“I am afraid so, my Lady,” the mage guard answered, obsequious.
“The four mages maintaining the prison barrier…?” Antimony asked.
“Immobilized by your noble mother, Lady Twinkling Star Light,” the unicorn guard explained with some visible discomfort over the resulting conflict of loyalties. “The other Mageguards are… were… not sure what to do…”
They would be. Most of the Terre Rare Mageguard had been trained to one degree or another by Twinkling Star Light. There was no spell they knew that she did not. There was no ability they had that she was unaware of. What would they do – what could they do – in the face of their fickle and flighty mentor’s interference? The Mageguard supported Antimony as the formal successor, rather than Twilight and Alpha Brass, but she lacked the iron-hoof of total control her father and mother enjoyed. Making a blatant move against Star Light was not just foalhardy, it was practically out of the question as well, no matter what Mother did.
“My mother is where, currently?” Antimony asked, simply.
“Attending to Lord Cruciger,” the mare answered, glancing up for a moment. All that greeted her was Antimony’s frosty glare. She quickly went back to staring dutifully down at her front hooves.
“No doubt my mother neutralized the first circle of guards,” Antimony murmured. “What of the second?”
“They were conscious but did not dare to interfere. Ser Gewitter has organized search parties to find your brother, my Lady, but… there has been no success from them as yet…”
The Baroness let a soft sigh betray her vexation. She held out a hoof, sheathed in a black leather boot. “Do you have the Fly on the Wall?”
“I do!” the Mageguard chirped, and magically reached into her robe to retrieve a small cylinder. “Right here, my Lady. Shall I play it for you?”
“Do so,” Antimony commanded.
The cylinder was followed by a portable hoof-held phonograph, designed for the helical track format. At Antimony’s nod of consent, the unicorn mare carefully retrieved a thin wave tube from within the storage cylinder and inserted it over the phonograph mandrel. Holding it up, her magic began to crank and power the mechanical phonograph.
For a few seconds, there was nothing but a faint static… then…
“Nice of you to drop by--” It was a stallion’s voice, a calm, relaxed, almost sensual medium timbre. There was no mistaking it, not for those who knew him. “--Mother.”
“Alpha.”
And there was Lady Star Light, her voice airy and carefree, even when she was deadly serious.
“So this is where you were hiding. This cell was meant to contain extra-dimensional entities… 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. More curious still is you letting yourself get caught…”
Antimony listened to the conversation with eyes half lidded. Despite her seemingly bored expression, a practical side effect of how she needed to keep her eyes from being entirely open, Antimony’s attention was entirely set on the record before her. Even the sounds of the fight in the nearby grotto were filtered out. She listened intently as her mother and her brother talked, both already knowing the former intended to let the latter free.
The ‘Fly on the Wall’ had proved its worth, it seemed. The cylinder continually wrote and re-wrote over itself, the process only terminating when there was a disruption in the prison integrity. It was entirely mechanical in nature, and thus undetectable by magic. The wax Fly was clandestinely kept running behind a thin section of wall, automatically preserving the time of the incident and the minutes leading up to it due to the same feature that disconnected the recording in the event of an incident. It was an addition to the magical prison cell that neither mother nor brother knew about. Antimony had seen fit to install it personally, confiding in and seeking out the advice or insight of no other member of her family.
There was nothing that could be done, now, about either Twinkling Star Light or Alpha Brass.
Antimony was resigned to that fact. At the very least, however, she could learn why their dear mother had facilitated Brass’s escape. Some other clue might also have been mentioned in passing as to what he was up to; Antimony was certain her brother somehow had a hoof in the chaos overtaking Canterlot. It was an entirely paranoid assumption, but paranoia often seemed to pay off when it came to the only son of the Terre Rare main branch.
‘You have no idea any of this is being recorded, do you, Alpha?’ Antimony thought, her ears twitching as she listened. ‘You and mother… you always styled yourselves the smartest of us all, but intelligence is still nothing without the power to see your ambitions bear fruit. But then, you always took after mother, and I, our father.’
“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Brass said, his voice clear over the small phonograph, “but how did you find me here?”
“Oh, that…?” Mother took on a lecturing tone, as she often did, even with foals too young to understand her. “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.”
Antimony blinked slowly.
Magical phosphorus isotope? By the Grace of the Princesses, that certainly sounded like the sort of insane thing their mother would do. Antimony glanced down at her boot-covered hoof. There was no doubt their mother was capable of such a thing, but it still stretched belief. Was there really this magical radioactive isotope in her… in all of their… bone marrow?
“I see.”
Brass’s voice was telling, and it immediately seized Antimony’s attention with all the force and subtlety of a slap in the face. It was surprise. This revelation had caught him by surprise. And…
Yes. There was worry there, too. Antimony could tell just by the voice, just by the tone of it, just by those two softly spoken words. No mare knew him as well as she did: the little sister who had once idolized her brother, only to be betrayed by him. The baby sister he had used as a pawn and guinea pig, just as Chalice had been.
“So, you injected radioactive phosphorus into your infant foals,” Brass went on to state. “What am I saying? 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,” Mother insisted. “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…”
“Wait a moment,” Mother said after a pause. She only then seemed to catch onto what Antimony had already noticed. “You weren’t really concerned about your safety, were you? You know I would never use untested magic on you. No. 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.”
“A miscalculation on my part,” he replied, evasive.
“Alpha. 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.”
It was a lie. A lie as clear as day! But Alpha Brass did not just lie outright; he always veiled his lies in some sort of truth, just as he softened his manipulations with the illusion of choice. This one was just a blanket prevarication. What was he up to?
“You’re here for my blood and body, are you not?” he quickly changed the topic to the one thing Mother cared about above all else. “To help bring father back?”
Antimony’s mind raced, though the rest of the recording failed to provide any further information of the sort she needed. Her brother did not want anypony to know where he had been.
But where had her brother been?
Since his marriage to Olive Branch, around the same time as the Sisters’ Duel for the succession of the Terre Rare, she knew he had been to the Frontier. That was to be expected. The Marquis and Marquessa owned or oversaw numerous keeps, castles, towns and ports all throughout the Equestrian colonies and frontier.
Alpha Brass’s new domain dotted the map, from the frigid tundra where the Crystal Empire had once ruled to the sweltering jungles of the south, to the islands unclaimed by Neighpon, to the trading posts and colonies that touched on the zebra-lands. All of it, plus the navy that guarded the highways of the sea, was ultimately administered by the Marquis of the Frontier and the Equestrian Marches.
Alpha Brass, Antimony knew, had visited all these lands and more besides. He had supervised and expanded family dig sites in the Crystal Wastes of the north and the still-frigid remains of the Old Kingdoms. He had made at least two trips to the zebra lands, one of which he even wrote about and self-published. Zebrabar, Antimony recalled, had figured prominently in that story. He had visited it at least twice since then.
Was it Zebrabar he wished to keep a secret?
That hardly made sense. The city was a seedy one, certainly, run by all manner of corrupt creatures. Saddle Marabian refugees had taken it over centuries ago, and most of the ruling families there were still Marabic, but these days all sorts of nobles visited the city and maintained villas there. Even the Terre Rare. There was nothing shameful or secretive about it. Besides, his trips there had still been rare things when measured against the span of years. Why worry about being found out? Antimony found it hard to imagine him sneaking off to Zebrabar for some illicit affair, anyway. Not only wasn’t her brother the type, he had all those infamous parties at his Hanging G--
Antimony blinked again and her eyes widened just a little too much as the revelation struck her.
The mage-guard, who had been incautious enough to look up at her face, along with a half dozen others passing by her in the tunnel, all paused to stare into her almost fully open eyes. Silence, like the inside of a tomb, fell over the tunnelway. Antimony quickly remembered herself and brought a hoof up and over her eyes. The spell broke in that moment, and the enthralled ponies – and one drooling diamond dog in Rarity’s white and purple livery – slowly came to their senses.
“Baroness,” the mage-guard muttered, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes. Her tone was less respectful than it was fearful. Not that Antimony blamed her for the reaction. No pony dared to look straight into her eyes – into the Gorgon’s Eyes.
No pony except… two… her brother and--
‘Rarity,’ Antimony thought, and smirked. The one mare absolutely crazy and desperate enough to purposefully look her in the eye, even knowing as she did that it meant being entranced. Even fight-happy madmares like Ritterkreuz had done everything in their power to avoid the Gorgon’s Eyes. Even magical geniuses like Sand Dune had concocted elaborate ways to avoid it. Only that one foolish, naive, small-town seamstress had thrown all caution to the wind. But she had won that duel, hadn’t she? Did that then suggest that there was wisdom in her boldness?
Regardless, there was a more pressing matter: her brother’s Hanging Gardens.
That had to be it.
They had to be floating over someplace unusual or special. It certainly fit into the assumption that, to Antimony’s knowledge, nopony had ever actually flown up to the Gardens. Even when she visited her brother there, it had been through a teleportation matrix of some sort. Nopony physically left the Gardens, either. It was surrounded by a barrier shield. Antimony tried to recall what the ground below had looked like when last she had looked over the edge to take in one of the great views the gardens offered… and she couldn’t recall any real details.
‘Nowhere over Equestria, then?’ she speculated. ‘He wouldn’t… it couldn’t be over some other country, could it? The barrier shield filtered out the native weather. It could be hovering over Saddle Marabia or Maretonia or even the bloody Old Kingdom for all we know. It could even be mobile, as the great Sky Palaces of old were!’
Alpha’s gardens were typically seen as a novelty, like a particularly expensive and elaborate sky yacht. It was a place where he hosted parties and curried favor with noble peers. It seemed mad that its location could be some dark secret any more than rich ponies worried about where they dumped trash off the side of their airships. Yet the more Antimony thought on it the more convinced she became.
Alpha had been worried about their mother’s tracking spell.
That was reason enough, in the end.
“I have orders for you,” Antimony said, finally, and the mage-guard nodded but didn’t dare to look up at her mistress. “Return to the army camp. Return to the Lion’s Den. Tell my mother to use her spell to locate my brother… or better still, create a device or artifice I can use to find him. Tell her that in return, I will let her know how I know about the spell in the first place. There’s nothing that so vexes her as a mystery. Remind her of the hundreds of changeling bodies and dozens of changeling captives I will have in my possession after this battle is won. They can all be hers for the price of her cooperation.”
“And--” the unicorn mage wondered, coughing into her hoof. “--if Lady Star Light is uncooperative…?”
“She won’t be,” Antimony assured her. “Now go.”
“As you wish, my Lady,” the mare answered, and vanished with a pop of displaced air.
Left alone – such as alone could be in the cramped confines of the embattled network of tunnels beneath Canterlot – Antimony found her thoughts drifting back to a memory. It was one that often came to her, when she dwelled on her brother. The day after defeating Chalice, Brass had come to visit his youngest sister, and Antimony had not held back her words in expressing her anger and sense of betrayal.
“Everything you say is a lie,” she had told him, then, fixing her older brother with a stare that held back none of her contempt. “Everything you do is terrible. I hate you.”
Yet, as he always did, he had never turned away from her eyes. ‘Beautiful,’ he had called them, when she was just a little filly, when she had let slip how afraid she was of her own reflection, ‘your eyes are beautiful. Never be ashamed of them… or the power they have.’
He had been her big brother and a best friend, once.
What he was to her, now, Antimony couldn’t even find words for. How could a pony’s own family count themselves as both ally and enemy? How could a sister hate her brother and yet still love him? Father would call it weakness – the same weakness that inevitably begat conflict and suffering – and so it had time and time again.
“Brother,” Antimony hissed under her breath. “Where are you now?”
- - -
- - -
Alpha Brass appeared in the reception room of the Hanging Gardens, freshly teleported and still sparkling from residual magic. His countenance, normally calm bordering on serene, was marred by fatigue and a very faint scowl. His mother’s revelation, Twilight Sparkle, and so much else, all weighed heavily on his mind. On top of that, he had been compelled not to make the long awaited transport alone.
“Oh, wow!” “Where are we?”
“Look at this place!”
“Fancy! But that’s what’ya get from a lord!”
Kernel and his family wasted little time in spreading out and exploring the reception room. Masa, the mother of the bunch, found herself transfixed by the paintings and sculptures set into the walls. Euporie had overseen much of the decoration here, and it bore her influences. Between the romanticized pictures of great ponies and events from centuries past she had interspersed tame only-by-her-standards scenes of lovemaking, along with one particularly vivid depiction of the deaths of Roameo and an underaged-by-modern-standards Juliette. Masa quickly found Kernel staring at them as well and wrapped a leg around his virgin eyes.
“Is the whole house this pretty?” Sunny Sweet asked, and bowed to one of the waiting staff. “Oh! Hello! Pleased to meet you, madam!”
“We are safe here, right?” Flint Corn asked, ducking his head to inspect the glowing circle in the floor that still crackled and hissed with Brass’s magic. “None of those things can follow us, right? That’s what you said…”
“You are as safe here as you are anywhere,” Alpha Brass promised the stallion, and motioned with his hoof for one of his silent staff to come forward.
“My Lord?” one of his loyal guardsmares answered his command, stepping forward. She was one of two kept on rotation in the Garden’s main reception room. Behind her followed a younger, more petite mare in a Prench maid’s outfit.
“See my guests to a room and send word to Eunomie,” he ordered, following Sunny Sweet with his eyes as she proceeded to touch half the statues in the room. “My daughter is here, isn’t she?”
“She arrived with Lady Sparkle and several other guests some time ago,” the guardsmare answered, standing rigidly at attention. “I will have word sent to her immediately!”
“Good.” Brass waved a hoof, and the guard went to the tasks of rounding up the farmers he had arrived with. They were collectively near the exit when Brass coughed and raised his voice.
“Keep their quarters away from Euporie’s chambers,” he amended his earlier instructions. “Have a serving filly prepare them dinner and a bath.”
The guardsmare didn’t question his orders. Perhaps she even secretly saw the reason in them. “Yes, my Lord.”
He waved his hoof again.
“Will we see you again, sir?” Masa asked, still holding tight to her son.
“Yeah!” Kernel exclaimed. “We’re friends, right! You should show us around!”
“Kernel! Don’t annoy him!” Sunny bumped her little brother on the shoulder with her hoof none-too-gently. She bowed her head deeply, her nose almost touching the carpet of the room. “Lord Brass, thank you so much for helping us!”
“And for taking us in,” Flint Corn added, also bowing. Masa followed a second later, and seeing his family doing it, Kernel imitated them in bowing his head.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again once the current crisis is over,” he promised, and waved his hoof again, dismissing the lot of them.
“This way, please,” the guardsmare said, and ushered the family of earth ponies away.
Alpha Brass waited a few seconds after they were gone. Then a pop in the air heralded the arrival of just the pony he had wished to see. Eunomie Mosaic arrived looking not much the worse for wear. There was a bandage around one of her forelegs, but Eunomie being Eunomie, she hardly even acknowledged the wound. Her pale coat had been combed down smooth and her red mane was in its usual tight bun. She lowered her amber eyes in respect, the last few traces of magic cooking off along her horn.
“Father,” she greeted him. To most ponies, it would have appeared to be a cold reception. He understood it for what it was. In her own way, she had to be relieved to see him. Now he could once again shoulder some of the burden.
“Eunomie,” he returned the greeting, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “It is good to be back. Tell me everything.”
They began to walk, first out of the reception room and then down a crystal hall bedecked with gold-leaf ivy in imitation of an actual garden’s wooden trellises. Between the gaps in the crystal pillars were murals of a dozen different Equestrian vistas, each one different from the last, from rolling deserts to frozen lakes to the Serenity Waterfall that flowed beneath Canterlot itself, falling thousands of hooves to the ground below.
Eunomie began, rightly, with a summary of the beginning.
“The two bridesmaids, Minuette and Twinkleshine, proved decisive in Chrysalis’s battle with Princess Celestia. Things continued largely as we had expected on that front. Celestia was cast down. According to preliminary reports, she may have killed one of the changeling Queens before being defeated, though we are as yet unsure which one, if any, she could be responsible for. Chrysalis made her move during the wedding and attempted to take everypony in attendance hostage, but she lost control of the crowd in the chaos.”
“I observed Lady Sand Dune in action, and we know she is cooperating with Lady Rarity and Lady Sparkle. The Quartz also helped cement Lady Rarity’s role in organizing the nobles after the wedding turned to chaos. She was able to compel them to overcome their distrust of one another and to cooperate in defending the city.” Eunomie lowered her eyes and sighed very softly. “Regretfully, there was little I could practically do to prevent that, and so I kept my cover.”
“The Canterlot nobles are unified, then?” Brass asked. The pair trotted slowly past a series of balconies overlooking the gardens. It was dark outside, just as it was twilight over most of Equestria.
“Unified is a generous way of describing it, but they are cooperating and working together, yes,” Eunomie replied.
“Such is the power of the Elements of Harmony,” Brass admitted with a cheerless sniff. “Even weak ones like Generosity. That element in particular has ended up becoming a thorn in my side. What next?”
“Three of the mares, Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Lady Rarity, went off to rescue some young ponies who were being used as hostages. At the same time, Twilight Sparkle and I began to enact her plan to amplify her anti-changeling spell, just as we had discussed earlier. We were accompanied by Pinkamena Diane Pie, one Miss Fluttershy, and Twilight Velvet, Twilight Sparkle’s mother.”
A guardmare dutifully opened a gilded door for the pair.
“Go on,” Brass ordered.
“We knew that Twilight Velvet had been replaced, but I did not expect she would attempt to follow us at this time. The changelings had been working their mind control on Twilight Sparkle and she was unaware of the deception. I decided to allow her to come with us, so that I might reveal Lady Velvet at an opportune time. I also felt it increased our chances of the changelings destroying the radio tower Twilight Sparkle needed. Our earlier decision of a week ago to lure Exuvia to the tower worked as well, though she attempted to parley instead of cutting her losses or fighting Twilight for control of the structure.”
“Were you able to kill her?”
“Exuvia? Unfortunately no, Father, I was not.”
Brass was silent for a few seconds at that. “That is unfortunate, Eunomie.”
“She did not fight us,” Eunomie reminded him, “but she did destroy the tower in her retreat, which was the most important thing. I also used the occasion to expose Twilight Velvet. This revelation, combined with the earlier ambushes on our party, and knowing who had been responsible for them, meant that Twilight Sparkle was sufficiently motivated towards our point of view, just as you wished. It also left her receptive to relocating and using her spell in the Gardens. With my primary objectives met, by and large, I decided that pursuing Exuvia and meeting lesser conditions would only add unnecessary risk.”
“Was there much trouble getting to the tower?”
“More than expected…”
Eunomie hesitated only a moment as they entered the baths. Brass trotted towards a shower, turned the water on low and hot, and let it run down his body. He unwound the bandages around his midsection, feeling where most surgeons would have left a scar. There was nothing. Only a pain and an emptiness inside. He dropped his hoof and turned his head up and into the stream of water and steam.
Eunomie, meanwhile, continued to describe in greater detail the travails she and Twilight Sparkle had faced getting to the radio tower. She also filled him in more on what she had gathered about Pinkamena Diane Pie and Fluttershy. Both mares were Twilight’s friends, but Brass himself had little knowledge of them outside Twilight’s own anecdotes. Both had acquitted themselves surprisingly well in combat.
“What about the rest of the city?”
“There is no word of Cadance, as yet. She did escape, from what we can gather, along with Prince Blueblood. Miss Heartstrings is undoubtedly still with her. Information there is choppy at best. Hasn’t she attempted to contact you, Father?”
“No.” Brass levitated a bar of soap and began to scrub. His body hurt less than it had, but his magic was still well below what it should be. The level of raw magic was recovering on time, but it was still slightly scrambled. The bar trembled in his magical grip and he had to steady it with one of his hooves.
“There have been field reports of some sort of incident at the Palace,” Eunomie went on to say, sitting primly by the shower and watching her father while he cleaned off. “Our friends report that there is some confusion among the changeling ranks. We believe something to have happened to Chrysalis, but we do not know what.”
“That is why I freed Lady Cadenza,” Brass replied, but craned his neck with a grimace and a pop. “But then, you say this isn’t likely to be her doing? If we are fortunate, that just means somepony beat Cadance to the punch. She should still be aiming to save Shining Armor. Cadance will move heaven and earth to save her fiancé. With the two bridesmaids I supplied Chrysalis out of the picture, as they should be by now, that gives my old friend Cadance and Miss Heartstrings all the opportunity they need to strike.”
“We have eyes on the Palace,” Eunomie promised.
“Good. Chalice…?”
“Back at the Gardens with the items. Her mission was a success.”
“There was no incident, then?”
“Not that I know of.” Eunomie blinked slowly and stared at her father while he washed the last of the soap from his body. Her horn glowed and she floated over a pearl-white towel to rest across her shoulder. “There is another major problem… more of an extension of the earlier one, actually.”
Brass ran a hoof through his soaking wet, golden mane. “What?”
“Two things. The first is that fighting has been averted in the west. Ritterkreuz killed Prince Blueblood before he could order an attack.”
Alpha Brass closed his eyes and let the water cascade across his face. “And the other?”
“Princess Luna is alive,” Eunomie stated, holding out the towel. Brass took it, but didn’t begin drying off.
“So?” he asked.
“Luna isn’t just alive. She has rallied the defending nobles and other ponies to her. Morale is apparently quite high among those who follow her. The Princess – along with three Elements of Harmony – allegedly killed two changeling Queens in a single decisive battle. They have the Canterlot Sky Harbor under their control and Cloudsdale is sending reinforcements into the city.”
“Luna--” Brass frowned as he stared at the towel in his hooves. “I should’ve sent Chalice to make sure she was out of the picture.”
Eunomie kept silent, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
“Hope is like saltwater to a mare lost at sea, Eunomie,” he finally said, patting his face with the towel and running it up and down his horn. “A thirsty mare will drink it until it kills her, growing more deluded with every hoof-full. Hope leads foolish ponies to overestimate their survival. Princess Luna is one of the few who can justify giving others a sense of hope. I underestimated her. How could the nobles and common ponies look to her for salvation?”
“She is their only alternative with Celestia gone,” Eunomie reasoned, but then added, “Lady Rarity was also involved in this incident, along with the elements Applejack and Rainbow Dash. If they played a part in getting Luna recognized--”
“Then the thorn has grown into a briar patch.” Alpha Brass neatly folded the towel and rested it on his neck as he began to walk. “We have Twilight and the Broken Crown… Celestia is down, but not Luna. The nobles are united and tomorrow half of Equestria will launch a counter-attack. Canterlot is not the sinking ship I had hoped it would be at this point.”
“Euporie,” Eunomie reminded him.
“We do have Euporie and The Device,” he agreed. “Where is she?”
“In her chambers,” Eunomie answered, and there was a long pause. “Resting.”
“Resting?”
“Resting, Father.” There was yet another long pause in Eunomie’s response. “She was upset when I arrived with Twilight Sparkle and decided to have a ‘private party’ to cheer herself up. She is being emotional. She believes you love Twilight Sparkle more than you do her.”
Brass stopped trotting and glanced over at his step-daughter.
“Do you?” Eunomie asked in monotone.
“Euporie is my valuable daughter, just as you are, Eunomie,” he said, but there was no smile on his face. “But you know as well as anypony that my heart is empty. There is nothing there to find. Nothing.” He shook his head and simply reminded her of one plain fact: “It is impossible for me to love anypony more than anypony else.”
He started to head towards the still-pool baths, but Eunomie abruptly spoke up.
“Father--” She reached towards him with a hoof, and he paused again. It was an unusual outburst for her. Eunomie lowered her hoof and sat down on the tile floor, her eyes downcast. “I don’t mind if you do. If you value Twilight Sparkle more than you do myself. She is… powerful and talented… in ways even Euporie isn’t… and I…”
“Eunomie.” Brass sighed and trotted over to her, cupping her chin and raising her up to look him in the eye. He let her go and softly kissed her forehead, just to the right of her horn.
“Father?” she asked, her cheeks straining with a very faint smile.
“You are an amazing pony and a wonderful daughter,” he promised her, but still without a smile. “None of this would have been possible without you. I am grateful beyond words to have you in my life.”
Eunomie lifted her front hooves and, shakily, placed them on his shoulders. It took a moment for him to realize what she was doing. It was a hug. She was trying to hug him. But she seemed unsure exactly how. It was almost as if she was trying to copy how she had seen other ponies hugging each other.
Wrapping one leg around her he pulled her in close and held her.
“You saved our lives,” she whispered into his chest, and her forelegs squeezed him for a couple long seconds. “Euporie and I both love you,” Eunomie said, her voice unable to express the emotion inside her. “Tomorrow… we’ll show you how much. I promise. Nopony else in this world matters to us as much as you do.”
“Eunomie…?”
Much more confidently than she had started the hug, she released it and let him go.
“Enjoy your bath, Father,” she told him, bowing briefly and all but running for the exit.
“How strange…” Brass shrugged and continued down one last hallway, a short one, decorated with marble inlays of dolphins and seaponies. A door opened at the behest of his magic, revealing the heated baths beyond. A faint haze of steam hung over the surface, but it was immediately clear that the long, bubbling bath was not entirely unoccupied.
A lavender figure paddled forward, blushing hotly to rest her hooves on the edge of the pool.
“Twilight,” Brass greeted her, smiling pleasantly.
“Do you, umm--” She bit her lower lip and nervously clopped her hooves together. “--do you want to take a bath together? I read about it being relaxing for couples on vacation, and I know this isn’t a real vacation, I’m mostly just waiting for the go-ahead to use my spell, but it is in a weird way, since this is still sort-of a break from stressful circumstances, and being chased around all day by monsters trying to kill us, and if you don’t want to, I don’t mind because we’re both kind of wet and naked and I can’t stop talking and Pinkie said the key to a relationship was surprise and--”
“I heard you had some adventures on the way over,” he said, gently interrupting the mare, if only to give her a chance to catch her breath again. Entering the bath and descending the steps into the hot water, he sat back on a stone platform underwater.
“Maybe a few,” Twilight Sparkle admitted, her blush intensifying across her purple coat. She laughed and tried to relax against the lip of the pool… only to slip and end up entirely submerged with a surprised yelp.
Sputtering and spitting out water, she re-emerged and shook her head and mane.
“I’d love to hear about it from your perspective,” he told her, chuckling and holding out a hoof.
Twilight Sparkle took it and he pulled her over to sit next to him.
“What about you? Did anything happen to you?”
“Nothing interesting, I’m afraid. It was just another day.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.04 seconds
Total duration
666 users online
684,086 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
I still don't understand Alpha Brass at all.
...I get that Alpha Brass is trying to clear the board, but what I don't get is what he's planning to play on the board once it's clear...
...and, frankly, that's kinda scary.
I actually waited for this chapter for a long time. Alpha's childhood and his relationship with Antinomy were interesting and entertaining. Antinomy's planted but and conflicting feelings about her brother serve to make Brass more complex. Additionally, his plan to make Kernel confront the Changelings so that his parents stood up to them shows that, despite being emotionally hollow, he understands how love is a powerful motivator. I congratulate you for making this chapter.
P.S: Twilight and Eunomie's affection for Brass is adorable and heartwarming.
... you have managed to instill a deep seeded hatred of alpha brass and almost his entire family in me of late. moreso than anyone else writing about backstabbing nobleponies ever have.
i hope all his plans blow up in his face.
Hm, so get Luna and Celestia out of the picture and the nobles and Equestria fractured in order to get them desperate enough to turn to someone... anyone who can unite them? And lo and behold, Alpha Brass shows something to them that they will pick him or Twilight as Dear Leader.
...Is it wrong of me to keep hoping that Alpha Brass will be redeemed in the end?
With all of the characterization of him we've been given, I can't find it in me to hate him.
Well, this does clear some things up.
Alpha Brass is on the verge of achieving his primary goal of the eradication of the Changelings. That so far has worked out well.
Everyone seems to underestimate Luna. I always assumed that Luna was more capable combat wise than Celestia. I figured that Nightmare Moon was no stronger than Luna, but simply a different personality. And Celestia did in desperation use the Elements, rather than in a "I beat you now I will try to cleanse you" moment. And Chrysalis did initially want to capture Luna, the knife to the throat was to spread the poison faster, not to kill. It just didn't quite take.
His secondary plan, which still seems to be seizing the role of emperor of Equestria; it's not going so well. Luna is still active, and alive. Rarity is rallying the nobles. It could go either way still, but its less in his favor. He is still unlikely to be harmed by his actions though.
I still can't figure out what his power is. Is it some kind of mental control? He clearly did something to the colt, there is no way that the colt should have been able to kill the changelings, and I am pretty sure he killed both. On the other hand, if it is like that, why couldn't Brass escape from the cell from the beginning? Maybe it is limited to one person...
You have still lost me on suspension of disbelief, but you are reeling me back in...
4450969
He either wants to set the world a blaze and watch the cinders or He wants to essentially tear down Canterlot and put himself and/or Twilight in charge to build it back up in a manner that he sees fit. Those are pretty much the only outcomes I can foresee where he finds Rarity and Luna rallying the nobles in their defense to be a bad thing. But that could just be that I'm not looking at this with a broad enough scope to see beyond a simple "Take Over the World (Of Course!)" plot.
I'm starting to see what the problem is.
Alpha is playing both sides. He's trying to get them to a mutual suicide so he can step in, or put Twilight in as a figurehead.
Bastard. I hope having Luna alive is more a thorn in your side than you figured. I hope Twilight sees through you before you end up destroying her entirely. And I hope that crown is fixed and put on Rarity's head so you can choke on your failure.
@Author's Note: I really, really fail to see any problem with this.
Ugh...I don't like this game that Alpha Brass is playing.
Dammit. Eunomie finally shows an ounce of genuine emotion and it's pointed the wrong way. Was hoping I wouldn't have to write her off, but she be written.
Also, any cautious optimism I had left in Brass's intentions being somewhat well-meaning in their extremism is officially gone. His scheme is going to cause even more of a bloodbath than Chrysalis would have let Sarai get away with if the changelings won outright, and pretty much the only motivation I can see in sowing that much civil war and regicide amongst the ponies is to try and Genghis Khan them under Twilight's hoof while he puppets her.
Also, don't worry about the slew of OCs. You made them come to life a hell of a long time ago, and I promise you the nausea half of them are inducing in me is for entirely the right reason.
I'm still very much curious what Brass's endgame is. You've done an excellent job hiding his reasons.
Yes, he intends to exterminate all Changelings, but I don't even know if that's his primary goal. He's completely emotionally dead and that changes how you view the world, it also prevents accurate guesses as to his motives.
I really hoped Twilight was a bit more savvy than she's been displaying. Could it be an act? Highly unlikely... I don't doubt that the elements and the associated powers behind them are going to play a greater and greater role in this, but it seems like it's a very sedate 'war'. The timeline seems a little wonky.
I honestly find Alpha Brass a pretty silly OC. He seems to be playing xanatos roulette with everyone. When Celestia plays the chess aster it can somewhat be lampshaded by the fact she's thousands of years old. When you have someone whose in his 20's doing it along with secretly hiding a fortress under a capital city, it really breaks suspension of disbelief. Combine that with his family and
Kekkei Genkai
Well.
Unless I'm truly mistaken, we have our "real" villain here, at least as far as life as anypony knows it, ladies and gentlemen. The stallion without another stallion behind him, the one at the bottom of this twisted gambit pileup. My theory on such is as follows:
Alpha Brass resents being a tool, being nothing but a creature of the Terre Rare to use, abuse and then throw away in pursuit of the Platinum Crown. From the most obscure of his relatives down to his mother herself, that's all he is to them, so he's going to break them. They want the crown? Ker-smash. They want to be the pinnacle of pony society? Ker-smash. They want to serve Princess Celestia? Ker-smash. All the hopes and dreams of the Terre Rare, brought down around their ears, just like any hopes and dreams of his own were quashed by his father, mother, and ancestors.
Worse yet, not content to simply do that, he's going to rebuild each of their objectives, twist the knife and salt the wound style, but with his own design and with no place for any other Terre Rares in them. With Chrysalis and co. providing a conveniently alien wrecking ball removing or masking the removal of all the old things, he's going to make a new crown, a new princess (diarchy?), and a new society, probably doing away with the concept of nobility entirely, and then he can tell his father, his mother, and the rest of the extended clan to go stuff it.
Common ponies like Kernel would probably wind up just fine though, so it's not like he's Tirek or Nightmare Moon. Not quite a black-hearted villain here, just a very gray, empty-hearted one.
It's strange how much I despised Star Light when she all but claimed that her foal was just a mean to an end. "He exists to want what the family wants." Oh. My. God! As if I needed more reason to dislike her.
This chapter made me pity Alpha Brass, then sent me back into vague dislike with the last scene. There was always the feeling that the extermination wasn't actually the end, but his reactions speak volume now.
Still, him saying "Even weak ones like Generosity." felt almost tragic. It's hard to qualify families that objectify its members into tools as anything but selfish.
Lastly though, I have to say that your OCs are good. They are well-constructed, and they exist in an institution that the show's character cannot demonstrated. All I'm saying is that you have nothing to be disappointed or unhappy about here.
Dang, the Terra Rares are messed up.
Wait, Brass's cutie mark is the ouroboros? O_O Is his talent immortality? Destiny? Something like that?
He's already shown an ability to resonate with and amplify the magic of others. But how is that related to the wyrm that bites its own tail?
4452781
Perhaps it's that being his ally is still pretty unhealthy, so he's biting his own "tail", that being everyone that helps him?
Fascinating. I think this was very important over all, as much as you hate this chapter, it gives us reasons and motives. It brings us a better insight into a character who is literally working the puppet strings like mad.
His ends become more apparent:
00. Let the Changelings destroy the the aristocracy and the Princesses.
01. Rescue Equestria from the changelings, wiping out those emotional parasites in the process.
1T. Step into the powervacuum and rule Equestria.
10. Take control of Sol and Luna (not Princess Luna).
11. With control of the forces of the Terre Rare, the military he will rebuild, the Elements of Harmony, and the ability to use Sol the way a foal uses a magnifying glass on ants, he will rule over Equestria for the rest of his life while conquering many neighboring countries.
¿Can anypony identify the base I used for numbering my points? I am of the opinion that Lauren Faust made 11 mistakes:
00. She used our system of weights and measures.
01. She used our clocks.
1T. She used Base10.
The show would be much more alien if ponies would write the Circle-Constant as:
1T0 . 10T,T0T,110 , 0T1,10T,T0T , 1TT,000,001
¡It took me an hour to hand translate the Circle-Constant using a calculator and negative powers of the base!
Given that everypony knows what the Circle-Constant is, it should be easy to figure-out the base.
I learn toward Lauren Faust should have used either Quaternary (Base4) of Sexagesimal (Base60).
4452831
Hmm... it's an interesting interpretation. I was puzzled because the ouroboros is usually a representation of eternity, but you know, that just might be it. What that must have done to his childhood...
4453460
Including the original target audience?
4453503
The original target-audience was young fillies who night not be numerate, but everypony reading this probably knows the CircleConstant.
4453608
That's true. What I meant was, while it would certainly be more realistic for ponies to use different systems, the show's creators probably didn't do so because the original target audience was not one they expected to appreciate the difference.
It certainly would've been interesting if they did, though.
4453632
Foals are smart:
I am certain that the foals would rapidly learn the Weights&Measures, Clock, and Base of the show.
¿Did you figure out the base I used yet?
4451197
I'm hearing a rapidly speeding up ticking noise coming from the innards of the story and of Brass' plots, so the whole thing's going to blow up any chapter now... and I doubt he'll avoid the blast radius.
Yes, it does increasingly seem that Alpha Brass's ultimate plan is to smash up the existing system so badly that he can take power and shape Equestria according to his own desires. As for his talent, I'm thinking it's something like Saruman's voice: the ability to project a trustworthy image even when he's lying outrageously.
One day... one day I shall overcome this fic. I mean, it's no longer than FoE. Or Worm. Or the Triskelion Trilogy, which I've still to read, as well as Chaos Theory, and Ice on the Rhine, and Methods or Rationality, and oh gods, it never stops, does it?
I wish we could poll how many people want Brass either redeemed or dead by the end of the story
And we are getting an inkling of Brass's true goal
A world without hope...
I wonder if this would have happened if not for the changelings in his life?
Up until this chapter there had been some ambiguity to what really was up with Brass.
All that has been removed now and we have a full picture.
He's a full on psychopath. He planned to kill the princesses, planned to kill off as many noblea as possible, planned to kill the changelings. Not sure of whether he planned to put himself in power or not but it's a safe assumption.
Yes, in his mind he had the best intentions. Intentions for a better Equestria and a better world for ponies, etc. but, as trite as the comparison is, he had the best intentions in much the same way that Hitler had he's just more subtle.
Now that that's as bluntly out of the way as possible lets see how this ends up being resolved, but any lingering sympathy i had for this character has been thoroughly eliminated.
4452713
That sounds very plausible. I'd propose a variation:
Alpha Brass might've taken a long, hard look at Terre Rare history and concluded that any society fostering the likes of himself and his family isn't worth saving. So, he's smashing it to bits to start over.
Anyone else get a little creeped out at Eunomie's interaction with Brass at the end there? I may be reading too much into it, but judging from how his abilities work, both of his adopted daughters have a massive crush on him.
Nopony sees himself as the villain, not even Alpha Brass. It also seems to me that Brass has a nasty case of Chronic Backstabbing Syndrome to complicate his Xanatos Speed Chess.
And anyone that complains about this chapter is a fool. You've developed the OCs in this story to such an extent that they are just as integral to the story as the canon characters, and in some cases more interesting. Do not feel ashamed or sorry for devoting this chapter to them, instead feel proud that you've created characters this good.
4455956
Not sure about the crush thing, but I think Eunomie has been spending too much time with Twilight and friends and now wants in on some of that family bonding action.
Those ponies are a bad influence.
The diamond dogs are 40k orks! This is the greatest thing!
Ok, it really isn't when compared with all of the other things in this fic, but still!
You seriously don't need to worry about your OCs being unable to carry the story for at least a chapter. Personally, I would hardly hesitate to read a story in which they were the only characters, since they're just as well-developed as any other character here. I can understand the feeling of prefering to stick with canon characters, though.
As for Alpha Brass... Hoo boy, he's a piece of work. Are you sure his magical powers can't manifest in our world? Because you've given me every reason to hate him, and yet I can't help but love him. Even when he outright says he wants to kill the princesses, destroy the nobility, level canterlot, and use Twilight Sparkle and her magically enhanced love for him to accomplish his goals and perhaps rule equestria from the shadows, I still love him and want to see what would happen were his plans to succeed.
Speaking of the elements being thorns in his side (also saw what you did with Cruciger's comments on fear coming before them all), might the elements of harmony, particularly the element of magic and the future princess of friendship be rubbing off on him and Eunomie? I keep seeing little flickers of love and emotion from Brass, particularly when his thoughts drift to his personal pretty purple pony princess. Ok, she's not a princess yet, but I couldn't resist the alitteration. Maybe Brass isn't quite as permanently dead inside as he keeps telling himself he is? I certainly know Eunomie isn't quite the emotionless shell that she often appears to be.
Eagerly awaiting whatever shenanigans ensue in the coming blocks of horse words.
Also, let the diamond dogs know to look out for da purple unz. Dey be sneaky. And da speedy red unz, too.
We got some very interesting information in this chapter.
So, you'll throw Brass directly against Rarity, so I can actually stop liking him? Well, you are the author.
I see Brass developing some real feelings, but dying shortly afterwards.
I suppose, if Kernel got caught and thus the changelings stopped looking around the farm and so Brass has a lesser chance of being found was also an acceptable outcome for him out of helping the colt.
I always thought to myself that if an alien ever said this to me, I would suggest that they go to the nearest fine bookstore so that they could purchase some good medical texts. No need to chop up bodies when your species of interest has done it already!
I may be in the minority here, but I don't think we've seen enough to determine what Brass' true endgame is, but I don't think it's either as simple, or as petty as it's being portrayed in the comments.
Scenario 1: Brass is launching a simple (okay a very complex) palace revolution, to end with himself running Equestria from behind either Twilight and/or Chalice.
Scenario 2: Brass is some sort of pony version of Littlefinger, who is out to screw over everyone and everything because he has a massive chip on his shoulder about the real or imagined slights he has suffered at the hooves of Equestria at large.
But neither of those play for me, because they're motivated, at heart, by some very base emotions, namely greed and/or wrath. Except that, as we know from the Chrysalis POV bits, Brass is more like Teflon, emotionally. Nothing sticks. Either Brass is such a master of emotional compartmentalization that he can hide them from a creature designed by nature to find and feed on said emotions, or he really is emotionally dead inside, and bases every decision on the cold harsh light of logic and reason.
If the above is true, then Brass' agenda becomes murkier, but I believe he has done the math and decided that Equestria as a whole is stagnating, and stagnation is but one short hop away from entropy and a slow painful death spiral into collapse. As such, he intends to sweep away as much of the old order as possible, alicorn princesses, entrenched, intransigent hereditary nobility, and monsters like his family... And himself.
I fully believe that Brass neither expects, nor even intends, to survive the final phase of his plan, and as someone bereft of emotions, is okay with this if it accomplishes his ultimate aim, hence what he said some chapters ago about Twilight being the one to rebuild Equestria. (Note that he did not say anything about where he was going to be while she was doing it. Now maybe Brass is just genre savvy enough not to give long-winded villainous monologs at the drop of a hat, but I don't think that's why)
This is also, I believe, where the Terror Twins' secret plans come into play, because I somehow doubt that they are okay with Brass' deliberate self-immolation, and believe they can save him from himself while still accomplishing the majority of his endgame.
(Or I could be totally wrong and I'm a few chapters from going 'Enope, Brass was a first class a-hole after all.'
But I have my doubts)
What I love most about this chapter is that it sets up Rarity to be Alpha Brass's biggest obstacle, after Luna.
Luna is the defacto leader of Equestria right now, as Princess, but should anything incapacitate her, who will lead? From what we've seen of the nobility, they're a distrustful lot, and any leader from their own ranks would invite suspicion that he/she would abuse the position to further their own goals. Blueblood, being Duke of Canterlot, would be a likely choice, but he is both unavailable and thought to be unsuitable for command in a crisis. Shining Armour, in his role as captain of the Royal Guard, would likely be accepted, but he's with Chrysalis. Cadence is an Alicorn, but she's the ruler of a foreign court, not to mention missing.
Rarity is Blueblood's fiancée, has the support of powerful duchesses, is a minor noble, is one-sixth of the EoH, and has already proven her mettle by taking out Sarai. If Luna falls, she wouldn't be anypony's first choice, but she'd likely be the most acceptable to the majority. I doubt Alpha's influence on Twilight Sparkle would be strong enough to cause her to disagree with Rarity being chosen, so she would have the backing if all her friends, too.
It's either Rarity or Twilight; but I think Rarity has the edge, especially if Blueblood reunites with her.
Huh, I wonder if Twilight is really just in the gardens to activate Brass's Cobalt Thorium G device
4453489 I think I see what the Ouroboros means, now. Commonly, it's a symbol representing cycles, history repeating itself. This whole fiasco started with Arsenic being born in a form in which she couldn't inherit what was set to be hers. From nothing, she built herself and her clan into a force to reckon all others in Equestria. Later, Alpha Brass was set to marry a Blue Belle, but instead a Blueblood was born, so Brass, being a colt, isn't set to inherit anything in the family, even though it was supposed to be his. Now he's built for himself an army, a vendetta, whatever, by which he can defy Arsenic's own purposes and take back the power that should have been his.
Wow, the Terre Rare family is just so disturbing and scary.
Man, I still really want to believe in Brass, but he makes it damn hard, especially with his observations about the situation in Canterlot at the end of the chapter. Maybe I just want Twilight to not have to face the eventual realization about how much of the blood on the streets of Canterlot can be laid at the hooves of her potential husband.
At least we have fun Twilight at the end.
I wasn't sure if I needed to root for her to stop talking at all costs or to keep going while the going was hilarious.
4467766 There is nothing to love about Alpha Brass, just as there is no love within him. He is the ultimate sociopath, an emotionless monster driven to a singular goal by brainwashing, inhumane experimentation by his own mentally disturbed mother... and most likely a good deal of the issue has to do with inbreeding.
Nothing matters to him other than his ultimate victory and ascent to power. If all the ponies involved had to die save for those he needs, it would be fine with him.
He is a perfect monster.
And must be destroyed.
4459220 Not so. Brass has one emotion he has demonstrated quite clearly: hatred.
He overflows with it now. It drives him to wish to exterminate the entire changeling species. It urges him toward vengeance upon his ancestry and the nobility. It pushes him to use pony after pony, subjugating their will to his use until they are disposed of.
4456568 >>>I still love him and want to see what would happen were his plans to succeed.>>>
Ah, so it is true that I alone am so OP that my powers have come to manifest in a tangible sense and negate the effect of Alpha's influence, as fostered by his agent in our world (the author) whose writing acts as a conduit. I can perceive the spell matrix within the photons emanating from my computer screen.
*Alondro has all da powers!*
4450969
He was born to rule, intended to be the stepping stone that would return the line of arsenic to power, but the opportunity was lost to him, stolen away by mere chance. His entire life he has been 'worthless', intended only to assist his sisters in his every action, and has spent the past however many years being tortured by Chrysalis and her children, in perhaps the most vile manner imaginable. 110-montauk has nothing on what he went through(little SCP reference), and he is looking to destroy ALL the changelings. So he planned to make Canterlot weakened, but indefensible for the ponies. So that, when the time came, and the armies of Equestria stood arrayed about the capitol, the only option left to them would be to destroy it, and with it, every changeling in the world.
That's why he hates Exuvia- she wants peace. After everything he's had done to him, everything the changelings have done... she wants peace. The thought is, naturally, foul to him. He doesn't even want war.
He wants an extermination.
Every time I read about the upbringing of the core Terre Rare family, whether it be Polished Jewel , Antimony, Alpha Brass, Chalice or even Cruciger himself, i become filled with this odd, almost ineffable sadness. It is so very tragic this sense of noblesse oblige taken to an extreme crossmated with this sort of ruthless " social darwinist"/strongmare ideology to create this very contaminated corrupted overbearing and oppressive miasma that hangs ominous and thick in the air of each of these scenes.
These ponies have no childhood, almost no free will , no sense of self actualization. They are tools only, to be sharpened and used to advance the family agenda, and to be disposed off and abandoned at the very first moment of weakness. The moment when Cruciger leaves Antimony after her defeat by Rares was so heartbreaking and so emblematic of this attitude.
but above all:
When will we learn? That people gain happiness through self actualization? When will we learn that not only do we create the meanings of our own lives... but that attempts to impose meaning from outside usually cause more harm than good?? I say "usually" because I am very wary of speaking in absolutes, but I in fact have never heard of anyone who has been helped instead of harmed by having a destiny or a " meaning of their life" imposed on them.
The ghost of predestination is a toxic and pervasive one, whether it be the racial predestination of the Nazis, the nationalist predestination of most totalitarian regimes, the religious predestination of Calvinist Christians and several strains of Hinduism, or the even more common familial predestination so well embodied by the Bismuth Line of the Terre Rare. The day we finally abandon predestination and embrace self actualization will be one of the happiest days in the history of Humanity, and one of our greatest steps forward as a species.
When somebody tells you " this is your destiny, this is what you were born to be" we should walk away. It may be a seductive siren, but down that path there is suffering and destruction. YOU decide your destiny , never let anyone else sell you and impose on you a false destiny. The Terre Rares embody this tragedy, in the sense that the term " tragedy" is used in classical drama.
4456568
I have this same reaction as well, and it bothered me until this chapter.. why did I like Alpha Brass so much why is it that, when I read him I tend to silently cheer him on?
And then this chapter made me realize that I identify with Alpha Brass a lot. I mean if I was totally amoral and loveless and out for genocidal revenge. ( the fact that Chrysalis and his immediate family are so easy to hate helps but still) But reading about him and his relationship to antimony reminded me of myself and my younger sister. I take after my mother, she takes after my father, I am usually labeled, unfairly, as " the smart one" my sister is known to be both beautiful and intimidating etc. In a world where Alpha and Antimony had remained best friends, their relationship might resemble that of myself and my sister.
Of course we are so very different in many other ways, I grew up in a incredibly warm and loving family,( which is perhaps why the Terre rare so appall me) and if anyone is the " scion " it is me, though no one doubts that my sister will be the wealthiest of my generation and the most likely to be famous, since she has the most charisma, and the requisite Nietzschean " will to power"( in the best sense).
Still it made me understand my affection for this loveless genocidal revenge driven loon.
on a much lighter note, as a Hispanic/Latino the fact that the mother of the " corn" family was called Masa made me smile smile smile
In fact i am visiting my parents for the weekend and as I type this I am about to sit down for lunch and the steaming hand made tortillas have just been placed on the table.
I saw her name and I instantly thought of Christmas and tamales!!
.......wait, wut?
Phoenix Wright: *points finger* "OBJECTION!"