The Munificent and Magnanimous Crystal Empress, Trixie Lulamoon Midsummer

by Archmage Ansrit

Escapes and deceit

"What's their story?" One changeling asked a pony, nodding towards a changeling and pony couple on one of the sleds. "He looks like he went through a blender, and she's not that much healthier..."

The pony - a pegasus pooka mare, or 'bat-pony' - turned to where her companion was gesturing, and saw them.

Like almost all changelings, his winter covering was full - scarf covering his muzzle, hooded jacked, pants, boots - but he also had bandages covering his eyes, and the bulge in the jacket hinted at a heavily-injured foreleg hidden inside. He kept nodding every which way tiredly, and one hindleg was being held up with a makeshift sling. The only way to know he was a changeling was the crooked horn peeking from under the hood, and the hole-ridden medium-length blue tail.

The white unicorn mare keeping him company had the left half of her face hidden behind bandages, and, though her winter garb wasn't as complete (like that of most ponies in the caravan), it only displayed her bandages to the world.

"Ah, I take it you weren't captured?" The mare turned back to the changeling that had asked, although she already knew the answer.

"No... did they...?" He started to ask, fearful of the possible answers.

"Oh, no!" She shook her head quickly, guessing where that line of thought would have gone. "They were with the extraction teams; the changeling helped break me out of the loony bin, and the unicorn went with the ones that hit the prisoner transport."

"They got that hurt during that?"

"In a sense... did you know that you can actually choose to get mage-rot and healing sickness to make your magic more effective?"

"Oh..." The changeling shuddered at the thought of performing magic so big it would hurt.

"Most of the injured are cases like those, actually, though nowhere near as bad; if it weren't for the urgency, we'd let them rest before moving." She sighed, shaking her head. "Sadly, someponies had to have a heavier load than others..."

The call for dinner was made, and, if she squinted, she could swear that there was a small blue light shining somewhere in the distance; it was almost, but not quite, obscured by the icy winds.

*****

Princess Celestia went over the report once more, trying to see if another glance would help her retain everything.

She had been consulting them over and over for the past hour, but each pass felt like it was making her forget what was written!

Once more, for the sake of getting things done.

For a good leg of the journey, things were fine.

Then the sound of trees being toppled came to their ears. Many trees, quickly, one after the other.

Then, a trio of ponies came out of the woods running at full gallop, chased by a whole pack of timberwolves sized larger than the trees.

One of the ponies, a white mare, blasted one in the snout, making it burst... and the rest of the body fell apart and joined those of the other wolves.

The guards were alert, yes, but even so, it was difficult. Timberwolves formed out of clumps of strange, unstable magic that thought they became a wolf; it gained a form of stability, but they were a danger to everypony... moreso when they started growing like that.

The fallen trees floating towards the struggling ponies, the unnatural green glow coming from within the wolves already formed...

She wondered, would the guards have felt like she did? That time, seeing the beam from the changeling queen's attack drawing so close, so quickly? The report was a sanitized account, with feelings and most opinions removed...

They performed admirably, even if the enormous entity swallowed the poor trio it had been hunting, back when it was many instead of one.

Still, it was no wonder that the changelings escaped - something that big wouldn't be so quickly dispelled by the wards of the transport. It was too powerful, although maybe after a while, after having to waste energy keeping its form outside of the forest, keeping its form despite the attacks, the fire...

A few of the guards requested a brief leave, though not therapy.

She wondered, was it because they were that brave? Were they that resilient, mentally speaking? She herself had not quite stared death in the face, and yet she had trouble sleeping... the guards escorting the prisoners were not trained to fight that kind of monsters. She could invite them, give them an award - well, first she had to find a loophole, as they had not taken injuries of note.

Thank goodness.

Neither had they 'completed their mission despite the adversity'... perhaps she could give one to the officer in charge, for managing to bring back every guard and directing their efforts so well. She would talk to them all, try to see if they needed any help to recover from the experience.

Ugh... but the changelings escaped. The suppressor of one of them was scored deeply when the beast smashed into the transport, after having taken the first of its original prey within its jaws. Then the bindings were removed and damaged, preventing them from reusing them and requiring them to be remade from the forge.

The changeling must have been an adept magic-user, as the damage alone would not have been enough to completely disable the ring. That, and a blow that powerful, even against the metal of the ring, would have made his or her horn feel it.

And she could not even begrudge the changelings their choice of running away. One of them did hit the wolf in the eye with a spell, helping the guards in the end even if it was to save themselves.

She still had the report of the hospital's breakout to go through, however.

With a sigh that almost turned into a whine, she opened the next folder.

*****

"... they always think of the horn first; it is an easy mistake to make." A changeling with a bandaged left eye rasped, coughed slightly, then continued. "All ponies have magic, in any case, and the entire body is magically conductive to some degree."

"Case in point." A bandaged, amethyst-armored hoof wiggled in the air, before picking up a bowl of soup and lightly pressing it to the changeling's mouth. The owner was a lilin, a succubus more accurately, with purple eyes and hair (although one eye was behind a bandage), with a silvery white coat and leathery wings. "Some parts more than others, depending on the type."

The changeling had a red, medium tail, and his eye was also red. He wasn't doing any magic, nor connected to any other changeling, so his iris showed. The reddened sclera took some time getting used to, for non-changelings, but being around them for a while exposed ponies to a rainbow of colors that made them shrug off that particular detail rather quickly.

"I thought that the whole point of the restraints was to prevent changelings from shapeshifting, cutting off the magic flow of the entire body, even if nopony thinks of magic that way." A unicorn stallion, the one that had insisted on dragging the sled that held his cubi wife and child, asked.

"While that is indeed the case, previous to my 'capture', my brother used a metamorphosis on my hooves, not a shape-shift, thus making their altered state the 'normal' state, and therefore my transformation remained." He spoke calmly and eloquently, or as much as he could with a throat lined with sandpaper. "Muscular mass and enhanced tendons made breaking the chains a cinch; although smashing one of the shackles until it was too dented to work was part of the plan, it was a painful part of the plan."

Indeed. The changeling had a foreleg inside his coat, on a sling, just like the blue one from the hospital.

"From there on, I put my studies to use." He said, making the lilin feeding him giggle, bat her eyelashes and kiss the side of his snout. He continued as if he hadn't noticed her, or the stallion and his wife - which were blushing. "I disabled the ring around my horn, pulled it off, levitated a piece of metal, and hit the ring hard enough to cut a good amount of runes and even get to the core, which conveniently shorted out the magic field in the metal I used, eliminating it as evidence. I freed the others as quickly as I could - which involved my magic rebounding and hurting my body -, but I was done just in time; the timberwolf tore into the transport ten seconds after the last restraint was a piece of bent scrap."

The cubi mother shivered, her feathery wings bristling unconsciously.

"Must have taken some courage, jumping into the jaws of something that large."

"Were it a hundred-percent real, I suppose so. That is the beauty of growth spells, potions, and a group of ponies using magic in harmony."

"Sadly, not complete harmony, since the rebound was not pretty."

The injured pair almost touched their bandaged eyes, wincing. They brought down their hooves, and simply sighed.

The wind howled outside the shelter.

Ice and snow magicked into an igloo kept the embers of hope burning still, giving them the chance to grow.

*****

"Empty your mind."

Luna found herself standing once more inside of a half-formed room. The walls were a washed-out grey, and there was the vague shapes of weapon racks with hazy colored objects upon them. There were some ponies, and quite evidently a changeling at the least, but none of them defined save for one.

'Lula' was sitting in the middle, blindfolded, with an expression of serenity.

Her ears twitched as the ponies around her moved, tracking them through sound. Sometimes a pony became less blurred as they made a noise that gave a hint as for their expression, then returned to an unfocused shape as their stance became uncertain.

'Spatial awareness, and not bad, either.'

She had a small silver circlet, fitted with a magenta-colored crystal lozenge below her horn.

'The shard, I suppose.'

The mare broke out in a coughing fit, with the final one sounding like she had blown a stone through a pipe, making Luna wince in sympathy.

Lula grunted, with an exhalation that sounded like a whine, before she threw her head back and moaned in discomfort. She shook her head, her scraggy mane losing what little semblance of order it had, making her look... well, awful; whereas she had looked ill before, now she looked ill and neglected.

"Easy there, Lula." A male voice said - it clearly belonged to a changeling, as the strange reverberating effect was quite distinctive. "Don't push yourself too hard."

She just snorted and blew a few strands of hair off her face, returning to her previous posture. The jewel on her forehead started to glow brightly, although Luna suspected it was similar to what she had witnessed during the procedure - the light was not actually 'there', in the sense of common sight.

Indeed, she could see faint glowing lines appearing at the level of the floor, and the multitude of colored strings and mists that represented a living being. The mare was connected to each one of them, as well, although none as warm or as beautiful as the one that tied her to the mostly purple changeling from the night before. Everything became much clearer, and the vague guesswork images were completely replaced.

"Is it working?" A pony (or disguised changeling, or lilin) asked, trotting about. Each time a hoof impacted the floor, the shine coming from the floor rippled as if water, and, as 'Lula' recovered her calm, the lights of each being and the floor around them pulsed in a rhythm that was quite evidently that of their hearts - Lula's included, naturally. Each wave also illuminated the things it traveled through - be it an object or a pony - , mixing and bouncing back with those produced by others, or simply coloring the air and words that were spoken.

Lula nodded.

"Good!" Another pony(?) said, this one a collection of black, white, and blue - and the waves he produced had those same colors. "You're making great progress! Earth pony magic is something else; makes you feel more alive, no?"

Lula hummed in contentment.

"Of course, this is more like Magic itself." The male changeling that courted Lula said. "I am sure it is beautiful."

"Focus." A mare, possibly an earth pony, said with a stomp - said stomp became the source of an intense ripple that lit up everypony else and bounced back almost as bright. "Nature magic is veee-he-he-ry finicky. You need to work with it; it won't move just because you want it to... although that is good in a way, since it makes those who can take it into their bodies much more hardy."

"Changeling empathy helps bridge the gap, and, coupled with some natural defenses, they can emulate earth ponies even if they don't know all of the working principles of it all." Another pony, stallion judging by the voice, said, inspecting a wooden training spear (or so it looked like).

"For as long as their reserves hold, anyways." The one changeling Luna was certain about commented.

"Now, it's testing time." The blue, white, and black pony said, suddenly less than a hoof's length from Lula, somehow already holding the wooden spear and bringing it down on her shoulders before her ears had finished rotating.

The dream exploded.

Comments

[Archmage Ansrit]

4984777

Trixie is dreaming, but since she has memories from the future, she dreamed of things that 1) Happened 'years ago' for her, but 'years from now' from the perspective of the calendar and 2) Didn't happen anyways since she changed the timeline.

Luna doesn't know this, however, and thinks that 'Lula' is currently out there, still sick-ish, instead of being a time-traveler with a body that never experienced illnesses that bad.

Trixie woke up and went about her second day in the Crystal Empire.

Celestia's scene... is to establish her character. A peek inside of her head, with a bit of dramatic irony for the reader.

Cadence's is merely showing that she is being delayed because the circumstances are different than in 'canon'. Instead of departing from Canterlot, where preparations are easier, they had to take a longer road, and ran into bad weather they would have otherwise avoided.

The group of refugees got a considerable head start (due to messages from the future, courtesy of the self-sacrificing sender), did avoid the worst of the bad weather, and are thus making better time.

Technically, everything is happening in the same morning, with the dream happening first, of course, but everything else semi-simultaneously.

[Obsidian Raindrop]

4984861 thanks the chapters after that explain most of what's going on it's the lack of context as to when every thing is happening (you might want to put the date and time of these scenes to make people get a better sense of time) that makes it hard to follow you cause you jump without any warning that trips me up.

[Matthew Stone]

This title is a mouthful.

[Emperor]

So if I take the one Changeling's line talking about growth spells and well-trained ponies, then the large Timberwolf was a fake that they made to throw away the guards' attention so they could make a clean escape? The way the Changeling explains their jail escape isn't quite neat enough to make one hundred percent sense, however, with regards to the whole leaving no trail.

The dream scene that Luna observes of Trixie learning the different types of magic: now that Trixie is no longer possessing of the Element of Magic shards, I wonder if she can still use the other types of magic, or if she has lost the capacity to do them ie. whether she needed a psychic catalyst to be able to access them at first and can then use them thereafter even after her time travelling, or if the Element of Magic was a physical requirement.

[ChronoMitsurugi]

It feels like 3 different fics within this story.
1) is Luna trying to piece together a mystery of an operation on a half dead pony.
2) Celestia has gone insane and xenophobic and wrongfully imprisons ponies and their nonpony lovers, who eventually orchestrate an escape and are on the run.
3) is Trixie coming back from the future and aiding the crystal empire because Sombra killed twilight.

Each sounds fantastic. The problem I have that it's difficult to read all three at the same time. Things get very confusing.

[Yubella]

This is an intresting story. I always like giving my mane three more screen time