Frozen Love

by Workable Goblin

Snow Day

I return to the waking world wrapped in warm cloth and hugging something deliciously radiant, leaving me to melt in a puddle of comfortable bliss. For a long moment, I just lie in bed, unwilling to give it up, but soon enough I'm forced to crack my eyes open. In front of me is a wall of white, particolored streaks of blue intruding towards the top of my vision. Mmm, so that's what's warming me up, my hunk of a husband.

I slowly scootch up his back, taking care not to disturb him too much, until I can lick his ear and tell him, "Morning, honey."

"Zzzz...Twilight, get off," he mumbles. "'M not for riding..."

I giggle. "'Twilight get off'? My, my, is there something you want to tell me, Shiny?"

Instantly, he jumps to full alertness, bolting out of my hooves as if I was on fire. As he stands up next to the bed, I can see that his face is so hot with blush it's practically on fire. I prop myself up in bed and watch as he zeroes in on me.

"Oh, Cady," he groans.

I giggle again. "Shiny, I know perfectly well it was just an innocent dream." I wriggle forwards and plant my lips on his for a moment. "Come on, the sun is up and it's time to start the day."

He nods, and I pull myself out of bed. Together, we wander to the bathroom and get into the shower, helping each other bathe. Shiny preens me, silently apologizing for falling asleep before me last night; I tell him not to worry by polishing his coat to a gleaming luster before we shut off the water and dry off. My attendants capture me before we can do more and drag me away to my dressing chambers, allowing me only to blow him a kiss before we're separated for the day.

As I finally manage to escape from the dressing rooms, styled and wearing my regalia, Quick Quill gallops up, disheveled and untidy. I cock my head to one side and begin to ask, "Quick, what's wr--"

"Princess!" she interrupts me as she reaches me, dipping into a brief bow. "The blizzard--the train--your letters--snowed out!" she pants.

"What?" I cock my head to one side before the force of her words hits me. "Snowed out? Proper Poise!" I add, turning back to face my attendants. "Get my winter ensemble. I am going out. Now, Quick," I turn to my assistant, still puffing heavily in front of me, "breathe." She nods and takes a deep breath, then exhales. Then another, and another. "Now," I continue once she is breathing easily, "perhaps slightly less rushed?"

"Princess, the conductor on today's Empire Express came to me shortly after dawn to inform me that the rail line has seen a dangerous accumulation of snow and that the train cannot leave, nor others arrive," she tells me, this time speaking smoothly and easily.

I frown. "I will have to see for myself."

"Of course, Princess," she nods. "The conductor and stationmaster expected that."

Before I can respond, Proper emerges from the dressing rooms with assistants in tow. The next several minutes are a whirl of fabrics and outfits as Proper tries to outfit me for the wintery weather outside, but soon enough I am dressed and ready to leave. I nod to Quick Quill, who is wearing a similar outfit of her own, and we quickly trot to the castle's entrance, then outside.

Like the last several storms, around the palace the weather is not so bad. A thin haze of snow fills the sky, true, but the winds are relatively weak, and overhead the clouds are patchy enough that sunbeams can penetrate them and reveal shafts of swirling flakes floating in the storm's winds. Thanks to my pegasus heritage I barely feel the chill in the air even where I am not swathed in insulating fabric, and I feel little different than I would in Canterlot.

Looking outwards, down the avenues leading away from the Palace to the outer districts, however, the true strength of the blizzard is clear. The patchiness above us vanishes even a short distance from the palace, locking the Empire in darkness, while the violence of the wind and volume of snowfall quickly increases. Just a mile or two away in all directions, there is a curtain of white stretching from ground to clouds, obscuring everything beyond.

The fact that, once again, the regions closest to the Heart have been spared the full fury of the storm and that, once again, I can feel a thin, almost imperceivable thread of malevolence behind the storm sets my heart fluttering, and I nod to Quick. We trot forwards towards the train station, bowing our heads as the winds grow stronger and stronger.

By the time we reach the outer suburbs, even our snowsuits are doing little against the chill. I can take the cold, but Quick begins violently shivering before we've even left the city proper, and I stretch out one wing, wrapping it around her as an extra blanket.

"Thank you, Princess," she mumbles through her scarf. I look up. Conditions are nearing white-out levels, but I can see the station just ahead. I cast another spell, and a thin thread of darkness stretches out from the station towards where we were just coming from. If the weather gets even worse before we talk to the stationmaster and conductor, at least we won't be left to wander aimlessly around the city until we freeze solid.

Stepping into the station is like stepping into a sauna. Instantly, the ice and snow crusting our clothing begins to melt and fall away, only slightly accelerated by our attempts to shake it off. Only once we've started to warm up do we look around at the waiting room we're in. Unsurprisingly, the only ponies here are the stationmaster, conductor, and a few other members of the railway staff, currently busily engaged in stuffing any loose cracks with rags to minimize heat loss and bringing firewood to the two fireplaces at each end of the room, both of which are absolutely roaring. Quick and I pass them by for the ticket office in the center of the room, where the stationmaster and conductor are sitting and watching the activity.

As I approach, they stand and bow to me, saying "Princess" as their knees touch the ground.

"Safe Hooves, Ticket Check, please. I'm not here to command you, but to see what's blocking the train."

"Yes, Princess," they answer together. "Er, well," Safe Hooves coughs a moment later, "if you'll follow me Princess?" He leads me up the stairs in the center of the ticket office, through the second floor, and into the cupola on top, where we are afforded a 360 degree panorama through its crystal walls.

"See there?" he points to the left, towards Equestria. Just past the end of the platform, the tracks plunge into a snowbank, vanishing from view just before the storm itself consumes all vision.

"Engineer can't see if there are any obstructions on the track," the stationmaster notes as I gaze. "The Express has plows, but if it's this thick here, who knows how bad it'll be in the mountains? Could be an avalanche risk. Too dangerous to let them go."

I nod. There's nothing else to say, really. A moment later, he turns and steps back down the stairs, and I follow. When we reemerge into the waiting room, Quick looks up at me, face drawn and worried. "Princess, it's getting worse out there," she tells me as I step up beside her. "Do we really have to go back on hoof?"

I pause. I could teleport us back to the palace, but with the rail line cut I have to inform Auntie immediately. There's only one way I can do that, and it's sure to be a major magical effort. Teleporting just before it would be...troublesome. Still...looking down at her face, I know I don't really have any choice.

"Brace yourself," I tell her as I begin to channel magic through my horn. I close my eyes and begin visualizing the throne room, reaching out for it through that sixth sense all unicorns have. It only takes me a moment to grasp it and begin reshaping the raw magic I'm channeling into the patterns needed to warp us there. Just as I'm about to commit us to the teleport, I feel...something in the magic field, and immediately pull back. I wince as some of the magic discharges itself through my horn. I open my eyes to see Quick looking back up at me, head quirked just so.

"Princess, what's wrong?"

Rather than answer her, I close my eyes again and begin carefully probing the field between us and the palace. It takes me minutes of searching to find it, but eventually I find a subtle thread of spell work deeply buried within the environment, carefully crafted to interfere with teleports. This is really Twilight's field, not mine, but a moment of work and I prise it apart. It...I open my eyes and make a face.

"Cadance, what's going on?" Quick asks again, her face lined with concern.

"You should be very glad I aborted that teleport, Quick. We would have exploded before even leaving."

"What? Ugh." Her face twists just like mine as the meaning hits her.

"And that definitely wasn't there yesterday," I add. "Meaning..."

"...the storm brought it."

"Exactly. I had felt something off about them, now I know something's wrong. Ordinary blizzards don't interfere with magic."

I sit down. I need to talk to Auntie immediately, and there's only one way for me to do that. I begin channeling magic through my horn again, shaping it into a new spell. In some ways, this one is incredibly similar to teleportation, but it has a very different purpose. I complete the spell and am treated to a weird and very loud sort of hiss filling my ears. I would recoil, but the spell has made my muscles unresponsive, and I am forced to endure the noise. Gradually, something approaching speech begins to emerge

"--Adance. Can -ou--omething--ong--"

"Auntie, can you hear me?" I 'say' in my mind, carefully focusing on each word. "Something is interfering with the spell--"

"--Una--light--old on--"

I lie there, waiting for my fellow princesses to join the spell. As if I needed more evidence that something is actively out to get me, the mind link spell is breaking up. I know there was nothing that could do that active earlier, meaning that somepony is actually out there trying to prevent me from using any complex spells.

Gradually, the hiss diminishes, and I can make out increasingly frenetic 'speech' passing between Auntie, her sister, and Twilight.

"I'm here," I interject. "I can hear you now."

"Cadance, oh, we were so worried!" Twilight announces.

"There's something interfering with my magic," I inform her before she can get off-track. "And that's why I contacted you Au--Celestia," I correct myself before Luna can, "something very strange is going on here..."

"Please hurry, Cadance," Celestia tells me, sounding slightly strained. "It's taking our combined efforts to keep the link stable."

"We've been hit by a blizzard, the third one this month. I could feel something off about the previous two, but this one has been interfering with my magic. And not just passively, there's something out there that's actively altering the magic around here to keep me from casting anything complicated or powerful."

"Are you sure?" Luna asks, but before I can answer she continues, "Sister, do you not remember what Starswirl told us of the Windigos? How they would precede their coming with mysterious bursts of winter weather? It is so exactly like it..."

"Windigos haven't been seen since before Sombra, and he himself used the weather as an ally," Celestia responds. "It's far more likely to be some remnant of his magic, a last-gasp--"

"I'm sorry Princess, but I have to agree with Luna," Twilight apologetically interrupts. "I've been reading through some of Starswirl's library, and there are a number of documents on Windigo attacks. Most of them I've just catalogued, but I read a few, and all of them describe this sort of unseasonably frequent winter weather preceding Windigo assaults. It can't be ruled out."

"But the magical interference," I say, feeling an irrational need to stick up for Auntie. "I've never heard of Windigos doing that."

"No," all three of them agree simultaneously. Before anypony can say anything else, Luna adds "That is very troubling," while Celestia and Twilight murmur agreement.

"Cadance, whether it's Sombra or the Windigos you must find and stop whatever is causing this," Celestia tells me a moment later. "We will try to send help if possible, but you cannot expect any aid from Equestria until the storm passes."

"I know," I tell her.

"Maintaining the link is becoming...difficult," she says, voice straining. "Unless...?"

"No, Celestia, Luna, Twilight. There's nothing else. I love you," I add just as I cut the link.

"What happened?" Quick asks as I stand up.

"I found out it's either Windigos or some remnant of Sombra," I mutter as I regain my hooves. "I'm not sure which one would be worse. Quick," I continue more loudly, "we're going back to the palace. I need to call an emergency meeting--"

"The weather crisis team, Shining and the heads of the guard divisions, and Lexicon?" she suggests.

I smile at her. "I knew there was a reason you were my assistant," I tease her. "Come on, let's go."

Comments

[Snake Staff]

This looks like it has potential.