The First Hearts and Hooves Day: A Legend of Spike Story

by DiabloGuapo

The King and the General

Two days had passed and Prince Zephyr had failed to return to the palace in the sky. A certain general was pacing the floor of the council room, his officers watching on anxiously. It was the eve of the coronation and they hadn’t received any word from their Prince. They knew he had gone to the Unicorn Kingdom, but he never specified on how long he would be there. Also, he went alone, causing Tempest to worry to no end.

That foal, Tempest thought angrily to himself. Who knows what sort of mischief he got himself into! Two days is too long just to be a simple visit. Something must have happened to him. Paranoid thoughts filled his head as he continued his pacing. He berated himself for allowing Zephyr to go off by himself, but he was given a direct order from his superior. On the other hoof, if it was something that could jeopardize his or the kingdom’s security, he had a responsibility to intervene. Then again, if his prince wanted to go chasing after some mare, who was he to stop him? What’s the worst that could happen? Chances are they had really fallen for each other and so are so enraptured that they had lost track of time.

Doubtful, Tempest dismissed the idea. He had heard what she had said to Zephyr at the council. There would be no way that she would suddenly fall head over hooves for him. That left the other option; something bad must have happened to him. Maybe he was too pushy or came on too strongly. They would have kicked him out of their castle. If so, then why hadn’t he return yet with his tail tucked between his legs? What if he had somehow offended her greatly? What if her father, the Unicorn King, took offense as well?

If that was the case, he would have surely thrown him in the- General Tempest stopped dead in tracks. Suddenly spinning around, he marched out of the council room, barking orders to his soldiers. “Rally the troops immediately!”

“Sir, what’s going on?” an officer asked urgently as he and the others filed in behind him.

“I don’t know, and that’s the point!” responded Tempest, his march turning into a gallop as they raced down the halls to the landing fields. “Anything could have happened, so there is no time to waste!”

“Sir, couldn’t we send a messenger or a scout to gain intel?” asked another officer.

“There is no time for that! If it turns out to be nothing but a simple misunderstanding, then there is no harm done. But if something has happened to him, then we must be prepared to fight!”

In no time at all, an entire battalion had been assembled and was preparing to take flight. General Tempest stood at the head of the gathered Pegasi warriors and loudly said, “Stallions! Our Prince is missing in action in the Unicorn Kingdom! His situation is unknown! All we know is that he went to visit the Unicorn Princess and has failed to return! If they are holding him, we must be prepared to rescue him at all costs! Now, let’s fly!”

At their commander’s word, the winged warriors took off and flew in formation down below the cloud city in the direction of the Unicorn Kingdom. As he led his troops, Tempest thought to himself, If this turns out to be a false alarm, I’m going to kill him! If this turns into a situation, I’m going to KILL HIM!

“Two days?” Amethyst asked, astounded by what she heard. “He was gone for two days? What in the world could he have been doing?”

“Don’t tell me he and Rose where… you know,” Rarity asked, blushing a bit at the thought.

“Thankfully, no,” answered Aurum. “Due to his incompetence by neglecting to add the key ingredient, he had poisoned himself as well with potion. His hair would have made him immune to its effects, and since Rose was a Unicorn and not a Pegasus, the potion had an adverse effect on them; it worked too well.”

Aurum paused and let out another mighty cough, forcing Spike, Rarity, and Amethyst to cover their ears from the deafening noise. After he had finished, Aurum gasped for air, his breath coming through as laboured pants. Rarity’s face furrowed with concern and she lifted a large shield from the treasure hoard with her blue magic. After dumping the coins and gems that rested inside the hollow of the shield, she ran with it to a grotto on the side of the cavern. Water from a spring that rested above the cave trickled down the rock wall so that it formed a crystal clear pool. Rarity dipped the shield in the water and carried the impromptu goblet back to Aurum. Seeing the alabaster mare had brought him a drink, he thankfully smiled at her. Due to his enormous size, it was no more than a thimble's worth to him, but he graciously accepted the kind gesture. He took the shield carefully with two claws and drank the sip of water.

After Aurum’s breathing had returned to normal, or as much as it could, Amethyst asked, “So what did happen to the prince and princess?”

“Make way for the King!” cried a herald. The doors of the great hall opened and an armored stallion entered, followed by his entourage of knights. Upon their lord’s entrance, the servants immediately went to work and started to remove the king’s equipment. They undid the clasps on the breastplate, loosened the straps on the greaves, and took the lance that was at his side, replacing them with the royal regalia of gilded horseshoes, a purple cape, and a diamond studded collar. After replacing his helmet with a crown, the servants moved away as King Adamant walked across the rug that spanned the length of the hall.

Fiore Rossa’s father was slate-gray stallion with an iron colored mane. His mouth was covered by a large mustache and his hard eyes were just as colorless as the rest of him. At his side, his chief knight and eldest child kept pace with him. In contrast with his father, Prince Orichalum had a golden coat, a coppery mane, and ruby red eyes. Both father and son bore scowls of disappointment, the father’s leaning more towards frustration.

As the king and prince made their way across the hall, two maids, one peach with a purple mane and the other yellow with a green mane, and a brown butler with a blue mane approached them. The three looked nervous, for they saw that King Adamant’s patience was already worn thin, yet they knew that one of them had to report the sure to be upsetting news to him. When his two companions failed to speak up, the brown coated butler cleared his throat, gaining him the cold, sideways glance of the king.

“Your Majesty,” the sweating butler slowly started, gauging the king’s reaction. “How fared your search for the dragon?”

It was a rhetorical question, for it wasn’t hard to see that the hunting party had returned empty hoofed. To the butler’s relief, the king didn’t explode with anger at him, but huffed, “We lost sight of it.”

“We searched the sites where it had been spotted,” Prince Orichalum elaborated. “By chance, we managed to spot it, but it disappeared in Blind Chasm.” The treacherous Blind Chasm was infamous for its rugged terrain and for the dense fog that blanketed the network of canyons and interconnecting tunnels, making it a veritable labyrinth. Many a traveler have been lost to the Chasm and all attempts to map it have proven futile.

“Did you go in after it?” the peach maid asked, horrified by the idea.

“We did, and we lost an entire day just trying to find our way out!” shouted the king.

“We’re all glad that you managed to return to us, Your Majesty,” the yellow mare stated. “It would have been awful if you never returned!”

“Your concern is appreciated, but that doesn’t change the fact that one of those firebreathers is loose in my kingdom,” grumbled King Adamant. “Thankfully, it hasn’t pillaged a village or snatched up some poor, defenseless foal yet. Every second that demon roams free is a second closer we come to disaster. I’m surprise that something bad hasn’t happened yet!”

“Uuummm…” The three servants cringed together, sharing a panicked look. Adamant and Orichalum, hearing this, looked to the three with questioning stares.

“What? What is it?” the prince asked. The maids looked to the butler, who was hesitantly pawing at the ground with a hoof, and nudged him to continue.

“We… have a situation…”

“Go on,” Adamant commanded impatiently.

“There’s a problem with the Princess,” the brown butler explained, bracing himself for the king’s inevitable wrath. “She… You might want to see for yourself…”

Adamant was led to a door, which opened to reveal to shocking sight; the king’s daughter was sitting in front of a Pegasus stallion, nuzzling and cooing baby talk to each other.

“Lovey-dovey,” Fiore Rossa sighed contently as her eyes fluttered.

“Baby-waby,” Zephyr hummed before pecking a kiss on the princess’s lips. Seeing that the foreign prince dared to touch his daughter’s lips caused Adamant’s blood boil as his cold eyes heated with unbridled fury, servants and soldiers alike cowering away from him. After staring wide eyed at the pair for a solid minute in disbelief, the king sharply turned to the unfortunate three that were tasked with bearing the bad news to him.

“What is the meaning of this!?” the gray Unicorn roared, his rage finally reaching the bursting point. “What is that Pegasus doing here!? And why is my daughter snogging him!?”

“Y-Your Majesty, that’s Prince Zephyr...of the Pegasi,” the peach colored maid whimpered as she and the other servants huddled together.

“I know who he is! What is he doing here!?” the king reiterated.

“He arrived a couple of days ago asking to see the Princess,” the yellow maid tried to explain. “One moment they were talking, having lunch together, and the next they were like this.”

Orichalum looked between his father, the servants, and his sister, bewildered by what was transpiring before him. “I don’t understand. Why are they acting like this? Did they say something or did something happen?”

“We think it’s the wine that Prince Zephyr brought. We think it may have been drugged,” the butler told him.

“What wine? Did anypony check it for poisoning? Bring me the bottle,” Adamant ordered.

“Well, that’s the thing...” the butler continued. He nodded to a palace guard, who then proceeded to walk to another door and opened it. If Adamant and Orichalum were stunned before, what they saw on the other side of the door left them dumbfounded; there was a mass of serving ponies paired off, cuddling with each other while babbling on like idiots in sickeningly sweet voices. Stallions and mares, mares and mares, and even stallions and stallions were lost in their own little worlds, oblivious to their surroundings aside from their sweethearts in front of them. Seeing the palace staff act like lovestruck foals, Orichalum took his hoof and firmly planted his face on it. In the midst of the confusion, the brown butler brought the now empty wine bottle to the king. “After the Princess and Prince Zephyr went off to… cuddle, some of the staff got into the wine. As you can see, they all fell in love with the first pony they saw.”

“Where did the wine come from?” the frustrated king asked.

“Prince Zephyr brought it,” the butler explained.

“Then why in the world did you allow it to be served to my daughter!?”

“Because he was drinking it too!” the frightened stallion explained, pointing a hoof to the Pegasus Prince. Adamant glanced back to the unwelcomed guest and snorted as he conceded. If it was a poison meant to kill his daughter, why would he drink of it as well?

“Very well, Manesworth. You said that they have been like this for a couple days now? What have they been doing? If he has defiled my precious daughter’s purity, I swear I’ll make him and you geldings!” threatened the king.

“N-No Sire! He hasn’t done anything of the sort!” the brown stallion answered, waving his front hooves in terror. “T-They’ve just been like this! Other than kissing and nuzzling, they haven’t done anything for two days! All they do is just sit there and baby talk all day! They don’t sleep, and they barely peck at the food we bring them.”

“Why haven’t you tried to separate them?” asked Orichalum.

“Believe me, Your Highness, that was the first thing we tried to do when we discovered something was wrong,” the peach maid told the gold Unicorn. “When we tried to pull them apart, they flailed about uncontrollably! When we put them in separate rooms, they knocked everypony over as they broke free. The Prince gave poor Sunflower here a black eye!” To emphasize her point, she motioned towards the yellow maid, who in turn pointed to the purplish bruise over her left eye. “And when the others started to act this way, we didn’t know what to do! We knew it must have been some sort of magic potion, and the Royal Mages are working on a remedy as we speak.”

“Have they made any progress, Miss Sugarplum?” the Unicorn Prince asked the peach mare.

She shook her head and said, “So far, no. They say that whatever was in the drink was powerful. And they say that trying to undo its effects with a spell might be dangerous. Their enchantments might react badly with the potion’s and cause even more problems.”

“Alright, alright. I get the point. But something has to be done about them now. If they’re not eating or sleeping, then their health is going to be affected.”

“Manesworth, I want all afflicted ponies separated and quarantined,” ordered King Adamant.

“But Sire, we have already tried that before!” protested the butler. “They broke down doors and plowed through the servants trying to hold them just to get back to each other!”

“Have the guards go to one pair at a time and use restraining spells,” the King firmly continued. “Lock each pony in a separate room and tie them down, shackle them, or even have a guard maintain a holding spell on them if you must, but get them apart! Start with Rose. Take her to her room and make sure she doesn’t escape. As for him...” the King spat in disgust as he looked back to the white Pegasus that was smooching with his daughter. He then turned to the nearby guards and ordered, “throw him in the dungeon.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” As the servants and the soldiers carried out their king’s commands, Adamant and Orichalum watched as Fiore Rossa cried and thrashed about when they dragged her away from Zephyr with their magical telekinesis. An afflicted pony may have had unnatural strength under the influence of the love poison, but the red mare now helplessly floated in the air, caught the aura of the guards’ magical grip.

“Sweetums!” sobbed the princess as she was carried out of the room.

“Smoochie!” wailed Zephyr as he was hauled off to the dungeons below the castle.

Hearing his daughter’s distressed cries weighed heavily upon Adamant’s heart. Never had imagine that he would have ordered his own daughter to be carried off and restrained like a dangerous animal. The stressed king rubbed his temples and exhaled deeply, “How could things get any worse?”

At that moment, a panicked sentry ran into the room and reported, “Your Majesty! The Pegasi Army is approaching the castle!”

Outside the Castle of the Unicorn King, the sentries sweated as they fretfully looked up to the clouds above. On each cloud was perched a squad of armored Pegasi, spears,swords, and bows at the ready in their hooves. The clouds they stood on had turned gray and rumbled ominously with thunder, influenced by the flying ponies’ hostility.

King Adamant exited the castle onto the battlements, his soldiers taking defensive positions around him as they fortified the castle. At his side, Orichalum stood ready with his sword drawn and his horn glowing red. They watched as three figures descended from the angry, gray clouds and landed on the road leading up to the front gate of the palace. Adamant recognized the central figure as General Tempest, the late King Boreas’s right hoof stallion.

“I seek an audience with King Adamant,” the general called up to the gray stallion. Moments later, the gate opened and the Unicorn King, his son, and their accompanying bodyguards walked out to meet the envoy. The Unicorns stopped and faced the Pegasi on the doorstep, both sides scrutinizing the other. General Tempest then stepped forward and King Adamant did the same until both gray coated stallions stood face to face. They stood staring at each other as though if they were waiting for the other to attack first. After waiting a moment in uncomfortable tension, Tempest finally broke the silence.

“Your Majesty,” he said with forced respect.

“General,” Adamant managed to say with strained hospitality.

“You have something of ours,” the Pegasus told him. “We are here to take him home.”

“I’m afraid he isn’t going anywhere any time soon.”

“I wasn’t asking, Your Majesty. We have come for Prince Zephyr, and we are not leaving without him.”

“Then you’ll be waiting here for quite a while, I’d imagine.”

Tempest narrowed his eyes at Adamant and said, “You have no right holding him prisoner!”

“I have every right to hold him! He has caused me quite a bit of trouble and must pay for what he has done!”

“If he has gotten himself into trouble, then release him to us and we’ll see to it that he is dealt with!” protested the general.

“Release him!?” the king exclaimed at the outrageous suggestion. A thought then occurred to him and his pale, gray eyes narrowed in suspicion at the pony before him. “Ah, I see your game.”

“What game?” scoffed Tempest, raising a brow at the Unicorn.

“This is all a part of some ill-conceived scheme to sabotage my kingdom,” Adamant venomously accused.

“What!?” the general shouted, insulted by the claim.

“Yes, I can see it clearly now,” the king seethed. “He came here in a false act of peace and delivered a curse upon my house, and now my servants are bewitched! Even my own daughter has been afflicted by your Prince’s deception!”

“How dare you accuse us of such treachery!?” Tempest shouted indignantly. “We would never perform such an underhoofed ploy!”

“Oh, no? Then is it by chance that your army arrived at my doorstep shortly after half of my staff had been incapacitated by a poison that your Prince administered to my daughter!?” Adamant questioned.

“Ridiculous! Don’t you hear yourself? Even if this was part of some scheme your deluded mind has imagined, why would our Prince put himself at risk in such a manner?” retorted Tempest.

“Because who would suspected a prince of such deception?”

“Obviously you,” snarled the gray Pegasus. “If you’re so paranoid and expected such a scheme from us, then why would you even grant him access to your castle?”

“Are you saying that it’s our fault that your Prince poisoned us!?” the king screamed in outrage at the notion.

“How do we even know that your staff has been poisoned? For all we know, you could have made that up as an excuse to hold him. What if the real scheme here is for you to hold our Prince hostage and demand a ransom from us!?” Tempest yelled, turning the accusations back at the Unicorn.

At this, King Adamant’s face burned red with rage and his horn glowed a cold blue. Seeing this threatening display, Tempest and his accompanying guards crouched down in a combative stance, their wings flaring. With their leaders preparing themselves for combat, the opposing armies readied themselves for battle as well. The Unicorns activated their magic and raised their weapons while the Pegasi agitated the storm clouds and held their own blades at the ready.

“Fall back to the castle!” Orichalum ordered the knights that stood behind their king. As they retreated, they kept their weapons fixed on the Pegasi before them, never taking their eyes off of them. Orichalum stood beside his father, who was still squaring off against the Pegasus General, and urged, “Father, we’re exposed here. We need to fall back.”

Adamant acknowledged his son with a nod, but his eyes were still locked with Tempest’s, who himself was being urged to move back by his own guards. Both stallions backed away from each other slowly, waiting for an attack from the other. Adamant walked backwards until he reached the inside of the castle gate, which then was sealed shut, and Tempest had flown back up to the clouds where his army was waiting for him. After Adamant had returned to the battlements atop of the castle, he looked up to the cloud that his adversary was perched upon.

General Tempest peered down at the stronghold that contained his Prince. He then looked to an officer at his side and said, “Storm the castle.”

“What do you think they’re going to do?” Orichalum asked his father as he gazed at the Pegasi that were buzzing around the sky, pushing the dark clouds together.

“I don’t know, but-” Before Adamant could finish his statement, a blinding light flashed and a crashing boom filled the air. The king and prince dropped to the floor and covered their heads. Something wet dripped onto Orichalum’s nose, and opened a cautious eye to see that it had started to rain. The two stood up and looked about to see that their winged opponents had started a downpour.

“Ha! That’s it? Just some rain?” scoffed Adamant. He then cupped a hoof around his mouth and called up to the sky. “You’re going to have to do better than that!”

As though it were an immediate response to Adamant’s challenge, a cold, hard piece of ice pelted against his face. The Unicorn King yelped in pain and so did the rest of the Unicorns as they were bombarded by hail. Above them, the Pegasi were jumping up and down on the clouds, their pounding hooves causing the clouds to drop marble-sized chunks of ice on the Unicorns below. Dropping their weapons and deactivating their magic, they shielded their heads with their hooves and started to run back inside.

“No! Stand your ground!” commanded Adamant, wincing every few seconds from the ice that was hitting him. Heading their King’s order, the guards retook their positions, enduring the onslaught of hail. “Return their fire!”

A multitude of colored beams shot up into the air, forcing the Pegasi to evade the bolts of magic. Without the them, the clouds’ hail production declined. Whenever one of them would try to head back to a cloud, a beam of magic would drive them back. In response, the Pegasi soldiers then charged the clouds, striking them with hard bucks from their hind legs. The storm clouds then shot bolts of lightning which sent the Unicorns scrambling for cover as they struck the castle. Seeing that their attacks were becoming more violent, Adamant signaled for the archers to start firing up at the Pegasi. However, this was proved ineffective as their targets were high above the range of the projectiles. The Unicorns, on the other hoof, were quite in range of the Pegasi archers, which returned their fire with a volley of their own.

The defending army protected themselves with translucent shields of magic, which rippled every time an arrow bounced off their surfaces. Since they couldn’t maintain a shield and attack at same time, the Pegasi increased their offense. Seeing that they were being overwhelmed, Adamant called for every soldier to pair up and for one of them to create the shield while the other fired back.

“Father!” Orichalum grunted as he strained to concentrate on maintaining the red colored barrier over his and Adamant’s heads. “We can’t take much more of this! They...ngh...They have air superiority! Gah!”

A powerful thunderbolt came crashing down on top of Orichalum’s barrier, the force of impact shattering the magical shield and knocking both ponies to the stone floor. Adamant shook his spinning head, his ears ringing from the explosion. Once he reorient himself, he saw his son struggling to stand. He rush to his side and helped the groaning stallion onto his hooves. With his son’s hoof draped across his shoulders, he looked about the castle wall and saw that his soldiers weren’t faring any better.

“Fall back to the castle!” Adamant called out, knowing that defeat was imminent if they remained outside. Though it would mean that the invaders would gain ground on them, the Unicorns would have to defend their castle from the inside, but this would mean that the Pegasi would have to force themselves in. Outside, they could use the elements to their advantage, but inside, they would be forced to use only their melee weapons while the Unicorns had both weapons and magic at their disposal. Tempest knew this and so had his troops hold off on the assault when the Unicorns barricaded themselves inside their stone fortress.

“Sir, shouldn’t we press on with the attack? The longer we wait, the more we risk them harming Prince Zephyr,” a Pegasus officer advised the general.

“No. If we go in now, they would take us out easily as we rush in one by one,” Tempest explained. “Now, we wait them out.”

Comments

[bronyvamp]

The stressed king rubbed his temples and exhaled deeply, “How could things get any worse?”
At that moment, a panicked sentry ran into the room and reported, “Your Majesty! The Pegasi Army is approaching the castle!”

never temp fate like that