• Published 17th Jun 2015
  • 5,854 Views, 151 Comments

A Dance with Vengeance - Seven Fates



The search for the Crystal Heart unleashed Sombra's deadliest servant, yet even with her newfound freedom, her past hangs over her. Shamed over actions scarcely her own, she must become the guardian she was meant to be, or fall trying.

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Chapter 4

~ 3rd Person: Present Day ~

The blue skies flickered orange as Princess Cadance struggled to keep her spell alive. A single thought was all that kept her resolve strong enough for her virtue imbued shield to repel Sombra, and every waking moment spent here in the Crystal Empire was making it hard to hold onto it. At first, it had just been the old king’s relentless attacks on the barrier, which had grown more numerous the stronger he grew. In fact, he could very well have been siphoning power from her through her own spellwork.

Seeing the Blood Dancer freed, however, had been nearly enough to break her spirits. Auntie Celestia had told her that Shantae had been a cruel, merciless killer on the battlefield. She’d seen the memory orb of the massacre at Malachite Hill. The mare in the memory had killed without mercy or hesitation, not even showing the slightest hint of emotion. What she’d seen a mere quarter hour prior before was not the same creature. Her domain over love and emotion told her that the creature’s display had been genuine, and that was the only saving grace in this scenario.

She had shown Cadance the depths Sombra could go to in order to achieve his goals. He was nothing short of a demon, and he was coming for her and everypony else in the city. With the power to subjugate minds and the readiness to barter souls in exchange for untold power, there was no way he would be content just regaining control of the Crystal Empire. If Twilight didn’t succeed, she shuddered to imagine what horrors lay in store.

And yet, Shantae had managed to break his hold! Through some fluke or chance happening in her short encounter with Celestia and Luna fifteen hundred years ago, she had regained her free will. Not only that, but the mare held no kindness for he who made her fight. The fact that she was eager to dispense vengeance upon him gave Cadance hope that Shantae could be more than just an ally of convenience. Had the mare not been as much a slave as everypony else under Sombra’s control?

“I’m still not sure we can trust her,” Shining Armor warned, placing a tray of high-energy fruits and vegetables on the balcony railing before her. “Say I believe you, and her little emotional display down in the slave quarters was genuine. All that means is that she has no problems turning on a pony if they slight her. She’s too volatile, dangerously so.”

He glanced down at the city below, where a speck of purple could be seen darting along the rooftops and bouncing between buildings. “Even if she was entirely under his control, the ponies here still remember everything as her actions. Applejack’s already reported an increased panic among the populace at Shantae’s reappearance, though she doesn’t understand the significance.” He gave her a dour look. “I’m not sure she could fit in here at all... and if not here, where? Elsewhere, she might get by, but who is to say she won’t snap and hurt somepony?”

Cadance frowned, watching the shadows at the edge of the city grow longer. “I don’t know, my love,” she admitted. Taking a mouthful of fruit, she rested her head on the bannister. “What worries me most is that there is something familiar about her—the way her emotions felt—that I feel like I should be alarmed about, but I can’t put my hoof on it.”

The frown on Cadance’s face was reflected by her husband. “There’s something else,” he said, pressing his side into hers. “Something about what she said struck me odd, so I went looking... You’re not going to like what I found...”

~ Shantae ~

Bouncing off of the sides of buildings lining the street like a ricocheting bullet was a far better means of getting around than running down the avenue. For one, this little monkey form packed a heck of a lot of power in its little legs; regardless of whether the Monkey Bullet ability was being amplified by my urgent desire to find Brie, it was easy to see how the Nega Shantae boss weaponized it so well. Additionally, while there were plenty of gawkers, none of the ponies I passed by started screaming bloody murder at the sight of me. That much was a welcome change to be sure.

Unfortunately, a lot of ponies were starting to notice the sky taking on the familiar orange tinge of Sombra’s influence. The look of dawning terror on their faces as the lustre drained from their coats was sobering, and I was incredibly tempted to abandon this foolish filly chase. She was just one foal, and Sombra didn’t stop being the most vile bastard I’d ever known just because it turned out that he hadn’t killed her.

At the same time, though, Sombra knew her. I didn’t just mean that, as a slaving tyrant, he knew of her; he’d seen her at the morning inspection of the castle slaves, and he’d seen me with Sapphire Brie and the way I often doted on her. So here was this filly who’d somehow survived a spell that should have left her a dessicated corpse among the mass grave: a filly he knew meant something to me. How could he not take notice of her continued existence? Even if the mystery of her survival did not interest him, her use in controlling me would.

No, I couldn’t let her go; I would have to find a safe place to keep her until I could deal with him. If I could find her.

Why was she coming this far out though? The way she always spoke of her parents, I could have sworn she’d been born into slavery. She’d never left the slave pits except to be moved to the castle. Brie wouldn’t have known her way around the city... and yet, she seemed to be moving very purposely towards what looked like a cairn near the boundary that kept the frozen wastes at bay. It was very peculiar.

Despite my smaller size, it was quite easy to catch up to her. Whereas Brie was only able to cut through the streets and alleys, I was able to shave off time by cutting over the rooftops. Plus, she couldn’t turn into a simian projectile, which certainly helped.

I was close enough to leap on her when she reached the edge of the barren field upon which the cairn was built. At the very instant my stubby arms gripped her sides, I mentally dispelled the transformation. There's no way to really explain how I knew how to revert, just like I couldn't put into words how movement in monkey form came naturally to me; it felt like a cop-out to blame magic.

The filly let out a small shriek at my touch, a shriek which carried over into a full blown scream as my momentum and change in mass bowled her over. She thrashed and cried incoherently, hooves never connecting, but the threat very real. “No! I won't go back! You can't take me away again!”

“Shh, Brie! It's okay!” I said as I unwrapped my arms from around her barrel and snaked my fingers through the bit of mane at the base of her neck. With a gentle tousle of the hairs, I nuzzled the top of her head, between her ears. “You're safe now! I'm here!”

Sapphire struggled a few moments more before she made any efforts to calm down. She seemed more confused than anything else, as though she could scarcely believe that I was actually there with her. Every one of her breaths came easier, and I could no longer feel her pulse against me. “Shantae?”

I just sat there, hugging her as she trembled against me. There was little to do but wonder as she calmed down. How had she survived? Why did she come out here? What would I do next?

Slowly, she pushed away and struggled to her hooves. When I too had gotten to my feet and confirmed that, yes, my garments had returned, I crouched so that our eyes were level. “Why are you out here, Brie?” I asked in a soft voice, fighting the desire to tousle her mane again. “It isn’t safe.”

Rather than looking chastened, or even the least bit afraid, she looked confused. “I... This is where I'm supposed to be,” she said, glumly. “Before the king and his slavers took me, this is where I belonged. I thought if I was free, I could finally return.”

The tone of her voice, the resignation with a bizarre tinge of hope, scared me. In all the time that I had spent with her, I'd always avoided the topics of her parents deaths and the circumstances of her enslavement, and I found myself regretting that decision. If being grabbed by a pair of shiny talking horses after waking up in the frigid tundra as a woman was a sore spot for me, I'd reasoned, surely such a thing would have been downright painful for others.

My eyes flicked between the cairn and the foal. Just what had happened? Had she been taken while mourning the loss of her parents? Had she, in some way, resigned herself to joining her parents in the afterlife sooner rather than later? Is she a risk to herself?

“Brie, have you ever seen an alicorn before?” I asked, hoping to distract her. “I don't mean in a book or scroll or on any sort of tapestry; I mean a real, live alicorn princess.”

She shook her head, her eyes wide. Her ears splayed backwards, and I couldn't help but think she might be a bit afraid of the thought. “Nuh-uh,” Sapphire said, glancing back at the mound. “I wanna go home.”

“Home is good!” I agreed, turning to face the tall spire-like castle. “The pretty alicorn princess has taken the castle, and she seems very nice. At the very least, she's keeping Sombra at bay, so it's probably safest there.”

Sapphires eyes went even wider, and she backed away from me. “That isn't home,” she cried accusingly. She thrust a hoof toward the mound. “That is!”

“But-”

Before I could get a word in edgewise, she spun on her hooves and darted across the field toward the burial mound. I ran after her, as hot on her tail as I could be in human form. We both closed the distance quickly, coming to a rest beneath the surprisingly tall structure.

Rather than come to a complete stop, however, Brie ran straight up the near vertical incline like it was nothing. I couldn't even fathom how that was possible, but something drove me to go right up after her. I'm not sure whether I was channeling the monkey form or if my desire to get her to safety made it possible, but I was right up there with her.

At the dome's peak, I joined the confounded foal atop a large crystal plug recessed in the ground. It was definitely Sombra's work, the polished black surface glinting wickedly as the sky above us flickered from blue to hazy orange. But why would he waste his time and energy to put this large a crystal atop a mass grave for slaves he cared little about?

Was there some sort of disease outbreak before I showed up? I wondered, kneeling to examine the surface for any sort of markings. Or did this precede Sombra, some sort of ancestral crypt that he didn't want them visiting?

“No!” she cried, slamming her forehooves against the glossy black plug. “He can't block it off; they can't get out if this is here!”

Again and again, her little hooves slammed into the sturdy crystal and her tears peppered its glossy black surface. But as tempted as I was to let her get it all out of her system, I knew it would only grow more dangerous the longer we were out in the open. The burial mound would surely still be here after all of this was over, right?

I stood back up and placed a hand atop her head. “C’mon, you little booger,” I said softly, nudging her back towards town. She didn't move, but she stopped her assault on the crystal. “I promise to do everything in my power to help with this after Sombra's gone, but I need to get you to safety.”

Once more, Sapphire jerked away from me, and, with a near feral scream, slammed her hooves against the crystal plug. “I gotta get home! I gotta help them!”

The glassy blockage shuddered beneath us. “Please tell me this isn't a vertical drop,” I moaned as my stomach gave a lurch. “Please be a sliiiiii—”

The ground opened up beneath us, and before she could even scream, we were falling into darkness.

~ ~ ~

There’s something to be said about waking up flat on your back, staring up into the angry eye in the ceiling that happened to be the entrance, I mused picking shards of black crystal out of my hair. It sucks!

When I’d awoken, I was on the floor of a cathedral-like room with a large hole in the vaulted ceiling casting light down upon me. All around me were the shards of the former blockage, glittering like diamond dust in the shaft of pale orange. Not one of the several corners of the room was shrouded in darkness. Sitting up and looking around left me with the realization that, besides miraculously surviving the fall, I was utterly alone in the room.

Sapphire Brie had definitely been here, though. There were hoofprints leading away from an almost filly-shaped impression in the dust and debris that littered the chamber's stone floor. They led straight through a darkened mouth carved into the chamber’s ‘south’ wall. That’s arbitrary south because I have no clue whatsoever which way is south in here or outside.

Heck, was there even a magnetic north or south here? Half the time, I wasn’t even sure the laws of nature as I understood applied here. Was Equus a spheroid world, or was this some sort of non-euclidean nightmare where the universe was in fact a parabolic shape at the bottom of which sat the ‘disc’ of Equus? Heck, maybe Pratchett had it right all along, only for the Disc World to be inhabited by small horses, rather than people.

That was neither here nor there, and largely a moot point; I was trapped in a subterranean crypt of some sort. If there was one thing I knew about places known to house the dead, say a Zombie Island or a nordic barrow, it was that, in these situations, there was always something that wanted to hurt you. I mean, Shantae—the actual character, not me—fought all sorts of undead things, including a dread pirate who just didn’t want to stay dead! So yeah, I had to find Sapphire before she got hurt, and figure out how to get the hell out of here.

With that in mind, I hopped back onto my feet and considered my options. I didn’t really want to fight any zombies, because I knew from personal experience as Sombra’s pet that undead ponies were extremely hard to kill. Oh, I could cheat with the limited amount of hellfire magic I had and burn them out of existence completely, but what then? Despite what the video game would lead you to believe, Shantae’s monster whipper was just not that good at killing a magically animated corpse... and if I ended up facing anything like that goat lich Grogar... I’d really wanna hold onto the hellfire. Besides, I wanted to save some of that for Sombra.

As I drew near the dark corridor, however, something curious happened: a single brazier just inside the darkness began to glow. I honestly couldn’t justify simply calling it a flame, because the phenomena was just so out there. Hundreds of tiny emerald shards began to flit and dance about atop the fixture like a swarm of iridescent insects, reflecting and amplifying light from some indeterminate source. Oh sure, it mimicked the pattern of a flame perfectly, but... Had it sprung up in response to my presence?

I followed the curving corridor for a time, never straying too far out of the light cast by the crystalfire. The entire time, my eyes never stayed in one spot too long. I’d look from wall to floor to ceiling to wall and back again, looking at anything and everything. Mostly it was circular tunnels carved into the stone, with a disturbing lack of recesses in the wall where I’d expect to find tier upon tier of corpses. Still, every so often I could swear I’d pick up a hint of movement in my peripherals, only to be met with empty space lit by green not-fire.

It wasn’t that I was following the light, though it did seem like the flames were trying to lead me in a certain direction; on the contrary, I would have loved nothing more than to not follow the eerie lights to my inevitable demise. The lights just happened to follow the same path that Sapphire seemed to have taken.

By the time I’d reached the first branch in the corridor, something felt really off. You know how you sometimes hear humorous idioms that are situationally relevant? The phrase “Quiet as the grave,” came to mind, but it didn’t really do any justice. At the very least, I would have expected to hear the echo of my footsteps down the tunnel or the flow of air... but there was nothing. It was like there was a bubble of silence around me, leaving me alone in the dim green light with my heartbeat. What wasn’t I hearing?

I continued on down the lit path, hoping that the unlit branch wasn’t the way out. The realization that the whole place was unnaturally silent had me casting glances over my shoulder behind me, but it wasn’t until the first straight stretch of tunnel that my blood froze. Far off behind me, the darkness was swallowing up the light.

“Shantae,” came his cruel whisper. I screamed. I don’t know why I screamed, but the thought of him down here with me and Sapphire terrified me, spurring me to run. “Pet.”

I shook my head and muttered, “You’re not here!” He wasn’t; he couldn’t be. The stallion had been a powerful mage—there was no mistake to be made about it—but he had little influence in the Empire right now. He wouldn’t waste his time chasing me down into a dark crypt when his seat of power was in even more danger of being taken than it had been when Celestia and Luna had appeared with their armies, slaying his hordes of slavers.

In my sudden fit of fear, however, I’d stopped looking ahead of me. At some point, Sapphire’s tracks vanished from the path the lights had been leading me. Actually, that wasn’t quite right. I had followed her tracks perfectly... until the lights simply stopped. This section of tunnel simply didn’t seem to have any of those strange crystal flames to light them... and by the time I reached portion of the tunnel that was lit, her hoofprints were no longer present on the dirt floor.

Dare I go back and attempt to feel my way along the floor in the darkness to continue following her? What if her trail simply ended because something that didn’t touch the floor had taken her? She could feasibly be anywhere in this labyrinth.

“I almost hope for a monster at this point,” I muttered under my breath, distracted from where I was going. “It’ll break up the monotony of all this empty tunn—augh!”

My foot caught on something in the dim light, and I fell. I wasn’t so lucky as to simply fall flat on my tits and be content in my pain; that’d be no fun, according to the universe. No, the thing I landed on was hard like iron, with lots of hard edges. “Just my luck.”

Pushing myself up, I let the dim light fill my eyes, and almost wish I hadn’t looked. You know that one silly thing from your childhood that haunts you well into adulthood, despite the irrationality of it? Mine was Ridley Scott’s Alien. The thing scared me to death when I was a kid, and put me off Easter entirely. The thought that inside some random egg, there could be some sort of face-raping creature that’d lay an egg in your throat, only for a black-carapaced horror to burst out of your chest days later... and my brothers convinced me to watch the next two, too!

... and now, here I was looking at my childhood nightmare, or something like it. It was some sort of creature that looked almost exactly like one of those alien xenomorphs... if it had grown inside a pony, instead of a person or dog, and it looked like it was partially made of crystal. I wasn’t sure what was with this region and crystals, but the mundanity of crystals at this point did nothing to lessen the effect.

I shoved off of the monster, half expecting the thing to wake up at any moment and show me its second mouth moments before I met my grisly end. Yet, as I sat there, staring at my would-be attacker, it simply did not move. It took me a further few minutes to realize that it wouldn’t move; the thing wasn’t going to attack me because it wasn’t alive... and it hadn’t been for some time. It was a dead semi-transparent husk... just like the ones I was slowly starting to realize were littering the corridor ahead of me.

Even though the light didn’t illuminate the floor that far ahead, I could see the green light reflecting off more crystalline carapace. Oddly enough, their general equine shape helped make it clear that none of them were facing me. What killed them?

Deciding that, no, my childhood nightmare wasn’t about to come facerape me, I picked my way forward through the hollow equinoid carapaces. I didn’t want to think what their lives had been like, or what their last moments had been. A few displaced light sources and gouges in the tunnel walls painted a clear enough picture for me; these creatures, whose numbers were hard to gauge in this half-darkness, had probably died painfully. Cracks and holes marred the limbs of the creatures, as though some predator had attacked... or if they’d been tearing at the walls in search of some means of escape.

The dead were thickest at the end of the tunnel, literally piled on one another. At first, I thought the tunnel just ended and the strange bug ponies had simply crawled down this corridor and died, but just as I was about to turn around, I caught sight of a small gap among the corpses. It was something I might not even have noticed had I not turned my head, but there it was, clear as day, blue light shining through a small hole.

“Uhuu,” came the soft cry on the other side of the gap, along with the telltale drip of water. That’s Brie! It’s gotta be!

It’s probably not the greatest idea to touch dead things of unknown threat level, but they were safe enough. Stepping over nearly one hundred of them in the greenlit darkness without one of them leaping up to take a chunk out of me had made me cocky, but this place wasn’t giving me a zombie dungeon vibe anymore. Besides, it’s not like I was desecrating them; I was just pulling their insanely light remains out of the way so that I could get at the hole...

... or rather, the door. It was a disc-shaped slab of stone that had, at one point, been in the process of rolling shut. The bug ponies had seemingly thrown themselves into the door’s track, sacrificing themselves in an attempt to keep the door open for their comrades and gumming the track with their remains. Even now, after however long—a millenia, dare I say?—ago this happened, there was still a sickly sweet smell of something.

Too bad they had done as bugs do, and swarmed the small opening. None of them would have even fit through the gap, though I wouldn’t have the same issue. All they’d done is provided a false sense of hope as they fought and died in an attempt to fit through the opening.

“Sorry, you lot,” I whispered as I slipped through the gap. “Something wants me going wherever this corridor leads, and you were kind of in the way.”

Once I was through, I looked around. Finding myself halfway up the wall of a small, but deep bowl-shaped cavern, I couldn’t help but whistle. The blue light that had caught my eye came from a bed of some kind of glowing lichen on the ceiling and stalactites, which illuminated a large pair of pony statues, the design of a chain wrapped around a raised forelimb plainly visible. Nearby, a small stream of water wound its way through the floor, a stoneware dish abandoned at the very edge of the flow. I’m pretty sure there was even a fair sized bungalow carved into the opposite wall near the cavern floor.

The crying stopped.

As I shifted my weight to look around, for some way down, my left foot caught a slippery patch of moss, and my balance was lost. With a groan of protest, I went arse over teakettle down the cavern wall. Egads, that’s so slimy!

My descent met a quick end as I found myself deposited in a small pool of surprisingly warm water. Not wanting to find out of there were any carnivorous cave fish waiting for a snack, I scrambled out of the pool, past an overgrown bed of mushrooms, and toward the statues. I don’t know why, but I felt myself drawn to them.

From close up, I could see that the towering pony on the right was an angry looking unicorn, for someone had smashed the horn off of his face... or else it had been carved that way. Conversely, the pony on the left was a pegasus, the likes of which I had only ever seen as a footsoldier during Celestia and Luna’s final attack on the castle. The pegasus looked sad rather than angry, her wings bound with chains and straps.

Looking at a pair of chains ending in manacles descending from their raised hooves made something click inside my mind. If the glossy look to the curved walls of the cavern was any indicator, they all seemed to all be covered in the same slick moss that I had slipped on, meaning that someone had meant to keep people, or ponies rather, down here. This is a gilded cage. Water, minimal food, and a shelter... Are these chains for sacrifices to their captors?

I wanted out of here, and fast. This whole place was creepy, and I was getting a really weird vibe about Sapphire Brie’s history. None of this was right. A child shouldn’t want some life of pending sacrifice over a life of freedom after years of servitude! I turned on my heel...

... and walked straight through the mare standing behind me.

Author's Note:

Many apologies on the time it took for this to be posted. It's honestly been finished since the beginning of the month. I've been sitting on it, waiting for Dash the Stampede to look over it, but I guess things in life keep getting in the way. I'm easily partway through Chapter 5, although how quickly I finish that up is entirely contingent on how long I can peel myself away from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. Won't lie. Addicted.

And yes, there IS a changeling hive [in case you didn't already jump to that conclusion] underneath the Crystal Empire in this universe, but you'll have to learn about it more in the next chapter.

Comments ( 34 )

Just a note that this chapter was entirely edited by me. Reply to this comment if I missed something.

6335950 Find out on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z!

6335923
4th to last paragraph has pony written twice.

A crypt of the lost and damned, with ghosts standing guard past the external defenders who were terrified beyond sanity and forced them selves into the door way to seek something. The terror or hunger drove them to a sudden death, blocking the door, for untold years. Then a child passes through the portal, seeking something. Followed by Shantae who it seems has earned the attention of the spirits who remain.

Shantae's fear of Aliens and Face Huggers is perfectly rational. I can't wait to see how she deals with the Ghost Mare who snuck up on her.

And then nothing of import happened.

6335950 A Changeling Ghost! :fluttershbad:

C...could it be? An update? The sun's rising in the west.....

6335989 Just update soon!:twilightsmile:

Finally, it's nice to see a Shantae fanfic on this site for a change!

Please release the next chapter from it's prison. You know it's the right thing to do.:fluttershysad:

I like your story! Hope for the next chapter!

6718775 As the Princess of Heaven, I agree.

Sad to see this cancelled. I enjoyed what there is of it quite a bit.

No why did it have too get cancelled

I really thought i was the only one that remembered this game though. You never really see people talk about it. And i just found out there is a new one coming this year. Still i would liek too see this continued

What happened to this story?

Before I read. what is the Gore tag for ?

Why was this cancelled?

8484205 Lost creative momentum and interest.

Oh, dang. Was wondering what became of this. Shame, this story showed promise from what i recall.

Please continue this story. *puppy eye applebloom* Please!

Can you plz continue this story it is literally 9 new of TWO shantae story's! I'd not then I still think you are an amazing writer and I apologize for my inconvenience.

Will this story return?

You really should consider continuing this. It's quite good and different enough to be interesting to todays audience.

The only thing that needs any clean up at all is the monkey transformation scene being too drawn out.

Take some time to really consider continuing this.

Monk

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