Aggressive Negotiations
Grand Prince Caldrast was staring in absolute shock, his irises shrunk to tiny dots, his jaw dropped and his tail stunned rigid. The arena had gone equally as silent and still. Cadance almost felt a bit guilty at the satisfaction that gave her. Almost.
Well. Time for one last try. He did look nearly pathetic like that: she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d called for his mother.
“We don’t have to do this,” she said, earnestly. “We can still resolve this peacefully.”
Her words finally broke Caldrast out of his thunderstruck stupor. He shook his head as if to clear it, pride, anger, and humiliation at his reaction visibly warring with apprehension.
“No. No!” he snapped, forcefully. “I shall not back down from you, pony! I am not afraid of you!”
Internally, Cadance sighed. Nothing for it, then. She’d tried her best, but you just couldn’t get through to somecreatures.
“Are you sure?” she needled lightly, with the barest smirk. “Because it sure looked like it from–”
“Begin the duel!” Caldrast interrupted furiously, his face red with shame and anger.
Cadance flourished her blade with practised ease and was secretly delighted to see the twitch of worry in Caldrast’s eyes at the effortless way she made her massive blade dance. All the hours she’d spent practising that had paid off.
The marshal, mastering himself with rather more effort than Caldrast had, spoke again. “The combatants are prepared. The duel begins on my mark. Mark!” The marshal scurried out of the way with most unseemly haste.
Caldrast immediately opened with a snarling leap, swinging his heavy blade in a furious double-taloned downward slice. Cadance was actually fairly sure he’d begun moving before the word was given, but she had expected that. She deftly moved her own blade to intercept.
The resounding clash of the blades echoed throughout the arena. For a moment, they were frozen in place, Caldrast’s furious rage flickering into concern as he realised that Cadance’s sword hadn’t even budged a millimetre from the heavy impact. Nor had the alicorn herself even adjusted her casual stance. Cadance let that sink in for half-a-second, before shoving her blade up and pushing the big alphyn away. Caldrast, off balance mentally and physically, let out a surprised yelp as the motion pushed his blade over his head and nearly sent him head over heels backwards. As it was, he stumbled on his back legs several paces and had to let go with his his left talon before he regained his balance.
He did so just in time to barely dodge Cadance’s own sword swing, calculated to disrupt any attempt he might have made to regain control of himself. The blade whistled past his sternum, leaving in its wake both a slight scratch on the surface of his armour and a trail of incongruously disconcerting little popping hearts.
Cadance knew she had to keep the pressure on. The longer she could keep him from focussing and provoke him into making rash attacks to tire him out, the better her chances were. This fight was going to be difficult at best. Even if she’d been willing to kill him, a dead Caldrast would sign no treaties. Further, the inevitable subsequent scramble for succession and potential civil war would mean that it could take years before there was a successor in position to re-negotiate with. Even knocking him out was out of the question: he needed to be able to offer his surrender for her to be able to accept it by the terms of the alphyn’s honour duels. No, the only way she could win and salvage this situation was to actually force him to capitulate. For that, she was going to have wear him down, physically and mentally.
She held herself still, affecting an aura of cheerful nonchalance with an almost-amused smile on her lips, even as she pressed her attack. Her only movement was to pace one or two steps forward to keep her sword within reach. Caldrast was a consummate schemer, but if she’d judged right from his reactions thus far, he reacted badly when his meticulous schemes were upset and he lost control of the situation. She needed to keep him in a state where he was not thinking clearly.
She swung at him again, and this time he managed rear up and make a double-taloned parry. His eyes widened still further as she exerted her strength and his feet began to skid backwards.
In the royal box, Shining glanced at his family. Spike was motionless, his eyes wide, one claw halfway to his mouth, frozen in mid-chew. Twilight, meanwhile was mumbling in incredulity, eyes glued to the battle. Shining leaned back a bit in his seat, returning his attention to his wife and failing to completely hide his smile. It wasn’t often he could legitimately get one up on his sister, so he might have been forgiven for milking the moment for all it was worth.
“Should have brought some popcorn,” he half-grumbled.
Caldrast abruptly tensed his legs and sprang backwards, taking him out of immediate sword-reach. His tail glowed yellow and flashed into an almost-instinctive spell-pattern. A blazing yellow-hot ball of flame exploded from the tip, easily the size of Cadance’s own head.
She made a split-second judgement, weighing the benefits of keeping her projected stance and attempting to take the fireball hit on magical shields versus dropping the stance and dodging. She opted for the latter, springing to her right with a beat of her wings. The fireball hissed past half a wing’s breadth away from her left flank, and she could feel the heat boiling off it. Wise decision, she reflected, a heartbeat before the fireball exploded against the arena wall. The intensity of the blast was large enough that she felt it from where she was flying.
Oh, snap! she nervously gulped, taken aback. Unfortunately, her momentary hesitation was enough to give Caldrast the fraction of a second he needed to ground himself.
A second fireball followed, and then a third. Cadance dived under the second one, still flying but skimming only a scant hoof-width above the arena floor. She tried intercepting the third one with her sword. But large as it was, her blade was too narrow in proportion to completely block the fireball. It detonated far too close, forcing her to abruptly spread her wings wide and pull up vertically. A fourth fireball came close enough to singe the feathers on her left wing. High enough it should have sent the audience scattering, it instead exploded on an invisible magic screen starting above the wall. Even behind the shield and seated a little distance back, the alphyns directly behind the impact all flinched.
Okay, this was bad. Caldrast was apparently a fire specialist, if the strength of these attacks was anything to go by. And a highly practised one, at that. Now that he was not on the defensive, he was settling into a steady attack sequence, his tail moving nonstop. Cadance realised with a start she could see that he was actually starting one spell-pattern near the base of his tail, a second was working its way down the length while a third pattern completed at the tip. Scratch that, this was really bad.
Twilight gasped, finally shaken out of her stupor at the abrupt reversal. In spite of herself, she was impressed with the level of skill it took to be able to cast spells sequentially. It was not something that a unicorn or even an alicorn could have done – their magic simply did not work in that fashion. Though alphyn spells might have had an overall longer casting time, the ability to queue up more that one spell at once nearly obviated that disadvantage. It was quite clear from Caldrast’s display he was not at all out of practise and she could suddenly see how he had managed to weld the fractious alphyns under his single banner.
Beside her, Shining was no longer smiling. Razor Sharp muttered a muted oath of surprise, his eyes narrowing in calculation.
Caldrast’s expression had gone blank. Cadance took this as the worst sign yet; he’d regained his focus and worse, it meant that every available mental process was now concentrated on beating her, with none spared for grandstanding, fear or anger. He was standing half-rampant, his right arm holding his sword parallel to the ground, his back legs bent, and his left foreleg locked rigidly on the ground. His swiftly-moving tail unleashed a steady stream of fireballs.
She needed to snap him out this as fast as possible – those fireballs were getting closer, and jinking and dodging alone was not going to be enough. She hovered still for a moment, putting up a pale blue spherical shield. A fireball slammed straight at her, and she had to intercept and detonate it with her sword. Her shield took the brunt of the explosion, though not without sucking up far more magic than she would have liked. In return, the moment’s pause bought her enough time to fire a horn-blast at the same moment as the impact.
With no warning and screened by the explosion, Caldrast had no time to dodge. But in her haste, Cadance’s aim had been off, and the beam only hit his right shoulder. To her dismay, the blue-white beam diffused on striking the armour’s magical protection, leaving a glowing white circle around the impact-point which faded after a second or two. The armour didn’t quite absorb all of the force; enough power got through to cause Caldrast to jerk and spoil his aim. The brief flicker in his expression seemed to suggest he had expected his armour to be able to completely block her attack. Cadance grimaced inwardly. On the one hoof, she could still affect him with her horn-blasts. On the other, the magic-ablating effect meant that she was going to have to fire harder and longer to overcome it.
She snapped into a half-aileron roll to her right, keeping her distance so she had more time to react to the fireballs, and blasted a sustained slashing beam across Caldrast’s position, left to right. Caldrast hopped backwards out of the beam’s path, ignoring the spray of hot sand thrown up by the beam’s passage, his fire not even noticeably slowing.
Cadance weaved through another pair of fireballs and dived down to nearly ground level. She rolled to her side and slashed another beam, aimed above his head at his unarmoured tail. Caldrast did have to break off his attack this time, dropping flat and to the left, bringing his sword up. The beam struck the blade and reflected off it and Cadance ceased firing. The alphyn deftly backflipped away from both her next blasts with blinding alacrity, his tail snapping out two fireballs – simultaneously this time.
Caught by surprise, Cadance dodged one, but the second one skimmed over her sword, and it was only instinctively she got a shield up in time. As it was, the direct hit sent her tumbling head over heels. As she came out her spin, she had already started blasting at his former position before she realised he was no longer there.
Where in the hay did he–
A heavy weight collided into her from behind. Darn, he’s so fast, she thought, alarmed, only distantly hearing Spike’s far-too-late cry of warning. Caldrast had somehow leaped up and landed a solid double drop-kick on her with both his rear legs, then practically landed on top of her mid-air. As the alphyn’s weight brought her crashing down, he grabbed his sword with both talons and swung it downwards. She managed to get her own blade in place just in time. She hit the floor at the same time as the flaming blade, knocking the wind out of her and jarring her sword noticeably.
Now she was in trouble. While with her Earth Pony strength, she was probably still the stronger of the two, Caldrast was much heavier and in a position to use his strength to its full extent, whereas she was flat on her back and couldn’t get any leverage.
Caldrast’s smirk was back. He hammered at her sword, attempting to beat through her guard, as she desperately struggled to gain purchase. Frantically trying to think of a strategy, she recalled what the formidable mare who had been her first combat instructor had always advised in this sort of circumstance – and that gave her an idea.
Her horn flared, and the air and sand around her coalesced into a solid upwards thrust of crystal, hurling Caldrast off her. The bulk of the blow had been centred on one particular point, causing eye-watering and a murmur of sympathy from every male in the audience, except Spike.
Catching Shining’s querying glance, Spike shrugged cheerfully.
“Dragon, remember! We don’t have the same dangly bits you guys do!” He danced up in his seat and yelled encouragement. “Go on, hit him there again, Cadance!”
“Spike!” Twilight snapped aghast.
Razor Sharp quietly made a few mental notes, among them not to get on the wrong side off the little dragon...
Cadance kipped up to her feet, her impromptu crystal ram bursting apart. She found that Caldrast had recovered with commendable speed, but from his angry and embarrassed expression, she’d at least shattered his composure.
They both sprang forward with their blades at the same time. Caldrast had maintained enough of his cool to remember his superior speed. He dropped in mid-charge to slide feet-first past her right side, twitching his blade aside from its initial angle at the last second to swing at her flank. Her own stroke had swept above his head; her weapon, despite its relative lightness for its size, was still just a fraction too heavy to compensate. She only barely pulled her body out of reach, and the flaming sword seared a hoof-width’s length off her tail.
Her sword swing, however, was unimpeded by the need for her to hold it physically and she simply continued its trajectory in a circular arc. She put a little more momentum into the stroke for good measure, which carried it fast enough that this time, Caldrast wasn’t quite able to backflip out of the way. The tip grazed his left shoulder, slicing into the armour but failing to penetrate to the skin beneath.
It was then Caldrast had an unpleasant revelation. While he had a blade that was on fire, Cadance had a blade that was on love. Which, the Grand Prince realised with horror, was a far worse thing to be hit by, as it tended to react badly with the dark-at-heart. Unfiltered love-magic boiled into his brain, bubbling over into compassion and dragging out entirely unwanted feelings of remorse. Caldrast let out a distraught cry as these unfamiliar feelings flooded into his skull and bounced around where he was quite unable to repress them.
“I suddenly feel incredibly guilty for selling my grandmother!” he wailed.
He completely missed Cadance’s momentary look of incredulous disbelief. Seriously?
She hit him again, swinging her sword back in from the right before he could recover. His own blade stopped it from slicing into his side, but the jolt bowled him over and the flat of Cadance’s blade struck him in the flank.
“I regret demolishing those four animal shelters to make way for my golden statue!” Caldras involuntarily lamented. But even as he fell, he retained enough presence of mind to send his tail snaking out. It wrapped around Cadance’s left foreleg and pulled it out from under her. Caught flat-hoofed, she sprawled face-first into the sand, just clipping the tip of her horn on the sword’s guard as she fell.
The double impact made her see stars. She scrambled to her hooves to see Caldrast had opened out the range between them. He was now standing more-or-less where he’d begun the duel; she was halfway between him and the royal box behind her.
Caldrast’s tail was just completing a new spell-pattern – he must have started it as he pulled his tail back, she realised. The flames on his sword flared up, blazing from fire-red to searing yellow. With a bellow, a huge stream of fire erupted from the blade towards her, the shock wave scattering the sand in both directions.
She only just had time to slam a shield up. Even so, the heat was incredible – and the attack wasn’t stopping. She tried to move her sword into the path of the blast to try and deflect some of the force, but the flames were so intense that she could barely hold it in the stream. She didn’t even dare try to move or let up her shield to teleport, as it was the only thing preventing her from taking the full force of the blast. She redoubled her efforts and poured all her energy into it, her only hope that she could outlast his attack before she ran out of power.
“Cadance! No!” Twilight cried. The pink alicorn was all but invisible, even her shield disappearing under the yellow inferno.
Shining Armor’s face was an impassive mask, but his jaw twitched minutely.
Caldrast drew in a mighty breath. With a snarl of exertion, he surged his magic and sent a pulse down the stream of fire, which doubled in width, going from yellow to pure white. The pulse slammed into the unseen shield and exploded in a violent flash, leaving behind a cloud of dust and smoke.
Spike let out a wordless cry of horror.
Shining made a sharp intake of breath, but then relaxed slightly, noting the pattern of the cloud. Before he could impart his insight to his sister, the smoke gusted away, revealing a soot-stained and slightly singed Cadance, a few little wisps of smoke rising from several places on her fur and wings.
“Thank Celestia!” Twilight half-sobbed. Spike dropped back into his seat, dizzy with relief, dashing the tears from his eyes.
As the smoke cleared, Cadance, half-boiled and chest heaving, saw Caldrast on all fours in a similar state of exhaustion. The two combatants silently stared at each other for several moments, knowing that the next exchange would likely be the last.
With a final effort, Cadance charged forwards, wings pumping, skimming the ground. Caldrast snatched up his sword with both talons and launched forward like a coiled spring.
Cadance threw herself flat, swinging her sword in from the right and upwards with all her force. The two blades clashed one last time. The strength behind her blow finally tore Caldrast’s sword from his grasp, sending it in a high arc, spinning end over end towards the arena wall. The flames guttered and died mid-flight and it imbedded in the stone halfway to the hilt, juddering.
Caldrast, stunned, looked dolefully from his lost weapon to Cadance, her divine blade tip now pointed at his throat.
“This battle is over,” she said, huffing with exertion. “Yield.”
“Never!” Caldrast spat. “I shall never yield to you–”
Cadance rapped him smartly on the head with the flat of her blade.
“Aaagh! Those poor orphans!”
“Now do you yield?” Cadance asked, her eyebrow twitching slightly. “I can keep going...”
“Never!” Caldrast said, struggling to stand up.
She conked him again.
“Nev–” Conk.
“I shall nev–” Conk.
“Rot in–” Conk.
“Wow, he really doesn’t know when to quit, does he,” Spike observed, buoyant once more, shoveling another handful of rubies into his mouth.
“I feel kind of sorry for him, actually,” Twilight said sadly.
“I don’t,” Shining chirped brightly, giving Razor Sharp a surreptitious high-hoof.
“I... shall,” Caldrast raggedly managed, eyes unfocused, before wavering and collapsing to his haunch and knees, breathing heavily.
“Are you ready to give up yet?” Cadance asked, rather more kindly that was probably necessary and with just a hint of pleading at the edges. She didn’t take any pleasure in having to hit a defeated opponent, but until he acceded, there wasn’t anything she could do without actually killing him. He had to offer his surrender before she could accept it and he couldn’t do that while unconscious.
Caldrast drew a shuddering breath.
“I... yield..”
Cadance started to smile in relief–
“...to NO-ONE!” His shout was so loud Cadance felt her hair blow back. “Not to you, nor to a land full of vacuous, empty-headed grazers, nor to a fat, old, cake-obsessed lackadaisical sun-nag, nor her sister who spends her time bothering the dreams of foals in the vain hope of conning somecreature into spending time with her, nor to a neurotic, jumped-up child incapable of seeing past the book she has jammed her pointy head into, nor her stupid, shamefully house-broken joke of a brother and least of all, her vile, emasculated, magic-spawned progeny whose very existence is an insult to every dragon who has ever lived!”
Cadance’s mouth hung open.
There was a collective gasp from around the arena.
Shining was half-ready to grab Twilight in case she leaped down to the arena, but for good-or-ill, it appeared the sheer audacity of Caldrast’s diatribe had momentarily short-circuited her brain.
“Harsh,” Spike whispered, more than a little stung.
“Ooooh,” observed Razor Sharp, tutting quietly. “You shouldn’t ought to have said that, Caldy...”
Cadance’s expression went flat, eyes narrowed. It was only now, finally, that it occurred to Caldrast he might have made a tactical error. Somewhere in the back of his head, the smartest portion of his brain, hitherto largely unheard over the prideful parts, made a little whimper and curled into a foetal position.
The resultant spifflication was only half-observed by those in the arena, who were too busy averting their gaze and audibly wincing at every blow.
(Except Spike, who was jumping up and down in his seat, whooping and hollering and shouting encouragement at the top of his voice.)
Cadance gazed down at the battered, blithering, semi-conscious twitching heap of alphyn before her. Dismissing her divine weapon in a bright shower of blue sparks, she leaned over, head to one side, and cocked an ear.
“Now do you yield?”
Caldrast made a sort of high-pitched wheezing noise and twitched slightly. Close enough.
“He says yes,” Cadance announced, with a big, closed-eyed beaming smile.
“Uh,” said the marshal, uncovering his eyes and regaining his composure. “I, uh, declare this duel to be concluded! Princess Cadance of Equestria and the Crystal Empire is the winner!” He glanced apprehensively at the great pile of Grand Prince, but there was no further reaction.
There was a sort of nervous applause from the watching crowds, but the exuberant cheer from the Equestrians more than made up for it.
Cadance trotted away, eyes closed and smiling up at the royal box. Internally, she was straining her ears, hoping, pleading, that Caldrast wouldn’t do the predictable thing and would stay down. But just in case, she surreptitiously counted down on her right wing primaries: three... two... one…
Right on cue, with sad inevitability, Caldrast exploded from the ground towards her unprotected back, bellowing with rage.
Twilight’s yelp of warning cut off half-way through as Cadance deftly performed a complicated manoeuvre, part back-flip, part roll, which had her suddenly behind the astonished pouncing alphyn. It happened so fast that more of the watchers didn’t even see how she did it, only registering that the pink alicorn was abruptly there and delivering an almighty buck to the leaping alphyn’s rear mid-flight. Spike ever after swore blind he’d seen a flare of blue and burst of sapphire love-hearts at the point of impact.
Caldrast, propelled by his own momentum and accelerated by Cadance’s tremendous buck, had barely enough time to register what had happened. His roar turned into a screech just before he slammed face-first into the arena wall. He pancaked against it hard enough to crack the stone into spiderwebs. He hung there for a moment, then peeled off bonelessly onto his back on the sand, well-and-truly unconscious. His tail flopped on top of him like a cut rope.
With a disappointed sigh and shake of her head, Cadance flew up to the royal box to be pounced on by her family in a far more pleasant manner.
“That was amazing!” Twilight gushed, as the diplomatic party trotted back to the palace from the arena. Once her adrenaline rush had worn off and she’d confirmed for herself that Cadance was largely unhurt, Twilight was only barely less excited than Spike. “When did you become so good at fighting? Why did I never hear about it!”
Cadance giggled lightly. “One, you were always too busy with your books to notice. Two, you know how much attention ponies pay to crises unless they affect them personally! I amazed when you girls told me that Daring Do’s adventurers were all real! You would have thought at least some of them might have made the papers! Didn’t most of the ponies at the first Grand Galloping Gala or even your birthday party fail to recognise the girls as the Elements of Harmony at all at first?”
“I guess so,” Twilight admitted. Pony news was a funny thing. Celestia over-indulging in cake (again) was front-page news, but a dragon attack sometimes barely merited a small side-story the middle pages. “But– but –Chrysalis! And Tirek!”
Cadance smiled mirthlessly. “Chrysalis got the jump on me. I’d just gotten through a difficult battle with a pair of Indriks that were threatening Canterberry. She ambushed me with a couple of dozen drones when I was alone and too exhausted to fight back and drained me nearly dry.”
“And Tirek?” Cadance continued. “Well, the plan was never to fight him, was it? We gave you our magic so you could hide it. But even if it had been, you would still have been the right choice. While I may be a more experienced fighter than you, your special talent is magic, Twilight. I could never have handled the power overload as well as you did.”
Twilight blushed a little at the earnest praise.
“But with the way things are going, Twilight,” Cadance observed somberly, “I think you’re going to get a lot more fighting experience, too.”
The group fell quiet for a moment, before Cadance spoke up again.
“Maybe with everything going on we should try and arrange some time to spar – you, and the girls. And Spike, too, of course,” she added, smiling in the direction of the little dragon.
“You know,” Twilight said, “as unexpected as this all has been, I think I’d like that.”
That night, the ponies and dragon were showered with food (and gems) and spent the night in a rather more fancy suite; this one had several separate bedrooms, and was capable of more than comfortably holding all nine of them with room to spare. Spike spent the entire time bouncing around excitedly and reenacting the battle with waving arms and making noises until he wore himself quite to sleep. Razor Sharp, solemnly and with his usual understatement (and completely ignoring the half-exasperated glances Twilight and Cadance were sending him), deliberately encouraged the little dragon and ensured that Spike missed no details and got everything in order, under the auspices of giving a full account to the other Elements.
Cadance went to take a long bath, and retired early to her room. And if Shining Armor excused himself very shortly afterwards and firmly closed the door behind him, nopony politely took notice of it.
It was the following day when Grand Prince Caldrast, heavily bandaged to the point he looked more like a mummy and noticeably starting every time Cadance so much as glanced in his direction, signed the treaty.
The Grand Prince explained, in whimpers and squeaks translated by his servitors, that he was, in fact, extremely pleased to be signing the treaty, and actually, perhaps he had been a bit harsh and perhaps Equestria would like some more concessions? Please? Also, in entirely unrelated circumstances, that he was announcing a whole raft of new orphanages, rest homes, pet homes and free candy to be distributed to small children.
In the end, the trade agreement was very fair on both sides. Twilight, utterly delighted, completely failed to suppress a little unladylike squee of excitement as she signed under the Grand Prince’s somewhat shaky signature and seal. Spike immediately sent the Equestrian copy to Celestia via dragon-fire, ensuring that Caldrast had no opportunity to renege; beaten he may have been, but Spike didn’t trust him as far as he could have thrown the big alphyn.
As they walked back to the royal carriage and the train that would start their journey home, Twilight frolicked along. Spike sat firmly on her back, eagerly telling the story for the umpteeth time to anypony that would listen. Cadance smiled at the sight, but then looked down and sighed softly.
“Something wrong, honey?” Shining asked quietly. “It all turned out okay in the end.”
“I know,” Cadance said. “I just feel a little guilty.” She looked away. “I know scaring Prince Caldrast straight is probably better than him being the way he was, even if it might not last for long. But... well, I still had to beat it into him. I just don’t like having to resort to force like that, even when it is necessary. Even though he left me no choice.”
Shining nuzzled her comfortingly. “I know you don’t. But you know what Celestia would say.”
“That if I didn’t feel like this, I wouldn’t be worthy of wielding the power I do,” Cadance replied. “I believe her, but even doing so still doesn’t change that fact I do feel guilty, you know?”
Shining brushed her side lightly, and in return she gave him a quick winghug before they entered the carriage.
After they had settled in, and the train’s whistle sounded their departure, Twilight looked over to her sister in-law.
“So, Cadance,” she said. “At the risk of setting Spike off again,” Spike rubbed the back of his head and grinned sheepishly, “maybe you could tell me some of things you’ve been doing between being my foalsitter and marrying Shiny?” She looked at her sister-in-law hopefully. With Spike’s eager, pleading gaze turned to the Protector of the Crystal Empire as well, Cadance could hardly refuse.
Cadance smiled, settling more comfortably into Shining Armor’s side.
“Well, there was the time Aunt Celestia sent me out to track down this peluda that was harassing a small village…”
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This was pretty good! I enjoyed it. Not many stories can pull off a good badass Cadence.
Canterberry? I suspect there is a tale or two there...
Bad literary references aside - part 2 was worth the wait. I'm even going to try this one on my daughter...
It's hard enough to write a convincing swordfight without bringing magic into it, but you have written a compelling duel here. Good job!
"I regret selling my grandmother!" *giggle*
6182172
6182394
Thank you! This was my first attempt at actually writing a proper action scene like this (though far FAR from the first time in my head...!), so I'm glad it worked.
The major thing was to ensure that the fight was more even, as letting Cadance just beat the crap out of Caldrast - while hilarious - wouldn't have been all that interesting. So I tried to ensure that, although Cadance basically had the advantage, that no fight is ever garenteed.
(I dislike the standard of fights - especially common in anime and fanfiction - where it goes "bad guy beats hero soundly, then hero managed to reverse at last moment," be it over the course of one or more fights. I figure both sides should be feeling the pressure, which I attempted to show here.)
6182263
*tips helmet*
Anything I can do to to aid the goal of corrupting the next generation...!
6182409
I rather liked that one myself...!
I don't think Caldrast will be sitting on that throne much longer. Under normal circumstances I suspect alphyn honor would make any potential challengers wait until he is fully recovered before challenging him again and he is strong. But, by attacking Cadance after the duel was declared over and worse failing at it he has publicly discarded the honor that would otherwise protect him while he's weakened.
A fun story! Excellent job on making your readers really desire to see the Prince get his smug face smashed in, and then delivering it in a most satisfying way. The reveal of Cadance's secret badass nature was nicely done, and I truly loved her frilly 10-foot sword with its bubbly heart effects. Plus the whole thing aligns well with my own headcanon that Cadance and Shining were on Equestrian-crisis duty while Twilight was being trained by Celestia.
Thanks for sharing it!
Lol, I wanted Cadance to lose.
6184975
Not a Cadance fan, I take it...?
6184302
Thank you! I'm glad to see I'm not quite the only one who has that line of thinking!
6183747
Now, that's an interesting question. On the one hoof, the alphyns that are left have been THOROUGHLY cowed by Caldrast. In the sense that all those who were of the "proud/noble warrior race" types Caldrast would have made certain he dueled an killed. (Remember, he doesn't have to accept their surrender even if it is offered.) So in short, anyone who might have been a threat to Caldrast has long been exterminated (one way or another).
So the remaining Princes will be completely under his talon (for one reason of another) and, so long as he's alive, they very likely dare not move against him, since even if they succeeded in killing him, the personal cost to them would be extremely high. (It's how he can cheerfully disregard he honour rules; because he doesn't himself have any but he's more than smart enough to take advantage of the system to abuse the people that do. And has had done, to the point he's very actually eliminated all his potential rivals.)
What you have left, then, are the cowardly schemeing-type Princes, who value their own skin and priviledges far more than honour. They are still too crap-scared of Caldrast to try anything - and Cadance has now proved to be EVEN MORE scary than them, so it's quite likely they would probably run at the mere sight of her...!
But remove that obstacle, and they'd get straight back to their own manouvering for power. It would not unlike removing Vetenari from Ankh-Morpork - even if you could do so, it probably would not be in your best interests to do it, since the ensuing chaos would be bad for business. (It would be very bad for Equestria if Caldrast was removed for power; it would be as bad as having killed him in the duel, since the following Princes would not necessarily agree to the same terms, and trying to scare them into it would be messy and nasty as Equestria would essentially have to involved in a civil war.)
And on the other hoof, a scared-straight Caldrast might actually be in an even stronger position, since for (however long his change of heart lasts) his sudden desire to do good deeds (which will be echoed by his cronies) will likely build up popular support. So, daft as it is Cadance may have actually helped stabilise his regime even further.
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Thank you! As, if I do have a tendancy in my stories (and my wargames... and my RPG quests) to build towards a "sudden thing you don't see coming", it's good to know this still works even if you do know...!
You know what other couple this reminds me of?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwkGW748vlM&feature=youtu.be&t=1m15s
(Only of those two, it's Steven who is a "magical prince".)
6424035
Huh. Well, great minds and all that, or something...!
(That clip paints the series in question in a better light than UK CN trailers, but it's not one I've watched myself.)
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That could either be a) an oversight by the marshal, b) an oversight by the author, c) a deliberate attempt by Caldrast to further snub Cadance and Equestria or d) all of the above at once...
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Thank you!
*tips helmet*
One might legitimately observe that Caldrast is a DM's boss-monster-y sort of character - since the vast majority of what I write is quests and whatnot. Caldrast was sort of there, ultimately, to be something for Cadance to wail on and aside from Sufficient Context, I did not give it more thought than that. (I'm just not wired to think about it that way around.) So there was a certain DM BBEG[1] slant to him, setting up a domino for the PC/Protagonist to knock down, because the DMing is so deeply ingrained after over quarter of a century! (One thing we discovered as Skywriter editied was that I tend to write everything as read-aloud flavour text if I'm not careful!)
I also am more of a fan of those who are Evil because they chose to be (or are "because I can") - largely because I associate with them far more personally. So there is that bias as well to consider.
On top of all that, I was trying to avoid the mental place of making him like this universe's (theorhetical) version of Sombra (which if Magic ever happens and I actually ever wrote the one or two stories that have been kicking around in my head since season one one might see), intelligent, ruthless and capable enough to be able to stand-up to everyone at once - at least for a while. I have a noted tendancy to cleave towards that sort of thing. (An examination of any of my campaign worlds will find the major evil threats are pretty much always Lawful Evil or equivilent, with highly-trained and organised armies, rather than the uncounted hordes and whatnot more typical!)
In a perfect world with unlimited time and motivation - and were I was magically capable of writing such - I ideally would have done the actual pre-fic diplomacy in more detail (i.e. shown, not told). You would have seen more OF Caldrast, certainly... But, ultimately, I fear, Caldrast was principally an enormous egomanic (probably medically narassitic or something), who just happened for rare occasions to have the competance to back it up and enough personal charisma and intelligence to manipulate people into feeling that competance.
(That said... I wouldn't rule out inspiration striking me I was writing, as it sometimes does and resulting in something outside what I'd original thought, so who knows?)
As it was, I gambled and hoped that I could give enough context (and apparently succeeded, from the reactions!) with careful exposition, to not have to do that, as otherwise it likely have meant, I never would have started; it would have hit my mental "too big, will become a chore to write" threashold. (Which is why I have all the respect for the fine fellows like yourself that stick to the bitter end. I am stubborn enough to do it, I think, if I forced myself[2], but at that point it's not really fun anymore.)
[1]Big Bad Evil Guy
[2]I have been known to blither on recaps of adventures or let's play for an entire year, even when evidence suggests no-one is paying the slightest attention after the first post or two.
Seattle's Angels should definitely hype this story. Where else can you find a believable Warrior-Princess Cadence?
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Thank you! I should be so lucky!
Yes, there are far too few stories with Cadance (or for that matter, Celestia) getting to do awesome stuff.
I also noted in the movie, though the other Princesses were predictably Worfed (*sigh*) Caddy at least, was the one who actually reacted FIRST and actually blocked the attack with the diarchs and Twilight stood gawping. (And also she was the first to be targetted!) This pleases me, since it actually helps my case...!
Certainly.
Ignoring the side clauses and quotation interruption, currently it reads "What it is this time?" which is the wrong word order for it and is in a question. You'd say, "What is it?" not "What it is?"
If you meant "I can't find that" then here is the full excerpt: (edit: here, ch1)
8777992
https://www.englishgrammar.org/degrees-comparison/
The comparative (more/-er) is used when comparing two, the superlative (most/-est) when comparing more than two.
8778855
To the first:
*skulldesk*
Aaaand that is clearly why both Skywriter and I missed it, because I couldn't see for looking. (It was kinda late last night, though, in my limited defence!)
Fixed.
As to the second.:
Interesting. I often find it a bit odd that English language (or at least when I was at school/college) never seemed to get nearly so much into the nitty-gritty of the mechanics of the language (even when I A level English, albiet literature, not language[1]). Clearly, this is one of those bits.
I did/am doing some further research on it. Some of the examples I've been finding are so obvious that I would never have done it wrong (e.g. Apples are dearer than oranges) and some that I find do sound natural, even if they are apparently, strictly wrong. (e.g. of 'Which of the two sisters is the prettier?' and 'which of the two sisters is the prettiest?', the second one sounds more correct to me. (And according to one ot two places I looked, this is one of those issues where in the instances it crops up, there is something to be said for a degree of artistic lisence for some occasions.)
In this specific instance, (unlike say with "best" verses "better"), the technically correct is fine and I have changed it.
It is something I will certainly try to remember and give a cursory thought to in future (and so, in an instance where I do it "wrong" I will at least hopefully do so on the auspises of it "sounding right," even if it technically isn't!
I have, as they say, learned something, so thank you once again.
[1] I WOULD have done the latter, but I was daft enough to do four A-levels at once and it didn't fit in with the other three.
It had been about a month since Caldrast's defeat at the hooves of Candace and already he was plotting his revenge. "I'll get that prissy-little-princess... I'll get them all! And NOCREATURE is going to-"
In a flash of light a creature with miss-matched body parts materialized before him. Caldrast froze. His heart stopped dead for a moment. He knew what this beast was. It was told of in hushed whispers around campfires by cubs to scare each other, and by superstitious old females who considered it evil incarnate. He barely managed to studder. "Y-y-y-you... Y-y-you're DI-" An eagle's talon seized him around the throat.
"That's right." The draconequus grinned maliciously.
"I'm Discord, Lord of Chaos! And that 'Fat, old, cake-obsessed lackadaisical sun-nag' and 'her sister who spends her time bothering the dreams of foals in the vain hope of conning somecreature into spending time with her' you where just talking about?"
With the next three words, Caldrast knew he was dead.
"They're my sisters."
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It would probably be as well - for him anyway - that Caldrast didn't know that (if that were true in the nominal continuity that I half-have this set-in[1]), or he almost certainly would have managed to work Discord into his rant as well. When spitting fumes, Caldrast is not the most... Circumspect individual.
Glad you enjoyed it.
[1]If the Fic(s) That Will Probably Never Be Written ever was (were), there would be a possibility that Discord might have been... Currently indisposed at the time.
In any case, magnificent, well-balanced beatdown, to say nothing of the setup that made it feel so cathartic. I wish I'd read this years ago. (And I can't help but note that even in the movie, Cadence was the only non-Twilight princess who even tried to defend herself.) Thank you for this.
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*tips helmet*
Thank you! I was very glad I made the effort to get this out, actually, since not long after that, I didn't have as much free time anymore.
I had a jolly old laugh myself at that point of the movie and quietly thought "Heart of the Matter canon confirmed...!"
(Though in fairness, if I ever wrote the story that has floated around since season one, Celestia would have got her badass moment too. That sadly, is likely not to ever get done, simply because it would have been a huge undertaking that I'm not sure I could sustain to actually finish (or at least, not without it becoming a chore). So I content myself with this one, at least!)
I enjoyed this a good deal. Cadance here is powerful without being braggadocious, and the turn of putting her on her back hooves was well executed.
That, and we just don't get all that many fics where's she's a force to be reckoned with, so it's always nice to read a good one.
An oddball ghost happened across your fic and read it. Have a review!
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Thank you for the review and the recommendation, which, considering how little fanfic I've written (four, maybe, in... huh, will be about twenty years now), is more than I could hope for. (I point at Skywriter's editing for enabling a quantum leap in how my approach to writing had changed, which benefitted a lot of my rules-writing stuff as well.)
(And I just realised on reading the description on the review how accidently moderately topical this might kind of seem to anyone coming in, what with a greedy autocrat who has ceased power from a corrupt oligarchy getting a deserved beatdown. That seems to be my lot, of late, accidently topical despite having planned or written stuff months or years in advance...)