From the Flames in the Firelight

by Snowybee

2 - Came the Night

Powerful magics had seeped into the very earth long ago, sewn by powerful forces to root their stake into the heart of their land. The energy that comprised such a powerful hex hummed through the ground and air with nerve-wracking steadiness; an unnatural pall about the entire shining kingdom.

The residents within enjoyed the presence. The spell protected them from the teething cold, the wolves seeking blood, the madness of the outside. The ethereal warmth below the shimmering kingdom created the most fantastic illusion; the illusion that a scoop of spring had fallen into the chilly bowl of the land.

However, boundary between the warmth and the cold languished. The enchantments pilfered the traces of heat and life from the outside to sustain itself within, leaving only a cold that could freeze even the words from the air.

Through it all, a lone pegasus fought through the winter gusts. Though the icy winds feigned beauty, they felt as though a lane of tacks dragged across her wings. At her back, the heartbeat of the lustrous city licked at her bones one last time, before it could no longer spare her the suffering of the dense blizzard that hampered her flight.

The frost must have spread unevenly through her heart, for a more thawed corner of it throbbed. Unconsciously, her eyes the pull in her chest to that side, and through the snowfall, a blot of red had appeared like a sore upon her temple.

“Trying to fly again, Cadenza?” a voice called to her. The sound blanketed her mind, snuffing the roar of the winds until they screeched at her from behind a thick, stone door. The voice paused, as if expecting a response. “I see you’re getting better at flying, Dearie. You know how it goes, though. If you hurt those beautiful wings, Hew won’t know how to fix them.”

The pegasus gulped. A ball of chilled saliva tormented her throat and nerves.

“Let me tell you a secret. I think Papa isn’t doing the right thing by making you bind them up when we’re not around. I know he’s only worried, but smothering you like that won’t help either.”

Her eyes narrowed. The red blot’s last whisper faded away in the returning winds. No one would fix her wings up should she take a spill so far out in the wilderness.

Alone.

Wasn’t that the point? Behind her goggles, the pegasus’s eyes fluttered. From the edges of her sight, the glass frosted over.

The true cold of the North bore down upon her. The second guesses cried in unison from the sting. With trepidation, she peeked over her shoulder.

No sign of that shining majesty. Only seas of snow. She turned her eyes forward once more after what felt like an eternity of searching.

The itch around her shoulders persisted, even though she was blind. The pull of the North stayed true to the migratory creature, so there was no doubt that she would find her way. The cradle of warmth she knew was beyond her reach, with as far as she’d come. Her beloved would be faced with the very real possibility that this was her last hurrah; her last act on this wonderful, wonderful world. A pegasus only knew, in their heart, the pull of the North. It was the purview of the earth pony to be pulled back by aspirations and commitments and relationships. It should have been all their own. The longing for home set in on the feeble pegasus, overpowering the drive to go forward.

An elbow bumped her side. The contact pulled her attention to the side, and she saw a face. Devoid of eyes, the head rested within folds of snow, riding the wind. The mouth moved, yet the words she heard hardly fit the enunciations. “I know you’re different, Cadie. I know you try your damndest to be strong, to hold your ground like the rest of us, but ya can’t. It ain’t right. Your body just can’t be strong the same way ours can.”

A powerful shift overtook the currents. Walls of wind crashed into each other in combat, leaving the pegasus to helplessly toss about. She gasped. Bone scraped higher up her shoulder, higher than it should have. Her wing became slack. The winds tossed her about, funneling her limp body downward.

Her consciousness snapped back. For the briefest moment, her eyelids faltered. She tore them open. The horizon rotated from beyond the swirls of snow. That face appeared between her eyes as two blurry images, which seemed to ignore the chaos all around it. Her head swam.

"You can't take risks like this, kid. You wanna spread your wings? Well, be ready to leave something behind every time you do. I might be the next thing to go."

She shrieked. Not fear. Anger. The useless wing whipped behind her back. The twister of the landscape settled into a perfect picture. She focused. The horizon closed in, jaws around her entire body.

She flared her good wing against the wind. Her joint screamed as the limp one did, but all of her aggression pooled to her breast, holding the limb out with iron force. Her wing burned with exertion and energy. The feathers shimmered and caught the flakes of snow, one by one. From her side to the joint to the tips of her pinions, scales of frost solidified to relieve her muscles. The hard part ended there.

Eyes turned to the ground. Her body stopped tumbling. The veil of snow thinned just enough to expose the landscape below. Her hooves swiped at the air. Not in panic anymore, but for something else. The air stirred about the pegasus, following the motions of her legs. Two small streams of wind reacted to her magic. One twirled about her body, and the other mirrored it. With a small droplet of clarity, the pegasus angled the two streams toward her frozen wing.

Her eyes bulged. A sheer slope barreled towards her, and at the base rested icy boulders. Her body rotated at last, angling the ice towards the ground. With all her might, she flared the curled wing under the ice. An explosion of glass raced towards the ground ahead of her, an array of deadly spikes. At the last second, her magic went wild, away from her grasp and into the cloud of icicles.

In an instant, the suction at the heart of vortex melded the ice together, less than a second left. The newly-sewn icicle at last gained the mass to escape the vortex, just as the winds pounded the earth below in a small explosion. The wave of pressure immediately flung the icicle towards the pegasus. The magic in her hooves flared. She threw out a foreleg blindly, and the icicle snapped onto it with a loud crunch.

She bit through her tongue. The rest of her hooves righted the ice. The tips of the trees rocketed by at last.

All her senses failed in the next moment. Time sped up and ran away with all her focus clenched in its jaw.

Walls of white erupted all around her.

Her joints crumpled together. Her skin tore; it must have. The ground roared beneath her, and in the next jolt of awareness, a deafening ring tortured her ears. A lead weight dropped in her belly; then, an eruption of pain across her entire body. A monolith tipped over onto her lungs, and the air left it.

The shredded bolt of her sight fluttered in consciousness. Sparks. Nothing.

***

The lone pegasus leaned against the tree.

Fire roared in the pit. She studied her hooves. The left forehoof bore a wicked crack, crusted in blood. The other appeared mostly unscathed. Most definitely unfitting for the rest of her appearance. Her frayed mane set in a hasty bun and anarchic coat more fitted a vagabond, yet her hooves appeared far too immaculate to indicate her journey was even past infancy.

Given her station, simple survival tricks were not easy to come by. Once more her cracked hoof met the well one. One little strike, and a shower of sparks rained. Her hairs stood on end about her good leg.

Alas, a whimper wormed its way between her lips. No longer did the limp, throbbing wing on her shoulder wane in silence.

A pair of red hooves took her bleeding left hoof between them. The pegasus winced. Pain had tripped the surprise on its way to her brain it seemed.

“Oh, look at you, you poor thing,” the mare said. Though she kept her head down, the pegasus gave the mare her full attention. “Your wing, it… it doesn’t look good.”

The pegasus sighed.

“I know you’re a mature filly, Cadenza. That’s why I’m telling you the truth. You wouldn’t ‘want it any other way’. Your words, yes?”

She swallowed. “Y-yes, Mother. Us ponies are tough as nails, and I c-can’t be weak.”

The mare’s hooves slackened a tad. “You have an earth pony’s heart.” The grip regained its strength. “I brought you up since you were a little foal, Cadenza. And let me say this: I’ve never seen a little filly get into so much trouble, get into so many scrapes, and still keep barreling through everything life throws at hers like you have.”

The wing throbbed once more, lancing pain down her spine and hip. A pained sob. “You think it’ll h-heal, Mother?”

The older mare hummed to herself, gently circling her hoof upon the pegasus’s ankle. “You’ll be just fine, Cadenza. As long as you can walk on home with me and your Father, that’s all that matters.”

Her mother stepped away.

The moon’s bluish glow painted, through the trees, the pristine quilts of snow around her camp. Only her own breathing signaled life in the forest. Dead silence poisoned the air with its aging flesh, flesh that settled upon its death some time ago. A web of frost bound her on the inside, staving off sleep and simple comfort with waves of biting cold.

She wanted to scream. Only thoughts of scavengers, holed up in the silence, stayed her coiling frustration. The throes of fantasy tempted her in place of sleep, and already she had given in once before. The all-encompassing woe that snared her with its black, crooked teeth snapped the strings binding her awareness to her body, one by one. It was so easy to simply... lay down...

She growled.

With her right hoof, she pulled herself closer to the flame. It's warmth wrapped her wits about her once more, and the chill upon her back tingled with intensity. The numbness failed to claim her lame wing. The pegasus ground her teeth.

She would die. If not then; if not there. No one would be looking for her. The lack of energy would creep upon her the more she spent her reserves to spark fires. With inarguably damaged legs, foraging fell far out of favor.

The wing. She needed it to be right, to carry her again. Yet, it dangled, free from its socket. The muscle must have been torn. The pain only screamed, didn’t tell her what was important. No, she screamed on the inside. The pain was too much. She was too little, too small to think beyond it. A shame. A waste. Worthless.

Something clicked in her ears, before she knew it. The bubbling mud of whispers overtook her one moment, but the air rushed back to her ears. All the quiet came back. Her legs trembled. When did she stand?

She stood before a stone, a short distance from the fire. That simple move jostled her wing enough to reignite the pain. The hairs on her jaw felt iced over as she worked it. Slowly, she forced her wing to curl inwards. A rain of red-hot arrows arced along the base and joint, halting her brave advance, and yet…

She swallowed back the snot and tears. A head of snow looked up at her from between her bruised forelegs. Like the snow, the eyes held no life, but they didn’t need to. The gaze of scorn was ever-etched into his face. Wouldn’t the general execute her for desertion? Wouldn’t she spare him the trouble and do it herself? No, she already had begun the process. The steel of winter pressed into her skin from all sides, but the little wick inside her heart burned yet. It could still be saved.

Though she tried to do so carefully, the most subtle slackening of her leg muscles rendered her descent into a sloppy tumble, which tossed about her wing. Stones ground in her ears, a high pitched creak. The trace of an echo, not unlike her voice, bounced between the trees. Her steely resolve whined under the weight of the pain.

No time to lose.

She wormed closer to the stone, and with all her strength she flexed the wing as far as it could go, wrapping about the heavy object.

Then, she rolled her shoulder forward. Gross, leathery agony rippled around her flesh. She pushed hard against the faceless enemy. Did it dare oppose her, a princess?

Her unmistakeable growls of pain broke through at last. It was her that sounded a broken beast. A beast. A monster. A creature that commanded respect. Her jaw dropped for just a moment, and a drop of slobber and snot peeled itself from the corner of her mouth. Pathetic beast. It could hardly take it.

Energy roared to life in her body. Still a monstrous, powerful creature she was. At last, her body jerked, and the tension faded in her shoulder. Shuddery breaths carried the life her body emanated in the lonely patch of wood, the sole resident. She hoped, anyways. Perhaps her display had scared even the creatures below the ground away. Somehow, the loss of the agony left a sense of loneliness.

She unscrewed her puffy eyes. Her head lay just before the mound of snow that looked to her, but the face had vanished.

A weary chuckle pushed by her lips and her cheeks took on a hue to oppose the dull pallor it once took. “O-old man. Did I scare ya? Huh? W-well? Heh.” she whispered to herself.

The trees were the last thing she could take in before unconsciousness seized her. All of the snow had fallen away from their branches for dozens of meters around.

Oh, her husband would be proud.

Author's Note:

A bit of a change, mainly due to plans changing mid-write. Enjoy!