The invasion lasted all of thirty minutes, most of which I spent being dead.
In the morning, it took hours to convince Cady and Twilight I’m not actually made of glass, that I do have some work to do, no matter how unimportant, and that I’m at least fit for desk duty. Which really is where most of my job happens, no matter what everypony imagines. The doctor tried to convince me, waving the death certificate he wrote while Cady was standing over my corpse, but Twily glared at the thing so hard, that it actually evaporated right there, scaring him out of his stethoscope. By the time she realized that the doctor really was on their side in this, it was a bit too late.
They continued resisting, but I insisted. I really needed some time alone to think.
I’m sure that dress uniform tunic is going to the Royal Guard museum now. And I don’t want to even touch the morning newspapers. This isn’t how I wanted to end up in history books.
The Royal Guard itself is something of a historical curiosity, and the more time I spend in this office, the more it seems to me that all of us belong in that museum, together with our shiny armor and our spears. A colthood dream turned… Something weird. The Guard was originally founded by the decree of Princess Platinum, who decided she needs a completely separate elite unit to guard her person, and I’ve heard at least five different theories as to why, some of them supposing elaborate conspiracies, and others citing vanity. Since history retained very little actual evidence any of the Founders even existed, beyond their signatures on the portion of the original scroll of the Accords that wasn’t immersed in custard, it hardly matters all that much. What does is that the Royal Guard escaped being merged into the Earth-Unicorn-Pegasi Guard in 1012 and remained as the castle guard of Canterlot under direct command of Princess Celestia.
Over time, this translated into two sets of duties that have next to nothing to do with each other, one of which is police jurisdiction over Canterlot and its environs, and the other is protecting the Princess and other national VIPs, wherever they may wish to go. Effectively, I’m the only chief of police in Equestria that answers directly to the Sisters, and not to the EPA. Also the only one who commands an actual artillery unit in a metropolitan area, not that it has ever done us any good. When trouble comes calling here, it tends to bypass the walls entirely.
So many of the reports written about yesterday’s events ended up on my desk, and I was determined to read every single one, no matter how ugly they might turn out to be, or how thick the stack gets. Even if Princess Celestia decides there won’t be a quiz, I still feel it’s my duty to know.
The stack turned out to be considerably thinner than I had anticipated.
The invasion was over pretty quickly, and it was very good that it ended when it did. The reports were unclear on the total number of casualties, because the hospitals were still flooded. The majority of the wounded suffered from symptoms that were as vague as they were debilitating – weakness, depression, and what the ones that could still talk could only describe as “brain fatigue.” Those that received visits from friends and family were showing rapid improvement, and doctors expressed hopes most would be discharged within the week. The number of tourists from all over Equestria made locating the said friends and family rather complicated, and my guardsponies were strained just keeping things in order.
And I probably should be out there with them, but instead, I’m sitting here and reading their reports. I felt myself way in over my head once again. Solve the only murder to turn up in a decade, and everypony seems to think you’re some kind of genius. I have always thought somepony more senior should be sitting in this chair, but the Princess would hear none of it.
Back to the reports.
Those with more conventional injuries sustained during the battle were actually worse off. Compared to other tribes, let alone most of the non-pony races, unicorns tend to be somewhat fragile, so discounting those that just needed stitches or a kiss to make them better, there were a lot of ponies out there who would need wheel-carts. Some of them, for the foreseeable future. It was hardly a consolation that all of those were my guardsponies, so they were at least guaranteed honors and a pension. It’s a miracle on par with what Cadance did that there was only one confirmed fatality.
Except me, that is.
And the changelings. In addition to the thirty four taken prisoner, which almost filled the castle dungeons, the number of corpses exceeded the capacity of city morgues, and emergency facilities were set up in accordance with disaster relief protocols. Nopony could clearly tell just how many corpses there are, either, because even emergency workers don’t normally get to assemble a jigsaw puzzle on that kind of scale. Especially when some pieces are missing.
The captured ones weren’t that much better off. They were refusing to eat anything, including griffon cuisine, trying to bite the staff instead, and actively resisting any attempts at communication. I wonder if they consider talking to food demeaning. If the ancient legends are true, and they do require love for sustenance, they’re probably not long for this world, either, because even compassion for them was in short supply. And I couldn’t even rightly fault anypony for it.
This is not the first time Canterlot was invaded by creatures of dark magic, not by far. Mom and dad have a lot of stories about the last one, they keep making jokes about hospital beds. There’s even that crazy theory there’s some kind of regular invasion cycle. But this attack is the bloodiest one in centuries, it doesn’t fit that cycle, and it’s far more calculated than any of those on record. I knew our wedding would probably be a chaotic affair, but I never expected something like that.
Should have listened to Cady. We could have eloped to get married in Las Pegasus and not given those things an opening.
Twily would really hate me for that, though.
The report of Prince Blueblood’s covert security detail was far more entertaining than it had any right to be. If the bachelor party didn’t have to be postponed, it would surely spoil the surprise. Since the only reason the report even existed was the fact that they lost the guy after he appropriated a cart for the purpose of defending the city, that particular point was moot. The report of the covert security assigned to the Ponyville human was much less entertaining, because they lost her well before the whole mess started, and nopony could even explain how. Considering that Twilight’s preliminary report on humans that I got to work with said she has no magical abilities worthy of note, that was weird.
The one that Princess Celestia called an alien princess was not even mentioned, but since I gave very specific orders to stay away from her whenever possible, that wasn’t a surprise. The reports of a completely unknown third human were. Just as the fact that it was she who roused the citizenry into song and was directly responsible for at least a third of all changeling fatalities, as well as most captives. All the patrol guards who heard her were confident the voice was feminine and very beautiful, but that was all they could really say.
Hidden deep within the stack was a sealed folder from the OSI, marked “Over The Top Secret, Burn Before Reading,” which is a clearance I wasn’t sure I even had. But since it had my name on it, and was, after all, on my desk, I felt justified in opening it.
I regretted it three pages in. The one disadvantage of being the Captain of the Royal Guard is that the only issues that get through to me and actually are above my pay grade are the ones Their Highnesses choose to handle themselves, so I never even have an actual excuse. It read like a trashy spy novel.
OSI writes a novel like that every time when they want our assistance, I think they have a bored paperback writer on staff somewhere. But I didn’t expect a story that would stretch my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. One of Cady’s friends secretly being a famous librettist was normal. Being the Princess of Love, she just can’t help but play matchmaker when an opportunity turns up, so you really meet all sorts of people with her. But the report descended into nonsense immediately afterwards, suggesting that Lyra Heartstrings was replaced by a disguised human at least a year ago, and citing unusual sitting habits as evidence. It also detailed the activities of the Ponyville human, including the use of a weapon that sounded like it came out of a comic book.
And I couldn’t even ignore that report, because I really had no other explanations. Maybe, I should have taken the classification literally and burned it before reading. Actually, burning it now and saying I did is still an option. Whoever Lyra Heartstrings actually is, thousands of ponies owe her their lives, in my book that’s worth a lot of no questions.
I was looking around the office for something to light a fire with, when somepony knocked on the door. “Come in,” I said, without getting up. Normally, I would open the door myself, but one physical symptom from yesterday still remained. Both mine and Cady’s magic was drained so deeply, that even levitating paper still hurt.
Must be one more report. I hope this one doesn’t bring any worse news.
“Hey, Shining, are you very busy or just busy?” Spike said from somewhere just outside my line of sight. My desk is stupidly large even for this room.
“Somewhat busy,” I replied. “Actually, you’re just the dragon I need. Help me burn that thing,” I added, pushing the OSI folder towards him.
Spike clambered into the chair opposite me and glanced at the folder. “Wow. Top-secret, huh? Spy stuff?”
“Spy nonsense,” I replied dismissively. “They’re all a bit crazy, you know. ‘Burn before reading,’ you’d think a sane pony wouldn’t write that.”
Spike grinned at me. “Did you read it?”
“My lips are sealed,” I grinned back. “But it says you were very brave.”
Spike’s spines bristled visibly. “You don’t suppose there’s a chance Rarity could hear about that?”
“Well, I can’t show her the report…” I said. Last time Spike came to visit, he kept talking about the mare non-stop. It’s a shame that I never got to talk to any of Twilight’s new friends at the Gala, somepony who tells Blueblood off in full view of the entire party is definitely a pony who will go far. “But I think I could put in a good word for you.”
Spike tossed the folder up. With a whoosh of green flame, it became a cloud of finely dispersed ashes. “Why are you hiding here, anyway? Everypony’s looking for you, I’m sure the paperwork could wait.”
“Why do you think?”
“It’s not about Princess Cadance, is it?” Spike stared at me with worry.
I shook my head. “No, it’s mostly about me.”
“Look, just tell me, is everything okay?” Spike pressed.
“Not really, but I’ll manage,” I insisted. “It’s certainly nothing new. I felt useless in this job long before I died in the line of duty, that’s just the icing on the cake.”
“Aw come on, you can put a shield up over the entire city!” Spike exclaimed. “Even Twilight can’t do that, and you know what they say about her. Hay, even Princess Celestia says she can’t do that!”
“So what? Made no difference to the changelings, they were here already. That red-headed human? She walked through it. What’s next, an invasion of crazy cockatrices? Mutant vines? They will find some way to bypass it too, won’t they?” I sighed. “I wanted to be a knight. You know, like in fairy tales. Sure, I’m more of a cop now, but Royal Guard is as close as one gets to a knight, in our day and age. I even have my princess to protect. But what kind of a knight I am if I can’t even do that?!”
“But even in comic books, heroes don’t always win!” Spike insisted, climbing up on the desk to point a talon at me.
“This isn’t a comic book, Spike,” I replied. “And even in comic books, I don’t think a knight who is always getting saved by his princess is good for more than comic relief.”
“You’re still my hero,” Spike said, almost crying.
“Thanks,” I replied patting him softly on the head. “It means a lot to me to hear that. Really. It’s just that sometimes, being a hero isn’t fun at all. I’ll get over it.”
It wasn’t long before the pause turned from heartwarming to slightly awkward. Spike doesn’t like to be reminded he’s still a baby dragon. At least, not by anypony other than Twilight, and least of all, me.
Spike broke it first. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about Princess Cadance, anyway? Twilight said that you knew her even before I was hatched.”
“Same reason,” I replied. “It’s difficult to measure up to an alicorn princess. Alicorns are the closest ponies ever get to divine. I just couldn’t believe I’m not dreaming. Still can’t. Cadance might say that she can see how we live happily ever after in a crystal palace, but I’m still afraid to jinx it.”
“Eh, I think you got the worst of it already,” Spike waved his claw dismissively, “Getting killed and brought back to life, who can top that?”
“Famous last words,” I tapped my hoof on the desk and grinned. “Seriously, you’d think you read enough comic books to know that it’s always a bad idea to say that.”
Spike snickered. “All right, but you know what’s a good idea? Joe’s reopened. You deserve a lunch break. Doctor Spike prescribes a donut!”
My growling stomach concurred. I suppose that’s a good time for a reminder that I’m still alive.
And maybe, when I see Cady again, I will be less ashamed of myself.
Why'd he get killed?
7629967
Because Chrysalis got cornered and a dead Shining Armor was more useful than a live one. See Conversation 25.
7629977 Ah, I guess I forgot that part.
I hope Thorax didn't get diced to pieces since his canonical hovering in indecision until the love wave would have made him an extremely easy target for Lyra.
Yes I am aware that Thorax didn't exist when this was outlined. But if I understand this storie's metaphysics that doesn't necessarily matter.
S6 Finale spoilers:
Also I imagine Starlight Glimmer's and Thorax's pleas to the rank and file changelings will be much harder since this time they've lost friends and loved ones to the ponies.
" even Princess Celestia says she can’t do that!”
Well, Cadence can do it too...not sure why Celestia shouldn't, perhaps it takes rather a lot more concentration on her part?
The mass Changeling-slaughter squicks me out some. Clearly, this isn't the main story, but some grimdark fanfic derivative.
And Shining Armor is aware of how superfluous he really is. How sad.
7630231
He might have gotten an arrow to the knee, but I’m sure he survived. Named characters only die for a narratively useful reason, after all.
Who knows, he might even turn up… ;)
We’ve been off the rails for a while now. I’m not sure it’s possible for the events of Season 6 finale to happen at all.
7630244
Cadance can only do it in the Crystal Empire. The reasons why will be touched upon in Conversation ~35 or thereabout.
Well… It’s a somewhat unusual version of Equestria in many respects. Mary picked it, after all. :)
7630244 An earlier chapter established that Changelings are very "divergent", due to the fact that lots of fanfics wrote stuff about them but we had virtually nothing to go on about Changeling culture to base their histories on. So presumably the Changelings of this universe are on the "feral" side.
I hope, anyway.
Interesting take on the Royal Guard. I've always figured they were just what the unicorn division of the EUP evolved into (adding other tribes over time), but the idea that they've always been a royal bodyguard detail and are now basically the Canterlot police force works too. This does make me realize though, we've never really seen the EU part of the EUP in the show.
This sounds like a throw-away, but is actually important. Twilight didn't use magic to do this. It's a prime example of the world running on cartoon logic. I wish Twilight and Mary would have a conversation where Twilight is pressured to explain in scientific terms what evaporated that paper.
Not sure what the term wheel carts really means, but we've seen disabled ponies in a smart little device that attaches to their two back hooves, with wheels on it. Is that what this is referring to?
Jeeze, this makes it sound like Equestria has always been almost as war-ridden in the past as it is during the show, which would probably drive down confidence in Celestia a lot.
Grizzly. Makes some of the future plans of Chrysalis less likely too. If ponies brutally hacked apart half her army, I feel like she would have a lot harder time compelling them to keep attacking the ponies in various ways (especially the comics stories).
OSI is reconstituted SMILE, right?
What's weird is, zero mention of Lyra's relationship with Sweetie Drops. You know what else is weird? Bon Bon/Sweetie Drops grew up in Ponyville, based on Pinkie Pride. So was she born Bon Bon and changed her name when she joined the service, or what?
Poor Shining Armor, to have the cutie mark of protecting others, and to always play the role of damsel in distress. I feel like this time he's really going to kill Sombra, if Cadance doesn't.
Spike really has modeled a lot of himself after Shining Armor, hasn't he? The desire to be a knight, the love of D&D and comics.... No wonder he's pissed at SA for not revealing the fact that he was dating Cadance, if Shining had, Spike would never have gone to Blueblood for advice.
7630231
7630285 Hopefully he didn't die, but on the other hand its a lot harder to imagine Thorax fleeing to pony lands to seek a friend after he watched half his family brutally killed by righteously angry ponies. I wonder where he would try and go instead?
Well, it's late and this question might be answered already (and I'm spoiling it just in case because I'm not sure if it counts or what the current mores are about spoilers) but here we go:
I may be misinterpreting this but if Rika can only perceive herself in third person, how can she know what she thinks? She'd have to be viewed at all times and with someone that can essentially read her thoughts - and if she's ever not perceived, how can she function? Or is that merely a preference and not a necessity?
7631204
That’s my best-fit-to-total-canon take on Royal Guard. See RTAC #4 where I originally put this theory forward.
I did count all the appearances of ponies in Guard armor I could find. :)
You’re reading into this too much. She was just so angry, that the residual magic, the same barely visible magic that frazzles her hair, was enough to make paper sublimate.
Yes, it must have been a sight to behold, but Shining Armor’s kind of used to it.
Yes.
War-ridden – not really. Equestria hasn’t been in an actual land war for centuries. Monster-ridden – well, more or less, it’s a fact of life that sometimes, wild things invade, and occasionally, things get messy before they can be stopped.
OSI owned and subsequently dissolved SMILE. The same is true of its predecessor CUPCAKE, and will probably be true of whatever nasty word replaced SMILE. The alphabet soup is boiling. Half those ponies really have no idea what their outfit is supposed to be called this month and what their codenames are. OSI itself? They do government financial audit.
Pinkie is metafictionally aware, remember? :)
Because… Well, you’ll just have to wait a week. :)
And Lyra belongs both to Shining Armor’s generation and Twilight’s generation, but there’s only one Lyra, right? Right?
I do hereby promise that Shining Armor gets to be awesome within the next 20 chapters or so.
Yes, on both counts. :)
7631214
I don’t know, this has been spelled out far enough, and people actually reading in order shouldn’t bump into comments for chapters they haven’t read, should they? But just in case…
You are misinterpreting. Rika lives in third person in that she perceives her own actions, or rather, the actions of her body, preferentially, through the eyes, or rather, personal narration, of any observers present, but that has no bearing on her ability to think for herself or control her actions. She isn’t “actually here,” and her body itself would be considered legally blind in most jurisdictions. Look at Conversation 7. Essentially, she is reading this story together with you in a very literal sense, with only a few differences.
What do you think “The Reader of Last Resort” meant? :)
7631308
So what causes Spike's eyes to turn into hearts when he looks at Rarity sometimes, Twilight? Residual magic on the eyeballs?
It's one of the biggest differences between ponies and humans, in a way. Here in California we had the California Grizzley, which is bigger and meaner than a lot of the monsters we see in Equestria. So bounties were put out on the Grizzlies, and they were deliberately hunted to extinction. If humans lived in a place like Equestria, there would be no manticores, timberwolves or cragodiles left anywhere, and damn the ecological consequences if people regularly got sent to the hospital by them. The Everfree Forest and places like it would be picked clean by an army, or at least an army of bounty hunters. The fact that ponies value nature and other live in all its forms so much more highly than we do is.... different. Not better or worse, but certainly a big difference in priorities.
I sometimes wonder if Celestia maintains the whole things so overly-excitable ponies have a secret club to join.
I think Lyra probably took a lot longer than most to finish her education, before she dropped out to be a full time busker.
Please stop, I can only get so hyped!
7630285 I thought Cadance's barrier was more of an emission of positive love magic that repelled Sombra's dark magic. She didn't need to make a hole in it for the girls to walk through the way Shining did his for the trains. By contrast I'm not sure Shining's shield would do much to keep out the near-intangible creature Sombra was at the time.
So their abilities are complimentary. Shining can protect against physical threats. Cadance protects against more exotic mystical/spiritual threats. Together they can create an impenetrable defense against almost anything.
7631916
No. Narrator’s imagination. You have a lot of narrators to choose from around here, don’t you? All of them see the world rather differently… ;)
Shining Armor certainly seems to suspect this is the case, considering that he calls them crazy right there.
The outline for the Crystal Empire arc proper is itself a chapter long right now, and it starts in Conversation 35. How fast I get through it is mostly a matter of how much free time and energy I get…
7631966
I wonder if he's afraid Celestia had the same idea about a club for noble ponies who want to feel knightly?
7632173
Well, now that he's marrying his princess, I think this worry is safely behind him, he gets to be her knight if that's what he wants, regardless. :)
This is a pretty great story, I'd have preferred to see where you'd take it without Shining Armor being resurrected.
7632575
That would get seriously grimdark quite quickly though, and that is kind of not what I'm aiming for.
7632664 Of course. On another note, I would be very interested in reading more about Marys and Rikas origins and/or other misadventures.
7632702
There will be quite a bit of that in the future. :)
Thought it was about time I read one of your stories. This was a strange one. Metafiction always interests me, and I'd say that the meta element here was well done overall. Mary and Rika provide an interesting lens through which to talk about these topics and explore them (Mary moreso than Rika), and their lines of questioning also provide lots of opportunity for neat worldbuilding tidbits, another thing that I'm greatly interested in. Suffice to say, reading this provided foundation for a lot of new headcanon for me. I'll be sure to credit you when I steal most of this.
But the meta elements weren't flawless, either. For example, with some of those deliberately confusing moments, I'm not sure what the narrative benefit was of leaving me confused, and these were often the moments where I took the most breaks and my reading rate was at its most sluggish. I don't think you were ever in danger of losing me at any point, but regardless, I didn't appreciate those moments.
I also suspect that we have the meta-story, specifically Rika's "reading narrative streams" schtick, to blame for the multiple first-person perspectives. I didn't like those. The language used often wasn't tailored to the character's manner of speaking and personal lexicon, the head-jumping between chapters meant that a sense of intimacy wasn't built with any specific character (defeating the arguable main purpose of first-person narration), and most of the time, there wasn't really any good reason for taking a particular perspective (Rarity in Conversation 6 stood out to me as particularly superfluous). I think the story would've been far stronger if it were third-person. You may disagree, but those are just my impressions.
It was pretty good overall, though. I can definitely say I liked this, and I'll be following along from now on.
7646179
Not exclusively.
That is, this shtick is a major part of it, but it is also intimately related to other important plot points, and it’s also sort of a successor for the story I also wanted to write, but for various external reasons can’t: Mary’s story. Which was to be kind of like that, but contained half the total weight in Mary’s footnotes, because she was the editor and translator of hundreds of disparate personal accounts, trying to build a coherent historical picture of world-changing events and attempting to stay objective. And failing. Because she secretly orchestrated everything and knows what really happened, even when the characters, for one reason or another, lie, omit key details, and try to make themselves look better, or usually, much worse than they actually were.
Ponies don’t lie to themselves anywhere as often, but they do see the world rather differently from each other, at times.
That said, when I say “I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with this,” that’s what I mean: multiple first-person perspective is hard, and I readily acknowledge I don’t always get it right.
Thanks. :)
“Over The Top Secret, Burn Before Reading,” ha! One could take care of that without letting it change desks.
Green?
7730905
Spike's dragonflame is green, isn't it? :)
7730917 Everypony's gonna be paranoid for years afterwards about green fields. Poor Sweetie Belle won't be able to set hoof on a train or airship without being pulled aside by the ETSA on the basis of her horn glow.