• Published 7th Mar 2016
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New Family - awesomesauce4



We've all played games. But what happens after the game ends?

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Chapter 13

The courtroom was adjourned, any semblance of court proceedings having long since vanished into the aether. Sombra was besieged by ponies once more – but this time, with musical requests instead of pitchforks. Jeremy watched as young colts and fillies begged to hear his composition again, and again, and Sombra happily obliged each time, smiling as he entranced his audiences time and time again. Kylie and Pinkie busied themselves with providing refreshments for those that had stayed to listen a little too long, and the others simply stayed to watch for the whole thing, Jeremy closing his eyes and letting the music wash over him again, and again.

The night grew long, and finally the last few stragglers had to leave for the safety and warmth of their homes. As soon as the last one had disappeared, Sombra made his way over to Princess Cadance, who had returned after putting Flurry Heart to bed.

“Princess Cadance, may I ask a question?” he inquired.

“You just did, so the answer’s yes,” Cadance laughed.

“Where, exactly, did you find this particular instrument?” Sombra asked, a slight pleading smile gracing his features as he waited expectantly.

Cadance brightened, understanding immediately. “It was found in a very old, run-down house, just outside our borders. Researchers cleared it out after the Mystery Composer’s… er, your original notes, were found there, so it’s been well taken-care of.”

Sombra looked at Jeremy, who smiled knowingly back. “…Can we visit?” he asked.

Cadance nodded, giggling slightly. “Of course you can visit! It’s your house, Sombra. Well, technically it’s the Crystal Kingdom’s property, but I don’t mind giving you the deed back.”

Sombra chuckled. “Thank you. Erm… I don’t really know where it is, after all this time… can you lead me there?”

Cadance politely nodded, turning to make for the edge of the city before turning around in thought. “Though, if you’re going out into the blizzard this late, you’ll need an accompaniment,” she noted.

As though summoned to her side, Shining Armor and two Crystal Guards appeared, and Sombra flinched back. “Right…” he trailed off.

One of the Guards sighed. “Hey…” he greeted Sombra.

“Hi…” Sombra returned uncertainly.

“So… you’re the Mystery Composer, huh?” the Guard asked awkwardly.

“It would appear so…” Sombra confirmed, looking anywhere and everywhere but at the Guard he was speaking to.

They sat there in silence for a moment, continuing to not look at each other.

“Um…” Jeremy trailed off.

“Right, right! Time to get going,” Sombra commanded, heading in the direction of the magical barrier.

The tundra was beautiful at night. The wind had died down, revealing an endless expanse of white that glistened almost as much as the stars overhead. The moon shone down upon the six of them, casting an expanse of shadows and lending an air of mystery to the snowscape. Jeremy was once again wearing Cory’s coat, while the Guard next to him and Shining wore particularly thick sets of armor. Chrysalis, Sombra and Cadance wore nothing at all to insulate them from the bitter cold, though Jeremy suspected Chrysalis at least was using a warming spell.

“This used to be fields of wheat and corn. What… what happened?” Sombra asked Cadance, looking around.

“Your spell did this,” she answered sadly. “In addition to putting the Crystal Kingdom in stasis for a thousand years, it locked an entire third of the continent in an eternal winter.”

Sombra lowered his head. “I suppose that is what happens, when one makes a deal with the Windigo,” he muttered.

“They’re sapient? I thought they were just angry wind spirits,” Chrysalis noted.

Sombra snorted in amusement. “Oh, they’re sapient all right, and very devious. They promised me that in case anything went wrong with my conquest, I could shatter a certain crystal they gave me and the whole kingdom would go into stasis for a thousand years, so that I could surprise my foes when next I appeared. At the time, I figured that Windigo and umbra were similar enough in diet and nature that we would share similar goals. What a fool I was to trust them,” Sombra muttered.

“Are they still here? If I recall, the presence of neverending winter indicates that they’re around somewhere,” Jeremy noted.

“Could they be trapped just like the umbra?” Princess Cadance wondered.

Sombra paused in thought. “There’s an idea. Should we free them too?” he asked Jeremy.

Jeremy waved his hand in a so-so motion. “…Probably? They’d definitely help the efforts on Earth. Convincing them might be a bit harder, though, if they’re as cunning as you say.”

Cadance hummed ponderously. “Maybe we could… no, that wouldn’t work,” she muttered.

“What would they want from us? A good enough deal might persuade them,” Chrysalis remarked.

“Freedom is the first thing that comes to mind, although that usually results in them betraying us once they’re actually free. Wouldn’t Windigo want this, anyway? An endless, frozen, emotionless expanse?” Jeremy wondered, gesturing.

“If so, we could always shoot them into space,” Sombra joked.

Cadance snorted. “I think they’d be rather upset by that,” she commented.

“Plus, it’s not always cold in space. Just most of the time. If you get too close to a star, or get too much cosmic radiation on you, things can get very hot,” Jeremy added.

“How do you know?” Cadance asked, raising an eyebrow, and Jeremy laughed.

“Humans have been to space a lot recently. We didn’t use any magic, so we had to spend years making absolutely sure we knew what we were dealing with.”

Shining looked at him, incredulous. “Now you’re just pulling my leg. Humans have been into space?”

Jeremy chuckled, amused by Shining’s expression of blatant disbelief. “Yeah, I can show you when we get back! We currently have the equivalent of a mobile research lab floating around the planet called the International Space Station, and we’ve visited our Moon a couple of times. According to NASA, we’re not far off from being able to mine asteroids for precious metals and stuff.”

Cadance looked confused. “NASA?” she asked.

“National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I worked there once, as an intern,” Jeremy explained, and her expression cleared.

“Oh, I see. Humans must be wonderfully inventive, to be able to reach space!”

Jeremy considered this, snorting. “I suppose so. We had a few… accidents along the way, though. Space travel’s dangerous.”

Sombra rolled his eyes. “Can’t imagine why,” he snarked, and Jeremy laughed.

As they reached a particularly flat area, Cadance stopped, surveying the patch of snow before them. As far as Jeremy could see, it was exactly like every other patch of snow.

“Are we… here?” Sombra asked.

“Yes… I just have to clear all the snow off,” Cadance explained. She lit her horn, and a pile of snow the size of a city block lifted off of the tundra before them, dumping itself to the side. Jeremy looked down at the thirty-foot-deep hole, perplexed.

“Wait. If the snow’s that thick, then how come we were standing on level ground back in the Crystal Kingdom?” he asked.

Cadance giggled. “The Crystal Kingdom’s actually on a plateau. Our researchers theorize that because of the stasis, it was pushed upward by tectonic plate action.”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow, interested, but decided to shelve that particular discussion for later. “So… wow, this place… aged really gracefully for a thousand years,” Jeremy noted, looking down at Sombra’s house.

“Preserved by the temperature, probably,” Sombra murmured.

The wood of the house was pristine, if freezing, and the front door even still had ‘FLAK’ chiseled into it. The forge that Sombra and his father had spent so much time at was unlit, frozen coals scattered carelessly around the floor. Tools and hammers were stacked haphazardly in different compartments of a box, and Jeremy recognized some of these as the same ones that Sombra had used to fight him in the umbrum’s memory back in Tartarus.

They flew down, and Chrysalis, Cadance, and the accompanying Guard examined the house. The Guard actually took off his helmet, and Jeremy looked at him curiously, surprised to find a lone tear was making its way down his crystalline orange face.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

The Guard looked over. “This place is sacred to musicians, and… well, I am a musician,” he explained. “No matter where we really came from… here, we were born.”

Sombra blushed and looked away, surging ahead of them as he approached the door to his home. “It’s so cold…” he noted.

“Maybe we can get a fire going?” Jeremy wondered, ducking in through the door after him.

“It’s kind of cozy in here, once you get past the whole ‘freezing’ thing,” Chrysalis noted.

Jeremy looked around at the interior of Sombra’s house, a thousand years later. He couldn’t imagine how Sombra must be feeling – a millennium had passed since he’d seen this place last, and here he was rediscovering it. Jeremy briefly tried to put himself into Sombra’s shoes, imagining himself discovering his own house, centuries and centuries after he had lived in it. He felt… a vague sense of unfamiliarity, as though even though he were standing in his own house, it wasn’t his home anymore…

He was startled out of his reverie when Cadance kicked at something on the floor. “Huh?” she noted, leaning down to look at it.

“D-don’t look at that!” Sombra cried, yanking it away from her with his magic. Startled, Cadance leaned back, blinking. “But it was only a stuffed bear,” she replied, bemused.

Sombra blushed furiously. “Y…yes… only a stuffed bear. That’s all.”

Jeremy gave him a knowing look. “You know, I had something similar when I was a little kid. Only it was a stuffed lynx, instead of a bear. I called him Lynx Kitten, and he was my favorite,” Jeremy began.

“So did I! Mine was a tiger, though!” Cadance added.

“Mine was a bear too,” Shining chuckled.

“My mom got me a spider,” the Guard accompanying them offered. All of them stopped to look at him strangely. “What? It was a cute spider,” he defended.

“…Anyway, lots of us had a stuffed animal growing up, it’s perfectly normal,” Jeremy explained.

“Really? Oh… I never had anyone else to tell me,” Sombra mused, embarrassed.

“Didn’t you have any friends growing up?” Jeremy asked.

Sombra shook his head. “The only ponies I knew were my parents and other nobles.”

Cadance gave him a sympathetic frown. “All you knew was nobility… no wonder you never knew love,” she murmured.

Sombra rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, I’m a sociopath, I know.”

Cadance immediately looked sorry she’d spoken. “Not like that! I meant… oh, I didn’t mean it like that,” she apologized.

They got a fire going, and Chrysalis immediately laid down directly in front of it, blocking off the others as she stretched to absorb as much heat as possible.

“Hey!” Shining complained.

“What? I need more body heat than you do, I used a lot of magic on the way here,” Chrysalis explained.

“Well… the rest of us need warmth too!” Shining retorted.

“Sombra, got a blanket?” Jeremy asked.

“Sure, one moment,” Sombra answered, rummaging through a few frozen cabinets. He finally returned with a folded blanket that was stiff as a board, tossing it over in front of Chrysalis. It landed with a clatter, causing everyone nearby to wince.

“…Maybe something that isn’t frozen solid, Sombra?” Chrysalis asked.

“We can just thaw it out by the fire. Then we'll all be warm,” Jeremy answered, placing it gently near the fire. It thawed quickly, surprisingly as dry as the rest of the room despite having been frozen. That done, Jeremy laid Chrysalis down on the blanket, rolling her up like a burrito before picking her up again and cuddling her close. “Warmer yet?” he asked.

“Very,” Chrysalis answered, snuggling into his chest and sighing in satisfaction.

“Aww,” Cadance and Shining Armor cooed at the sight.

“What is this ‘blanket’, anyway? It’s very warm, much more so than a ‘bedsheet,’” Chrysalis asked.

“Thicker fabric, but same idea,” Jeremy explained.

“You’ve never seen a blanket before?” Shining asked.

Chrysalis shrugged. “We never needed one before. When changelings needed to keep themselves warm, they simply cocooned themselves.”

Sombra brought more blankets for the rest, and they set about wrapping themselves up in front of the fire.

“How’s Flurry Heart?” Jeremy asked.

Cadance started forward, a guilty expression on her face, but sat back relieved a moment later. “She’s asleep, the nursemaids are watching over her. Also, don’t do that! I worry enough as it is,” Cadance complained.

Jeremy chuckled. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Anyway, we might as well sleep here, if nobody needs to go back for anything – it’s what, midnight?” he asked a moment later.

The Guard accompanying them pulled out a small pocketwatch. “Three minutes past, yes,” he answered.

“Cool,” Jeremy replied, laying down and closing his eyes.

An hour passed before anyone spoke again. Sombra had joined the makeshift slumber party, eyes closed and surprisingly murmuring instead of his usual loud snoring.

“Chrysalis?” Shining Armor whispered.

“Yes, Shining?” Chrysalis whispered back.

“Why did you mind-control me? I mean, I understand you wanted food for your kind, and had to conquer the city because of... your orders. But… why me? And why our wedding?” Shining asked.

Chrysalis sighed, closing her eyes again as the fire crackled.

“…Chrysalis?” Shining asked again after a moment.

“I… I wanted to see what it was like,” she murmured.

“What what was like?” Shining whispered curiously.

“Love. Real love, someone who loved me, not just… gave love to me. Cadance, the Princess of Love, the supposed final say on romance… she thought you were good enough for her. She loved you… loves you with all her heart, and… I wanted to find out why. I thought, maybe, that marriage was something that would help me understand, so… I decided to take her place and make you marry me instead. But… I knew I wasn’t that good of an actor. You’d surely catch on eventually, so…” Chrysalis trailed off.

“…I see…” Shining replied softly, when nothing else was forthcoming. “We didn’t… do anything while I was… under your spell… did we?” he asked nervously, tail flicking against the wooden floor.

“Do anything? What do you mean?” Chrysalis asked, confused. She stiffened as Jeremy sent her a few thoughts, and blushed. “N-no! Nothing like that, I’d never-!”

Shining fell back, relieved. “Oh, thank goodness. I was trying to save myself for Cadance, and… even though she said that the thought was what counted…” he trailed off, sighing.

“I don’t think Chrysalis even could do that, after what she’s been through,” Jeremy murmured to him.

“Fair…” Shining agreed.

Sometime during the night, Jeremy slowly awoke, feeling a distinct lack of warmth on his stomach. He looked around blearily, and Chrysalis was nowhere to be found.

“Chrysalis?” he whispered.

Cadance and Shining Armor were asleep, and the Crystal Guard who was watching them was evidently dozing off as well. Sombra’s room was still closed. Chrysalis was not in the room, but he felt her presence nearby. Groaning, he got up, shaking himself awake before stumbling outside to find her.

Chrysalis was just outside the door, to his surprise, using the light of a torch to read a book. As Jeremy looked over her shoulder, he noticed it was the same book they had taken from the library yesterday – “On the Origines of Ponie-Like Species”.

“Heya,” he whispered, and Chrysalis looked up at him.

“Read this,” she muttered, thrusting the book into his hands without another word.

Confused, Jeremy took it, examining the page she had been reading. The illustration on the page was that of a changeling and an umbrum, snarling at each other… but the changeling was colorful and ‘healed’, just like Thorax and Chrysalis were now. “What…?” Jeremy began.

“Read it!” Chrysalis insisted.

Jeremy gave her a very concerned look, but obediently began to read.

“Long ago, three great nations ruled the continent of Pacem in peace. To the east were the changelings, those great bringers of love and harmony who could take the form of whatever they chose. To the west, the umbra lived, and stole away the hatred that others exhibited. And to the north, the Windigo ruled, eliminating fear and distrust from the land. Though many, many species called Pacem their home, these three tribes were the rulers, for they and they alone ensured the peace was everlasting and absolute. No dispute could not be resolved by a group of three of them, which was then referred to as a tres pacificae, or Peaceful Three. These groups of tres pacificae served as a form of Royal Guard for the land, ensuring conflicts did not escalate.”

“But something went wrong. One day, changelings and umbra found they simply could not get along anymore. Though they agreed that love should rule over fear, they disagreed with the methods of the other tribe.”

“The tension brewed, and before long war had broken out between changelings and umbra. The Windigo, serving as a neutral third party, helped to evacuate those citizens that would otherwise be caught up in the fighting. According to the histories unearthed by my archaeological expeditions, it was the most terrifying time in Pacem’s history. Nopony knew who to trust, who to side with. But everypony knew that the centuries of spreading love had made the changelings far, far stronger than the umbra.”

“The changelings, fueled by determination and led by Queen Diligita, won the war and sealed all the umbra underground, never to see the light of day again. Why Diligita chose this course of action is uncertain, as apparently up until her victory she had promised to destroy every umbrum in existence. It is surmised that her daughter may have persuaded her off of this dangerous course, though without historical records this is impossible to know for certain. Whatever her reasoning, it is apparent that those citizens that remained were surprised and overjoyed by this act of mercy, however small.”

“But, once again, something went wrong. Whether the umbra had planned it or not, Diligita’s Hive exploded the day after the umbra were sealed, presumably killing every changeling in existence and ensuring a post-war victory for the umbra. But the umbra were still sealed away, and they could not enjoy the fruits of their plot. The balance had been erased: Two of the three species who had once ensured peace and love for all had been eliminated.”

“Those few survivors of that time, the same citizens who had lived through the conflict and had evacuated to the north with the Windigo, refused to give an account of their time there, whether written, oral or otherwise. Most fled the country to seek life elsewhere, now that their precious lives and homes had been destroyed so thoroughly by the war between the two races. The only thing known for sure from that point onward was that the Windigo, the last recorded species on the continent for a period of several centuries, spread throughout the land, converting what was once a lush and wonderful land to a place barren, frigid and nearly devoid of life as they struggled to survive.”

“What happened next is best told in the following section,” Jeremy finished, at a loss for words from what he had just read. He flipped the page, and Chrysalis cringed.

“Equestria: The Beginning,” Jeremy read, shocked. “Clover the Clever… arrived… in… wait. Pacem was Equestria?” he queried, shocked.

“We destroyed the civilization of an entire continent,” Chrysalis mumbled, evidently still horrified. “We’re exactly the monsters Sombra made us out to be.”

Jeremy narrowed his eyes. “Hold that thought, dear. Something’s not right here,” he decided, flipping back a few pages.

“What do you mean?” Chrysalis asked.

“This war apparently broke out for no reason. Star Swirl couldn’t find the cause, and what evidence exists suggests that up until that exact point, changelings and umbra worked together extremely well,” he posited. Chrysalis nodded. “Now, we both sat through the talk on humans, so you know this too. What’s the first thing anyone says about a war while it’s going on, or even afterward?” he asked.

“The justification,” Chrysalis realized.

“Yeah. There’s always a reason, even if it’s a stupid one or a lie told to the public. For Star Swirl to have found nothing about why this war was happening suggests that it wasn’t a normal war. Groups don’t just randomly decide to fight each other, it’s always about some kind of gain.” He flipped forward a few more pages. “And then there’s this section. ‘The Windigo, serving as a neutral third party, helped to evacuate those citizens that would otherwise be caught up in the fighting. According to the histories unearthed by my archaeological expeditions, it was the most terrifying time in Pacem’s history. Nopony knew who to trust, who to side with.’ Now, I’m normally not one to believe in conspiracy theories. But isn’t there something a little strange about the Windigo reacting so suddenly to the war, evacuating all citizens into their territory, and remaining a completely neutral third party?”

Chrysalis’ jaw dropped. “You don’t think…” she trailed off, and Jeremy nodded.

“I think they started the war on purpose,” he declared. “They feed on fear and mistrust, and there’s no better time for mistrust than a continent-wide civil war. It might have been due to starvation, it might have been for political gain… but I bet the Windigo were behind all of that. They might even have been behind Diligita’s Hive exploding – if the entire goal was to ensure both changelings and umbra were taken out, thus leaving Windigo on top, they would have wanted to ensure no survivors.”

Chrysalis reeled at this. “Then… we’re not monsters…?” she whispered.

Jeremy shook his head. “I have no idea if we are or not. Nobody has any account of what political opinions were being said at the time of the war, apparently, so it’s impossible to know just yet. What we do know is that if the Windigo hadn’t intervened, the changelings would have likely not started the war.”

Chrysalis swallowed. “Okay… I think that makes sense… but… what do we do now?” she asked, sounding lost.

“We have a hypothesis, now we look for evidence. If all of this took place in Equestria, there had to have been towns, cities, whole cultures that have been buried beneath the sands of time. If we can continue Star Swirl’s work, we might just be able to find the answers. And… forgive me if this is a stretch, but I think there may have been a survivor of Diligita’s Hive,” Jeremy remarked.

“Who?” Chrysalis asked.

“Hespera. According to our earliest accounts, she awoke in a cave with no memory of anything that had happened before. And before you say that she was created there by that strange mutagenic substance, I’ve always been confused about this. Every time the story of Hespera is told, it’s always mentioned that she was able to walk very soon after she awoke. She explored the cave, found the pool, et cetera,” Jeremy noted. “But our little wigglers take at least a year or two to move around even in their larval forms. So how did Hespera know how to walk from birth, and that information didn’t get passed down to the next generation?”

Chrysalis looked, if that were possible, even more shocked. “Because she’d already passed the larval stage,” she whispered.

Jeremy held up his hands. “Like I said, just a theory. I’m not going to go questioning your histories just yet, we need more information to be sure of any of that. The story of changelings’ origins could still be true, just placed… a little farther back in time. And it said changelings lived to the east of Pacem, but our Hive is very far to the south. Hespera might have been taken to that sacred place during the war, as a way of ensuring that the changelings would survive in case Diligita lost,” Jeremy explained.

“But if all the other changelings in the Hive died, they would have been stored in the hivemind,” Chrysalis reminded him.

“Yeah… I dunno about that. Maybe the hivemind didn’t exist back then? Like I said, we’ll need to find more evidence,” Jeremy sighed.

Chrysalis doused the torch they had been using to read. “I… I need to sleep,” she decided.

“Same. Come on, honey. Let’s figure this out… tomorrow,” Jeremy cajoled.

“Okay…” Chrysalis softly agreed. He carried her inside, and wrapped the two of them up in the blanket, where they cuddled together.

“Hey. No matter what we find out about changelings, just know that I will always believe in you, okay?” Jeremy whispered.

Chrysalis kissed his chest, smiling up at him. “No matter what we were before… I’ll be good,” she replied, and Jeremy beamed down at her.