Queen Takes Pawn
When I came to, I had a splitting headache. It was one of the side effects of taking a chloroform nap. Apparently another side effect was waking up hoof-cuffed to a chair in a dungeon. In a cell on the other side of the room, Griff was sitting on a cot. In a chair opposite mine, Pound was likewise hoof-cuffed.
"Ah, awake at last I see," I heard a gravelly voice behind me say. I watched Pound's eyes follow him as he moved around beside me. A haggard looking gryphon in a dirty lab coat walked over with a syringe. I always hated needles. He took the syringe in his talons and injected me in the shoulder.
"You should swab first," I said. "I might get an infection." The gryphon smiled at me. He grabbed another syringe and injected Pound.
"I'll be back when this has taken effect," he said before he left the room.
"What did he inject us with?" Pound asked.
"A truth potion of some kind," Griff said. "Sodium Pentothal or something like it."
oh no
"Is it working yet?" Pound asked.
"I don't know," Griff said. "Ask him something you know he'd lie about,"
"Are they going to kill us?" Pound asked me.
"Yup!" I said.
"Yeah... It's working," Pound said. He looked at me. "Why were you on a train to Gryphonstone?"
"I was sent on a mission from Princess Luna to assassinate King Guto," I said.
"Shut up, Storm!" Griff said.
"Why?" Pound asked me.
"The king was rallying the enemies of Equestria into a massive coordinated attack."
"That is classified information!" Griff yelled.
"But it wasn't King Guto," I said. "it was a changeling."
"The king is a changeling?"
"Was a changeling," I corrected. "Now a dead changeling."
"The king is dead? Is that true?" Griff asked.
"It has to be," Pound said.
"Why are you here?" I asked Pound as I worked the small tool pamphlet out of my bracelet and into my hoof.
"I was trying to rescue the prince," Pound said.
"No, I mean, why were you on the train at all? Why are you even in the Guard?" I asked. "You never told me that."
"It was what I needed to do-"
"Why did you leave your home?" I asked.
"I was... made to leave," Pound said.
"Why?"
"I didn't love Pumpkin like I was supposed to," he said.
"You don't love her? But you're so protective of her!"
"Oh course I love her! Just... not like I was supposed to. Not like a brother should."
"Oh?... Oh." I realized.
"Yeah," he slumped lower in his chair. "When my parents found out, my father told me that I would be making a trip to the Royal Guard recruitment office, or the gelding office," he said.
"Oh. I'm sorry Pound."
"Yeah. Me too," he said. I looked around the dungeon room.
"Maybe you should have taken the knife. You don't deserve this," I said.
"Yes I do," he said as tears rolled down his cheeks. I winced. Under the effects of the potion, he told the truth. He really believed it.
"I'm gonna get you out of here," I said. Griff scoffed.
"Oh? has the potion worn off for you already?"
The door opened behind me again. The gryphon in the lab coat from earlier returned with another burly guard. The guard walked over to Pound and reached into his pocket, pulling out a pistol.
"No!" I yelled. The guard shot Pound in the neck. I could see the feathers of a small tranquilizer dart sticking out. Pound didn't fall unconscious, just sort of, limp. The guard holstered the dart gun and took the crossbow from the strap on his back, holding it in his talons, pointed at me.
The doc gryphon pushed a small cart over to us. He lifted the cloth from the top, revealing all manner of sharp instruments.
"You gonna torture me?" I asked.
"No," the Doc said. He put a pair of gloves over his talons. "I find that torturing someone is a very ineffective means of extracting information from them. Oh, sure, they may resist at first. But then they'll tell you things. Some of it might even be true. But often they will just say anything to make the pain stop. And I don't want to waste my time sifting through misinformation after the victim passes out from pain." He picked up a few of the tools and inspected them.
"No. I have a much more effective method," he said, taking the scalpel in his claws. He walked over to Pound. "I'm going to ask you questions. And if you give me an answer I don't like, I'm going to cut something off of your friend here. And believe me when I tell you," he said, looking at me, "they will be things that he will miss." Pound was barely aware of what was happening. The doc cut a small notch from his ear.
Like Moonshine's.
A dribble of blood ran down Pound's cheek.
"Ah, ah," The doc chided, putting a bit of clotting powder on the cut, stopping the bleeding. "We don't want you bleeding out just yet." The doc walked back over towards me. "Now then, is there anything you want to tell me before we start?"
"Yeah. Have you ever danced with a nightmare in the pale moonlight?" I asked.
"What a question," he breathed, "Why do you ask?"
"I always ask that of all my prey," I said "I just like the sound of it. To let them know that I'm going to kill them pretty soon."
"I see... How, exactly?" he asked.
"Well, first I'm going to use your body as a shield to soak up the bolt from his crossbow," I said, nodding at the guard. "And then I'm going to kill him by throwing that ice pick on the tray." I looked back at the doc. "And then I was thinking about... slitting your throat."
"Really!?" the doc asked. "And what makes you think that you can do all that?"
"You know my hoof cuffs?"
"Mmm?"
"I picked them."
I jumped out of the chair and grabbed the doc just as the guard was about to shoot me with the crossbow, catching the doc in the gut with the bolt instead. I grabbed the ice pick from the tray and threw it at the guard. It stuck him in the collar. Painful, but not lethal. I flicked my left wrist back and fired a dart from the bracelet into his wide, surprised, eye. Before the guard's body even hit the floor, I took the scalpel from the doc and jammed it into his neck. Griff stood up in his cell, watching me lift the keys off the guard. I unlocked the door to his cell.
"Pound, are you okay? Can you walk?" I asked.
"Jussa won drimk. Ngh m gud ta fly ofisher," he slurred.
"Griff, I need you to get Pound out of here. Please!" I told him as I unlocked Pound's cuffs. Pound slumped forward. Griff moved over to hold him up.
"Swear ta drunk mnot Celeshtia!" Pound mumbled. The three of us made our way back through the dungeon to the grate where I had come in. Griff dropped down into the sewer. I took the memory mirror from my pocket.
"What are you doing?" Griff asked, shielding his eyes.
"The right thing." I pointed the mirror at Pound. "Going my way?" I asked him, activating the mirror. His eyes lost focus. It erased his memory of this place and his painful confession. But more importantly, left him open to suggestion. "You're a good pony, Pound. Your family loves you. They WILL forgive you. GO! HOME!"
"...Kay," Pound said, drooling a little. I helped lower Pound down to Griff.
"Just get him out of here!" I pleaded with Griff. "As far away from Gryphonstone as you can. Get him back to Equestria. He doesn't deserve to be here. He doesn't deserve any of this!"
"Nu, u!" Pound muttered."
"What about you?" Griff asked.
"I still need to rescue the prince," I said, I started to close the grate.
"Hey, Storm," Griff said.
"Yeah?"
"You're alright," Griff said. "Try not to die."
"Right."
I closed the grate. I headed in the other direction, through the dim tunnel towards where the prince would be held. I heard voices up ahead. There was a crack in the castle's old foundation wall. I looked through. I could see the shadows of two ponies just out of sight.
"Shining, you should tell Stormageddon the truth about me," I heard a female voice say.
"No! He must never know the truth about you being his mother!" He shouted. "And he never will!" I could hear the metal of his sword being pulled from its sheath.
"No! Guards!" She cried out before her scream was ended as ran her through with his blade. I heard the door in the other room burst open. And he was overtaken by the guards.
"Storm?" I jumped at the voice behind me.
"Echo?"
"Storm, what are you doing here!?" she asked in shock.
"I came here to kill the king. He's dead."
"Guto's dead?" she asked. I nodded. "Great! Then I need you to help me find somepony. He should be fairly... near." She looked at my necklace. "Where did you get that necklace!?" She demanded.
"You gave it to me," I answered, still under the lingering effects of the truth potion.
Shit!
"Liar! I gave it to Moonshine! I was following him," she said. It dawned on me. The necklace that she had given to me for 'good luck' on the mission, it had a tracking spell on it. And now it led her to me. I guess I was just lucky. "Where is he?"
Oh, Echo, why did you ask me that?
"He's dead," I answered honestly.
"What? When!?" she asked desperately.
"I'm not sure. A few days ago," I said.
Please stop.
"Impossible. I just saw him!"
"That was me."
"What!?"
I tried. By the stars, I tried so hard to do the right thing. I did what was asked of me. I did what I needed to, not because it was easy, but because it was hard. I persevered in the face of incalculable odds to try to save lives. After all the crimes, and hurt, and lies. I've tried to just be a good pony, in the vain hope that the sins of my past would not come back to haunt me. But alas, I could not escape my fate. I had dug my own grave. It was time to lay down in it. My 'uppance' had come.
"You gave this necklace to me last night for good luck. I'm sorry, Echo." I shape-shifted into Moonshine, and then into my naked, changeling form. "I'm a changeling." Her face broke, first in the realization that Moonshine really was dead. And then it twisted up into rage at my deceit. She pulled her hoof back to punch me. I made no move to stop her.
"You bastard!"
I deserved this.
Her punch socked me in the jaw and sent me reeling. The impact shocked me from putting my hooves up to stop my fall. My head cracked against the stone floor.
"I'm sorry!" Her punch was followed by a series of kicks to my ribs and stomach. "OOF! It wasn't my idea!"
"What you did to me-" She cried.
"I'm sorry! I didn't know he was your coltfriend!" I shielded my face with my hooves. "I didn't want to hurt you!"
"You son of a-" she kicked me in a particularly tender location, "bitch!"
"ARRGH! Echo! I can only say 'I'm sorry' so many times!"
"WELL THEN SAY IT AGAIN ANYWAY!" she screamed at me.
"I'm sorry."
She reached down and broke the necklace from my neck and spat on my cheek. She turned on her heel and left me there.
"Echo," I whimpered. But she was already gone. My mind raced with thoughts.
Maybe the war was prevented. Maybe it wasn't.
Shining Armor just killed my mother.
Echo hated my guts.
But one thought rang out clear above the rest.
Oh my gosh,
my everything.
My everything hurts.
It hurt to move. It hurt to think. It hurt to be awake. It hurt to be alive. I could hear hooves approaching from the darkness. Which wouldn't be for much longer, I figured.
"That'll do, Storm." I squinted through my swollen eyelid. I looked at the charcoal pegasus with a teal mane and fern leaf cutie mark. Sweet Leaf. She looked at me with those bright, viridian eyes. "That'll do." She scooped me up in her hooves as my vision faded to black.
The warm summer sun beat down on Sweet Apple Acres. My home. Applejack served the volleyball up over the net we had set up on the sandy shore of the riverbank.
"I've got it!" I called out. I bumped the serve up for a set to Big Macintosh. The tall stallion jumped up to spike it. And set it into the net, making the ball fall on our side.
"Ha! Another point for the gals," Applejack laughed, giving Apple Bloom a hoof bump. "Are you sure you're not playing for the wrong side, Pineapple?" she asked me.
"Eenope!" I said, imitating Big Mac. "Your serve," I said to him, passing the ball. Big Mac took the ball and gave it a solid whack with his hoof, sending it sailing. I watched it arc up into the heavens. All strength, and no coordination. That was him. Good for kicking apples out of trees, but not much else. The ball flew into the underbrush of the forest nearby. "I'll get it," I said, running into the thicket. I pushed my way through the shrubs, looking for the wayward volleyball. I came face to face with a set of green eyes.
"Are you sure you're not playing for the wrong side?" Sweet Leaf asked me.
My eyes shot open. All I could see was green. Green light everywhere. I felt warm, yet terrified. I was submerged. I panicked and lurched upwards, breaching the surface of the fluid. I screamed a silent scream as my lungs purged the liquid filling them.
"HUUUUH!" I gasped, taking a first breath of air. I was in a big tub, no, a pod of some kind. I leaned over the edge and retched and coughed the rest of the fluid from my lungs as I fell out onto the floor. Strangely, I didn't feel like I was drowning. I didn't feel pain. No pain from the various punches, kicks, cuts, stabs, concussions, explosions and pony-knows-what else from the past few weeks.
"Feeling better, Storm?"
I looked up at the pony on the other side of the iron bars. I realized that I was in a prison cell.
"Sweet Leaf!" I growled. I rushed at the bars, reaching through to try to grab at her with my chitin, changeling hoof.
"Tsk tsk. Such ingratitude! After all that I did to save your life," she said motioning to the pod. "Such a wonderful thing. It can save you from the very ebb of death."
"Then why did you try to kill me!?" I asked.
"Kill you!? I don't want to kill you!" she scoffed. "What would I do without you?"
"You burned my home down! You tried to kill me and my family!"
"So certain are you?" she asked with a coy smile.
"You left your damn fern leaf for me to find!" I spat.
"Oh. Well... Isn't that convenient for all the ponies that wanted to control you," she said.
"What?"
"Oh? Still haven't figured it out yet, have you? Still using all the muscles except the one that matters?" she asked. "All your life you've had the ponies telling you what to do and where to go. Carefully guiding you along a very specific path to your predestination. Did it not seem suspiciously convenient to you that each time you dared to defy their will, a leaf would magically appear to set you back on the path they intended for you. The Farm. The Guard. L.A.U.G.H. Here, at last, in Gryphonstone to carry out their mission?"
Sweet Leaf leaned closer towards me.
"Do you really think they loved you?" she asked. "Or liked you? Or even cared about you? Any more than a carpenter cares about a hammer? Do you not feel exactly like that? A tool of their will? A pawn of their schemes? You were so bent on your drive for revenge, that you were blind to everypony around you using it to manipulate you. Did they ever care about what you wanted? What you really wanted?"
She stared at me. She stared with those haunting green eyes.
I stared back, unflinching. I didn't want to believe her. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore her logic.
"All you ever asked for from day one was to know the truth," she said. "The truth about your family. Your parents. Is that so wrong? And yet at every turn, the so-called benevolent ponies denied you that simple request. And based on what? A promise? Like so much carrot on a stick to do their bidding? Lies upon lies, Storm. And then they condemn you for doing the same. All I tried to do was expose their facade. And now they've sent you to eliminate me... Are you sure you're not playing for the wrong side?" she asked. I opened my mouth to speak. She put her hoof up. "Now, now. You needn't answer right away. This is an important decision, after all. If you would let me, I would like to give you the opportunity to get those answers. You want answers?"
"I think I'm entitled," I said.
"You want answers?" she asked again.
"I want the truth!" I demanded. She smiled.
"It's just through there," she said, nodding at the wall of my cell. She pulled a lever, lifting the wall. "A gift, my dear Stormageddon. A token of my good will. I give to you the stallion that murdered your mother."
On the other side, Shining Armor was kneeling on the floor, shackled to the wall by a collar around his neck. His hooves were tied behind his back. His horn was fitted with a magic inhibition ring. His mouth was tied with a rag. The guards had clearly had a way with him. He was in rough shape.
"You may free him, and leave if you like. As you were told to do. Or you may free him from this mortal coil. Unlike those ponies, I won't tell you what to do. Think it over, please. Take your time. Make your own choice." Sweet Leaf said.
"..."
"..."
"So, here we are again," I said. Shining Armor listed a bit to one side. "I only ever wanted one thing out of all of this. I just wanted the truth. And you wouldn't even do that. Last time, I was your prisoner. You spared my life. Perhaps I should do the same. Perhaps I too should spare your life with the motive of using you for my own needs. Does that seem about fair? Tell you what, If you tell me who my father is, I'll let you live. Or how about my mother?" I said. He struggled through the gag.
"MMffnnFFMFM!"
"Oh, that's right. It doesn't matter anymore because you KILLED HER!" I grabbed the sword from his scabbard.
do it
And I thrusted it into his chest.
"MMMFFF!!!" He slumped forward as the sword ran through him and cut his rope bindings behind him, freeing his hooves. I pulled the sword from his torso, letting his blood run. He lifted a crimson hoof to pull his gag free, and then he ran it across my cheek gently. Blood ran from his lips as he managed to utter a single word to me,
"Son..."
He fell limp onto the ground as his life left him. His sword slipped from my hooves and clattered against the stone floor. I looked down at the fresh blood on my black hooves.
Sweet Leaf smiled.
"Oh, this part is always fun," she purred.
And then pain.
Pain beyond all description.
For all the injuries I'd had in my life, none compared to this.
Not even close.
At once, holes bored themselves into my body. I collapsed onto the ground as the feeling of a hundred knifes stabbed through me at once. My legs. My wings. My tail. My body became riddled with holes. But none so large as the one that pierced my heart. I thought I knew what love was. What did I know? The unconditional love of my father died along with him beside me at my own hooves. My throat tightened and closed off my air, but my mouth gaped in a silent scream.
"I'll be waiting for you in the throne room. Bring me his sword when you're done." She opened the door to my cell and walked out of the dungeon.
I think this is about where we came into this story. Me in a prison cell. But not in the Crystal Empire. In Gryphonstone.
If you asked me now why I did it, I probably couldn't tell you. My father lay dead beside me. Murdered by my own hooves.
A prison cell has a funny way of making you look back on the choices you've made in life. Then again, hindsight being what it is, it seems like one long string of "it was a good idea at the time" moments. But if ever there was one choice that marked a big, bright, red line in my life, it was that one moment, that one day, at the road leading out of Sweet Apple Acres, that I turned right, instead of left. It was as much of a literal fork in the road as well as my life.
The past is a puzzle, like a broken mirror. As you piece it together you cut yourself, your image keeps shifting, and you change with it. You see the choices that you didn't know you made. Sitting in this cell, I think of the cold laws of cause and effect...
...and I think of home.
"ARGH!" I cried out, writhing weakly on the floor. "Why does it hurt so much!?"
"Because his love for you was real," A weak voice said from the prison cell across the hall. An emasculated husk of a changeling shambled towards the bars. It's horn was a broken nub. "Quickly, the pod!"
"What!?"
"Put him in the pod! It might just work to save his life."
"He killed my mother!" I growled.
"You're in a changeling dungeon!" she said. "What did you really see? What did you really hear? Don't believe any of it! Put him in the pod! Do it quickly before it's too late for you both." I released the collar on the prince. I carried Shining Armor across the cell and placed him into the pod. My father sank into the green goo.
"What about you? What happened to your horn?" I gasped.
"The queen broke it. No longer does her voice crawl within my skull. But I can no longer feed either. I'll soon starve to death."
"But, the pod-"
"It's too late for me. For both of us," she said.
"What do you mean?" I didn't hear her answer. Her voice was pushed from my mind. My own thoughts were pushed from my mind. It was no longer my will.
Only her will.
Stormageddon, come to me.
"Yes... my queen." I took the sword, still warm with my father's blood, and walked to the throne room.
I walked into the throne room carrying the sword. Sweet Leaf sat upon the throne and watched me approach. She sauntered down the steps to me as her disguise peeled away. A changeling like myself, but taller. My body just as porous as hers.
"Behold, your Queen, Chrysalis," she announced herself. "Oh, I'm sure your head must just be buzzing with questions," she said.
"Either that or it's the tinnitus," I said. "I was in a train wreck today."
"Ah, but look at you now, my son," she said with a toothy smile as she caressed my exoskeleton with her perforated hoof. "I've looked forward to this day for so long. Ever since the Canterlot Invasion. Come, walk with me, my child. Let me tell you the story of... your life." With a flex of her will, I obediently fell into step beside her.
"On the eve of the invasion, I made a threat against Canterlot, forcing Shining Armor to abandon Princess Cadance's side to fulfill his duty as the Captain of the Royal Guard. I took Shining Armor's form and led his bride into the Crystal Caverns beneath Canterlot, where I trapped her. But not before I ravaged her in his form. It was a decadent meal."
"But in my overconfidence, Shining Armor's sister managed to free the Princess, and the attack was repelled. But you already know that part." She sighed. "My second plan for conquest was quite naturally perfect. It was a work of art. Flawless. Sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. An unforeseeable variable, a unicorn unknown to me, entered into equation and ruined everything." She snorted in frustration.
"Starlight Glimmer," she growled. "She took everything from me. All my years of careful planning, my kingdom, my hive, my SWARM! She took it all away from me! On that day, I no longer cared about conquest. Only revenge!" She looked down at me following closely beside her.
"This, you understand?" she asked. I nodded. "But in the years since, all of my attempts on her have been thwarted. She has focused far more on her own magical power than her Princess Twilight ever did. Starlight didn't waste her talents on the pursuit of friendship," she spat.
"And she matched it with a level of security that could teach even a changeling queen a thing or two about paranoia. Her power hexes. Her defense wards. The changeling detection fields she created. It seemed that I would never have the satisfaction of killing her myself. And even as ageless as I am, I'm too impatient to simply outlive her to the ravages of time."
"And so, I put my final solution into action. I used the gryphon kingdom to rally all of Equestria's enemies together in a final, great conflict to bring low the ponies who did so to me. I would have seen the world burn to be but queen of the ashes," she said with conviction.
"But now," her tone softened, "that needn't be. Luckily, on the eve of the invasion of Canterlot, I left Princess Cadance with a little surprise. An egg I had managed to deposit inside of her for her honeymoon. You."
"Me?"
"Yes. Your father, Shining Armor, unwittingly fertilized it. And months later, a horrified Cadance laid a changeling egg."
"Well, that explains a lot about her attitude towards me."
"I would have expected that they would have smashed it on the spot," Chrysalis said. "But for your father's love, and perhaps his ambition, he hid you away on an apple orchard. In hopes of using you one day against his enemies. They were wise to keep the truth from you. They understood the danger of the hive-mind."
"Hive-mind?" I asked.
"The shared consciousness of the swarm. We can share and read each other's thoughts. But your father's love and Princess Luna's meddling shielded your mind from me. Most of the time." She grinned. "I would get glimpses from you, once in a while. When you were experiencing strong emotions, or when you inhibited your own cognition... when you would drink, I was able to get information from you. And nudge you in the right direction."
Go right
Have another drink
Lie
Steal
KILL
"And the ponies did the rest. I collected information about Twilight's castle. The Royal Guard. The agents of S.M.I.L.E. and L.A.U.G.H." She bristled with excitement. "And best of all, I have their secret weapon. The one thing with the enchantments to walk right though their defenses, and get close enough to kill Starlight Glimmer, and all the rest." She turned and looked at me with those intense green eyes. A laugh rumbled from deep in her belly. "I have you. And now that your father is dead, you are under my total control now."
"I almost had you before, in the Crystal Empire. The wards surrounding the Heart protected it from me. But not you. Had we succeeded in stealing the Heart, your father would have perished then, and you would have been right there with me. But it all worked out in the end. Having you kill him yourself was just a bonus. But before you go back to Equestria to carry out your new assassination missions, let us celebrate your return to me, my suitor. After all, you killed my drone posing as the king, and the other traitor will soon starve to death. We have a hive to repopulate."
I obediently followed her towards the bedchambers. I followed the changeling queen that had been Sweet Leaf, the pony that I had vowed to kill. I had no choice in the matter. My hooves followed her instruction without my will. I would follow her. And I would mate with her. And I would kill ponies for her. I looked down at the bloody sword in my hoof. My father's sword. I looked at my hoof, at the holes in it.
I watched the holes begin to close. It felt like somepony let the air back into the room. I felt life within myself again. I felt my mind come back to me. The pod had worked, my father was alive! My father's love for me gave me strength. It filled me, and freed me from her hold on my mind.
"My Queen?" I asked as I followed behind her.
"Come now, there's no need for titles among lovers," she said.
"Sweet Leaf,"
"Please, my son, you needn't call me that,"
"Very well... Mother?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Tell me..." A smile crawled across my face as I gripped my father's sword tighter. "...have you ever danced with a nightmare in the pale moonlight?"
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- ItchyStomach · 51k words · 81 4 · 1.2k views
- MlpHero · 1.7k words · 12 5 · 243 views
- Riddle-Me-Think · 256k words · 304 24 · 9.1k views
- BaeroRemedy · 40k words · 57 4 · 1.3k views
- Dee Pad · 166k words · 59 2 · 1.2k views
- The Bricklayer · 2.3k words · 42 2 · 1.9k views
- Orkus · 27k words · 263 7 · 5k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.191 seconds
Total duration
1,060 users online
1,710,956 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Gasp
please make a sequel
this needs a sequel
pls
Good job!
Super huge mega spoiler:
SON OF A BITCH!!! IT IS!!! IT IS!!!
IT IS A SEQUEL TO THE SON IS SHINING!!!!!!!!! This one. It is a clopfic. For any uninitiateds.
Certainly not how I expected this kind of thing to play out.
Sequel
I and many others demand it.
Thanks for new chapters, I really like this story. :)
Oh. Oh. Oooooh. Eeeeehhh.
Certain earlier behavior is now waaaaay more understandable.
Wait, why do feel like we'll get a prequel concerning this?
So uh... Is this just over now? No sequel?
True Lies reference. Really?
Loved it, but a little reference heavy, some of them were just a little too intrusive.
So in the end a lot of questions remain unanswered, depending on whether or not you believe anything was the truth this chapter. Still, it was essentially correct that keeping the truth from Storm did more harm than good, even if, through dumb luck as usual, it may have turned out ok in the end. Shining deserves a good smack for that. And if 'Sweet Leaf' was telling the truth, the rest of the royal family all need bucks to the backsides. Luna for her manipulations and secrets that did far more harm than good, Twilight for actively aiding Shining into press ganging Storm into the guard and then treating him like crap, and Celestia for being an ignorant useless moron throughout all of this. The only one I have any sympathy for is Cadance, though her rejection of Storm directly led to these events too.
This REALLY needs a sequel, or at least a good epilogue, since it just can't end with us left hanging like this...
7906341 would you mind linking that story so we couldvread it?
7906718 I have now. I didn't before because it read right through the spoiler block, thus negating the block
7906718 Yes, it does take place before this story (in the same universe). But I wanted to distance it from this story for two reasons.
1. Spoilers.
2. It's a clopfic.
7906853 yeaaah.... no not touching that with a ten foot pole. no offense, but I just find clop disturbing.
7906643 7906652 7906697
i.imgsafe.org/e962d782cd.jpg
7906872 derpicdn.net/img/2016/8/20/1229870/full.gif
7906715 Oh, I like you.
#1 hope for the sequel: Storm and Echo become fremies again.
pardon my french but holy shit was that one badass ending with the music
just... holy god damn the music made that ending so good you have no idea
it feels like i just finished watching an action film and the credits are rolling and god damn was it a good movie.
i will return, and i hope for an amazing sequel. seriously, good job on this
7906872 oh hell yes
7906872
A smile crawled across my face as I gripped my father's sword tighter.
"...have you ever danced with a nightmare in the pale moonlight?"
Did the traitor with the sawed off horn in the dungeon appear anywhere else in the story?
Hmm, this played out in a way I didn't really expect it to, mainly because I found the whole scenario a bit unlikely and all over the place. Probably because I was hoping for more interesting plot twists and less action. I kinda figured that the whole coalition against Equestria was just a lie from Luna, because the idea seemed silly to me. The weakened gryphons managed to ally the highly unreasonable Yaks? I could see the Buffaloes have a beef with Equestria, but not really the Dragons. Usually, coalitions are formed against aggressive neighbours like Napoleon and not on super-friendly nations like the Swiss. I guess you could blame changeling mind-tricky, but even that seems a bit farfetched.
Luna knew what was going on with the gryphons, but still they didn't inform Shining who went there with barely an escort? That seems a bit too dumb, unless Luna actually wanted him dead to create a sort of Casus Belli against the gryphons. The whole scené with 'Storm', Shining, and Echo was also a bit weird, and I assume it was just a changeling mind-trickery to mess with him, though I have no idea how it reached that point. Shouldn't 'Storm' have gone with a gryphon disguise while looking for Shining?
With the story marked as Complete I assume what's happening in the keep is now done with, and whatever happened next will be off-screen. It didn't mind the cliffhanger ending too much, but I think an epilogue from perhaps Luna's perspective where she ruminates about the aftermath would make it cleaner.
Edit: added the spoiler just to be safe.
well dang this story really has a few super twist in it.
love love love it.
I'm kinda disappointed with how these last few chapters ended up, the references felt really forced and the pacing really off. Like there's supposed to be more before the ending happened but nope it's just done now.
The twists came out of nowhere with nothing having been hinted at earlier plus after the reveal that the Apple family was still alive it didn't make any sense why Luna got Storm to go on the last mission by saying Sweet Leaf would be there. Sure Luna promises to tell him what's going on after but mostly it's just him wanting to go after Sweet Leaf for no reason that I can imagine.
I really, really liked this story (my 2 hours of sleep last night can attest to that). However, the last couple chapters seemed really rushed. It felt like the pacing was all over the place, and like it finished three different times, just to laugh in your face because "haha lul you thought it was resolved but it really wasn't because reasons and stuff." Honestly, up until the last couple chapters this story was astounding. Those last two were difficult to read though. Whether you fix it or not is up to you. The last two may have been meh but the main story makes up for it quite well.
Awesome story I can't wait for more.... Also it's 6pm... I should really go to bed
Great story man.
Really loved reading it! Looking forward to any sequels you may write.
Eh. This ended up falling pretty firmly into something I want to like but can't.
The ending felt very rushed. The cliffhanger and offscreen kill might've been okay on its own if the rest of the finale wasn't such a mess. But it just rushes from event to event, even when they don't really do anything. Killing the fake queen, to Shining killing a second fake queen, to a scene with Echo(?) that basically served no narrative purpose whatsoever. And now patricide, and then some completely random-ass changeling helps him un-patricide for...reasons I guess? and then a bunch of reveals that most of us already guessed (Chrysalis getting in his head while he was drunk was a good twist), and then un-plot twist lets him kill the bad guy offscreen. It felt like you were throwing a bunch of scenes together that you wanted to happen, but didn't really think about why they should or what purpose they might serve.
And we're still left with basically everyone Storm ever knew being a horrible, horrible person, and the spy agency he works for being the most comically ineffectual intelligence department in the history of fiction. Luna tried to cover up four hostile nations, but let Shining Armor waltz right into a country they knew was being run by changelings to incite a war and where a ton of agents just got gruesomely murdered. How much peyote was she on? Jesus.
It's good writing mechanically, but the scaffolding it's built on is fundamentally and absurdly broken.
There are many things to say about this story. There are many bad things to say about this story. In the end, the only important thing to say was it was so overwhelmingly dissapointing.
I want to like this story, the characters are solid and realistic, the feel of it being a first-person disjointed mess because it's the memory of someone suffering from alcholism, depression, and probably a little smidge of suicidal tendancies is good, the important locations are well described and easily visualised.
It's a shame then that the characters while being solid and realistic are generally unlikable cock-mongrels, the consistant fractured story telling and insanely high pace makes this almost impossible to follow in any sort of detail, when it's nt relying on tropes and cliches, and any unimportant locations just feels like a grey mist.
This is great as a piece of artistic writing, as a story it's almost unreadable.
So I finally knuckled down and read the entire thing(in about half a day, none the less) and I can't possibly describe the rage I felt while reading everyone's interactions with Storm. With all of the bullshit he was forced to put up with, including the fact that the one person who actually told him what was going on, the full unedited story, was Chrysalis, who he then had to stop, they'll all be lucky if he doesn't go back and start wrecking shit in pure, undiluted rage. I know I would, and I do my best to be an eternal optimist.
While the story was nice and the characters well developed, the absolute lack of empathy was extremely jarring. Racism, or xenophobia in some cases, was almost shoved down my throat and the Apples actually kind of scared me. The military thing was also kind of out there, as I was in the military myself and they had the decency to lie to you until you reached boot.
I won't downvote it, because it flowed nicely and the characters were believable(except for the absolute lack of empathy anyone had for anyone else), but I can't upvote it either. It was just too frustrating,
Oh, and I know I'm a horrible person, but when I first read Pound's admittance for his reason for leaving, I interpreted it as the cake's demanding he screw his sister. Seriously, I was actually horrified when Storm told him to go home and that they'd forgive him because I thought he was sending the poor kid to get raped by his sister.
8038367 Storm was never meant to be a hero. I never intended to paint him as some kind of paladin. Right from the beginning he makes it clear early on in the story when he says that he is not a good person. And he does a lot of bad things. I intentionally made him a character that would be difficult to like, or root for. And this attribute of his character is easily missed by those who believe that the ponies around him are treating him poorly for no reason.
I want to make it clear that I don't condone his actions any more than you do. You are absolutely right about what he did to Echo. It was wrong of him to do that. And he does feel guilty about it after, and gets punished for it in the story.
But perhaps what I failed to illustrate in that event was the inner conflict of him between his pony morals upbringing, and his changeling nature to 'feed on love through deception'. When a wolf kills a hiker in the wild, do we call it murder? Or is it the wolf's nature? Does it justify Storm's actions? I don't think so. But our judgement of his actions and of him as a character does deserve some context.
I've never read this story... but for some reason... I felt nostalgic just looking at the title... and the description... odd...
By that ending, I'm gonna assume that there will be a sequel.
I shall be watching for it with great anticipation.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa
Looking forwards to the sequel.
I liked many parts about the story—there were plenty of moments where his cuntiness was absolutely hilarious. For example, his stealing from the minibar, which really did it for me:
It might be my schadenfreude speaking, but the shenanigans Storm got involved in made this story something I wanted to go back and continue reading.
That said, the ending did feel too rushed and honestly does a disservice to the rest of the fic. Not only is this with the Steven Universe reference that I found distracting, but also the other aspects, which 7912989 has already discussed in depth better than I can on a good day.
One response to the ending.
WWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!! 
Yea, i was just wondering if the World's Strongest Writer is strong enough to make a sequel?
8383529
Eventually.
So what do you do when you can become anypony?
You become a spy, of course.
well no shit oc course you become a spy you can kill someone and take their place. that is if you good at it.
8787125
s2.quickmeme.com/img/3c/3c0dfcca919bedf332845fba353a760f128ed0f3651f2b3340c45d564f13bd86.jpg
Are you going to write a sequel to this?
8943297 Eventually. In like... a year and a half.
The ending is so perfect as it is that it feels like it should stop there and leave the reader on their toes, rather a than a "they lived happily ever after". However, I want to know what happens! Thank you Shakespearicles for such an amazing story!
9162978
Thank you for reading!
Btw, is there going to be a non-cannon incestual side story between Storm and Chrysalis, either all or part of the Apple family, or with Shining Armour?
9163246 Technically, the BBBFF trilogy is a prequel to this.