Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky

by PortalJumper

Part IV - Chapter 5: As Above, So Below

Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky

Part IV - Chapter 5: As Above, So Below

* * *

The night wound onward and onward, the squall of wind blowing steadily and roughly as Sun kept his vigil. His guidestick provided some meager light, but against the blistering wind its reach could only extend so far. Insufficient illumination aside, Sun found his thoughts too clouded by Starlit's revelations.

"Why can't this be simpler?" Sun pondered. "Patching a hole in Applejack's roof, that was simple; helping the schoolfoals in town with their homework, simple as well. But now I'm stuck dealing with Princesses and the complexities of magic, not to mention risking life and limb for the fate of the world."

Straightening up with his guidestick, Sun took a glance back towards the tents, barely visible in the whipping snow. They all still stood, save for a hefty piling of snow all around them.

"I could just leave. Just grab up my things, scrawl the teleportation circle into the snow, and go back to the Oak. Then from there, just wander south until I hit home again."

Sun slowly slid back into his hunkered position, wrapping his cloak tight against the wind and leaning his head back against the stone slab. A hot burst of steam escaped his face mask as he sighed into the night.

"What is wrong with me?" Sun chastised. "Things just started to go sideways, just start turning against my favor, and I'm thinking of calling it quits? By Celestia, what would my parents say about that?"

A small flicker of warmth spread through Sun's heart as he thought of home, of his parents. Remembering his mother teaching him his letters and numbers, his father showing him how to bandage a scraped shin. They had both loved him, even if they weren't here to see all that he'd done without them.

The feeling of happiness slowly abated as Sun caught a glimpse of something out in the snowstorm. It was heavily obscured by the wind, but it looked distinctly pony shaped and moved with a steady, purposeful gait.

Righting himself, Sun slowly made his way towards the figure, keeping his guidestick aloft and his magic bolt primed. Anything that was moving around at this time of night and this far into the tundra wasn't something to be trifled with.

As Sun slowly approached the figure became clearer, as did the sky; as he drew closer to the creature the squall abated, and individual flurries of snow hung suspended in the air as if frozen in time. The figure turned to face Sun as it noticed his guidestick's light.

It's skin was as white as the driven snow, with odd blue undertones and a texture not unlike that of desiccated skin. It reminded him all too much of a thestral's mottled skin, and he reflexively drew back when it locked its large, iridescent, ice-blue eyes onto him. It had no mane nor tail, or even a tail bone, and a single shard of pure, crystalline ice pierced into its forehead in a grim simulacra of a unicorn's horn.

The creature stared at Sun, and Sun at it, neither making a move against each other for an amount of time that seemed like an eternity. Then, with a sound like cracking glass, it opened its mouth and let words spill forth.

"You, herald of my foe," the voice intoned from an unmoving mouth, feminine and despondent, "turn back. The Crystal Empire holds no treasure for you, only decay, despair, and demise. Leave me to my unending sorrow, for love's soothing warmth rests not in my crystal heart."

With another cracking noise the creature shut its mouth, and without a care turned away from Sun and continued its march into the snow, taking its pocket of calm with it. Sun slowly backed up towards his post, keeping his eyes on the creature until the snowstorm finally subsumed it. He jumped with a start when his back finally hit the rock, and then decided that it was Starlit's turn to keep watch.

* * *

Rainbow Dash awoke the next morning with a kink in her back and one of her wings awkwardly folded up underneath her, one of the perils of roughing it in the tundra. Taking a moment to stand, shake herself out, and get her blood warmed up, she pulled her goggles down and mask up to brace the chill and the layabouts.

As the harsh light of morning hit her eyes, thankfully protected by her goggles, she found that every part of camp save for her tent had already been broken down, and her tag-alongs were just finishing packing up their things.

"About time somepony got some work out of you two," Rainbow Dash chastised. "Keep this up and you might just start to impress me."

Neither turned to face her, although Sun gave a quick glance over before turning back to his bags.

"Ah, giving me the cold shoulder, huh?" Rainbow continued. "Fine, whatever, makes my job easier if I don't have to deal with your jaw-jacking."

Rainbow expertly broke down her tent, rolled up her bedroll, and tucked all of her supplies away into their appropriate pouches and bags. Save for the occasional gust of wind, she worked in silence.

"I hope watch wasn't too hard on you fresh flakes last night," Rainbow said as she joined them. "I find that nothing really tests a pony like staring out into the great unknown and wondering what might be out there."

"Are we going to get moving?" Starlit asked, her tone nearly as cold as the snow. "We're on something of a time-table here."

"Yeah, keep your snowshoes on," Rainbow replied, checking the map she'd taken. "Just keep following those fancy necklaces of yours, I'll make sure you don't wander down of a ravine."

Rainbow Dash took the lead again, as she always did, keeping her ears perked for trouble and her eyes on the horizon. The weight of her guidestick on her back was comforting, although the fresh snowfall from the dust-up last night had made any sorts of natural paths harder to discern.

One hour passed. Then two. Then three. The only communication Rainbow had with her charges had been the occasional course correction, followed by the pair of them falling back. Against the endless expanse of white with nary a spot of color to break up the monotony, Rainbow found her brain winding up like a spring. She needed stimulus, something to break up the trudge.

Slowly she fell back, putting herself at least within earshot of Starlit and Sun. It seemed like they were discussing something, but the covering on her ears and their low voices prevented her from making any of it out.

"Hey, I'm bored," Rainbow interjected when there seemed to be a pause in the conversation. "Either of you good at breaking that sort of thing up?"

Starlit shot a quick glare at Rainbow before moving back a bit further and resuming her conversation. Even with the mask, Rainbow could tell Starlit was still harboring a few wounded feelings.

"Look, I'm sorry about yesterday, alright?" Rainbow apologized. "It's just that you hit a nerve, and I got mad, and I'm not great at emotions and junk like that."

"Rainbow, we're busy planning for what's ahead," Starlit cut in. "Unless it's important, I think this would be a fantastic time to learn the value of patience."

Letting out a cloud of fog with her exasperated groan, Rainbow turned back forward and set an angry glare on the horizon.

"Fine, whatever, not like I wanted to bury the spear with you anyway," Rainbow grumbled.

Within the hour night fell again, leaving Rainbow Dash with even less to look at. Her fur prickled with every step, she often found herself idly chewing on her lip, and at one point idly twisting her guidestick in her hoof just to watch the light from its crystal. Anything to break up the tedium, all of which rapidly failed her.

"Okay, we're stopping here," Rainbow declared when she'd finally had enough of trying to keep herself halfway focused. She pointed out to a stable slab of stone cresting up from the frozen lake that they'd been walking on. It wasn't ideal, but it was flat and it gave Rainbow an excuse to do something other than endlessly march.

Rainbow Dash pulled out a few logs from their supply of firewood and set them up to prepare for kindling while Starlit and Sun busied themselves a decent distance away with their tents and supplies. All day the pair of them had been chatting incessantly, and it seemed that camp set up would be no different.

As Rainbow set the kindling alight with a charge from her guidestick she looked towards the tents and called for her charges.

"Fire's ready, I'll get some of our rations cooking," Rainbow said. She quickly pulled out her tin pot and nestled it into the now growing fire, then putting in a few hoofulls of snow to let it melt down and come up to a boil.

Rainbow was just pulling out some of the powdered ingredients that they'd brought along when Starlit and Sun made their way to the warmth of the fire. They didn't necessarily look happy, which Rainbow Dash could understand, but they didn't look particularly unhappy either. If anything, they had the sort of look that told her they had been thinking.

"A lot on your mind?" Rainbow asked as she poured the powders in. The snow-water immediately started to thicken up, and a scent of spices and vegetable broth permeated the air.

Starlit and Sun both exchanged a look, but didn't answer back.

"So we're still doing this, huh? Look, Starlit, I'm sorry I snapped at you yesterday, really. This really isn't the best situation for me to be in either, and I got a little testy."

"Rainbow, we've been doing some talking," Starlit began.

"No kidding you have," Rainbow interjected.

"And we think we'll be fine without you."

Save for the howl of the wind in the distance and the crackle of the fire, the camp grew deathly quiet. Rainbow cast a confused glance at both of them, but neither seemed like they were joking.

"No, you won't be," Rainbow replied curtly. "Trust me, out of the three of us I am the most experienced when it comes to this survival stuff. You need me around."

"Rainbow, this isn't exactly our first time doing something like this," Sun said. "We all know that you don't want to be here, and Starlit and I really think it would be for the best if you just took your belongings, enough food to sustain you on the trip back, and left us to our own devices."

"And how will you get in to the Empire without me, huh?" Rainbow shot back, only to be cowed when they both held up their compass-necklaces. The small glowing spot pointed to the northeast.

"And what about the no-magic zone?" Rainbow retorted. "You'll need me to navigate!"

"Not with the moon and the sun," Starlit replied back. "I learned how to navigate by those when I was little, and now that they're working properly again it'll only be easier to do so."

Rainbow looked back and forth, hoping that one of them would tell her it was all a joke. On the one hoof she wanted so desperately for an excuse to go back, to keep her promise to Scootaloo. But she couldn't leave a job half-finished, especially when Spitfire had given it to her explicitly.

"But you two promised that you'd tell me what was going on!" Rainbow hastily demanded. "You wouldn't back out on a promise, would you?"

"We can tell you when we get back," Sun replied.

"Rainbow, you're grasping at straws here and you know it," Starlit continued. "You said it yourself, this is a suicide mission at best; why get yourself killed when you have ponies worth living for back home?"

After having spent so much of the day desperate for conversation, Rainbow Dash found herself at a loss for words. This was her chance; she could make a clean break and go home with a clear conscience. No more trudging through the tundra, no more keeping her head on a swivel, no more having to deal with anyone but her own people.

"You know what, it's your funeral," Rainbow relented. "If you want to disappear into the white and never be seen again, then that's on your idiot flanks. I do have ponies worth living for, so if you want me gone then I'm gone."

Without so much as another word Rainbow Dash stood up, gathered up her pack, which she had noticed neither of them had bothered to unpack, and marched out onto the frozen lake. Guidestick in hoof and her goggles pulled down over her face she marched back south, both ashamed that she was abandoning the mission and relieved that she could go home.

As she flew off, she felt a gust of wind come in across the gliding edge of her wings, and noticed a squall starting roll in from the south. She flew straight for it, hoping that the chill of the wind would cool the fire in her head.

* * *

The nighttime air whipped at the canvas of Starlit and Sun's tent, shaking and rattling the rough fabric. They had both decided it would be for the better if they stay in the same tent to conserve on body heat and to make creaking down camp easier. Without Rainbow Dash they were down a set of hooves, and they would have to conserve all the energy that they could.

Starlit felt Sun shift in the bedroll next to her. He'd been tossing and turning all night, and by this point it was apparent that neither of them were going to be getting a good night's sleep.

With a slow yawn Starlit sat up and looked to Sun, who was laying on his back and looking up at the roof of the tent with that expression he got whenever he was deep in thought.

"Bit for your thoughts?" Starlit asked.

"Did we make a huge mistake?" Sun asked, still staring at the roof.

"I don't think we did, if by "mistake" you mean letting a potential liability go before she could become a problem."

Sun kept staring up at the roof, and the wind continued to pound at the flaps of the tent.

"Sun, we've gone over this," Starlit continued as she flopped back onto her bedroll. "She obviously didn't want to come along, and we both agreed that we don't want to be responsible for her getting killed on our mission. You even said that it was for the best."

"I remember what I said, Starlit," Sun replied. "I'm just starting to feel bad about how we went about it, I guess."

"Rainbow's a big filly, she can take a few sharp words," Starlit answered. "C'mon, we better make hay while the wind howls. No sense in trying to get back to sleep in this sleet storm."

"You aren't thinking about getting back out there in this, are you?" Sun retorted.

"Heavens, no," Starlit replied, taken aback that that is the conclusion Sun had jumped to. "I'm just saying we should take some inventory, go over the books Twilight gave us about this place, and wait for the weather to abate."

"Oh," Sun sheepishly answered back. "Yeah, that would probably be for the best. This wind is ridiculously loud, even compared to what we've seen so far."

"That probably means that we're getting closer to the Empire, then. Here, you go over the atlas while I take a look at this history text she gave us."

As the wind continued to howl outside, Starlit and Sun set their minds to work. It helped to focus her thoughts after what they'd gone through with Rainbow Dash, but she couldn't help but worry a bit for their wayward guide.

* * *

Rainbow Dash could practically feel the wind blowing against her, such was its speed and ferocity as it battered against her tent. The squall she had seen coming had blown in far faster than she anticipated, and she'd been forced to set up her tent in the blinding snow.

Rainbow could feel her face heat up in anger just thinking about what those two had done. Their hubris was going to be the death of them, but if they didn't want her then she wasn't going to indulge them with her presence any more. They could freeze for all she cared.

For nearly an hour Rainbow tried to roll back over and sleep some more, but kept finding that it wouldn't come to her. Every time the wind howled it reignited her indignation, her anger at hasn't been so jilted when she was just trying to do her job.

"It wasn't even a job you wanted, what are you so cut up over this?" Rainbow asked herself. "You get to go home, see Scootaloo, see your friends. They even gave you the perfect alibi for Spitfire."

Shaking her head, Rainbow stood up from her bedroll. She could get through this storm, and doing something physical would help take her mind off of her anger at being rejected and cast out.

Her goggles, head and hoof wraps, and thick coat were only doing so much to keep the biting chill out as Rainbow Dash broke down her tent and got everything packed back away. With her guidestick attaches to her side and beaming its red light in front of her, Rainbow started the trudge southward, doing her best to navigate by what little moon and starlight she could see through the clouds.

Rainbow had barely been walking for fifteen minutes when she felt a sudden chill, one completely unrelated to the weather. It ran down her spine, sending an electric tingle of primal fear through her. It wasn't a sensation she was used to feeling.

Whipping her head around she found herself surrounded by the blinding white, barely able to see ten feet in front of herself even with her snow-blind goggles. The light from her guidestick wasn't doing much for it either.

Cautiously Rainbow Dash creeped forward, the crunch of snow underhoof and the howl of the wind whipping against her face the only things she could feel as she perked her ears. She was trying to listen for anything out of place; a movement of snow, a cough, anything. Something was out in the snow with her, and she had to get the jump on it before it got the jump on her.

So focused was she on listening for another pony or worse that Rainbow Dash almost didn't notice when the snowstorm died down. The world was still shrouded in a haze of white, but the winds had ceased and the flurries of snow hung in midair. It was still, completely and utterly.

Slowly, with a soft crunching of snow, Rainbow Dash heard hoofsteps make their way towards her. A pony sized figure, hairless and with wrinkled, desiccated skin as white as driven snow stalked toward her. It's vivid blue eyes bore through her, but it didn't seem to be particularly malicious.

Rainbow Dash, however, froze in her tracks when she saw the stuff of her nightmares walk out of the silent storm. She had been told tales of these creatures, but always assumed that they were just foal's tales designed to scare children into obeying. It couldn't be real, but the evidence of her eyes was all that she needed to believe that it was.

"Windigo," Rainbow muttered under her breath.

The creature walked past, eyes locked forward, and as it went so did the flurries that it had suspended in the air. They all began to coalesce into pony-sized forms, incorporeal and spectral, that followed after the windigo like an army. Several of its ghosts walked through her, leaving a vicious chill in her chest each time they did, and as the mass finally moved past they took to the air, galloping across the northward sky with snow falling from their hooves.

They were going for Starlit and Sun, and Rainbow Dash wasn't there to tell them what was coming.

The storm now past, Rainbow started to the south, towards her home. She stared back to the north, seeing the wave of ice-borne death coming for two ponies who didn't know the doom that was about to come down upon their heads.

Rainbow thought of Scootaloo. Rainbow thought of Starlit and Sun. She thought about hearth and home, about terror and death, about her wants, about their needs, about her home, about her mission.

With a muttered curse under her breath, Rainbow took to the sky once more, flying as fast as her wings would carry her back north. She could run alongside the horde of ghosts, keeping above their mass so they wouldn't notice her. She just prayed that she could fly faster than they could.

* * *

The weather showed no signs of letting up after what felt like two hours, and despite the weather Starlit noticed the barest hints of daylight starting to peek through the oppressive winter wind.

"I'd say that this is about as good as we're going to get," Starlit declares as she slapped the tome she had been reading shut. "Let's start breaking everything down, we may as well get a bit more distance."

"You sure? The wind's still pretty bad," Sun asked.

"It's been bad for hours, we may as well get some walki—"

Starlit stopped short as her ears perked up. Despite the wind, she swore that she could hear a voice on the wind.

"Do you hear that?" Starlit asked Sun. Sun adjusted his ears, even placing one against the canvas wall of the tent.

"You mean the wind dying down?" Sun asked back. Starlit was only now noticing that the wind was starting to abate, which only set the fur on her neck even more on edge.

"No, it sounds like somepony yelling," Starlit answered. "Stay here, I'll go check it out. Get your knife ready just in case."

Sun drew the knife at his ankle with his teeth as Starlit carefully edged towards the flaps of the tent. Her horn was alight with blue magic, ready to throw up a ward if need be.

Just as she pushed the flap back it blew open with a gale as a figure barreled into the tent. Starlit reflexively activated her ward, popping a dome up around herself that tore the canvas of the tent to shreds and splintered the wooden stakes holding it in place.

As the tent blew away in the diminished wind and Sun held his ground beside her, the rising sun revealed a tangled mess of hooves, clothes, supplies, and a small shock of rainbow colored hair peeking out from under a head wrap.

"Rainbow Dash?" Starlit and Sun asked in unison.

Quickly Rainbow flapped her wings and assumes a standing position. She was breathing like she had just run a marathon, and her goggles were hanging haphazardly from her neck.

"What are you doing here?" Starlit asked. "We told you to go home!"

"Not now, there's something bad coming, and I mean really bad!" Rainbow quickly replied. "Get whatever you can carry, we need to run!"

"Rainbow, you're not maki—" Sun began.

"I could be halfway back home right now with the speed I just flew at, and I'm probably not going to be able to fly again for a day or two, so right now I just need you two to trust me!" Rainbow interjected, eyes piercing through Sun like an arrow. "There is a horde of monsters on their way here right now, and I'm pretty sure they're looking for you two specifically! Now grab your shit and move!"

As Starlit deactivated her ward she noticed something odd; the wind had completely abated, and the snowfall had stopped. Not like it had ceased snowing, but that the flurries hung in the air as if time had stopped. Rainbow Dash looked at the phenomena like a pony who had just seen a ghost, and Sun's quick tap from behind proved how correct of an assessment that was.

Galloping through the sky, like a hoard of ghosts, were incorporeal ponies made fro the very frost itself, and at the head she could see a single creature. It was pony shaped, with snow-white skin that was thin and wrinkled like a thestrals, and it's eyes were a solid, vivid blue.

As Starlit backed away as the apparitions and their leader drew ever closer to the ground, the pony at the head opened its mouth, and a high, sonorous, and vicious voice echoed out of it.

"Thou didst not heed my warning! Thou didst not return to from whence thou camst! Now thou whilst lie buried in the hoarfrost with the rest of the interlopers, so that mine sorrow may endure evermore!"

"Run!" Rainbow cried, and Starlit was more than inclined to agree. Grabbing up her saddlebags she slung it across her haunches and bolted, with Sun following just behind and Rainbow taking the helm.

The trio barely got more than a hundred feet out before a piercing cracking noise echoed across the ground, shifting the fresh snow to reveal they they were running across the roof of an ice cavern.

Another crack, and fissures as wide as Starlit was began to race along the ice behind her.

One final crack, and all three of them were falling into the frozen abyss below, tumbling head over hooves as the ice swallowed them up.

* * *

Comments

[JMP]

Well, that went...terribly. Seems Cadance isn't too happy to see envoys from Twilight. This one's...gonna be tough. I also don't think cutting off Rainbow was wise, but that's a moot point now.

[PortalJumper]

9921560
It was a pretty hectic situation, and they had left on pretty rough terms not three hours ago, so seeing Rainbow back that soon and obviously freaking out kind of overrode their logical minds.

And then the ice ghosts. That tends to put a bit of a spring in your step