Epilogue
“My Queen! My Queen!” shouted a hunched figure as it ran up a long spiraling staircase, its gravely grunting voice echoing off the nearby walls.
The creature stood on two legs, each was comparatively short next to its broad chest and abnormally long arms. Its entire body was covered in a thick white fur designed to provide warmth in the coldest of environments. Its face was canine in appearance, with a moderately long snout, pointed teeth, and a sniffling black nose. In its clawed hands, it held an almost perfect sphere of crystal clear ice against its chest.
The wolf-like creature ran up the spiraling steps in front of it as fast as its legs would allow, its clawed and padded feet clacking against the cold stone stairs as it went. Soon enough though, the wolf reached the top of the staircase and the ice-encrusted hardwood door waiting there. The creature immediately grabbed the door’s handle, flung it open, and hurried inside.
Beyond that door, the wolf darted through a very large garden. Flowers of every color imaginable stood from well-placed pots, and curved trees bent with the domed ceiling above to dangle their vines and leaves below. Then, as though to ensure the plants’ everlasting beauty, each and every single piece of plant life was secured behind a thin sheet of ice. At the center of this ice sculpture of a garden, there sat a large darkened throne, also carved out of the purest of ice. The throne, and the area immediately around it, were wreathed in an unnatural darkness that actually seemed to be radiating cold and shadows outwards into the room. Sitting on the throne was a vaguely humanoid figure, hidden underneath the cooling shadows.
The wolf creature ran up to throne in the center of the room, and knelt down in a deep bow just over an arm’s length away.
“Messenger, what news do you bring?” whispered a softly feminine and almost soothing voice from the veiled figure.
“Your Majesty, your scrying magic has just begun working again,” huffed the wolf as it held out the orb towards the throne. “The indebted Warden has reappeared.”
The figure on the throne stiffened and leaned forward a little, but not enough to pierce through the dark cloud around its seat.
“How did you find him?” the queen said at once, her voice shifting almost instantly to a chilling bite that pierced into the wolf’s ears. “There are precious few ways to evade my sight, even fewer that last for as long as he’s been gone.”
The wolf let out a short whine and folded back its ears against its furry skull, even while presenting the orb in its claws ever more energetically. “We don’t know, my Queen, he just appeared to your magic mere moments ago. Even now, the image isn’t perfect, but it’s there.” The messenger lifted its head to peer quizzically at the sphere it held. “And, there’s something else.”
The figure hidden under the unnatural shadows leaned forward in her seat until her head and arms breached through the curtain and came into view. Beautiful did not even begin to describe the woman’s face. Her skin was extremely pale white across her exposed face and hands, almost sickly, and completely free of any possible blemishes. The flesh of her face was free of excess fat, leaving her jaw and high cheekbones easily visible. Her hair was a long stream of straight shoulder-length silver perfection. If you didn’t look too closely, you could potentially mistake her hair for a short river of flowing platinum. Her eyes, contrary to the rest of her face, refused to be tied down to any single color. The icy pools of her eyes constantly shifted every few seconds into a different color of the blue spectrum. All of these created a face that would have any mere mortal falling to their knees in thanks at being able to witness such beauty; however, as many unfortunate men and women have learned, beauty is only skin deep.
Every muscle in her face worked to create a precise and carefully controlled mask. Very little emotion escaped from her shifted eyes, instead, she practically radiated a sense of feral hunger. Her gaze fixated intensely on the orb in her messenger’s grasp and slowly leaned closer to it, like a feline tensing before it pounces on its unsuspecting prey. Even the air around her seem to darken and drop to well below freezing as her attention became over more focused on the sphere.
The confines of the icy orb, while foggy and flickering occasionally, housed an image for the queen. Through its surface she could see a large bed with two unfamiliar figures lying upon it, although both were clearly to be equine in nature. The larger one was an alicorn stallion with an ashen grey coat and a black mane and tail. The smaller, lying curled against the stallion, was a lavender colored unicorn mare. Both slept soundly upon their bed, unaware of any prying eyes.
“What is this?” the queen whispered aloud seized the orb of ice from her minion’s hand, a very brief look of genuine surprise upon her face. “This shouldn’t be possible. They disapp…”
Her voice trailed off slightly as something visibly clicked behind her eyes. Her lips, as uniformly pale as the rest of her skin, stretched in a wide toothy grin. Her eyes opened a little further as an expression of pure giddiness broke through her icy mask.
“You found them.” The queen’s eyes traced along the alicorn’s body until they fell upon a silver pentacle mark on his flank, causing her smile to stretch even wider. “Oh, wonderful wonderful news! You found them and they’ve been keeping you safe for me all this time.”
“The grey one is the indebted wizard your spell is connected to,” the wolf said unhelpfully, albeit excited to bring any news that made its queen smile. “Your Majesty, allow us to fetch him for you. My pack and I can track him through his debt, no matter who protects him or where he hides.”
“No,” the smiling goddess said with a dismissive gesture, “you wouldn’t be able to lay a claw on him. This land he hides himself in, this Equestria, is unassailable by any within the Summer or Winter Courts.”
The wolf tilted its head to one side and stared uncomprehendingly at the crooning woman. “My Queen?”
The pale goddess let out a short sigh and tore her gaze away from the sphere in her hands and towards the one that had brought her this news. “Before even I came to power, my predecessor found this Equestria, and tried to seize it. It’s a place so rich with raw magic and inhabited by beings naturally capable of wielding it, that taking it would strike a major blow against Summer.”
The queen’s face became shadowed as she delved into what she knew or had learned about that dark time. The environment around her shifted slightly to reflect the haunted appearance on her face. The shadows around the garden became more pronounced and the temperature dropped another few degrees. Even the messenger’s fur began to harden and frost over.
“We did not anticipate one factor however. This world is somehow separated completely from our source of power. In this world, the cycle and power of both Summer and Winter bow to the will of these ponies, not us.” The queen’s eyes found their way back over to the image of the two ponies in her grasp. “Winter’s forces swarmed into Equestria eons ago, and every single one of them were sapped of their strength the moment they crossed into Equestria. Fae might means very little there. Shortly later, the entirety of Equestria simply vanished from the Nevernever, until now least. He can’t be extracted even with a platoon of your finest trackers.” The queen transferred the scrying orb to her left hand and stroked it like a pet with her right. “Besides, I need him to come to me, willingly. Even hidden away, I can still pull at his strings.”
The wolf creature looked expectantly at its queen. “So then, what do you want to do?”
“We will watch, and we will wait.” The woman poured a tad bit more of her energy into the sphere to try and get a clearer image. The grey alicorn within the orb shivered in his sleep and extended out a wing protectively over the unicorn. “No-one eludes Queen Mab forever, not even you, Harry Dresden.”
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Applechip · 19k words · 172 4 · 2.7k views
- Lighthawk · 27k words · 194 3 · 3.2k views
- psychicscubadiver · 32k words · 701 14 · 8.7k views
- Chengar Qordath · 224k words · 1,002 40 · 16k views
- Chengar Qordath · 14k words · 483 27 · 10k views
- psychicscubadiver · 89k words · 1,366 24 · 19k views
- Chengar Qordath · 47k words · 380 25 · 6.2k views
- Lord Of Dorkness · 119k words · 407 38 · 21k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.173 seconds
Total duration
883 users online
1,319,315 hits today, 2,054,621 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.®
Well, this means a sequel, looking forware.
Excellent sequel hook, man.
5056563 Perhaps, but plenty of supernaturals employ mortals to do their dirty work. Protection from Magic doesn't generally work on Bullets. Or Nukes for that matter.
Was that a sequel hook? Certainly felt like one.
I really need to get around to reading the Dresden Files....
5057008 I agree to this, but then the area on the other side of the Veil would be a blasted heath. The Fae would then need to find a blasted heath in the Nevernever to cross over.
Plus a Nuke is to impersonal for Winter.
5057685 READ THEM ALL!!! They are honestly the best 15 books (and one anthology) I have read.
5057008 Yeah, but if Harry is dealing with a Fae and can yank them back into Equestria or make them chase him there through the Nevernever and suddenly turn from prey into hunter as the Fae realizes they crossed the wrong border.
My guess: Winter invasion = Windigos
As a dedicated fan of Jim Butcher's work, I can say that It's not a perfect Dresden, but it's hella enjoyable.
It misses several bits, pieces, and details of varing importance that the canon version up to the crossover-point has laid down; though in some cases I can't help but think that being entirely faithful would, in fact have marred my enjoyment of this.
Particularly love the AU idea of Dresden staying/getting a happy ending for a change.
Would very much like to see more!
~(OvO)~
sequle plz?
Awesome, well written and entertaining.
~Crystalline Electrostatic~
Great Story that if very under-rated. I would recommend adding the human tag to the story though. I hope for a sequel!
A delightful read and quite an interesting AU to the Dresden Files itself, though, if this followed the same path the original Dresdenverse does, his absence all but assures Earth will fall to the Red Court, since it's his explicit actions that wipe them all out.
On another note, I only really have a few complaints about this story, and that's a few pretty glaring oversights:
First: Bob. Harry would have gone back for, or requested Micheal reacquire Bob. He's too valuable to leave unaccounted.
Second: Faith. Red Court, Black Court, and many other supernatural nasties are very susceptable to the 'magic' of Faith. For example, symbols of faith held by one who truly believes in them can cause a vampire pain, damage, and will hold them at bay. Holy ground, too, holds off damn near anything. This is information that Harry has gone over time and time again, but was left out here.
Third: Thresholds. Supernatural creatures like Vampires can't cross a threshold uninvited, so ponies in their homes would be safe.
I feel teased by the setup for a sequel... Otherwise this was a great read.
Celestia and Luna being the Summer and Winter Queens for Equestria makes a lot of sense. even helps explain the need for ponies to micromanage the environment. I hope you actually have something behind this Sequel Bait.
5534871 The faith thing really was untouched in this, aside from the sword. I was a bit irked with the dismissal of the Red Court weakness; their stomachs. A couple times well it was pointed out that cutting open the stomach, while not killing them, weakens them enough that it's one of the go too tactics for fighting large numbers of them.
As for the threshold... could just be different plane, different rules.
5663561 i certainly hope so...
This story......is #$%^#@$ AMAZING!
6359697 I started reading a while back and am still only on the third book, but it is my favorite book series so far. So epic!
Will Rainbow Dash be beating anybody up in this story? Will she be reaching Unstoppable Rage levels of anger? Will she be giving out any No Holds Barred Beatdowns?
7562846 man that is an old comment...and i only just realized where it came from. freaking caboose man...
8113833 Oh I know. That one is my favorite version. I'm talking cannon, Butcher himself explaining what it looks like. Though, considering the series is from Harry's perspective, it will likely never happen...
8350424
She was also presumably trying to answer the question "how does the Pinkie Sense work" not "do earth ponies have any magic at all".
But if we're assuming that she was checking for any kind of magic at all and got no results, then why on earth would she be acting like Dresden just gave her the answer to the meaning of life when he posits a wild theory that, not only does he have no evidence to support, she has personally derived empirical evidence proving him utterly wrong? (Whether her evidence is accurate or not is another matter entirely, though if she was conducting her test without blocking out possible contamination by outside magical sources, then she doesn't deserve even half the credit she gets for being a scientist and scholar.)
I mean, if you want to have him wow her by solving the Pinkie Sense with an outsider's perspective to prompt her into following him around like a lost puppy, that's fine, but saying "maybe it's magic?" to a scholar of magic ain't gonna cut it.