Chapter 6
“Times have changed… and we've often rewound the clock, since the Tribalists got a shock... when they founded Canterhorn Rock. If today... any shock they should try to stem, 'stead of landing on Canterhorn Rock, Canterhorn Rock would land on them! In olden days, a glimpse of preening was looked on as something demeaning, but now, Celestia knows... anything goes!”
Flurry’s hooves clopped against the floor at a furious, sweaty pace, revealing that she was quite a dancer. Wings out, she used them for balance, and this allowed her to make moves that might cause a regular pony to snap a fetlock. She floated on her hooves and seemed to defy gravity. In truth, the only reason why Flurry had agreed to learn dancing was to become a better fighter and she could already see the benefits of her many hours sacrificed.
She threw herself into the moment and allowed her emotions to bleed out into her dancing. Now, her hooves thundered against the crystalline floor and the tinny, jaunty tune coming from the hi-fi phonograph was almost drowned out by the elephantine force of her dancing. Dust rose from the floor as fractures began to manifest and with each hooffall, cracks spiderwebbed out from each point of impact.
Because it felt so good, Flurry let go and began to dance. The record began to skip, but she didn’t care, she was dancing. The whole room shuddered and she danced atop reverberating thunderclaps that prevented her from hearing her instructor’s frightened cries. Lightning flew from her hooves as they struck crystal, and the crystal, being only crystal, was never made to endure such abuse.
It shattered, the floor became a million tiny glittering fragments, yet another victim of Flurry’s rampage of destruction. Too startled to fly, she went straight down, fragments and all, and then landed in the room below, which just happened to be a magical laboratory that was mid-experiment. The sudden addition of a falling alicorn and crushed crystal was not good for the experiment, which began to fizzle out of control, and when Flurry’s hooves struck the floor, it too shattered from the impact, and she found herself going down to the next floor, which just so happened to be the alchemy apothecary.
The falling alicorn, the startled magical researchers, plus a storage space full of volatile reagents, these were things that should not be mixed under any circumstances, yet mixed they were, and to disastrous results. Potion bottles shattered, flasks burst, vats ruptured, and chaos began to construct a terrible, dreadful, complicated equation.
“Oh shit, not again,” Flurry deadpanned, deciding that things couldn’t possibly get any worse and that right now was a perfect time to use adult language. Reaching out with her magic, she wrapped all of the fragile, freefalling ponies around her in a protective bubble of magic, and just in time too, as the world around her began to detonate into a terrific super-explody mess.
Flurry coughed out a cloud of dust, pounded on her own barrel, and then shook her head to try and stop the ringing in her ears. As far as explosions went, that one was pretty mild and Flurry was becoming a connoisseur of explosions in much the same way that her mother was a known connoisseur of fine wines.
A falling chunk of ceiling—or perhaps it was a chunk of floor—came down and bonked her in the head. Where most ponies might have been brained, or even knocked unconscious, Flurry was only knocked somewhat silly. Her vision blurred for a moment and she had to give herself a good shake again to bring everything back into focus.
“Everypony, stay back!” a harsh voice shouted.
Blinking, Flurry realised that she was in the throne room. How many floors had she gone down? Five? Six? Another piece of what might have been a ceiling or a floor came down and cracked her on her noggin. She bleated in pain, rubbed her now lumpy-bumpy head, and began to get out of the landing zone of the falling debris. Around her, other ponies were doing the same.
She rose from the rubble, majestic, resplendent even when covered in debris, and kicked a pony-sized chunk of crystal out of her way just because she could. Nopony seemed hurt, other than some minor scrapes and maybe some scratches, and Flurry could not help but feel proud about her quick thinking.
Thinking nothing of herself, Flurry Heart moved to look after her little ponies.
Princess Cadance cut an imposing figure when she entered the room. Tall, calm, radiating an aura of serenity, those in her way stepped aside in a hurry as she made her way to her daughter, Flurry. With a big, beaming smile, the kind that made the corner of her eyes crinkle, Flurry looked up at her approaching mother and waved.
“She’s fine,” a nurse said to the imposing pink princess, “just the usual cuts, bruises, and scrapes.”
The parlour, full of ponies, was now an impromptu place of triage. Flurry, sitting in a high backed chair, looked very much like a princess holding court, and the fine white gauze that wrapped her head served her well as a crown. She looked up at her mother, wondering what to say, but not finding any useful words. Of course, she could make apologies, but those seemed so trite now after making so many. Apologies lost their strength after repetition and Flurry figured that she knew this better than just about anypony.
“You know, Flurry, if I didn’t know better, I’d think your effort to wreck our home was an attempt to get out of going to the cotillion.”
“Mom, I… it was an—” her mother’s sudden laughter gave Flurry pause and dumbfounded, Flurry felt the soft, reassuring touch of her mother’s wing against her cheek.
“I’ll have it fixed,” her mother said in a kind voice. “Sumac should be here tonight… in just a few hours even. And tomorrow, everything will go as planned. The Crystal Cotillion will happen as scheduled. There is something I want you to do, Flurry.”
“What’s that, Mom?”
“Forget about what the nobles want, ignore everything else, and focus on having a magical time. This is your cotillion, this year’s cotillion is your celebration of being a princess, and it is my heart’s fondest wish that you know the joys of being the belle of the ball… you are going to be a débutante, Flurry, and you only get to do that once… once. I know that you have your doubts, but I ask that you trust me, my sweet little palace puncher, because this will be a memory that you will treasure when you get older. This will be an experience.”
“I’ll try, Mom.”
“Flurry…” Hesitation could be heard in Cadance’s voice and she lowered her head to be eye-level with her daughter. “I’m not throwing this cotillion for them. All of them, they’re just guests. I’m doing this for you.”
Like magic, a lump appeared in her throat: Flurry tried to respond, but found that she couldn’t, no words seemed forthcoming, nothing she could think of seemed meaningful enough. The little filly felt a most peculiar sensation overcome her—she suffered a spell of being lightheaded and dizzy—and because of this she wondered if it was because she had hit her head.
But then she noticed the glow. Lifting her long, lean, almost lanky foreleg, she saw the glow. Through mysterious magic that she could not comprehend, she had turned translucent and had become crystalline in appearance. Looking into her mother’s eyes, she could see her own reflection and how she blazed with inner light. Now, not only was she speechless, but also breathless as well. These moments were rare, treasured, and there were no words to describe the joy that she now felt. Her mother’s love had transformed her, and she knew the truth of her mother’s words.
Launching herself up out of her chair, Flurry clung to her mother’s neck and wept tears of joy.
When Trixie reached over and tousled his mane, Sumac almost shot right out of his seat. She was gentle, but also firm when she grabbed him and pulled him in for a hug. Sumac resisted at first, because what colt wants to be hugged by his mother, but then the clock rewound by about five years and he wanted to be held by his mother. Trembling, he leaned against her and did his best to control his breathing.
“Having some troubles, Kiddo?” Trixie asked while giving her son a snuggle. “After Pebble and Silver Lining went off to visit the little fillies’ room together, you looked like you just sort of zoned out. I can tell that you are taking this hard.”
He was taking this hard. They had been on this train for a day, a night, and much of this day, with each minute that passed bringing them closer to the Crystal Empire. All those minutes, all those hours, there hadn’t been much to do but read, talk, and think. He wanted to be the Heir of Lulamoon Hollow, it was something that he was dedicating his entire life to, every fibre of his being as the old expression went, but some of the things he was expected to do were a bit more than he could handle.
“You could still run away,” Trixie said and there was much amusement in her voice. “You could live in a nice little wagon that you pull along behind you and you could see all of Equestria, until at last, when you become great and powerful, er, patient and humble, you could then settle down and accept your responsibilities.”
These words brought comfort to Sumac, and he pressed a little closer to his first mom, the one that had been there from the beginning of his memories. Oh, she might have been his master at that point, or at least the caregiver that would become his master when he was old enough to start learning, but in hindsight, she was his mother.
With a blink, Sumac’s eyes went inkshot, taking on a set of fine, spider-webby lines of black ink. The past became a palpable thing, with memories becoming just a little tiny bit more than just memories, and he was now lost somewhere between the past and present. Seconds passed like letters being scrawled upon a page, moments became sentences, and minutes became paragraphs.
“Such momentous events are in your future, Sumac,” Trixie said in a low voice as she rocked from side to side with her son. “Twilight wishes to restore the Clock Face Fiefdoms, the twelve regions around the Canterhorn with Canterlot in the middle. Lulamoon Hollow is in the twelfth hour position, so you’ll be a big part of Twilight’s plans. Ponyville is in the sixth hour position”—she paused for a moment, shook her head from side to side, and corrected herself—“Ponyville is in the fifth, sixth, and seventh hour positions… it’s gotten a little big under Twilight’s rule.”
Sumac knew about the Clock Face Fiefdoms because he had paid attention in school. After Nightmare Moon’s banishment, when Equestria was still wild, dangerous, and mostly unsettled, the Clock Face Fiefdoms were established, the protective ring around Canterlot. Lulamoon Hollow already existed, the land shrouded in midnight, but it had gone by another name: Luna’s Moonlit Hollow, the place where the moon shined, but the sun didn’t.
The Clock Face Fiefdoms formed a protective barrier of civilisation that pushed back the terrors of the wilderness, and all of Equestria radiated outwards from these strategic holdings. In the span of one thousand years, many cities rose and fell, fiefdoms rose to prominence and prosperity, then fell into infamy and decrepitude. Most of the nobles of these fiefdoms chose not to live amongst their peasants, but in Canterlot instead, so that they might look down upon all they surveyed.
“To rebuild Equestria and prepare it for the future, Twilight plans to reestablish those twelve fiefdoms and push outwards. It is going to be a grand, multi-generational undertaking, Sumac, and you will help her lay the foundations.”
“Mom, you’ve laid those foundations,” Sumac whispered to the mare holding him. “A lot of this plan was yours, not Twilight’s.”
“But Twilight will be remembered for it,” Trixie replied, and she let out a sigh. “I want Twilight remembered as a just, fair, and kind ruler. Sacrifices, Kiddo. You’ll learn to make them. By adding to Twilight’s lists of accomplishments, this great effort, this great push we’re making to prepare for the future, it’ll have more significance… more importance… it’s become so big and so meaningful that it is all that anypony can talk about and that will have a big impact on the history books, Kiddo.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Tilting his head up, Sumac pulled away just enough so that he could look up into his mother’s face.
“No,” she replied, and Sumac could see that she was being honest.
This puzzled him. There was a click from the door, indicating that Pebble and Silver Lining had returned. He watched the door open, saw them enter, and his mother gave him one final squeeze before letting him go. Being let go of wasn’t something he wanted, so he remained right where he was, not caring about being embarrassed in front of Pebble and Silver Lining.
“Oh, that’s cute,” Pebble said as she froze in place and Silver Lining bumped into her. “Hey, Silver, if you want to find a good husband, check out how a colt treats his mother. Look at our fluffy little guy.”
Groaning, there was nothing that Sumac could do but take the heaping helping of embarrassment. He felt his mother nudge him, a soft sensation of fuzz rubbing against fuzz, and then he heard his mother say, “Kiddo, they’re already making plans for you. That’s what took them so long in the fillies’ room.”
“Actually, Silver and I had a discussion about the illusion of safety and how I, a sweet, innocent, harmless little filly is so much safer with a big, ferocious griffoness as I go to the loo on a train.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Sumac began to chortle and his mother did the same. Of course, the truth was far, far different, with Silver Lining being mostly harmless and Pebble being the real threat, but others didn’t know that. She was right, ponies went by what they saw, and what they saw was a big, scary looking griffoness with a little brown filly.
When he opened his eyes, his vision fuzzed over, going in and out of focus. For a moment, everything came into perfect clarity, but something was off: Pebble was a full grown adult and so was Silver Lining. The griffoness was much larger now, not so much fatter, but mature with fleshed out features, and Pebble now had somewhat longer legs, perhaps taking a little something from her father besides his chocolate-brown pelt. Then his vision fuzzed over and when he blinked, everything faded out of existence for a moment. When it returned, Pebble and Silver Lining were both how they were when he had first met them: small.
His Ink-primed eyes were playing tricks on him that he wasn’t prepared for.
While his head turned, he blinked as he went to look at his mother. Her face was now timeless, wise, it was a face untouched by aging, but something about her eyes suggested that time had passed. Trixie’s horn was longer, pointier, and while he sat staring, that was when he noticed the wing wrapped around his body. Her wing. So entranced was he by what he saw that he didn’t want to blink for fear of destroying a moment so precious and beautiful. After several seconds passed, his eyes began to sting and the conscious need to move his eyelids was overpowering, painful even.
This reality was too perfect to let go of, and when Sumac finally succumbed to the urge to blink, it felt as though it was the most tragic thing he had ever done: he was destroying perfection. When he opened his eyes once more, the sensation of the wing around him was gone, and his mother was normal: somewhat aged with crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes.
Trixie rose from where she sat and stood up on the floor, stretching. “We should wake up the others because we’ll be in the Crystal Empire soon…”
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now she thinks to tell her, honestly she should have told her this in the first place I was worried this was going to be a "the cobblers children have no shoes" kind of thing
8395799
Alicorn plus alicorn pairing at least significantly raises the chances. And Cadence's line seems at least to produce at a high rate. A much higher chance at least than if either Flurry would mother an alicorn with a non alicorn partner or Sumac would father an alicorn with a non alicorn partner. Both theoretically could produce nothing but alicorn foals with non alicorn partners or no alicorn goals together but if making alicorn goals is a priority then best to try to help the chances as best possible.
Wonder if the nobles understand Sumac isn't a one mare young stallion and even if Flurry and he do get to business trying to produce foals Sumac will be likely married to multiple other mares as well down the lines with Pebble trying to claim the title of mother to every last offspring whether she birthed them or not. Might not sit well with some ponies....might not sit well with Flurry Heart even if she knows it is part of the bargain with dealing with Sumac.
I only recognized it because of the radio on Fallout, but i recognized it.
And dang. Does Twi do that to or can she actually control it more? (The ink stuff)
8395838
Does Twi do that? Well, you might want to read Foalsitting Follies.
This Trixie, I could see as being a good alicorn.
Canon Trixie as an alicorn would be almost as terrifying as a Pinkie alicorn. Almost.
Interesting chapter there is a major part Trixie isn't telling Sumac. While it was Trixie's plan she'd need the support of one or more Princesses or the nobles for her plan to really go anywhere also Twilight is unlikely to forget who she heard it from
8395844
Okay, fair nough, better question, has she gained more control over it or is it still spontaneous?
8395858
It hasn't been long enough for either of them to have any control yet. It is *new* magic.
There are no books about it, no knowledge. Only two ponies alive possess it.
"Flurry Heart, Princess of the Crystal Empire, Jewel of the Night, Heart of Winter, the North Wind, Stormbender, Sky Fury, Protector of the Realm."
Maybe someday.
I hope Sumac and Co get some time to relax before the event. That's a long train ride.
8395835 there are no stats for Alicorn plus Alicorn well known statistics. In modern terms its 40% and that might not be Cadance as much as Shining Armour an effect of his magic level.. if we take it over Luna and Celestia's lifetime those numbers drop as Celestia always has tripletts one of each species.. So without more data Sumac and Peeble are just as likely to have alicorn offspring as Sumac and Flurry if magic levels are a factor then the odds or Twilight's offspring being alicorns goes up
She says that, but after the discussion with Dim, I can't help but feel that the cotillion is more to try and convince Flurry to follow a path in the light, then to just give her a nice night. AT their heart, the alicorns can't really stop themselves trying to protect others, and with Flurry starting to veer down a darker path, she likely feels she is failing and her instincts are screaming at her
8396043 its not as simple as dark evil and light good. Eternal day would just as bad for Equestria as Eternal night.
8396180
I know that, what I meant was the duality between the two, like with the sisters. Luna exists as the dark protector and Cadance doesn't want that for Flurry, so she may be trying to sway her to remain in Celestia's light instead.
8396207 Cadance might not have a choice at the moment things are more balanced towards Celestia than Luna it seems though Twilight might represent a middle ground herself. Cadance is definitely more towards the light rather than the dark protector
8396226
Ah. but where does Sumac fall?
8396227 I'm more pondering where Gosling falls. Sumac seems to be a protector not sure if calling the protectors dark is right. Celestia is more of the mother a guiding figure while Luna is more of the protector so the ponies are free to follow that guidance
8395937
And destroyer of dance floors
8395948
Hm didn't also Luna have triplets in the ages past?
8396227
usually on his face
8396579
both Luna and Celistia always have triplets
1 from each tribe
8395948
It is interesting to note that 3 out of 7 alicorns are Elevated to alicornhood after birth and only 2 are natural born. this means that elevation to alicornhood is a more sure way to get more alicorns. I am not sure about Celestia and Luna, I beleave thy are also created.
Yes I am ignoring the none public alicorns ( harmony, pail and that other one what was his/her name again? )
seeing that from the 3 elevated alicorns all of them are respectable alicorns while flurry is not ( according to some ) this seems the better method. So why are the nobles not demanding more of that instead of more born alicorns that have a worse track record.
Never mind, they don't stand a chance to becoming one so to not give others a chance to get above them they want a method that takes a generation so that by the time thy are out of the picture those alicorns above them are somebody else's problem.
8396592
Yeah so the "percentage" of born alicorn goes down ^^;;
At this point it seems more a thing of Cadance + Shining, than anything else...
8396600 at the moment it seems other than Celestia and Luna the other ancient alicorns are working through champions or have passed their duties on to others.. Lima has Flicker, Terra Tarnished though its not the same as Flickers relationship with Lima.
Keep in mind the nobles have no idea what is going and probably don't care beyond their own power plays. The only proper pairing for Sumac is either a member of the royalty or nobility not a pheasant earth pony. He is an alicorn and alicorns are royality. Actually there are 8 alicorns and only a quarter of them were natural born.Heart
So is Sumac seeing the future, or only possibilities, like when he saw Shining with wings? (I think it was Shining, might have been Gosling with a horn)
8395863
Wasn't it hinted that Twilight actually has full control while she's completely immersed? And that she's stepped off of her full Ink-ness so that she can try and live normally with her friends, being that this is the Twilight who'd been in the Ink from more or less the beginning of Eternity?
If so, does that imply that when she's fully-immersed she knows what she's doing, but when she's just trying to be normal Twilight, she doesn't possess that intrinsic mastery?
Fun song, I was in that musical way back in high school.
My goodness, she really is a natural disaster.
Interesting plans.
Those visions, reminds me a bit of what he saw with the Lantern.
8396767 Keep in mind Twilight doesn't want to be fully immersed because she is respecting their privacy. Fully immersed there is no part of someones life that would be a secret from her
Joyin this one. Teenageish flurry for the win