The Corvus Prince

by Daemon McRae

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

”The cats, they purr, because they know
The Ravens, too, and so they crow

These beasts and birds have long since known
That where they’ve prowled and where they’ve flown

Would wither, weep, and waste away
Till naught was left but light of day

And soon, they all would take the skies
And carry death as the crow flies”

Luna had seen books perform magic on their own before. Some because they were enchanted to do so. Some because the spells they held within were so great, so powerful, as to imbue the text itself with arcane energy. Some just because Discord had found it amusing. She had seen words leap off the page, quite literally. She had seen texts of the Old Wood melt into the floor and bring forests to life around her. More than once, actually, she had seen creatures spring from the book and prowl around. So a couple dozen black cats walking about the castle, while not a common occurrence in the least, wasn’t much of a bother to her. Simply a hassle to collect and herd.

It was their tendency to melt into the walls, as if they had flattened into shadows of cats instead of real cats (which, to be fair, they weren’t), and walked about as if there had been a real cat strutting around casting a shadow. Also, the inky paw prints they left behind were proving extremely difficult to clean.

She was chasing one particularly playful feline when she came across her freshly-woken sister, stepping out of her room and pausing in surprise as the cat ran in front of her. She tuned her head to see a not-very-stealthy Luna trying to sneak up on the cat, coming around the corner, only to straighten herself when she saw that her quarry had gained quite a lead on her. “Oh, stars!” Luna exclaimed. “I liked that one.”

Celestia raised a confused eyebrow at her sister. “Dear Luna, what in the wide wide world of Equestria are you doing?”

Luna looked up at her sister with a light smile. “Oh, good morning sister! I must thank you for the wonderful present you left me!”

Celestia tilted her head with a smile. “I was wondering how long it would take you to find it.”

“Oh yes, it was rather well-hidden,” Luna conceded. Her horn glowed as she levitated the large, curious tome in front of her. “Hiding it on the shelf of ancient textbooks was rather clever. I almost didin’t notice the strange bindings!”

“Um...” said the Princess of the Sun hesitantly. “Luna, that’s… that’s not the gift I left you.”

The younger of the two sisters raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Of course it is! It sat on my shelf, dustless, clean as a whistle, just waiting to be read! And read it I did. Then a whole gathering of cats poured out of its pages, and I have spent the last few hours chasing the clever beasts! It has been quite amusing,” she explained, with a wide smile.

The blue aura around the text was quickly overtaken by a yellow one, as Celestia took the text in he own magic to investigate it. She scanned the cover, and, not recognizing the title, noticed something curious about the material with which it was bound. She eyed it carefully, sniffed it once, and even licked it. As soon as she had done so, she reeled back, dropping the book. “Luna!” She exclaimed. “How could you think I would give you such an atrocious gift?!”

Her sister flinched from Celestia’s sudden mood change. “What, what’s wrong?”

Celestia held the book up to her sister’s snout. “This book is bound in leather, Luna!”

The Princess of the Moon took several steps back, clearly horrified by the revelation. “Wha-what?! Why would somepony DO that?!”

Celestia, seeing how her sister was as disgusted by the concept of a book bound in treated flesh as she was, set the book aside on a nearby table. “Alright, Luna. Tell me everything that happened since you found the book.”

Luna recounted the details of her experience with reading the text, the efforts to determine the crossed-out lines, and the cats that had emerged from the pages, only to run rampant around the castle. Celestia considered this information very carefully for a few moments, before stating, “Luna, I think… I think this is some kind of dark magic. I can’t be sure, obviously, since sending out waves of mischievous cats seems less like malevolence and more like a practical joke. Of course, making them melt into the walls seems more and more like something our friend Discord would do. Maybe we should have a word with him.”

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Discord himself was relatively easy to find, however, as he had taken to spending quite a bit of time in the tea room lately. He claimed his motivation was to learn more about different kinds of teas to find new ways of surprising Fluttershy, but most ponies suspected he just really liked tea. Nopony could blame him, however, as the tea in the Castle was amazing.

Luna and Celestia found him here, sampling an array of imports from Saddle Arabia. He looked up at his new guests, and smiled crookedly. Of course, all of his smiles were crooked. It was difficult to determine if he was doing it on purpose or not. “Why, Tia, Lulu! What brings you here to my little tea-tasting party?”

Luna approached him with more caution than her sister, as she had never quite gotten used to his self-proclaimed reformation. “Discord… we have some questions for you,” she said flatly. Even now she was unsure of how to address the draconequus that had given her such brief before and after her banishment.

Celestia nodded, although greeted him more amicably. “Yes, Discord. Good morning. We were wondering if you… if you had anything to do with this,” she finished, bringing forth the suspicious book.

Discord not only fell out of the air, but fell out of the chair underneath him when he landed. “Wha-what in Tartarus are you bringing that atrocious thing around here for?!” he bellowed, uncharacteristically disturbed.

Luna and Celestia both recoiled from his outburst, Celestia’s hoof pulling away from the spreading pool of tea that had spilled in the process of Discord meeting the floor. “I, um… I take it you’ve seen this book before?” Celestia asked, setting the book on the far side of the table, and eyeing it like an armed bomb.

Discord stood up straight, wiping tea off of himself. It was a testament to his current mood that he hadn’t bothered with magic to do the job for him. “Of course I have! That… that thing chased me out of my home dimension thousands of years ago! Why do you think I came here to terrorize you lot in the first place? I only recently got the place cleaned up enough to move back in! Although the Bottomless Pit has proven nigh impossible to relocate. Now I just use it to throw rude salesponies in!”

Widely sidestepping the many things wrong with that last sentence, Luna asked, “Ok, what IS it?!”

Discord stepped away from thee table as if the book had moved. “It’s a prophecy in action. A physical manifestation of an ancient legend. Gods rest the soul who actually tries to read the thing. I’m just glad I crossed out all the dangerous parts!”

Luna flinched. “And… um… what would happen if, say… a bored scholar, not knowing what the book was, spent some time in extrapolating the missing text, and then, oh, I don’t know… read… it… aloud?” she finished sheepishly, as Discord’s glare grew more and more prominent.

“You did NOT,” he stated.

“SO!” Celestia interjected, in an effort to avoid conflict. “Say all of that happened. What… what do we do about the cats?”

Discord glared at Luna for a few moments longer, then turned to the older sister. “Stay away from them. They’re just the first wave. They’re dangerous, just like everything else that’s going to pop out of that infernal book. And whatever you do, don’t let them cross your shadow.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. Then another. She then looked down at her shadow.

Or, what should have been her shadow. Instead of an elongated expanse of black in the rough shape of an alicorn, there was instead a similarly stretched shadowy cat. It’s paws met her hooves, and it moves as she did. Luna and Discord followed her gaze, and recoiled at what they saw.

Discord looked from the floor to the Princes of the Sun, and slowly backed up a step. Celestia simply shook in fear, rooted to the spot. “What… what’s going to happen to me?” she asked, in a small, small voice.

Discord shook his head. “Well, first, you’re going to pass out. Then things get bad.”

Celestia looked even more alarmed. “What do you mean, ba-*” THUD. Celestia met the floor, her eyes rolling back into her head.

“SISTER!” Luna cried. She ran forward to tend to her elder sibling.

“NO!” Discord cried, flinging her backwards with a push of magic. “DON’T touch her, or her shadow! We… we have to leave here here for now. It’s not safe to move her physically, and your magi won’t even touch her. Neither will mine. I assume you ran into a similar issue with your magic and that… book when you first read it,” he mused sourly.

Luna thought back to the book dropping out of her mental grasp with ease. “Yes. I couldn’t even go near it, magically, until all the cats came out.”

Discord sighed. “We’re going to need a lot of help. And to let the castle occupants know not to go near the cats.”

Taking a sad look at her poor sister, Luna sighed, “Who do we know that could help us with something like this? Even you’re afraid of it.”

Discord sighed, not out of remorse, or empathy, but frustration. “There’s one pony I know more likely to have come across something like this than anypony else. The Princess of Books, Twilight Sparkle.”

Comments

[yamgoth]

Herding cats? That is incredibly difficult. Hilariously so 🐈

[SIGAWESOME]

8471285

Herding cats? That is incredibly difficult. Hilariously so