Shadow and Sunset
Sunset returned from the khal's select herd, the grey's reins in her teeth. The khaleesi's big filly was as placid and empty-headed as always, looking like nothing so much as a slightly smaller-eyed version of one particularly smug and imbecilic student a few years ahead of Sunset in the school for gifted unicorns. She thought that the grey's narrow-muzzled empty exoticism might have turned the heads of certain colts she'd known, the ones for whom the animal's total lack of sapience would have been a selling point. Sunset looked at the grey's expensive, fine-stitched saddle, and wondered if they were still the style for the fast and the fashionable back home.
She hadn't seen Ahego or any of his cousins, of course. Their prestige had yet to have recovered enough for them to be allowed to handle the khal's prized beasts. As long as they kept trying to put a rope on Sunset, and failing, they would be relegated to tending the cart-horses and the remounts, and should count themselves lucky that the herd-masters didn't send them even further back into the depths of the khalasar.
Sunset found Khaleesi Daenerys beside the mounting-block outside of her rapidly-collapsing tent, and the khaleesi dismissed the other handmaidens she had been talking with in her rapidly-improving Dothraki.
Daenerys looked cheerful and enthusiastic in her new leathers and her tied-back hair. As she got up on the block and threw herself into the grey's saddle, she stared eastwards into the glowing boughs in the distance that diffused and hid the rising dawn.
"Today, Sunset-horse, I am determined that we will see one of these elk I hear so much about. We saw nothing yesterday, or the day before, but today, we're far enough ahead of the main body, don't you think?"
"Your highness, we saw plenty yesterday. Every other branch held one of those ill-tempered black squirrels."
"Sunset-horse, they're squirrels. Who cares if they disapprove of you?"
"You've never been cornered by an angry pack of exotic tree-critters. They can be vindictive." The princess's deceptively idyllic gardens had been full of small mammals with evil minds, who lurked in wait for unsuspecting fillies who just wanted to pet a cute furry thing. Sunset had gotten in so much trouble after she'd burned the fur off of that mob of rare Somnambulan ground-squirrels…
"Maybe if you didn't glare at every movement, Sunset-horse. One of our supporters in Braavos had the most marvelous menagerie, with a tiger, and a bear, and these flightless pink birds taller than I am…"
Sunset looked up at the girl, towering over her on her grey-coated mount.
Daenerys blushed. "Well, I was probably six at the time. I may have grown a bit since then. But they were so tame!"
"You never can tell with private animal collections. I think it depends on the collector. My mentor prefered her pets to be wild and not too eager to run to an outstretched hoof. The ones that did, you could be sure were up to no good. We've been lucky that these spotted tigers have kept their distance so far."
"Oh, yes, those! I suppose we did see something yesterday, I had forgotten!"
How could one forget the steady glare of such a predator? Sunset remembered that mane-raising existential dread that had come over her when she'd spotted the great cat staring out of a bit of brush, its gaze trained upon Daenerys' beautiful grey mare. Sunset had picked up a rock and shied it at the beast, yelling for the archers of the khas to defend her mistress. Slovenly, foolish young stallions! They'd been larking about too far from the khaleesi to protect their charge. What if the spotted tiger had decided to pounce, or had been stalking with company?
Sunset remembered vaguely that some big predators liked to hunt together, and couldn't recall if it included that particular type of predator or not.
"But I've seen tigers before, Maester Florio had a matched pair in his menagerie, they'd eat meat right from your hand. I want to see one of these elk!"
The two of them left the khalzafra and the other handmaidens breaking down the camp, and raced out ahead of the advancing van along with Daenerys' khas. They would, as the khaleesi had vowed, move ahead of the grand bustle and noise of the khalasar, looking for the wary great elk who were rumored to hide deeper in the depths of the dark woods through which they passed.
Sunset was somewhat nervous to be so far from the rest of the herd. The stories she'd heard of sorcerers and ill-intentioned foresters didn't fill her with confidence in the beneficence of the Qohorik, who were almost as difficult to catch in the wild as their elusive great-antlered ruminants. But the khal had given his moon-of-his-life a large escort of young archers and enthusiastic riders to keep away the tigers and ill-intentioned locals.
Assuming they weren't all off chasing squirrels or the prospect of a nice spotted-fur hide to add to their tents.
The khalasar was passing out of the lesser woods which lined the western marches of the great forests of Qohor, into the heartwood itself, or so Sunset thought. Actual Qohorik were rare and hard to talk to, when you were orange-coated and too exotic to go casually mixing among hunters and long-knived stonehousemen who were known to prize pretty furs and rugs.
So Sunset had to make do with the Dothraki's incomplete knowledge of the geography of the Qohor ranges, but what she'd heard from those who knew matched what she was seeing. The great-boughed trees here towered above them, vast and almost as ancient as Celestia herself. This was old forest, climax forest. The evil little black squirrels lurked higher here than those of previous days, and she could barely hear their chittering and fury, they were so far off of the ground.
The brush was likewise much thinner here, under such a canopy, and in most places, was barely present at all, having been gnawed almost to the loam by herds of - something. There was precious little fodder for the horses of the khalasar here, and the baggage-carts full of scythed sweet grasses trundling along at the back of the horde would empty themselves quickly, for as long as the Dothraki were foolish enough to linger under these vast golden-leaved boughs.
So, today was a day for running, and racing, and charging about in dead gallops under the sound-deadening wooden skies above. No stone-arched hall or chamber in Sunset's mentor's great palace was half so well-built for silences and stillness as this endless natural cathedral, its tree-buttresses holding up great arches far overhead the roadway and the firm footing of the nearly-clear forest floors.
Sunset felt her lungs bellow, breathe in, breathe out, as she raced to keep up with the khaleesi's longer-limbed grey, and the archers and the lancers of the khas spread out in the slower, less firm dirt away from the well-preserved metalled surface of the road under their charge's privileged hooves.
Daenerys was still determined to find her elk, and the elk continued to remain stubbornly elusive. One might have thought, here in the great open spaces in the heart of the forest under the high limbs, that it would be easier to spot the great black beasts. But the shadows shifted, and remained, though the distant sun somewhere far over the shading canopy glared hard through the leaves. Even noon failed to dispel shadows under the trees, and the stray beams of sunlight only chased them about, as the remount herders might chase Sunset herself in the mornings or the twilight evenings after their work was done.
The exertion and the memory of her repeated humiliation of the remount herders distracted Sunset from her usual vigilance, and when the more distant dappled darkness began to engulf the khaleesi's outer khas, she failed to notice their little racing herd as it disappeared around them.
And then, just as Daenerys was crying hallo at the sight of a distant horned head in an obscuring sunlight-lanced shadow far ahead on the roadway itself, Sunset glanced sideways, and realized suddenly she couldn't see anyone else, couldn't hear the hoofbeats of the other horses.
"Khaleesi, stop! We've outrun the khas!"
Daenerys barely heard Sunset, but her grey was more responsive than her mistress, and dropped down into a walk. The grey's ears twitched, having noticed the same sudden loss of the rest of her herd, and caught anxiety from Sunset like a sickness, shuddering and twitching.
"But, but - elk!" sulked the khaleesi, not catching the mood that had suddenly swept over her horse-folk.
"Khaleesi, when was the last time you saw Rahkaro?" asked Sunset, her head swiveling around, looking desperately for any sign of horses, any glint of arakh or stirrup. "I haven't seen an archer or any other member of the khas in at least five minutes. This isn't right. We need to head back, and see if we can't touch hooves with someone else. Anyone else."
"We were all moving fast, Sunset Horse. They're out there somewhere, and probably ahead of us now, that we're standing in the middle of the road. Oh, blast, look at that - the elk is gone."
"Are you sure it was an elk? They say the Qohorik foresters are tricky, and sly. We should go back. Now. Quickly. There should be someone else a half-hour's ride back, even if we can't find your riders."
"Well, of course. We're within galloping range of tens of thousands of the greatest warriors in Essos. We can't be in any sort of danger, can we?"
"Khaleesi, we left the outriders behind an hour ago, and it was safe because Rahkaro and the riders were with us. Do you see Rahkaro and the riders? I don't."
Wait. What was that, that she saw over to the right? Was that movement? Sunset peered, backing up out of reflex, standing between the khaleesi on her grey and whatever that had been.
It hadn't looked like a Dothraki rider.
Was that another great cat, stalking them?
Sunset looked back, scanning the shadows between the trees for spotted tigers. Had they said if the tigers hunted alone, or in packs?
She went cautiously back to the grey, and nosed her back west, in the direction of the too-distant horde. The grey obeyed her herd-mate rather than her now-confused rider, and hesitantly started walking in the indicated direction.
The other riders failed to materialize around them in the rising darkness, as some unseen cloud passed between them and the sun hidden beyond the canopy overhead. What had been a glorious golden-glowing wooded cathedral of light, turned by moments darker, as they slowly walked back across the road pavement they had flown across on the way out into this now-threatening… emptiness.
And so it was, that when the rising shadows suddenly gained definition, Sunset wasn't surprised in the least. As soon as she'd realized that the Dothraki had disappeared, she had somehow expected something like this. It was too much like that one terrible day in the Everfree, when the wild storm broke in the midst of one of her little errands for Celestia, and the rain seemed to summon timberwolves from the depths of the forest.
There were no animate deadwood monstrosities, here under the boughs of the Forest of Qohor. No manticores, or chimerae. No, that would have been familiar to the orange unicorn. A promise of magic and home. Here? In Qohor?
The shadows formed blades of ebon and ice, and slashed at her head.
Adrenaline fueled Sunset's retreat, and her legs carried her rapidly away from the black horror, dancing away from the swirling sharpness, all edge with no weapon behind it.
Daenerys! Sunset spared a precious glance behind her, to spot the khaleesi, and saw the grey fleeing into the forest, off of the road as two more shadows emerged from other side of the road, and oozed to her left and right, moving to surround them both.
Sunset dodged one last swipe by the hostile shadow, and raced to keep up with the runaway grey, slipping under the tendril of darkness from another shadow as it tried and failed to summon its own cutting-edge.
They were panic-galloping, away from the road, away from any signpost or landmark, not that the Qohorik bothered with such things here in the heart of the forest. Sunset wanted to shout at the khaleesi to get control of her beast, but she couldn't spare the breath. Like a drowning pony too short of air to cry for help, she needed every precious lungful, she needed to keep going - because the shadows weren't letting them get away.
They were following them, following Sunset and her mistress.
And the magic wouldn't come! All Sunset had ever given her magic, all those months and years of careful cultivation, of feeding her voracious talent - wasted. Wasted if it would not come forth when called. Why was she born a unicorn? Why had she spent so many years under the tutelage of the mistress of the Sun, only to die here, in this dark wood, without magic, without power - without -
No.
No.
No.
Sunset turned at bay, and remembered.
She wouldn't die here. She wasn't a victim. She wouldn't be ridden by fear.
She looked into the emptiness of magic, of dark miracle. It moved. It threatened. If this world could birth intangible horrors like this, then it had magic, and magic to burn at that.
They existed, therefore they were possible. If they were possible, then her magic was just - it just needed to be found. She set her hooves.
"If you exist, then you can be burnt," growled Sunset, and her words fell into the unnatural silence like stones into empty wells.
"If you can be burnt, then I can burn you." There, something.
"I see you. Can you see me?" She heard the echo.
Sunset Shimmer pushed against the silence, and felt something like a membrane, a thickness in the air. There, beyond the thinning skin of the world, something warm, hot - scalding.
Sunset Shimmer pushed.
And the blue fire poured out of the hole she tore into the burning alchemical heart of the world, poured down her horn, burning. The fire roared like dragons, and sprayed in every direction, cutting through shadows. The darkness was lit like cerulean daylight brought to the forest floor, and the phantom enemy was carried away like so many surprised ponies caught in a draw, swept away by the sudden flash-flood.
"Ha! Take that, you sad shades! You thought to seize a horse of fire with hooves of shadow? I don't need a brand in the darkness - I have myself! Princess, are you back there? Can you see this?"
Sunset turned with a triumphant grin, and found an empty glade, with no sign of Daenerys or grey. Nothing but the slightest cloud of dust raised by the passage of the grey filly, and the faint sound of galloping hooves receding into the distance.
"Ponyfeathers!"
Sunset ran to catch up with her mistress's panicky mount, and cursed the thoughtlessness of this world's horses.
Magic! Her magic was back!
It almost made up for being attacked by - whatever the hay that had been.
Magic!
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And here I had thought you would hold off giving her magic untill danny had hatched her dragons.
Woo! Sunny's back with all her pyro glory!
Magic begets magic, and the Sunset horse is happy to adopt any she can find.
Woot! Everything just got more interesting!
Oh, nice! Can't wait to see how will this change the future of this world as a whole, for magic came back with a vengeance rather earlier than it otherwise would.
Sunset got her magic back so Westeros better watch out!
She got her magic....annnnnndddd noone was around to see it
Well if we go by Sunset's music video and her form in that EQG everfree, she's akin to the fiery phoenix. So yeah fire suits her.
I do hope she can use it again, or she'll be laughed at. Though i do wonder how the rest of the Dothraki will react to Sunset's new power.
Nice new pic. Looks better than the old one, guess it was the unfinished version?
And Sunset is now back to full Unicorn power? Ha! They are all so screwed now. Though it would be hilarious if the Dothraki, for the most part at least, won't fear and try to kill her for being a magical powerhouse now, but instead be much more respectful to her or even thinking that she might be the daughter of some worshipped horse god.
From now on the Sunset Horse shall be worthy of her title in every sense of the word.
BWAHAHAHHA!
Finally! It's about time! Hopefully things will start getting more interesting now.