A Terrible Plan
I had to leave in the middle of the night, mostly because if any of the others knew what I was up to they would’ve tried to stop me. As the first round of combat had amply demonstrated, Strumming and Puzzle weren’t exactly slouches at finding sneaky ways to stop a magus. Even Kukri would’ve done something, even if it boiled down to just making enough noise to get everyone else’s attention.
It wasn’t like I was just pulling a stupid self-sacrificing stunt. I had a plan. One with several backups and contingencies. Yes, it involved a horrifying amount of personal risk, but that’s just part of the package. It’s hard to win a war and save thousands of lives without throwing yourself head-first into mortal peril in the process. At least I wasn’t being stupid about it; I just didn’t have the time and energy to explain that to everyone else.
Or maybe I was just scared they’d find a way to talk me out of this. And it was probably a warning sign about how bad this plan was that I felt like talking it over with someone else would end with me deciding not to go ahead with it.
Oh well. Hopefully nobody would wake up early and find the notes I’d left behind in time to stop me. I had a pretty good head start, but even leaving aside the fact that Puzzle and Kukri could fly, I was moving at a pretty pathetic pace right now. I’d wrecked my old prosthetic by smacking Starlight with it, and the new one we’d quickly whipped up was only better than a peg leg because we’d added an extra-wide base so that it wouldn’t sink into the snow.
If I made it out of this in one piece, I was definitely going to sit down and put some serious work into getting a better leg. Well, assuming I didn’t manage to become an alicorn and part of that process included getting back my leg. That was definitely still Plan A, but having backup plans seemed like a good idea. Plus it gave me something to think about other than the dull pain radiating from my stump and my latest collection of injuries from yesterday’s fight with Starlight. Or the only mostly-healed injuries from all the fights before that. Or the nasty, bitter cold of a Northmarch winter night.
This was a terrible idea. Really, the whole trip had been nothing but a string of disasters.
Ugh, no sense moping. Focus. So, leg ideas. Maybe some sort of magically active crystal? I could use it for channeling spells, both offensive and defensive. Of course, crystal could be really brittle, and I needed something that would stand up to wear and tear. Leaving behind little chunks of magical crystal every time I walked around would just be silly.
Metal would probably work a lot better. It opened the door to conducting temperature and electricity, but a little insulation would fix that. And I could always pick something reasonably lightweight and durable, like aluminium, titanium, or mithril. I’d probably need to bring in a couple experts to design the thing, but that wouldn’t be an issue. I had a fair amount saved up in my bank account back in Freeport, and that was assuming Argentium wasn’t willing to foot the bill for it. Not that I was already thinking about how she’d reward me for all this, but I would think providing me with a good prosthetic for the limb I’d lost helping save her people was the least she could do. Granted, she’d already done that once, but that had been a temporary rush job.
I crested the last drift of snow, and found the thing I’d simultaneously been looking for and kind of hoping I didn’t find: Starlight Glimmer’s camp. Her horde of Blightspawn had left a pretty obvious trail when they withdrew from the convoy, to the point that even I had an easy time following them. Now it was just a matter of getting to the mare herself.
I ran into the first challenge pretty quickly when one of her ugly little beasts came rushing towards me with a feral roar. I wasn’t sure how much control Starlight had over the things, and I wasn’t inclined to take a chance. Rather than waste any magic on it I just swung Chainbreaker straight into its mouth, slicing its oversized head-body clean in half. For the record, the smell was awful enough it nearly made me stop to vomit.
It accomplished my main goal, though. It sure as hay got some attention. Not from Starlight herself, but one of her big uglies came rushing over. Judging by the nasty line of charred flesh and chitin on its back, it had been one of the ones I hit with a spell during the fight. I prepped up a teleportation spell, but before we got to the fight I made an attempt at diplomacy. “I’m here to talk, not fight. Take me to your mistress.”
The thing paused in mid-stride. Guess that answered one question for sure—they either had enough brains to recognize what I’d said, or a mental connection to Starlight who’d reined it in. Hopefully the second one, since that opened up a lot more options for me.
That left me following behind the Blightspawn, feeling just a little awkward about having a huge evil monster leading the way. Calling the place a Blightspawn ‘camp’ would be overstating the level of infrastructure and organization they’d managed. It was mostly just a relatively flat valley where all the monsters gathered together. I was probably happier not knowing exactly what the hunk of raw meat Starlight’s other big ugly thing was eating consisted of. I was a bit surprised none of the other, smaller creatures were eating too. Considering they were basically just a huge mouth and teeth on legs...
Maybe I should’ve done a quick dissection of one of the corpses to see if I could learn anything useful. Then again, my biology expertise boiled down to having read a couple books years ago, and rooting around in a dead monster’s corpse sounded gross. And knowing these things, there’d probably be something poisonous somewhere in their body.
It wasn’t too hard to figure out where Starlight was, since she was the only one with a campfire and a tent. Seeing how utterly miserable she looked immediately made me feel a bit better. Considering everything she’d been up to over the last few weeks, she deserved a little misery. She still had that chitinous armor on, but she’d taken her helmet off and wound a bandana around the eye I’d hit. She looked up as the Blightspawn approached, and her single eye narrowed when she spotted me. “What do you want, tripod?”
Charming. I decided to respond in kind. “Just came here to do some diplomatic negotiating, cyclops.” Judging by the way her teeth clenched up, she didn’t like the taste of her own medicine. “Nice to see your guard dogs can take a message.”
Starlight snorted and pointedly turned back towards the fire. “You’re lucky they can, otherwise they would have torn you apart. Probably should’ve let them anyway. Would’ve been doing you and the entire world a favor.”
I settled in across the fire from her, and pointedly flicked the gore off Chainbreaker. “I wasn’t that worried. After all, we both know Blackfyre wants me alive. He seemed quick enough to yank your chain when you went against that.”
Starlight shot a one-eyed glare at me. “Do you just spend your entire life posturing? I mean, is there a single conversation where you don’t feel like you need to go out of your way to come out on top?”
I sighed and poked at the fire, getting it to flare up a bit warmer. “I came here to talk, not for you to whine at me.”
“Yeah, sure, talk,” she growled at me. “You must think I’m stupid to fall for something that obvious. I know you’re up to something. So what is it? Is it just an excuse to get close enough to blast me? Are your friends sneaking around and getting ready to stab me in the back? Are you just being a big distraction while that stupid group of refugees you’re using as a meat shield try to get away? What are you up to?”
“If I was up to a dirty trick, what makes you think I would tell you?” I wisely refrained from commenting on whether or not I thought she was stupid. Tempting, but not why I was there. “Actually, I want you to escort me to your master.”
“What?” She stared at me for several seconds then snorted and shook her head. “Even you’re not arrogant enough to think you can talk him down.”
“Yeah, not likely,” I agreed. “I trained under an immortal. I know how set in their ways they can be. However, I’m going to guess his orders to bring me back alive and intact override everything else Blackfyre wants you to do, not to mention any impulses of your own.”
Starlight glowered at me. “What impulses?”
I didn’t even try to hide my contempt. “Remember when you were ranting insanely about how you were going to murder every last one of the refugees just to spite me for daring to fight back against you?”
Starlight snarled at me. “Oh please. Don’t try to turn this into some self-righteous sacrifice to protect a bunch of innocent refugees from the Big Bad Starlight. Where the buck do you get off acting like you’re some kind of hero and I’m the villain?!”
“Which one of us is trying to help a horde of refugees to safety after their homes were destroyed?” I countered. “And which one of us is leading a horde of twisted mutant monsters attacking the refugee column in the service of the guy who burned down their homes in the first place? How do you think this situation makes you the good guy?”
Starlight scoffed. “Well when you put it like that...”
“You mean stating the objective facts?”
“Shut up!” Starlight bolted to her hooves, and for a moment I thought she might attack me. Thankfully, she backed down before it got to that point. “Listen to you, going on and on about how good and righteous you are, how you’re so much better than me...” He remaining eye flashed an ugly orange color. “I should go back and kill those stupid fools one by one, right in front of you, just to teach you a lesson.”
“Yup, really holding onto the moral high ground.” For a moment I wondered if maybe taunting the murderous psycho was a bad idea, but then I remembered I had a plan to keep her from doing anything like that in the first place. “Of course, doing that would cost you resources and delay your return with me, and I can’t imagine your master wants that. Not to mention you’ll be vulnerable without all your Blightspawn.” I smirked at her. “There are plenty of people who are going to be coming after us, and plenty of them you can’t beat alone. Not to mention you’ll need to sleep at some point, and if things were reversed I’d want some very good guard dogs on you before I closed my eyes for eight hours.”
Starlight scoffed, getting up and pacing. “Being inefficient or dangerous doesn’t matter if that’s what he wants. Thankfully it isn't. And even if he did, I don’t—” She flinched, and I could swear I saw some orange light leaking through her armor. When she spoke again, her voice was just a touch ragged. “What my master wants is what he gets.”
I decided to push her a bit more to see what she’d let slip. One of the tricks I’d picked up from Strumming, I guess. “Nice to know he can keep you on a short enough leash to stop you from going around randomly murdering innocent people.”
Evidently her methods worked better than I gave her credit for, or Starlight was so wound it only took a little push to make her explode. “That’s not what I was—I don't want to do that! I’m not a complete psycho! He’s making me do this, you arrogant nag! What in Tartarus makes you think I’d ever want to do this?!”
If I still had both legs left I would’ve crossed them over my chest. “Maybe the part where two minutes ago you were ranting about murdering hundreds of people just to teach me a lesson?”
“Oh for the love of—” Starlight groaned and rubbed her face. “You’re taking what I said out context!”
“Leaving aside the fact that I’m not, I’m very curious to hear you try to explain what an appropriate context for mass murder out of petty spite would be.”
“That’s not—you’re—argh!” She closed her one remaining eye and took several deep breaths. “Okay, maybe I said that, but I’d never actually do it. I was just ... I was pissed off and venting. You think I like any of this?!”
“Maybe,” I shot back. “If you don’t want to do it, then why are you doing it?”
Starlight’s horn lit up and she all but charged across the fire to reach me, getting so far into my personal space that I had to consciously restrain the urge to force her back. “You think I have a choice?! If I don’t follow orders I’d be better off dead than what Blackfyre would end up doing to me, not that this is any better. I don’t even have full control over my own head anymore!”
I weathered the storm, doing my best to keep calm in the face of her rage. After all, if I didn’t keep a cool head it would turn into a fight, and that probably wouldn’t go my way. “Right, he’s not exactly the kind of boss you can give your two weeks’ notice to. Pretty sure his idea of a severance package involves severing your head from your body.”
Starlight scoffed. “I should be so lucky.” She pointed out one of the spawn. “He told me that the next time I failed him I’d become one of those. Or like the Warpmouth, that thing in the cage he likes to keep around. And that’s just for insufficiently zealous and successful service; if I outright defied him...”
“Right.” She was clearly fishing for pity, but I wasn’t about to indulge her. “Better a collaborator than a victim, right?
“A collab—” She snarled and for a second I thought she was about to attack me. “This isn’t my fault! All I wanted to do was find some magic that would protect me when Rising Fire returned. Something to give me an edge over that maniac. And Blackfyre was supposed to be dead. No one had seen him in a thousand years. How was I supposed to know he was still crawling around in his lair? Even then we would’ve gotten away with it if Frozen Finds hadn’t triggered Blackfyre’s alarm runes!”
She turned away from me, furiously pacing back and forth. “I’d almost gotten out when one of Blackfyre’s rune traps came down, and Finds left me to burn while he got away with all the loot. So there I was, facing one of the biggest and scariest dragons in the world. My choices were to become some monstrous thing, or work for him. Not that this is all that much better.” She reached back to rub at her runes. “You think I can’t tell he’s playing with my head? Not to mention the just about constant pain from the damn things. About the only upside to this is that at least I’m still alive and a pony, and we’ll see how long those two last.” Her single eye narrowed in a hateful glare. “What would have you done, if you’re so bucking perfect?”
Considering Blackfyre was planning to turn me into one of his spawn, I already had a good answer for that. “I would’ve hit him with a death curse.”
She stared at me a moment, then let out a mocking, joyless laugh. “Oh that's easy for you to say after the fact.” Her voice shifted to something high-pitched and sickeningly sweet. “But Starlight, why didn’t you just kill yourself to power one last spell in a vain effort to kill a dragon who’s as strong as Celestia and can heal from almost anything instead of becoming a slave?”
She spat on the ground. “Maybe I don’t want to die. Maybe I was bucking scared! Why didn’t every slave that ever was take their life? Because that’s not how we’re made. We want to live. You want to live, I want to live. Self-preservation is the strongest instinct we have, because as long as you’re alive there’s a chance. Maybe a really awful chance, but it’s still a better chance than when you’re wormfood.”
“Nice speech.” I glared at her. “So how many ponies and caribou are dead because you decided your life was worth more than theirs?”
“Shut up!” she roared. “You think I wanted any of this?! You’re such a sanctimonious nag. You’ve always had everything go your way, always had the stars align, always gotten everything you wanted. All I’ve gotten is being kicked out of Freeport, losing the village I finally found a decent home in because of a damned crazy lich with a vendetta against me, and now the evilest dragon in the world as my boss!”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “If you think I've had it all easy, you're delusional.” She looked like she was about to start arguing, so I didn’t let her. “Yes, I had some advantages. Being trained and practically raised by Princess Celestia is pretty huge. But your dad’s rich, and you got to be an exchange student at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. You’re not exactly a woe-is-me charity case.”
“Are you kidding?!” Starlight shouted, jabbing me in the chest. “Look at everything that’s gone wrong in my life! You know it’s not as simple as where I started out! Who cares about whether my dad has money, look at where I am now! I’m basically Blackfyre’s slave! So shut up with all your lectures and your self-righteousness, I’m a victim too, a victim of circumstance! None of this is my fault!”
“Horseapples,” I snapped. “Sure, you’re in a bad spot right now, but who put you there in the first place? Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the one thing all the problems in your life have in common is you?”
Starlight’s eyes snapped open, and a second later they flashed that same ugly orange color her magic had changed to. With that warning, I wasn’t all that surprised when half a second later she leapt at me, hooves outstretched like she planned to strangle me. “You nag! I’ll kill you! I’ll rip your eyes out!”
Fortunately, I’d seen it coming a mile away. When she charged in I was ready for her, and before she could lay a hoof on me I slammed Chainbreaker’s crossguard into her muzzle. She reeled back in surprise, and I wasn’t going to give her a chance to recover—there was no way I could win a straight fight, especially when I was alone and surrounded by her Blightspawn. I smacked the side of her head with the flat of my blade, sending her tumbling to the ground. Then I put the edge to her neck, which seemed to be enough to make my point.
Starlight glared up at me. “What are you waiting for? Trying to come up with a stupid one-liner to say before you kill me?”
“If I wanted to kill you, I would’ve.” I moved the blade away from her throat. “Just snapping you out of the crazy. I still need you alive to get me to Blackfyre.” Not to mention that if I killed her, the rest of her Blightspawn would go feral and start rampaging.
She grimaced and rubbed at the shallow cut I’d left on her neck as she gingerly picked herself up. “Right.” She frowned and gave me a quick once-over. “I don’t get it. Did you cut a deal with Argentium or something?”
My curiosity got the better of me. “What do you mean?”
She snorted. “You just laid me out and had me dead to rights in two moves. It wasn’t all that long ago you couldn’t touch me when you were going all out. That just doesn’t happen.”
I sighed and shook my head. “Like I told you earlier today, there’s more to winning a fight than throwing raw power around. Blind rage makes you stupid, and easy to manipulate. Pumping you full of it is part of how Blackfyre keeps you under control. You can have all the power in the world, but right now you don’t have the sense to use it properly.”
Starlight twitched, and for a second I was afraid I’d need to smack her again. She must have seen my reaction because instead of coming after me she closed her eyes and took several deep breaths “Buck you. You don’t know what this is like. Having him constantly in my head. Always messing with ... with everything.”
“No, I don’t,” I admitted. “But I know what it’s made you into. Not that I liked you all that much the way you were before, but you had principles. We even managed to do a passable job of working together during the whole Rising Fire thing. You were at least trying to make progress into being a better pony.” I sighed and shook my head. “Now look at you: a mad dog slaving away for a dragon. You could’ve been so much more, and you threw it all away. Even if I’m not all that fond of you, I hate seeing that happen to anyone. If you make it out of this in one piece with those control runes gone, I suggest some serious introspection. Because believe it or not, I’d be a lot happier if you managed to straighten yourself out before you end up dead or in jail for the rest of your life.”
She scoffed and turned away from me. “Shame it’s too late for me. Blackfyre’s got me, and now he’s going to have you too. From there he’s probably won. You’re the key to his plans to beat Celestia, and in a one-on-one fight he can wear Argentium down. He’s had a millenium to plan his revenge and we’re all just expendable pawns.”
“We’ll see.” I smirked. “I’m sure he’s got a bunch of elaborate plans that end in his inevitable triumph, but he’s not the only one playing the game. The thing about bad guys and their elaborate master plans for inevitable victory, something always goes wrong and they lose.”
Starlight frowned at me. “Oh. I get it now. You’re not just surrendering to keep me off the civilians, you’re up to something.”
I shrugged. “Contrary to what some of my friends think, I’m not so stupidly heroic I’ve graduated to needlessly martyring myself.”
“We’ll see.” Starlight scoffed and shook her head. “Maybe you have a plan, but Blackfyre’s got a lot more experience at this than you do. Not to mention way more power, and none of the weaknesses he gave me.”
“I didn’t say it was a risk-free plan,” I conceded.
“Guess we’ll see how it works out.” Starlight shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter to me. Even if by some miracle you do take him out, he’d probably trigger my kill rune just out of pure spite. And if you somehow stop that...” She scoffed and shook her head. “You had a nice little speech about me straightening my life out before it was too late, but I think we both know I’m way past that point. If Blackfyre goes down and I’m still alive, I’ll only stay that way for as long as it takes the locals to get some rope and find a tall enough tree.”
“I’m sure some of them would want that,” I agreed. “But seems to me like if that’s what you’re worried about, you should start working very hard to convince them that you don’t deserve that.”
“I’m not holding my breath,” Starlight muttered. “And even if I wanted to change sides, I’m not going to commit suicide by betraying Blackfyre. Maybe you’re willing to throw yourself into certain death for a doomed cause, but I like being alive.”
“Guess we’ll see how doomed it is soon enough,” I shot back.
“Yeah, we will.” She stood up once more. “Hope you’re ready for a long hike. Blackfyre doesn’t like waiting.”
“Yeah, about that...” I looked down at my crude peg leg. “This thing isn’t exactly great for cross-country hiking. It’d probably be a lot faster if you had a sled or something. Or just let me ride on the back of one of your creatures.”
Starlight snorted. “You can walk like me. Those things aren’t made for riding.”
I looked over of the bigger ones that had several bony spikes sticking out of its back. “Yeah, I noticed.” I shrugged. “Still, if you make me walk ... well, the group goes at the speed of the slowest person in it, and I’m not a very fast walker these days. Pretty sure Blackfyre wouldn’t want you to keep him waiting for a couple extra days. After all, once that convoy gets to the border and Celestia finds out I’m not with it...”
Seeing the look on Starlight’s face when she realized she was up against a ticking clock before Celestia came swooping in was a lot more fun than it should’ve been.
Once she got over the initial shock she shot a death glare at me, but a second later one of the bigger spawn walked over and dropped down onto its knees. For a moment I was tempted to rub it in, but being gracious in victory was probably the smarter move. I managed to climb onto the monster with only a little trouble, though I could’ve done without snagging my tail on one of its spikes and pulling a couple hairs loose. “Thanks.”
Starlight snorted. “Don’t thank me. All this is going to do is get you killed faster. I’d think you’d want to drag this out as long as possible ... or is getting there before help arrives part of this cunning plan of yours? Because right now, it seems like all I have to look forward to is watching you turn into the newest Blightspawn.”
I smirked at her. “Don't get your hopes up. With the way your decisions have been working out lately, I’ll probably become the immortal goddess-empress of Northmarch by the time this is all over.”
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What's with that bit at the end?
Yeesh, can’t imagine how horrible it is to have free will but also not at the same time.
Out of curiosity, what’s with the notes at the end?
Did you leave the editor's notes in on purpose?
I had a bad feeling about this chapter when I saw the title. Oh boy is it worse than I thought it would be.
The base is mentioned twice here.
The editor's notes there at the end is interesting but jarring.
Ah, Starlight. It's so easy to blame others for your faults, especially when they have you firmly under their thumb. It means you don't have to try. Try to learn, try to be better, try to overcome the hardship your earlier lack of trying has got you into...
Because raiding the dragon's lair was the quick and easy solution for greater power. You didn't have to actually try, you just waltzed in assuming it would be easy pickings. You didn't even find the body first. And now...
But Sunset isn't blameless either. She may insist she has a cunning plan, but it's still an objectively terrible idea thus far, and smacks of more than a little of a marytrdom complex. Whatever she's concocting had better be truly amazing, or her friends will never forgive her. And even if it is, they won't be happy.
There might be hope for you after all, Starlight.
Whenever Sunset makes it back, she is sure in for an earful from just about everyone (starting with Puzzle and probably going up to Celestia) about how crazy her plan was, whatever she has in mind. At least she has Chainbreaker but Sunset's not exactly helping her case about her self-martyring tendencies.
Another interesting discussion between Sunset and Starlight. Starlight's an even bigger jerk than usual but she's not in her right mind and worse she kind of knows it but can't do anything about it. And bad as she was, Starlight didn't deserve this. Normally I'd say Sunset's point about a possible death curse would be a better fate than being Blackfyre's minion, but her own issues might be influencing her too much. But that also goes back to Starlight's fatal flaw (one of them anyway)- her selfishness. She does mostly believe in equality but still keeps herself apart and elevated. If its between dying on her own terms or living a little longer, even as Blackfyre's slave, well, we saw how she chose.
I just hope Sunset's plan doesn't just come down to get close enough to Blackfyre and try to hit him with a death curse. Or that Sunset isn't actually relying too much on possible ascension to alicorn-hood fixing all her wounds. At the rate she's going, Sunset might as well move into the hospital.
9520254, 9520262, 9520263, 9520305
This is what happens when I publish a chapter about five minutes before I need to head to work and don’t check it over properly. Oops.
9520915
I still have a working theory that in this verse, alicorn-hood is denied to those who seek it and Sunset can’t become one simply because it is her ambition to do so.
9520304
It's all about the base...
9521357
Alas, I have dropped the base. Or at least one of the bases.
9521365
All your base are belong to us.
Yeah, Starlight has never been one to let "facts" get in the way of her delusions and presumptions ....
This so doesn't look like a good idea ....
You’ll know Sunset has gone off the deep end whe she starts considering « upgrades » that require removing biological parts.
9520465
Nah.
Terrible plans are the best plans, I'm here for this.
Possibly.
Okay, yeah, this was a terrible plan.
I suppose to be fair Starlight isn't in complete control of herself.
As if Starlight plans ahead. Hopefully Sunset has done so well enough though.
9521975
That'll be beyond Blackjack level - she never really wanted them.
9521338 No spoilers, but I think Rise of the Phoenix Empress goes against that theory.
We already know from stories that take place in the future that she does NOT in fact become a Goddess of Northmarch.
Though I am VERY curious as to how all of this will play out. Even more so since Sunset could have just delayed for time and tried to get help from Celestia.
9524157
No she didn't but she wound up deciding to get more anyway.