• Published 5th Apr 2019
  • 9,389 Views, 326 Comments

A Tempestuous, Pharyngeal Engagement - Raugos



Tempest Shadow and Pharynx have a disagreement. It's love at first fight.

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Chapter 2

“Princess, can you hear me?”

Twilight shied away from the light and curled up into a ball, groaning softly. She then hissed when doing so made her limbs throb and ache.

“Ah, you’re awake. That’s good.”

She blinked rapidly to clear the gunk out of her eyes, then slumped when she recognised the keep’s infirmary, with its orderly rows of steel-framed beds, beige walls, thin curtains and the faint scent of antiseptic. She was the room’s only occupant, aside from the batpony stallion garbed in a field medic vest of the Night Guard, who stood next to her bed.

“Who’re you? What happened?” she asked, glancing out the window.

Stars twinkled in the dark sky, interspersed between the towers of the palace and their glowing windows. Then, memories of the duel flooded back into her mind like tidal wave. She sat bolt upright and clutched at her barrel with a gasp, expecting to find herself encased in a full body, wing and hoof cast. But she only found her coat singed black in clumps, with a few shaved areas to make room for some gauze patches slapped on with medical tape. Her ribs and hips felt awfully sore, though.

“Sickle Cell, at your service, Princess.” He bowed slightly and smiled. “You gave everypony a fright when the fireworks blew up all at once, but it looks like your alicorn constitution and natural resistance to immolation kept you from experiencing the worst of the blast. Sergeant Tempest and Prince Pharynx weren’t quite as lucky.”

Oh no.

Twilight flattened her ears. She then reached out with a foreleg, grabbed his vest and yanked him close until their muzzles squished together. “What happened to them? Are they okay? Ooh, I am so, so, so banished to the moon if they aren’t!”

“Easy, Princess!” Sickle Cell cried as he fidgeted in her grip. “They’re not exactly okay, but all things considered, they’re far better off than they had any right to be. First degree burns, fractures, couple of dislocated limbs, a few missing teeth… nothing we can’t fix with the right spells, potions and some good old bedrest. Turns out that changeling goo is an impressive flame retardant, and it helps that they’re both pretty much at the apex of equine fitness. Anyway, they’re up in the next room and—”

“You kept them in the same room? And they’re conscious?” Twilight all but shrieked, tightening her grip on his vest. “Do you have any idea what they were doing to each other before things went boom? Do you?”

He cocked an eyebrow and raised a bony wing-finger. “Yeah, but they seem quite—”

Twilight didn’t hear the rest of it.

Space collapsed around her with a pop, and she materialised in the adjacent room with a deep breath in her chest and a shield spell charging on her horn, ready to yell for order and to restrain all parties involved if necessary.

But all of that air whooshed out of her lungs when she found herself standing in an empty corridor instead of the adjacent room.

“Huh?”

Somepony had intercepted her in mid-teleport!

But who could—oh.

Twilight turned and found Cadance standing right beside her, who forestalled the question in her opening mouth by pressing a pink feather to her lips and pointing her hoof at the window before them.

Just then, Sickle Cell came barging out of the doors to the next room with a worried frown, but he relaxed when Cadance smiled and waved him off with a wing. After a moment’s hesitation, he silently bowed and retreated down the corridor.

Twilight watched him leave, then hesitantly followed Cadance’s gaze to the observation window. It was a one-way glass that gave her a good view of the room’s interior, which was practically identical to the one she’d previously occupied.

Tempest Shadow and Pharynx lay on adjacent beds, alive and very much conscious.

Not many ponies got to see Tempest without her armour, but there she was, swaddled up to her neck in thick bandages instead of metal plating. She had one hind leg in a brace and a nasty row of stitches on her forehead. Her cheek had swollen up until the left side of her face resembled a ripe cherry, with the thermometer poking out from the corner of her mouth being the stalk. The medics had also shaved her mane down to a fraction of its normal length, presumably to restore some degree of tidiness to it and to get rid of the charred ends. Her tail had been similarly cropped.

Pharynx, on the other hoof, had reverted to his more elegant reformed form, although the term could only be applied in the most generous sense at the moment. He had split and cracked chitin all over his body, mostly on his legs and barrel. Some areas had also turned an angry shade of bright red, with the chitin flaking off or curling at the edges like warped bark. But instead of using bandages or stitches, the changelings must’ve seen fit to apply their own treatment in the form of green, semi-translucent gunk slathered all over those wounds. They looked very much like dried snot to Twilight, colour notwithstanding. Nothing had been done for his scorched and shredded wings and tail, though.

It’s a good thing that changelings can replace their softer parts with each moult, she thought with a wince.

Then, her breath hitched in her throat when she realised that they were looking at each other. And they were both smiling. At least, as close to smiling as their bruises and swelling permitted.

Giggling, Cadance nudged Twilight with an elbow, and then her horn glowed softly as she activated the room’s audial spell matrix, allowing its occupants’ voices to filter out into the corridor.

“—have any idea what it’s like to grow up lost and alone in a world that doesn’t care squat about you?” asked Tempest in a voice that was a little stifled by her swollen cheek and the thermometer in her mouth. “Don’t even get me started on how I literally had to fight other street rats for food in between sleeping in the gutter to avoid freezing at night.”

Pharynx snorted. “I have four hundred and ninety-seven siblings, and we had only twenty-three captured ponies between us for regular feeding. In pony terms, that’s like eating one raisin a day, and that was for nineteen years since I hatched.”

“Oh, poor you,” Tempest drawled with a mocking grin. “I simply cannot imagine such squalor, being able to put something in your tummy every single day… At least you had a home. Do you know what it’s like trying to sleep with a tick infestation sucking you dry?”

“Meh. Grubling.” Pharynx waved a hoof dismissively. “We’ve got pests, too, like quarray eels, and they can swallow us whole! You can’t see it now, but one of my leg holes was actually a wound that never closed up after I got impaled by a maulwurf claw. Top that!”

Tempest simply stared at him with half-lidded eyes.

“Right, horn.” Pharynx cleared his throat and gestured vaguely with his hoof. “Sure, physical trauma is bad and all, but do you know what it’s like to have a mother like ours? Some of my older siblings liked to use me as a punching bag when I was a grub, and Chrysalis laughed when I cried and whined about it to her. She even encouraged them to hit me harder, and she watched! They only stopped once I got strong enough to make them, not because my mother did anything. And, hey, the last thing she did was to abandon all of us because she didn’t want to look like a fruit – which is kind of fair, actually – but still! Emotional trauma!”

Tempest rolled her eyes. “There was this griffon who found me on the streets and nursed me back to health after I’d gotten beaten up by a rival for picking garbage in her territory. Once I was better, he sold me into slavery, and he didn’t even have the decency to kiss me goodbye.”

Twilight blanched and whispered, “What? She’s never mentioned that before!”

“Hush and listen!” Cadance whispered back.

“Out of curiosity, just how much did he get for you?”

“I don’t know, but it sure was enough for him to set up a business and move into a cushy mansion the next time I saw him. That was after I’d joined the Storm King.” Tempest’s grin came back. “And I was going to make him pay.”

“Ooh, do tell!” Pharynx chuckled evilly. “Did you break his leg?”

“No.”

“Tie his tail in a knot?”

“No.”

Pharynx raised an eye ridge. “Poke his eye out?”

“Worse.” She leaned closer and said in an undertone, “I made him pay. Eighty-percent of his profits had to go to the city’s orphanages for the next five years, since I’d been such an essential investment to get his business going. It was either that, or I could seize one hundred percent of his assets for the Storm King.”

He blinked. “Wait, what? What kind of revenge is that?”

“He’s a griffon. Most of those catbirds would rather gnaw their own leg off than give away money.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll take your word for it.” He then leaned closer with his ears perked. “And how did he take it? Did he beg? Did he grovel and weep?”

Tempest smirked and drawled, “Like a bitch!”

Twilight gulped as the two patients shared a bout of villainous chuckling, then gasped when she turned and saw her old foalsitter watching them with sparkles in her eyes. “Cadance, I know that look! How can you even find this remotely heart-warming?”

Cadance clasped her hooves together and sighed wistfully. “How couldn’t I? They’re such a cute pair!”

Twilight’s right eye twitched.

Is this what a stroke feels like? I think I’m having a stroke…

Eventually, their laughter subsided, and companionable silence filled the infirmary, with Tempest and Pharynx gazing contemplatively at the ceiling.

Then, Pharynx shifted uneasily and said, “Something’s been bothering you.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“You taste… annoyed. Been that way for the last ten minutes. Was it something I said?”

Tempest raised an eyebrow. “How’d you know?”

“Changeling.”

“Right.” Tempest shifted the thermometer to the other corner of her mouth—which, Twilight realised upon closer inspection, wasn’t actually a thermometer at all—and huffed, “No, it’s not you. This lollipop started off as strawberry flavour, but it’s pineapple on the inside. I hate pineapples.”

“Oh.” Pharynx averted his eyes and twiddled his hooves for a couple of seconds, then gave her a sidelong glance and added, “Umm, so, if you don’t want it…”

Tempest snorted. She then took a moment to manoeuvre the lollipop around in her mouth before finally spitting it free. “Knock yourself out.”

It sailed in a clean arc over the gap between their beds, and Pharynx only had to lift his muzzle slightly to snap it up in his jaws. One crunch, then two and three, and he spat out the plain stick neatly into the bin on the other side of his bed.

“Thanks!” He then happily crunched and sucked on the sugary remains in his mouth.

“You know, that was the first time anyone was able to keep up with me in the ring,” said Tempest.

Once Pharynx finished licking his teeth, he grinned at her and managed a partial salute with his foreleg’s severely constrained range of movement. “Right back at you. We should do this again! Just you and me, in a nice, secluded place with plenty of rough terrain.”

“Oh? Is this a date or a rematch?”

“Yes,” he said without missing a beat.

She grinned back.

His smile then twisted into a pensive frown as he murmured, “If the princesses would even let us, that is.”

“Technically, neither of us has said uncle yet…” said Tempest, rolling her eyes up to gaze thoughtfully at the ceiling. “We’re honour-bound to finish what we started. I’m sure the princesses would understand.”

“I like the way you think! Where have you been all my life?”

“Kicking ass all over the world. You should try it. It’s very therapeutic.”

“Therapeutic, huh?” He bared his fangs in a grin and transformed his foreleg into a fleshy imitation of a snake’s tail, which he then waggled at her. “I think I know something else you find very therapeutic…”

Tempest eyed his supple limb – again with dilated pupils, Twilight noticed, feeling blood rushing to her own face. She then gave him a thin smile whilst crackling, blue arcs of magic danced on her horn nub, writhing like tiny tentacles as she said, “Down, boy. You’re not the only one who acquired vital combat intelligence today…”

Okay, I do not need to see or hear where this is going!

Twilight tore her eyes away from the observation window and deactivated the audio spell, feeling a numbness descending upon her. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense!

“Cadance, how long was I out for?” she whispered.

“Just under six hours. Why?”

“Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure I must’ve been in a coma for a couple of years. Who even are these two? How’d they go from beating the snot out of each other to, to…” – she jabbed a hoof at the window – “To that?”

Cadance beamed at her, which Twilight recognised as the precursor to a long spiel about interpersonal relationships that frequently meandered into well-meaning but very unnecessary constructive criticism about her own love life…

Her gaze drifted around for a bit, until it settled on a clipboard tucked in the crook of Cadance’s foreleg.

With a flick of her horn, Twilight teleported it out into her waiting hoof and read:

OPERATION TEMRYNX

Compatibility: High

Affinities: Violence, martial arts, snarky humour, sweet tooth, maximum edge

1) Organise joint military exercise

2) Propose Tempest as new drill sergeant

3) Invite Thorax and Phar—

Cadance snatched the clipboard out of her hoof and tut-tutted at her, smiling with a rueful shake of her head. “Twilight, you know it’s rude to grab other ponies’ things.”

Twilight simply scowled back. “You planned this.”

“Now, what makes you say—”

“You totally planned this, I know you did!” Twilight hissed as several strands of her mane curled and twanged out of place. “I was this close to having a Twilynanas moment, Cadance. Hay, I think I’m about to have one right now!”

“Twilight, I—”

“This political manoeuvre is highly questionable!” babbled Twilight as she paced back and forth, counting away legal problems on the tips of her wing feathers. “Not to mention risky! We’ve narrowly avoided war with our neighbours several times already, but this… this plan of yours actually encouraged active combat between two high-ranking officials of our nations! What if they actually started hating each other? What if our alliance got knocked up—back! I mean knocked back all the way to square one? What if—”

“Twilight, I’m awfully flattered that you think I’m that much of a scheming mastermind, but really, on a scale of one to Celestia, it barely registers as a three. Maybe a four, at most.” Cadance hummed thoughtfully and tapped a hoof to her chin. “Then again, it’s not a bad idea. Would you like me to set you up as well?”

“What? I, uh…” Twilight ruffled her feathers and snorted. “No! And don’t change the subject!”

“Was worth a shot…” Cadance murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing!” Cadance rolled her eyes and smiled. “Just look at it this way: what’s done is done, and there’s no point fretting over what might’ve happened. What has happened is that Pharynx and Tempest like each other, and it’ll go a long way towards securing a positive relationship between our species!”

“But… shouldn’t we come clean and at least let them know, so that this thing between them isn’t based on an actual conspiracy?”

“No, that would ruin the fun of shipping!” Cadance grabbed her shoulders, assaulted her with huge puppy eyes and wailed, “Twily, it’s not every day that I get to ship a prince, and of a different species at that! Don’t take this away from me-he-hee!”

Twilight balked. “But, but what about Honesty?”

“Another Royal Wedding! Think about the research opportunities once they consummate their marriage!”

“How does that—”

Undaunted, Cadance flared her wings straight up and out, then slowly fanned them down to form an imaginary rainbow. “Potential hybridisation! Maybe even a whole new branch of magic!”

Twilight sucked in a deep breath in preparation to yell, then held it in when an idea treacherously wormed its way into her brain. She bit her lip and shivered with anticipation when she saw it: a publication in the Royal Canterlot Journal of Arcane Biology, featuring a ground-breaking article by Twilight Sparkle on the first-ever pony-changeling hybrid…

Oh well, I guess it won’t hurt to salvage something from this.

“I want first dibs on any thaumic residue and genetic material when you inevitably offer them a room,” she said. “For science.”

“Done!” Cadance giggled and clapped her hooves together. “Ooh, this is so exciting! Don’t worry, Twilight, everything will work out just fine!”

With a resigned sigh, Twilight smoothed down her mane and feathers before casting a nervous glance at the observation window. It was almost surreal to see Tempest and Pharynx so relaxed in bed, and making small talk to boot. If she squinted just right, she could almost see them lying side by side on a grassy knoll, watching the sun set.

“I hope you’re right…” she mumbled, before a huge yawn parted her jaws. “I’m going back to bed. Wake me up if they start a war or something.”