Crystals & Chitin

by Nytus

03. | There's a Beast and I Let It Run

The sun never came out the next day.

The natural climate up north is certainly no better than down in the lands of the other three tribes, though the Crystal Heart can hold back the wild weather and create its own within the aura of light and love.

Ever since I arrived inside the perimeter of that aura, this was the first cloudy day I’d seen. To me, that meant only one thing: Sombra was upset about something, and I had a sinking suspicion that something was me.

I hadn’t told Warden about the pony I… er, encountered the day before⁠—for obvious reasons⁠—and nopony witnessed the brawl to my knowledge. Was it possible Sombra had some direct control over these ponies?

That could explain why this particular pony had been indoors while everypony else had left for their slave labor assignments hours before. If that were the case, though, what was he searching for? The house didn’t exactly scream ‘rich and powerful’ to me.

“Headway? Son? Where are you at? Come back to us,” Warden said, swinging his hoof in front of my face.

I must have missed something while deep in thought. Both Warden and Double Time were staring at me expectantly. I also noticed Double Time was still wearing the necklace I had given her last night. As cheap as it was, it seemed like she had no intention of ever taking it off.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about the weather. Didn’t you say it was always nice inside the city?”

“Yes, and it’s for that reason that we should stay indoors today. I don’t know what it means, but I have no doubt it is a result of Sombra fooling around with the Crystal Heart. If we are lucky, he is merely trying to figure out how to control it.”

“And if we aren’t?” A wave of anxiety washed over me from behind as Double Time spoke up. It wasn’t extreme, but I could tell she was ready to let it run away with her if she didn’t like the answer. While that could provide an opportunity to comfort her and build up her dependency for me, it would mean more work than I wanted to put into mealtime right now.

“Don’t worry about it, Miss Time,” I responded before Warden could tell her the blunt truth, which there was little doubt would be forthcoming. “Whether he’s mad about something or not, we’re still safely anonymous here. Maybe he’s just upset about how much snow is piling up outside the barrier. I don’t know how it works, so it might be a drain on his magic. Or, maybe he just likes it a bit gloomy. He’s an evil tyrant, who knows what he finds desirable? For all we know, he’s just bored.”

“Mad!? Why would he be mad?”

Smooth. Yeah, why would a recently thwarted dictator be mad? It’s not like I’ve reduced his workforce by one or anything. I need to be more careful, one misplaced word is enough to give yourself away. This is elementary stuff, Carina! Pay attention for the queen’s sake.

Warden stepped forward and wrapped a foreleg around her shoulders. I could almost feel her tension dissolve at his touch. I still had a ways to go before I had such an effect on her. “Don’t be afraid, dearheart. Headway was just saying that even if he was angry, we’d still be safe here. That’s all.”

He sighed.

“Tell ya what, why don’t I have a quick peek down the road? It’ll only take a couple of minutes, and then we will have a better idea of what’s going on. I’ll leave Headway here this time to keep you company.”

I couldn’t exactly tell him how bad of an idea that sounded to me, not without telling him why I thought so. But when it came right down to it, I considered Warden to be expendable… all I really needed to complete my mission was the mare.

“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll keep Miss Time safe while you’re gone. If you do end up needing help out there, yell. Loudly.” I joked, mostly for Double Time’s benefit as I felt a small burst of mirth mix with her trepidation. I didn’t even consume it⁠—I wasn’t especially hungry, and the more positivity she could store up, the less her worries would overwhelm her.

“Funny,” he commented, shaking his head with a slight smirk, much like a father would after his child’s amateurish joke. His eyes were confident and reassuring, but he didn’t realize that there were two of us in the room who could feel the fear building within him.

“I should be back in about twenty minutes,” he said as I walked with him toward the door. Before stepping outside, he leaned in toward me and whispered. “If an hour passes, assume the worst. Take Miss Time and find a new hideout. If I am enslaved, there is a genuine chance that Sombra will pull the location of this school out of me. If that happens… well, just don’t be here if that happens.”

Time to go to work.

“Right,” I said as I turned back toward Double Time, the door closing with an audible click behind me, “he won’t be too long. Don’t worry about that old soldier, he can handle things on his own. In the meantime, how shall we entertain ourselves?”

Her face scrunched up as if I asked her to perform complex mathematics. I suppose some ponies might indeed resort to that given the question I posed, but I knew she was much more of an athlete than an egghead.

“We could… sing, or tell each other stories, or… um, maybe we could make something? I think there are some wooden sticks and bottles of glue in the back room. Are you any good at making models?”

Technically speaking, I have indeed ‘made a model’ in the past, but I don’t think tall, lithe unicorn disguises were what she had in mind.

“That could be something we do with a little more time on our hooves. We’re just killing a few minutes here, so why don’t we start with a story?”

I could feel her excitement grow at the chance to talk about better days and perhaps learn something about ‘Headway.’ My disguises cover a lot of personal aspects to pass scrutiny, but I would likely have to fill in some details to make something entertaining for her.

“Okay!” she exclaimed and ran over to the teacher’s desk, hopping up onto her favorite perch like a cat. “Let’s see…”

Perfect. Having her go first will give me all the time I need. Perhaps former disguises can fill in for foalhood friends.

“Oh, I know. When I was a blankflank, my parents were always at work. They are crystal palace guards, you know.” She paused at this statement for dramatic effect.

“I didn’t realize that.” Yes, I did.

“Yep! Dad and Warden have been guards for, I dunno, forever? That’s how they met—my parents, that is. Mom joined the guards a year or two before I was born.”

Of course. If they’d met a year or two after you were born, I would have had some questions, I commented internally, attempting to entertain myself through Miss Time’s slow-starting story.

She continued. “Anyway, this one time, my parents were at the palace protecting the princess—hey, that was alliteration! Oh, sorry, we were covering alliteration in school when... “

She trailed off before shaking her head, vigorously. “Sorry. Sorry! Um… oh right, I was left with my best friend and her mother for the weekend. Silly and I snuck out of the house in the middle of the night. We ran up to the north field just outside the city. There was a rumor that it was haunted, and the shadow pony lived there, coming out at night to eat primroses and other night flowers. There was a dare going around school to wait for him to come out then place a lamp in front of his cave so he couldn’t go home, melting away when the sun came up.”

Interesting, didn’t Warden say Sombra went to that north field too, right before he conquered the city? I might have to go find this cave of hers.

“Silly?” I asked. I knew pony names were descriptive, but I haven’t met many mares who would influence their foal’s destiny with such a name.

“Oh, yeah. Her real name is Cilantro Lime, but she doesn’t like to be called that very much, so we shorten it to Silly,” she said through giggles. Some of the first actual laughter I’d heard her produce.

“Ah, I see.” Of course. Ask a Silly question, get a Cilantro answer. I paused for a moment, blinking away the pun that just ran through my head. Uhg, pony humor is rubbing off on me. “Go on.”

“Well, we snuck out there and placed the lamp, but we didn’t wait around to watch the shadow pony melt. We ran home as soon as we put it down. It was scary, and a little fun, but we got in trouble the next day when Jasmine Dream knocked on the door to return Silly’s lamp.”

Smiling at her memories, Double Time fidgetted on top of the desk, staring at me expectantly. With Warden out of the way for a while, I drank deeply of the joy she was emitting. Her smile gradually drooped, but not before I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

“Well, maybe it wasn’t as funny as I thought…” she said, her shoulders slumped slightly. Her energy returned quickly, though, when she asked, “What about you? Tell me one of your stories!”

“All right. Let’s continue the foalhood stories then. When I was a colt, I was the oldest of my siblings. We didn’t get along very well, but our mother was pretty demanding, so we did as we were told and maintained a reasonable enough peace whenever we thought that word of our adventures might get back to her. Now, when we were isolated and alone with each other, all bets were off.”

She snickered slightly, not realizing how accurate my words really were. I continued the story but changed a few details to seem more pony-like. I wouldn’t want to scare her with just how violent a clutch of nymphs can be when trying to impress their queen.

“One of my brothers was exceptionally good at digging, and we had followed one of our other brothers to this little cave—probably much like your shadow pony’s cave—where he’d curl up and sleep, away from all the noises near our home. Well, my brother and I noticed he’d come back to this exact spot to sleep almost every single day. So, after a week or so had passed and he hadn’t changed his pattern, we came up with a pla— er, prank.”

Thankfully, she didn’t notice the near slip of my tongue.

“What did you do?”

“We went further into the cave and began digging a tunnel under the rock where our brother slept while he was busy doing other things for our teacher. I wedged a few stones into place to make sure the rock itself wouldn’t move—until we wanted it to—and then dug straight down for a hundred or so hooves.

“It took us all of our free time for several days, but eventually, we had a sizable pit that emptied out into a big underground pond. Once it was done, we went back to the stone I’d used to wedge his sleeping rock in place and slid a couple of clay pots of water into place next to them with their spouts facing the dirt walls.

“The next time our brother came to rest in his private little cavern, the extra weight crushed the pots and soaked the dirt under his rock, converted it all into mud, and the whole thing slid down the pit, dropping him and his rock into the pond below.”

She laughed, enjoying the story and misinterpreting an attempt at fratricide for a fun little water slide prank. She didn’t know my brothers were both changeling nymphs, nor did she know that nymphs—as a general rule—couldn’t swim very well.

“Was he mad when he got out?”

When. There’s another difference between changelings and ponies… trust a pony to expect a happy ending.

“Oh yeah,” I replied. “He spent years trying to get back at my brother, but I don’t think he ever knew I was involved. I rarely participated in their roughhousing.”

Well, that’s not strictly true, but noling ever knew when I did so. I was always the brain behind one of the others’ brawn. I never got the credit for my success, but I also never took the fall for any failure. Good trade in my book.

“I had to be the role model,” I said.

You’ve no idea how hard that last sentence was to say aloud with a straight face. I may have served as a ‘role model’ for someling, but it certainly wasn’t any of my hatch mates.

“Sounds like fun. Sometimes I wish I had a big sister so we could have played around like that. I was only allowed to see Silly on weekends. Throughout the week, I was in a boarding school set up for families of the guards. It was boring and taught by retired guardponies, so it always felt like we were being trained for army duty rather than real life, and we never had recess. I mean, come on, are you kidding me?”

Lucky for me you don’t seem to have been a very good student then.

“Um, Headway,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice, “has it been twenty minutes yet? There’s smoke over there.”

I looked up at the window she was pointing at. She was right, wafting up into the sky, there was clearly a thin column of black smoke rising.

In a normal situation, that wouldn’t be alarming. It was barely equivalent to a simple fireplace chimney output. The thing was, the affected didn’t light fireplaces. That meant it was either a deliberate act by Warden—unlikely, considering his goal was to not be noticed—or it was an accident, and he was in trouble. In either case, that plume of smoke would be summoning every power walker in the city soon.

Fear.

The raw panic slamming into my senses was nauseating. Double Time was worried about Warden and sinking deeper into a massive downward spiral by the second.

“Headway, please?”

Two words. That’s all Miss Time managed to get out through her growing despair. It was pitiful, really, but it forced me to reevaluate Warden’s importance.

She considered him family. He wasn't just watching over her, he was important to her, and if I did nothing to rescue him, I would lose whatever emotional attachment I might have been building within her. My only reliable source of food was in jeopardy.

Ugh, I have to do this, don’t I?

“Miss Time, stay here. I will go see what I can do. If this door opens before you hear one of our voices call out to you, run out that teacher’s door and don’t stop until you can’t breathe. Don’t go straight to it—you’re gonna want to cover your tracks through the snow somehow—but try to hide in that cave you told me about and wait for us.”

She was shivering and didn’t say anything, but she did manage to nod her head a couple of times as if she understood me.

I crept out the front door, making sure no surprises were waiting for me in the road before doing anything rash.

Looking up, I found it was easier to pinpoint the smoke once I was outdoors. From the looks of it, I would say it was coming from the same neighborhood that we scavenged the day before.

At least I knew how to get there.

I ran until I came to the side street. The difference in activity was like night and day. Dozens of helmet-wearing ponies were all converging on the neighborhood, just as I predicted they would.

Two or three teams of two had already made their way into the cul-de-sac. There was nothing I could do about them, but I could at least lead the others away… assuming they weren’t being ordered to investigate the smoke above all else that may be going on around them.

If that were the case, nothing short of magic could save Warden, and given my current disguise, that wasn’t going to happen.

I had spent some time studying this street while waiting for Warden previously. There were many small shops and various restaurants on either side of the road, most of which were abandoned with their doors unlocked and window signs flipped to ‘OPEN.’

Not very many of them would be useful to me, but I did recall seeing a pair of adjacent shops with second floors that seemed to indicate the owners lived above their stores.

Trusting that at least one of them was unlocked, I darted out from my hiding place and galloped directly toward the nearer of the two.

It didn’t take long to reach the front door, and there was no doubt that every pale green eye on the street was staring daggers into my back.

I placed my hoof on the doorknob and pulled. It opened smoothly with a tiny little tinkling chime as the swinging door brushed against a bell hung above the frame.

Teddy bears, pillows, blankets… this was some sort of bedding or foal-care store. I immediately discounted anything in there to be of use to me. By their very design, every product in the store was meant to comfort, not impede.

I jumped over the counter, knocking a decorative wooden cash register to the floor as I did so, and reached for the door I assumed led up to the living area.

Locked.

I found the only locked door in the city.

Wonderful.

I didn’t have long to complain to myself, though, as just then the little door chime came to life once again as two affected guardponies entered.

I quickly spun to face them, all the while raising my haunches and delivering the strongest buck I could manage to the door behind me.

I was rewarded with a dull ache in my right rear hoof, where my aim was slightly off—resulting in my kicking the knob rather than the door itself—but also the sound of splintering wood and the metallic clang of the doorframe’s brass strike plate hitting the floor.

As expected, there was a stairway leading up, which I quickly ascended and charged into the residential kitchen above.

The first useful object I found was a large iron skillet. I grabbed it and turn back around in time to see the first of the two guards reach the top of the stairs.

I charged her before she could get a solid footing inside the apartment and swung with all my might. I hadn’t counted on the spear.

Rather than knock her down the steps into her partner, as I intended, she brought up her guardspony spear and blocked my attack with its haft.

Meanwhile, her partner’s spear snaked out beside her hooves and jabbed at me. It was a bad angle, and the second mare was unable to put much power behind it, so I easily dodged the attack, but in doing so, I was forced to step back and allow the first guard to follow me into the kitchen.

My cooking utensil-turned-improvised-weapon took on yet another new role as a shield against the thrusts of the two pony slaves intent on doing me harm.

Below, I could hear additional ponies entering the shop, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before this already lopsided battle became hopelessly one-sided in their favor.

When I could spare the moment to look away from my assailants, I noticed the room next to the kitchen was a more spacious open room that acted as both living and dining areas for the shopkeeper.

It would provide more area to work with, but it would also allow more than one guard to participate in the assault at a time.

Instead, I focused on the light being cast across the floor. I could see a pair of windows facing the street, but that wasn’t the source of the light. The morning sun, in the southeast, was casting its golden rays through a window outside of my viewing angle, but I knew it faced the second building I was interested in.

Abandoning the kitchen and the single-file conga line of spear tips extending down the staircase and into the shop below, I made a mad dash into the next room, turned the blind corner, and threw myself through the window with a loud crash.

Once again, I was reminded of the shortcomings of pony anatomy versus changeling carapace.

My aim, thankfully, was adequate. I managed to defenestrate one shop and force my way into the second, but each window that shattered around my soft, squishy body lacerated me with fairly deep cuts and gashes across both sides of my body as well as a few on the top of my head.

Unable to waste any time contemplating my second injury in as many days, I quickly located the stairway leading into the store below and raced down it, taking the steps three at a time.

My shoulder slammed against the door at the bottom. A thinner decorative panel in the center of the door cracked, and my momentum forced it out of the door like a pane of glass, allowing me to tumble out through the doorway, which would typically have opened in toward the stairs.

I regained my hooves and ran at full gallop out the front door.

Of course, there are more of them, I thought bitterly as I once again found myself in the street. From either direction, I could count at least a dozen more ponies.

I managed one quick glance down the cul-de-sac before turning toward an unfamiliar residential road. I couldn’t see any guards down there, but the smoke was getting thicker. Hopefully, that meant Warden was able to flee into an adjoining neighborhood, leaving the burning building behind him to mask his escape.

Speaking of which, I needed to make my own.

I ran down the street into yet another cul-de-sac. The uniformity of this city was starting to irritate me, but at least no guards were waiting for me.

I chose one of the closer buildings and ducked behind it, hiding in the backyard for a moment as I caught my breath.

Seeing that I was in a reasonably private area, I called up the welcoming embrace of transformation. With the familiar green flash of flames, I once again took on the feline disguise I used the first day I arrived in the empire.

It seemed like a perfect plan until I realized that the wounds I accrued in my diversion were still present in this form. I hoped that the mindless zombie soldiers out there wouldn’t consider me worthy of notice, regardless of how much it looked like I lost a week-long turf war with a rival alley cat.

I took advantage of the new form’s agility and leaped up onto the privacy fence surrounding the home I hid behind. Padding along the narrow top edge of the wooden slat wall, I slowly made my way back toward the billowing smoke.

Luckily, I was right. The affected took absolutely no notice of me as I sauntered across the side street like they were the intruders. Once across, I worked my way toward the fire by passing between the storefronts. They were too closely positioned for ponies to squeeze between comfortably but were no problem at all for a cat.

Now that the immediate threat to myself seemed to be over and the adrenaline was starting to wear off, I began feeling every tiny scrape and abrasion I’d picked up. Nearly my entire body was uncomfortable, and a few of the deeper cuts caused actual pain, depending on how I turned my body, but I was satisfied that at least I wasn’t disfigured or in danger of passing out. My wounds would be an annoyance for a few days, but they’d heal.

Stepping out from between the buildings, I saw smoke coming from the house I had encountered the stallion in the day before.

So much for coming back to find out why he was here, I thought to myself.

I couldn’t see any flames, but the smoke was thick enough now to engulf the homes on either side of it. None of the affected seemed concerned about putting out the fire if there even was one, but that wasn’t surprising given their lack of free will.

Fear. Anxiety. Resolve.

Found ya.

One of the homes I passed on my inspection of the cul-de-sac looked ordinary enough, except for the emotionally-active pony hiding within.

I looked around the neighborhood as I selected a new hiding place for myself. Two guards remained motionless in the center clearing. It looked like I was successful in drawing off the majority of them.

Stepping behind the house Warden was in, I bathed in emerald flames and resumed my disguise as Headway.

It was a little risky, transforming so close to his hiding place, but I was confident that he’d have his eyes on the front window, not the rear.

Once in pony form, I tapped lightly on the back window.

A moment later, I saw Warden creep over toward me, the tension in his eyes and shoulders eased as he recognized me.

He slid the window open and slowly crawled out. He’d have hit the ground somewhat hard if I hadn’t caught him, but otherwise, I had to admit his exit via window was far more graceful than my own.

“I’m glad to see you, but where’s Miss Time?” he asked.

“She’s fine. I left her at home, but told her to go out the back and hide in a certain place familiar to her if somepony other than us approached the front door.”

He breathed another sigh of relief before taking notice of my condition. “And what about you? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. I just got cut up a bit diving through a pair of windows to distract the guards. You’re lucky I did, too, or else this place would be crawling with affected. I counted at least twenty in the street out there. As it is now, there only seems to be two in the cul-de-sac.”

He nodded, but rather than looking toward the center, his gaze turned toward the backyard.

“Good, we should be able to avoid two of them,” he said. “But we will have to swing wide and come back around toward home from the south side of town. All it takes is one pair of eyes to follow us back, and we have a much bigger problem on our hooves.”

He paused a moment, obviously allowing his thoughts to wander a moment.

“When I got here, I didn’t expect to run into a full unit of guards tossing the house you looted yesterday. I barely ducked in here before being spotted. It was certainly a surprise to see Sombra himself show up.”

That was a surprise.

“Sombra was here?”

“Sombra is here. That’s what that pillar of smoke out there is. It’s one of his favorite parlor tricks. His attention is inside the house, thankfully, or you’d be able to see those freaky red eyes of his in the cloud.”

Freaky red eyes? Was that Sombra who was staring at me through that love buffet yesterday? If it was, that means he’s seen me. The real me. If he knows what I am, what I came for…

“Warden, we have to go.”

---

It took us almost an hour to make our way back to the schoolhouse.

Double Time, predictably, flew into Warden’s embrace the moment we stepped inside, but less expected was how briefly she remained there before stepping back and launching herself at me.

Joy. Gratitude. Concern. Relief. Love.

There it is. I’ve been waiting for that one.

I drank deeply of the offered emotional feast. I diverted a healthy portion of it toward easing my pain and healing the worst of my injuries, making sure not to do too much. They could both plainly see my cuts and bruises. It would be challenging to explain how they vanished right in front of them.

“Thank you, Headway. I knew you’d bring him back. I just knew it! Thank you,” she gushed as I slowly took in her concern, both figuratively and literally.

“Give the lad some space, dearheart. He’s had a long day,” Warden chuckled, giving off some gratitude and joy of his own. “I don’t know how we got so lucky the day he joined us. If it hadn’t been for our young hero here, I might not have gotten away from Sombra.”

She gasped at the mention of the tyrant king’s name. Her eyes grew wide as she looked back and forth between Warden and me, still hanging from my neck, before bounding up and planting a kiss right on the side of my cheek.

“Thank you, Headway. I always knew you were a good pony!” She slid down my barrel as she released her hold around my neck and stepped back, gazing at me in a way that I was trained to cultivate.

Except that I am not, I thought to myself. I hadn’t expected a physical display of affection so quickly after finally establishing a proper claim to Miss Time’s love. It threw me off, and I stopped absorbing her energy. I am literally feeding off you both intending to drain everything I can from you to build up a magic reserve before facing off against King Sombra.

I barely noticed when Warden retrieved a small first aid kit and passed it to Double Time. I spent the rest of that evening on autopilot as I sorted things out in my head.

I didn’t pay attention as Miss Time dutifully bandaged the deeper cuts or dabbed aloe on the scratches. I registered her emotions and sipped on them slowly out of habit, but otherwise, I remained rather stoic.

He was searching the house I fought off that stallion in. Why? What is in that house that is so important? Or is the better question, who lived in that house that was so important? There’s no chance of finding anything of value now, not after he ransacked the place personally…

The only thing that shook me from my thoughts was Warden’s announcement just before retiring for the night.

“Tomorrow morning, I’ll be going south.”

Author's Note:

Another chapter in the books, pun intended.

update:
Originally posted on the 25th of June, 2019.
An editing pass was made on the 4th of March, 2020.

Comments

[Happy2343]

Great story.

[Nytus]

9711619
Thank you. I am glad you’re enjoying it so far.

The next chapter is taking me a little longer than I had hoped, so it might not be ready this week (especially considering tomorrow is the 4th of July), but I hope to have it ready early next week.