(Past Chapter 30): Life and Love
I blinked at the sight of the pink foal currently babbling a mixture of words and nonsense at a giggling nurse. Too young to even speak more than single simple, she couldn't have been more than three years old.
"As you can see, we've managed to dig up records, and her magical signature has been matched to one of the minor noble lines. Unless somepony else emerges with a firmer claim, this filly is... Technically next in line to the throne. Her relation to Princess Amore is distant, but magical signatures do not lie," Dr. Real explains as I stare intently at the child.
It was all purely academic, of course. I doubted even if I tried to cede control like that that it would be accepted at this point. Too much had changed, too much had been lost to the former Crystal Ponies.
And yet, as I stared at the little slip of paper containing the filly's name, I felt my knowledge of the world crack and crumble. I was uncertain of past, present and future, all due to one tiny name, a footnote at the end of a long family tree.
Cadence Mi Amore Cadenza.
I had no clue why she was here. I barely remembered anything about her backstory. Was she slated for ascension in this era? Did my meddling interfere with that? Was this even the Cadence I knew about, or an ancestor with a coincidental name?
I felt sick at the idea of dooming an immortal to mortality because of one little slip-up on my part. The foal was found trapped in ice. Was that ice not meant to be melted?
It was too late now. Watching a literal baby giggle and coo as they tried to clap at Nurse Motherlode's flaming olive-colored flame-hair to grab it, I knew there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell I could get away with saying "put em back in cryo", even if I had the will to go through with it, or the idiocy to think that would fix the problem, if there was one.
Something pulled at my heart for a moment. I knew I would have to take some form of responsibility for this, no matter what fate held in store.
I roll my eyes at my own twisted sentimentality, opening the door and walking in to face the foal myself.
Nurse Motherlode looked nervous, spotting as the filly's mood changed from playful to fearful at the sight of me. Some unspoken instinct that had me biting the inside of my cheek nervously.
"Dr. Real, could you take a message? Inform the head of staff to begin preparations to clear out the remainder of the Crystal Empire's traps and make it suitable for habitation within the year. Label it 'Project Crystal Egg'," I explain, prompting the scientist to quickly scramble out to do just that.
At the nurse's confused look, I explain. "We are in the presence of royalty, and there are certain courtesies afforded to one, even if they are subordinate to another, and in diapers besides," I state plainly and clearly.
Looking at the nervous foal, I lean down, meeting their gaze. "Princess Mi Amore Cadenza... I sense great things in your future. Do not disappoint me," I try to state dispassionately and mysteriously.
The foal's face scrunches up, before, with a sudden giggle, she claps her hooves trying to catch my hair, smacking directly into my horn instead.
The nurse quickly rushes me out before my frantic cursing can be absorbed into the pink pegasus foal's growing vocabulary.
The year passes quickly, after that. Perhaps too quickly for some, but certainly fast enough for my purposes.
A foster family is found for the new princess, my student learns ever more in her studies, and the Crystal Empire's former site quickly becomes the site of the new capital, as well as one of the first truly above-ground cities to be inhabited by the Longma since their transformation, with the Kingdom Heart remaining where it is in the Hidden Palace Zone.
Eclipse Flash turns fourteen. Glitter Miss Priss does as well.
All of that said, tomorrow, I turn nineteen on my third year in this world, something I only informed a few close friends like Iron Diamond and Princess Luna.
I awoke with a choked scream, the dream I had slipping away before I could grasp it. Ever since I faced whatever trap had cast that spell on my Shadow Clone, it seemed that my dreams had been trying to force me to remember it, to no avail. Luna said in past months that she knew what I had been dreaming of, but that I was not yet ready to face it. I trusted her, and tried not to concern myself with it.
All I knew was that, whatever terrifying thing the spell showed me, it felt so little like a fantasy, and so much like... A premonition. An omen.
I shook my head, checking the time. Nearly three in the morning.
With a sigh, I go through the motions of preparing for the day, not bothering to check my exhausted expression in the mirror.
I grimaced a bit as I walked over to the bathroom and washed my face. Ponies really did NOT understand my preference for smaller rooms. This one was normal-sized, and a lot of the features in it really sold the idea of luxury, the bed growing to match the floorspace.
My new room was underground, of course, in spite of the enchanted window that let in sunlight when it was actually day. Some things never changed, even living in the new Crystal Egg Zone. (As if I was going to call it anything else! Gotta stay on theme)
With a sigh, I brush my teeth quickly and spit, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with a spare set of hands as I walk out of the bathroom prepared to face the day.
A sudden crash has me leaping into the air with a shriek as Celestia of all ponies smashes through my ceiling!
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" I shout, trying not to have a heart attack as the princess tries to piece my ceiling back together with a bit of bemusement, chunks of rubble floating in her immense telekinesis.
"Hmm. Wooden and brick ceilings do not react quite like that. Perhaps I erred," she mutters, flapping her wings once to rid them of the stone and crystal dust.
"What the fuck is wrong with you!" I shriek, throwing my arms out wide.
Celestia's face twitches. "My sister told me you were in a funk, whatever that means. I saw fit to end her whining and remove you from it," she says, levitating the last piece of rubble back into the ceiling, creating a spiderwebbed mosaic of broken crystal that she sealed with a brief burst of sweltering heat.
"There, good as new."
I swear I feel steam erupt from my ears for a moment. "Get out of my room!"
Her ears flatten as she looks at me with an unamused expression, but I see her lips quirk a bit, betraying the mask. "It was merely a jest, a prank, if you will. I have heard tell of your appreciation for such things, and you behave like that?"
My groggy tired memories of nightmares are a long distant blur compared to the nightmare in front of me.
"Pranks are funny, this is... I don't know what this is! Out! Out NOW!" I roar, shoving her rear and pushing her out of the automatic sliding door. She giggles as I shove what feels like a half-ton horse towards my door, which is smart enough to open on its own to spare it my wrath, or so I like to pretend as I heave the obstinate home-invader.
With a glance to the ground in which the bitch sees something I don't, Celestia moves to the side, throwing me off balance and sending me flopping forwards out of my own doorway, where I fall into a pit filled with snow up to my neck. I'm surprised for a moment that Priss even had the time to dig this out just for another one of her pranks.
"My word, now that is a jest of much greater quality than mine. I can see why you're upset, if you're used to ones of such high quality," she titters down at me as I wipe rapidly melting slush from my face.
As my entire body shudders with pure rage, she suddenly seems to realize something.
"Oh, Lord Weiss, do take me to see little Cadence, I wished to visit the dear again as well while I'm here. She's such a sweetheart, yes?" Celestia asks with a fond smile.
I can only imagine Priss's confusion wherever she's watching to catch my reaction when she sees a few hallways explode from the pure hate-fire I emit in that brief moment.
Scrambling out of the pit and failing to strangle the princess, our loud bickering, I admit only in the privacy of my own mind, manages to distract me from my worries for a short while. Worries of the future, but worse still, of the present.
As I fail to get Celestia to leave as we enter the cafeteria, I briefly consider what Sombra is doing, if he isn't anywhere in the Frozen North that we can find.
When Celestia snatches my slice of red-velvet cake in a telekinetic field strong enough to rip apart steel, My worries are forgotten in light of my white hot rage as I try to rip it out of her grasp, about as effectively as a toddler trying to yank a rope out of a playful dog's mouth.
She snorts in a distinctly unprincess-like manner as I ineffectually summon a sword and slam it into her side, trying to distract her long enough to get my dessert back. It bounces off about as harmlessly as my words clearly do, but when I sneer and transmute the slice into a hunk of poisoned royal sugar, she sets it down and glares at me, finally annoyed to my liking.
Cadence, now an active four-year-old pegasus, laughs openly at our deadly dance of annoyance and aggravation, flitting around the cafeteria as her foster-mother tries to convince her to come down with a worried tone. Last year's Blast Day had been enough to turn the pegasus into a Longma as well, though it didn't seem to affect her wings, beyond making them sprout a single small claw at their joints, like that one type of bird whose name I couldn't remember.
Her mane was another surprise, as it seemed to crackle and spark in a way that intrigued Dr. Real to no end. I chalked it up to "Important Pony Destiny Bullshit" and left it be.
Giving my own smirk to the annoying princess as she glances at the active filly with no small amount of fondness, I, with a smooth motion, shove the magically sedative-laced cake-crystal into my mouth before she can react, pure spite motivating me to eat the cake now that she was idiotic enough to relinquish it.
I fail to see her roll her eyes as I almost immediately fall asleep, but I manage to hear her mutter "Happy Birthday, you utter foal."
Something I will absolutely be using as ammo against her when I wake up.
"Calm down, sir," Sombra hears hissed to his side as they trot through a blistering hot frontier town, the desert sun slamming down on them heavily.
He scowls. Her voice, her annoying voice that she used to try and quell his anger had grown more irksome since his defeat, since his desperate escape from his own God Damn kingdom!
"What even is a 'God Dam'?" he mutters to himself, darkly furious and still having those curious thoughts worming their way into his mind.
"Pardon, sir?" Mercy asks, the stallion glancing to his companion, whose voice was muffled slightly by the thick mask covering her face.
The snake was as thick around as his own barrel, and long enough to easily choke the life out of any ordinary pony. Her olive scales were mottled with darker spots, and in spite of all the signs to the contrary, Mercy was no constrictor. Her venom could attest to that, and the victims of that venom... They could not.
Staring into the Great Snake's eyes, he saw only the glossy smoked-glass inserts of her plague mask.
"Nothing. I grow weary of your games, Mercy. Tell me where we are going. I will not ask again," he responds instead.
The snake rises up to her full height. "You demanded the theft of that Sage's work, did you not? Unlike you, I have..."
The snake sways from side to side, ponderously. "Peers, in the art of biology. Ones who can help you, but only with that lovely heart you saw fit to bring."
Sombra frowns, thinking to the relic she demanded he bring as they scrambled to gather up what scraps they could before the barrier protecting the Crystal Empire from the royal sisters collapsed entirely.
Even now, he dares not look at the vile crystal, for fear of what visions he might see in the Crystal Heart's enchanted surface. Its propensity for using prophetic visions to manipulate were well known to him, and he did not trust a relic of Love to hold his best interests at heart, perhaps ironically.
At the sight of King Sombra's glare heating up at her lack of clarification, she finally answers, slithering around her king and, glancing to the sides for any who might be listening in on their little conversation, whispers with a hiss.
"I speak, of course, of the Changelings."
Squiggles tripped over a rock, one he should have seen, even in the pitch blackness of the hive.
As the pod of pink liquid splattered on the ground, he cried, trying to scrape up the liquid in his practically wire-framed hooves. He could only watch in horror and despair as the thin, nearly invisible black miasma in the air burned away the liquid love, making it evaporate as they warred against one another upon exposure.
"You incompetent foal! What have you done?!" his commander roared from the tunnel near him startling Squiggles and causing him to slip and fall on the pink sludge.
His hooves, hollowed out from famine, were unable to take the strain, several of the thin branches holding the swiss-like hoof together splintering painfully.
He didn't answer his commander, who stomped forwards to discipline the bug. Instead, he just whimpered with pain from the damage caused by a simple fall.
"With this damn miasma everywhere, you know we can't let any of our stored love be exposed! Do you have any idea-"
An interruption came from an unlikely source. "Stop," the two-toned voice, said, followed by Squiggles feeling telekinesis lifting him into the air.
Daring to open an eye, he gazed into his queen, who looked at him like the bug he was. The one he felt like ever since the miasma had begun to spread over the land.
"Your majesty! I'm sorry! I'm sorry I didn't mean to!" he begs, staring at Queen Chrysalis with horror as she casually lifts up the pink fluids from the ground, sealing them in a new pod.
It was embarrassing. Around them, drones scurried underhoof, many of them the new, smaller variety that had begun to appear when the miasma choked out larger eggs from gestating, and weakened changelings that had refused to sacrifice height during the rationing.
His queen is unshaken by her blubbering drone. "I know. You are dismissed, Commander Elytra," she says, turning to the one that yelled at him.
She returns her attention to Squiggles. "You must go with the others now, Squiggles," she explains, making him blink before shaking his head.
"I'm still strong enough to work, I won't make another slip-up, I promise!" he responds, wriggling in her telekinetic grasp.
She carried the wounded changeling with her as she crawled through the tunnels of the hive. "Do not question my decisions," she said simply, and somewhat emotionlessly.
He clammed up at this, recognizing the rebuke for what it was.
"I'm sorry," Squiggles responded quietly as they entered a large cavernous chamber, one with a large number of sick changelings in it. The chamber's rock was freshly carved, and he could see the various podded changelings. The nursedrones often coughed whenever they slowed or rested for too long, but worse still were the patients.
He could see that many of them looked awake and aware, and many of them were massive as well, the sort of drones who were the first to deal with the real problems of the hive. The kind of problems a changeling fought with hooves.
Squiggles could sense their discontent. The problem that threatened the Changeling race couldn't be fought that way. Even crueler, the strongest had been the first to fall, that much was obvious.
They glared, several of them even had their hooves crossed. Anxious and aching to fight, despite how fragile their bodies were.
"Please, my queen, I'm still strong, I don't want to be useless," he begs, the sight and the pain of his own fractured form making him forget his queen's earlier words.
Chrysalis stops, and turns her full attention to him. She snarls, but he senses no malice from it.
"You are useless. Others will take your place," she says clearly, leaving no room for argument. His pain is forgotten for a moment in the face of her majesty's overwhelming will. He nods obediently.
She turns to one of the nurse-drones, handing him off to them to be put in a healing pod. A stasis pod.
"Do not grow lax, Squiggles. This leisure will not last. I will have you returned to work shortly, and when that time comes, your labor will be... Intense," the queen says quietly, insistently.
He blinks, and nods frantically.
'I will be ready, my queen!' he mouths as the pod fills with slime.
The drone doesn't grin broadly as he watches the green-tinted form of Queen Chrysalis walk away at a measured pace, as if taking time from her schedule to attend to a single injured drone was merely to make an example of him. He expresses none of his feelings. Why would he waste some of his precious happiness on smiling, when his queen is counting on him?
He sees her talking to a commander, senses a brief flash of emotion. Watches her lips move before she more quickly darts away, skittering along the walls and exiting the chamber.
Convincing her majesty to express any feelings was a noteworthy feat. Squiggles couldn't help as a sliver of curiosity escaped onto his face, dissolving into the goop around him.
'Oops!' he realizes, getting a firmer grip of himself.
Chrysalis may have been many things, but a hypocrite wasn't yet one of them. She cursed to herself at the emotion she had let slip. Surprise, while it was not yet rationed, did not warrant being felt just because of who the visitors to the hive were.
"Angel of Mercy is here? Are you certain?" she asks her commander politely, buzzing through the tunnels at incredible speeds.
"Yes. Her and another. The shadow pony that ruined the Crystal Empire," the commander nods as they both land in her throne room, a cavern like all the others, but close to the surface, to entertain visitors and simplify banishments.
Chrysalis allowed her eyes to narrow. Hate was plentiful, and she felt no need to ration what little she could amass safely. "Send them in. I want an explanation," she says coldly, climbing onto her stone throne and reclining on it, openly radiating disdain in her posture.
The doors open, and striding in with confidence and malice strong enough to push aside the miasma, King Sombra approaches, Mercy slithering in behind him.
"So it is true. The tyrant of the Crystal Empire has come to my hive..." Chrysalis mutters, loud enough for him to hear.
Sombra's face slowly shifts from a leer to an almost coy smirk. His self-satisfaction as clear as day.
"Indeed. And I have come at the behest of this one, my royal doctor," he explains, stepping aside only slightly, forcing the snake to go around him to face the queen.
"Forgive me, your majesty. I and my king saw no other choice but to seek your aid. A new ruler threatens his hold over the empire. He demands I steal from this ruler their secrets of biology, and there is only one who holds mastery over the arts of the cells as well as I," Mercy says in a quiet, kindly tone.
Even now, Chrysalis saw fit to express respect for the snake's genuine feelings on the matter of wanting to restore the status quo of King Sombra's rule, nodding to acknowledge this respect.
Who else on this earth could feel kindness and happiness in the depths of the changeling hive? Who could ply the trade of surgery and experimentation and take pleasure in it? On their own kind, no less?
Angel of Mercy was anything but her name in one sense, and precisely it in the other.
"You are one I may call a peer, Angel of Mercy, but his majesty, King Sombra, is anything but. Do not forget why I barred you entry to the hive in years past, once your master saw fit to hide away the Crystal Heart," she glares, ignoring Sombra's twitching face.
"To rule over ponies is laudable, but with the Empire in ruin, it cannot spread love across Equestria, and now, his meddling has become the crucible for a new Empire to emerge, one that radiates not the magic to manage and enhance the love in the world, but instead, one that refines and spreads hatred."
She glares at Sombra, now, sensing beneath his current feelings deeper ones, his complex relationship with the sage that has vexed him thus far. Even he does not realize he is under the sway of that vile Kingdom Heart as much as any other pony, what should have been simple childish hatred with no depth had bloomed into a complex jewel of interconnected offense and respect in equal measure.
Queen Chrysalis could almost appreciate feelings like those, if they were not the source of her hive's suffering.
"The foalish ponies may revel in the joys that come from their confused grudges transforming into precious rivalries, but my kingdom faces famine and disease in this new world. Do I owe you thanks? Do I owe you what you have come to obtain from me? I think not."
Sombra snarls, and she smells the rotting odor of hatred in the air. Mercy, however, manages to catch his attention and calm his wrath, for a moment.
The shadowy unicorn, after a deep, calming breath, obtains a snide, manipulative bent to his tone.
"You owe us nothing. We have come because our goals align, and we have come to rectify what my rule has... Unintentionally done to your own."
He hisses as his horn smoulders. Backlash from his telekinesis reaching through to harm him as he lifts from his saddlebags a bright cyan crystal, in the shape of a heart.
"I have made a sacrifice, to bring this before you. I have taken a risk to allow it to be employed once more. I have lain down my pride in the face of defeat, to visit your kingdom now, as I am. Is this sufficient to express my sentiments? My willingness to aid you, as I would have you would aid me? Will you be my ally, Queen Chrysalis? My... Friend, in these trying times? You are, after all..."
He smiles maliciously, and Chrysalis, seeing her own drones in the throne room gravitate towards the glowing crystal like moths to a flame, begins to grin with equal malice.
"...The enemy of my enemy."
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So, the changelings got the heart... but at what eventual cost?
Neat
i feel sorry for the changeling race and sombra showing some smarts in wanting allies!?! seems sombra took a bit of weiss in him that a dangerous combo! for the queen changeling i wonder if this chrysalis is smarter more mature queen then her old tv self?
I wonder if sombra will get to meet some umbra ponies of his species? I hope we get to explore that culture...
now that I think about it but what do the kirin race think of the longma?
Oh dear, that's not good
Interesting, I'm guessing that the Kingdom Heart currently acts like a reverse Crystal Heart and spreads hatred around, thus poisoning the changelings.
I'll never understand this kind of thing with villains in stories, same with humans irl: they see their own failure and what their ambition has caused to others and still fail to see what beat them. Chrysalis could have at any point gone to talk to Weiss but nope gotta be stupid. Same as Sombra. Just pure spite and idiocy, fighting for an unsustainable goal of world domination, using methods that long term will kill the very world they are trying to rule over.
I'm probably just as stupid thought.
10833815
Umbra ponies?
Nearing the climax of the first half!?! And didn’t you say you intended to cut out a bunch of fluff? Great googaly moogaly man, how much story did you have planned?
10833953
My original plans slated out space for a total of 14 arcs (24 total, past and present, but they would line up so basically just 14), each with 7 chapters across the past and present with 4K words each. My intent was to breach one million words with this fic over 400 total chapters (100 Past, 100 Present, 100 Weiss Reports, 100 Noir Reports), with the fic itself ending on chapter 100 or so.
Originally, I had planned for the plotline you're reading now to take place from chapters 42 to 49, and had two filler arcs that would have been sandwiched between it and Final Sum.
In a previous chapter, it was pointed out that Sunset had made the claim that "It's like his personality changed ten years in!", which is why I had so much space slated out for what was basically filler to establish worldbuilding elements and players, and why now, I'm going to need to do roughly a 7 year timeskip in order to make the timelines and previously hinted-at lore match up correctly.
I also had vaguer, looser plans for a sequel after that.
I'll still be addressing the various plots I wanted to visit, just with potentially less fluff inbetween them. I feel that, for the most part, Eclipse Flash's characterization has been developed enough now for what I have planned.
10833914
While not explained much in the show, in the comics it was shown that Sombra belongs to a race called Umbrum. A race of "ponies" that share some similarities to Windigoes, and utter hatred towards the crystal empire.
Wonderful stuff as always man, and perfectly in line with Sombra's track record.
Not leaving behind an insanely powerful Love-centered artifact in the hands of the people who have literally made a holiday out of how much they hate him? No brainer. Using said artifact as a bargaining chip with a species that happens to use the same energy it produces as a food source, and thus an easily affordable and incentivized protection? Next level, and a delight to see form.
10833914
it the species of pony sombra is apparently I think I messed up the name and it called umbrum pony and it leader called Rabia here an example of the race and umbrum sombra!
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/043/295/fca.jpeg
Well, that's where the heart went. I wonder if they'll find some way of emulating it before the kingdom's eventual fall.
Spreading an aura of hatred throughout the land, no wonder celestia is so willing to break his house in. Unless she doesn't know?
10834385
Be mindful of what EXACTLY chrysalis said. It isn't just spreading a QUANTITY of hatred, but a QUALITY of it.
That would be Celestia. She is the god dam.