Gems II: Dawn of The Princesses

by Pen Dragon

Chapter Five: The Midnight That Tolls

Chapter Five: The Midnight That Tolls

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Midnight Blaze wasn’t sure what was going, or where he was exactly as he stared off into the empty void of nothingness. Everything he believed in, everything he thought was once true, all turned out to be nothing but lies. He has lost everything, the friendship he once had with his friend, the girl of his dreams taken from him by a pretender, and abandoned by the very Order he served under.

‘This... can’t be how it all ends...’ He thought to himself as he continued floating in the empty void, looking around for something to cling to, anything! But despite looking around him, all he could find was nothing. ‘I failed… I couldn’t stop them… I couldn’t save Stardust… I couldn’t even kill that traitorous bastard. So… why am I still here? Is this my punishment? Or is this really the end?’

“Giving up Midnight? Pfft… How very like you,” Midnight heard a voice call out to him, it was quiet, and raspy. “It is time for you to rest now and for me to take over.”

“Who’s there? Show yourself?” He demanded, searching frantically for where the voice was coming from, but again there was nothing, at least for a moment until a glimmer of light shone above him and as he looked upward he was left in awe as he gazed at that very light, taking note of it’s beauty as lavender glowed ever so brightly.

Wanting to see what awaited him up there, Midnight began to propel himself with his hooves, but it felt as if the light was getting further and further away. “Why continue to pursue something that is out of reach?”

“I know that if I keep going! I can escape this place and find a way to bring Stardust back.” Midnight rebutted, still trying to reach the light, but soon felt a hoof on his shoulder, holding him back. “Release me! Who do you think you ar-”

“Who am I? That should be obvious. I was the one who empowered you, the one who’s been watching since the very beginning of your ordeal. Do you not understand that you truly belong to me, Midnight Blaze? What do you mean to accomplish by chasing these pointless goals?”

“The only way you think it’s pointless is if you’ve never lost a damn thing before,” Midnight spat, his heart pouring out for this unknown entity, “and nothing, not even you, is going to stop me from getting justice!”

The other voice went silent, but the unicorn could tell from the heavy, tense atmosphere that it was still there, thinking in silence. It was like waiting for an angry letter to be responded to by an even more wrathful message.

Yet, the voice seemed to remain calm, “Oh Midnight. Poor weak Midnight. Of course I’ve never lost anything before. Unlike you, I’m capable, a paragon of this world. The justice you seek is impossible for you, but is something I could obtain in a breath, if need be.”

“You won’t even show yourself,” Midnight growled, spinning around and trying to find the source of the voice, which seemed to move from place to place around his body, “and you’re calling me weak?”

The void seemed to stop spinning for a moment, the unicorn freezing in place. A very familiar feeling of warm breath, and the presence of a muzzle moved within just inches of his own, as if a pony were trying to whisper into his ear now.

“I’m here now, as requested.”

Midnight went to shout, but his gums and teeth felt as if they had melted into a fleshy mass of horribly diseased tissue and shattered enamel. The sensation left him paralyzed and his heart rate soared, ice filling his veins despite the heart drawing from them pounding away behind his sternum

“You have nothing more to say? How fitting! You never spoke up to those who truly robbed you of the life you wanted… and of the power you believed you deserved. Just one more thing truly remains to be said, Midnight Blaze...”

The unicorn felt himself wanting to cry, but not even that part of his quivering body seemed to work. He felt the invisible pair of lips move up even closer to the inside of his ear, an experience that forced his lungs to hold still.

“It’s your fault Stardust died.”

Midnight’s teeth finally let go, a terrible scream erupting from his lips as the unknown force sent an invisible blade into his chest and up through his ribcage, slashing apart his left lung and impaling his racing heart with indescribable pain, each microscopic tooth of the dagger felt brushing every nerve ending. His last thoughts were of total despair from Stardust’s fate, and the bitter taste of his own blood rushing up his windpipe and into his mouth.

Jolting up from his sleep, Midnight felt beads of sweat dripping down his forehead, he trembled in fear before feeling a sharp pain in his chest and was surprised to find that his chest was wrapped up in bandages. He was confused, but that didn’t stop him from trying to stand on his hooves.

“Take it slow… Last thing you want is to strain yourself anymore than you already have.”

“W-Who’s there?!” He shouted, only to groan in pain.

Coming from around the corner, Midnight noticed a stranger wearing an old brown tattered cloak with what appeared to be horns of a ram poking out from under his hood and a white gote.“There’s no need to shout at the one who just saved you.”

“Who are you?” He asked.

“Somepony who knows a thing or two about the Order.”

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Baltimare

The Council of the Order, was a group of gifted ponies, leaders who had protected their way of life for over a 1000 years, with each generation that takes the mantle of leadership. However, there was always somepony who made sure that the Council didn’t step out of line and this time, that pony was Chancellor Apollo. The grey stallion couldn’t help, but brush his blonde mane to the side as he watched the old stallions argue about who to send after the False Princess.

It wasn’t until Soul Writer spoke up. “Listen to yourselves! You are overreacting about sending an entire armada to invade a city that is outside our boundaries for an impudent mare who simply lost her marbles! We have been trying to gain those grounds so we may have the advantage against the rebel scum! I won’t allow this!”

“And what do you prefer we do!? That damned wench won’t allow us to send troops into the borders unless we sign forms to conduct our business, which takes weeks to process! That pretender and her lackeys will be long gone by then!” An old mare spat as many of the other councillors agreed with her.

“You senial old mare! We are trying to earn Everfree City’s trust! Don’t screw-”

“That’s enough!” Apollo shouted, standing up as he slammed his hooves against the table, his horn glowing brightly as his voice echoed throughout the room, silencing everypony at once. He couldn’t help but sigh as sat back down in his seat. “I’ve already come up with a solution, which is why I called you all here! Soul Writer is indeed right, the Order cannot send anymore forced down to Everfree City… We need Ambassador Umbra Ink to join us so we can finally crush the rebels under our hooves, but we need to earn her trust first. However, I've found some ponies who may be… Interested in hunting our little pretenders for us.”

Nodding towards the guards by the doors, they opened them excitedly to let in Apollo’s guests. Two mares entered the room, side by side, one with a subtle smile on her face and the other with a dull scowl. The sullen one, an older earth pony and having seen things most ponies could not even stand the thought of, had a crimson coat and a mane dyed black with a long purple streak running through it. It wouldn’t normally be too intimidating, but what kept the council members for mocking her appearance was the lack of tail. Some sort of metal looking cord was in the place of the appendage, but it was tucked underneath of the slick leather jacket she was wearing. Her grey eyes looked back and forth at the others in the room, boredom on her face. She seemed to be enjoying a piece of bubble gum, cracking the confection between her teeth after a couple of audible chews.

Her companion seemed much friendlier, if not overconfident. The younger unicorn mare was just a few shades of blue, from the lighter color of her coat to the navy color of her mane, a perfect gradient of cerulean and azure, with subtle pinto patches of cyan on her muzzle and hocks. On her head was a gambler-style brimmed hat, brown in color with rhinestones on the brim, and a small cutout section where her horn comfortably sat. She remained silent like her brooding friend, but her grey eyes sparkled, perhaps the warmest part of her.

The councilponies seemed unimpressed by the two mares who had come before them, they’d seen plenty of private forces in their lives, and nothing stood out that they could tell other than the one missing tail.

“And what’s this?” chuckled one of the elected, shaking his head, “A card player and a mechanic? Why do you taunt us like this Apollo?”

A very sharp cracking noise filled the air, making him yelp in surprise. The bounty hunter wearing the biker jacket had loosened it, revealing the nature of her tail. A cyborgial looking appendage, made of interlocking metallic plates had embedded its nasty barbed end into the table. The reach on the weapon was significant, having struck just an inch from the startled official’s hoof on the table, and virulent poison was welling up on the now ruined wood. An inch closer and his arteries would have been filled with the caustic solution.

The weaponize’s tails owner relaxed her spine, which let the scorpion-like chain telescope back, clicking noises sounding as the plates slid back over the other, until the tail was only half her body length, at which point she concealed it under her outfit once more.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give us lip,” she muttered, blowing a bubble with her gum and letting it pop obnoxiously.

Apollo couldn’t help but smile at the cocky stallion’s horror at the near-lethal swipe the mercenary had taken at him. There was more than one way to punish subordination in his circle.

“All right, easy,” he said before addressing the other mare, “how about you then, miss? Who are you?”

She continued to smile, but instead of speaking, her horn glowed a glittery pink, and words began to be drawn in the air as glowing pink letters.

My name is Amate!

“Ah-mah-tay?” he responded, “wonderful name.”

The mare shook her head patiently, erased the words from existence, and started again, fast eye movements tracking her arcane penmanship.

Am-it. My friend is Shrike. She’s not so bad.

“I’ll take it from here,” Shrike interrupted, “Amate can’t actually talk, so she usually lets me handle ‘diplomacy’. Chancellor Apollo brought us here to take care of some ponies causing you trouble?”

“Indeed Shrike… allow me to show you your targets,” Apollo replied, his horn glowing brightly as a holographic image of the fugitives took form of a mare with a white coat and pick mane and a stallion with black coat and white mane appeared. “This mare has claimed to be our long lost Princess of the Sun and the stallion beside her is a murderer who is assisting her in spreading lies. They are currently somewhere in Everfree City and… I want you to find them, bring that pretender to me alive, the stallion you can do as you wish with him. And you’ll be offered ten million bits for your reward.”

The two mares could only smirk at each other when he said that.

“Is there any doubt these two will win the day?” the chancellor asked rhetorically as his two bounty hunters walked out, “You will feel silly having doubting them!”

Once they were outside of the meeting hall and well out of hearing range of Apollo and his cronies, Amate and Shrike immediately started planning their first move. The mute, having practiced her air writing to the finest point, would write small text in front of Shrike’s eyes so that they could converse “in private”. This also had the bonus of allowing her friend to watch where she was going as well.

“Everfree City is freaking huge, Amate,” Shrike said, smacking her now flavorless and rubbery gum again, “and I kinda know what the locals are like. Big saps. They ain’t gonna turn those two over to us.”

“Yup. We’ll have to be smart.” answered the floating pink text.

“Also, the chancellor’s letting his ego show again,” continued the scorpion-tailed mare, “we were on display back there. Sucks.”

“Look at it this way, Shrike… we’re finally on the board!”

The ‘board’ was the ranking system The Order used for official bounty hunting within its own borders. Skilled individuals would receive points equal to the total money earned from their hunts, multiplied by the perceived danger level of the quarries on a secret ranking system. Apollo had, of course, cooked the numbers on the mares’ recent bounties to bring them onto the list so he could hire them over the other hunters. At first, Shrike and Amate hadn’t understood why, until they had seen their new targets.

“Yeah, we’re on the board because we fragged that creep trying to sell off that poor guy’s daughter,” Shrike muttered, “wasn’t tons of money, but it was super satisfying, gotta say. That freak must have been worth a ton of points.”

Just that month, a stallion had dared to try and kidnap an Order colonel’s daughter, and the two mares had managed to track him halfway across the map where they caught him attempted to sell the poor mare into slavery under a griffon prince. The criminal was identified as the Red Scarf, a formerly mythological psychopath who had been responsible for several disappearances of young mares over the past year.

If Amate could have laughed, she would, “Can’t say I didn’t enjoy that either. Glad we got her home safely! The griffons almost had her...”

Shrike remembered putting her tail through that stallion’s scarf and into his neck, the satisfying crackle of his windpipe and spine snapping from the raw force. Ordinarily she didn’t resort to such overkill, but something about the fact he targeted younger mares made her snap. Most likely, it was her own situation as a young earth pony, living in a rough town full of creeps.

“Well, at least we taught anypony out there looking to prey on the weak what happens to kidnappers. We didn’t even return all of that guy to the collection office, hehehehe!” cackled the mare, remembering what they had done.

“The looks on the payroll guys’ faces were indeed priceless!” Amate added via arcane text, “So what do we do about our new targets?”

“We go to Everfree City and start staking it out,” she said, “everypony has probably seen or heard of them by now, but they’re probably in hiding. We gather some clues, we find out where they are, and then… we hopefully get the false princess intact.”

“Cool. Hopefully, that stallion’s a gentlecolt. Would hate to have to turn in part of his body, too,” Amate doodled on.

“Guess we’ll see how he treats the alleged sun princesses,” Shrike muttered, finally spitting out her gum onto an unlucky section of floor, “now let’s roll!”

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Midnight’s Location

“Tell me… Midnight Blaze, how much do you know about the Order?” The stranger asked the blue unicorn, setting down a cup of tea by his bedside with his magic. Midnight wasn’t sure whether to take a sip from the teacup he was offered by this stranger.

“How do you know my name?! Who are you dammit!” The blue unicorn shouted in anger, despite his chest causing him pain as he gripped it with his left hoof. However the stranger remained unfazed by his outburst.

“You can simply refer to me as… Moro.” He replied, hiding his face under his hoof to prevent the unicorn from seeing his face. “Now you’ll answer my question in return… What do you really know about the order?”

“I know that they were founded almost two thousand years ago sometime after the four princesses disappearance. And for a long time, Chancellor Apollo’s family has ruled since then.” Midnight replied, not sure as to why he answered this strangers question, but as far as he was concerned about the Order, they could burn in the darkest pit of tartarus for all he cared.

“I figured that would be all you knew… Which is one of the reasons why I saved you…” Moro replied, chuckling quietly as he soon began to cough. “*Cough, cough* Sorry… I wasn’t so… old before till now… Midnight Blaze… Do you believe in the four princesses?”

Rolling his eyes. Midnight couldn’t help but let out a loud sigh in response, crossing his front hooves as he turned away from Moro. It was frustrating enough knowing that there were ponies pretending to be them, but now he had to deal with another believer. “Again… Listen I don’t beli-”

But before the unicorn could finish his sentence, he was suddenly pushed to the ground, feeling pain course through his injured body as Moro stood atop of him, crushing his chest under his hoof. “That thinking is exactly why you lost to begin with… Doubting what is obviously real right in front of you will lead you to your downfall in the end. I can promise you this Midnight… They are real… And your going to help me kill them.”

Author's Note:

This took a little longer than expected but it's finally out guys :) I hope you'll come to enjoy this chapter and do ask me questions for what is to come. I don't mind spoiling a little bit >:D

Comments

[HolyCross9]

For a moment I had assumed that Moro was actually Grogar since he's also a malevolent goat.

Furthermore, I honestly expected Apollo to send more ponies to search Celestia and her companions.

[Amethyst_Spark]

I’m hooked and can’t wait to see what’s next

[Pen Dragon]

9885862
I'm glad you like it my friend, expect more to come soon and do tell others about this story :)