8: Bug in the sun, bugs against fake Sun, and bug loving real Sun.
The short yet still unpleasantly long sensation of a wingless drop through the empty void ends with wooden floor under my hooves.
“Okay, screw teleportation,” I mutter immediately.
“Wheah-oh!” Three stumbles, “Hey, sir, your mane is smoking!”
“I feel you,” announces Cromach, looking around, “Heh, hasn’t changed a bit since last time.”
“When yar at the age of my clientele, ye appreciate a familiar place, birdy,” answers a heavily accented voice, “Nice to see ye again. Yer friends too, and that’s just how my mane looks like.”
Again?
Okay, let’s start from the top.
This place looks like one of the smaller, family-run dwarf restaurants Two took me and One once to meet Topaz - a single, large room with low ceiling, a counter at the far wall with a door leading presumably to the kitchen, and fairly few tables scattered around. All the windows have blinders of surprisingly high quality for a place this rustic drawn, so the entire room is dim gloom of the… wait, isn’t there supposed to be night outside? Anyway, lastly, there’s a wooden door leading outside with glass panes in the center through which bright light is pouring into the dusty and dim interior, and all I can see is a lot of brownish yellow.
The speaker answering Cromach’s comment is…
...an alicorn. An elderly orange-fading-to-brown alicorn, to be exact, with light grey mane and tail which nonetheless look like what I could imagine as smoke or wind given life, who seems to be the only occupant of this place.
I am immediately suspicious because, you know, my experience with alicorn’s isn’t the greatest, but Cromach is smirking, and already heading towards the counter where the windy alicorn is cleaning a levitating glass with a rag wrapped around his hoof.
“So, what brings ye here?” asks the alicorn when Cromach hops onto one of many bar stools lining the counter.
“Nothing pleasant, Zephyr, though if I had a way to come here more often, I would,” Cromach shrugs, “Someone seems to be attacking alicorns.”
“Wasn’t me!” Zephyr waves his forelegs defensively, chuckling, “Although alicorn meat bean stew...”
“If you ever add it to the menu, invite me,” laughs Cromach, “No, the reason for the attacks is that someone is trying to drain their divinity. So far, queen Novo and princess Luna have been attacked.”
“And princess of Food,” adds Three, and I can almost feel the gears in Zephyr’s brain starting to turn in a different way to account for Three.
“Oh, right!” Cromach snaps his talons, “Yeah, Cadance too. This guy,” he points at me, “interrupted the attacks on Cadance and Novo, and from what I heard, Luna kicked a metric crapton of ass before the attacker or attackers took her down, which brings us here.”
“How?” Zephyr raises an eyebrow, “I think I do have an evil version in some other reality, but all he does is make the stew extra spicy. I think he calls it the anal screwdriver bowl.”
Thank you, that’s imagery I didn’t need so early in the morning.
“If even you call it extra spicy, I’m pretty sure it melts dragons from the inside,” Cromach waves his foreleg, “But I wasn’t talking about you. Before Luna passed out after the attack, she supposedly identified Magnus as the attacker.”
“What? Maggie? Naaaah,” Zephyr shakes his head so vigorously few tiny tornadoes split away from it an wibble in the air shortly before disappearing, “Maggie might be a foul mouth, but he wouldn’t hurt a mare in his dreams. Hay, I think Creamy used to tease him with some offered spanking and he just went red and started frothing into his blueberry juice.”
“I turn red too whenever miss One kisses my nose even if I’m not trying to transform. I also start glowing for some reason. Anyway, hurting anyone is bad unless they need remedial friendship lessons, so this means that Magnus guy is alright,” concludes Three.
Cromach pats his head.
“Good buggy. That’s all I know. We came here to ask if you or someone else didn’t have any idea how we could find Magnus, because it turns out that Sunbutt nor anyone we know does.”
“And Maggie likes to keep it that way,” Zephyr continues cleaning the glass for few moments while Cromach just drums his talons on the counter, “but if the situation is this serious...”
“Do you know where to find him?” asks the griffon.
“I don’t, but I know someone who might,” he points towards an empty table in the corner which is the only one with a pulled out chair for no reason I can think of. Maybe someone invisible?
“A table?” Three eyes the piece of furniture with suspicion, “It does have the right kind of legs to be a changeling...”
At least for a moment, I gain some mental anchorage in this situation when Cromach looks as confused as I’ve been feeling since the teleportation.
I follow him to the empty table, and twitch when I hear Zephyr bellow:
“HEY, KRONIE, GET OVER HERE!”
We both turn our heads to the alicorn who nods, and when we look back at the table, there’s an earthpony already sitting there, sipping from a square glass of some amber liquid. Unlike Zephyr, he’s smaller than me or Cromach, his mane is chocolate-brown and not at all magical, the rest of him is several shades lighter, and I can see his cutie mark of an hourglass.
“Come on, I told you last time- no… I told you before… or will I tell you now? Anyway, you didn’t have to yell,” says the earthpony calmly in a somewhat high-class tone.
“Sorry, have that whiskey fer free,” Zephyr just shrugs, and the glass before ‘Kronie’ refills on its own, “Anyway, these guys are here to see ya. Something about Maggie.”
The earthpony looks at us, and says:
“The closest entrance to Magnus’s tower is in the Holy City. Do you know the central market? Yes, you do,” he answers his own question before Cromach can open his beak, “It’s one of the exits he uses to grab… volunteers for his experiments. You need to be carrying a plastic cup of blueberry juice, exactly six apricots, think of a mare you’d like to have intercourse with, and walk into any part of outer wall of the Imperial palace.”
I have exactly zero idea what just transpired, so I just automatically mumble “Thank you.”
“Thank you, mister wibbly-pony!” Three smiles at the earthpony who gives him a somewhat confused look.
“That’s it, no persuading or anything?” Cromach seems to be as taken aback as I am.
The earthpony shrugs.
“Whether or not you spend five minutes persuading me won’t break this timeline or anything, really, so I didn’t see any harm in just telling you,” he picks Three up, and examines him from all sides, “Hmmm, Scream’s work.”
“Yep, I’m part lamp,” Three’s runes starts blinking various colors.
“We could be lying to try to get to Magnus and, I don’t know, harm him or something,” I suggest.
The earthpony raises an eyebrow, and gives me a smile I immediately categorize as somewhat irritatingly patronizing.
“I am the alicorn of Time, king Beard. I know what’s going on, I know what preceded this, and I know how this ends,” he glances at Cromach, “Well, most of it. There are certain loose ends which are so uncertain even I can’t see them. Amusingly enough, those depend on both of you,” finally, he sits Three down on the table, and boops his nose. Three lights up, literally, “Well, all three of you in a way.”
“Hmmm...” I rub my chin while Cromach stares at the possibly-disguised-alicorn with a puzzled expression, “Then how about you tell us what’s really going on, who is behind it, and how we kick their ass in the end?”
The earthpony smiles, and shakes his head.
“Now that would create a timeline neither of us wants. I know this will mean nothing to you, but it eventually will to our feathered friend here. The current state of the Pact of Harmony is giving us a fairly narrow path to a future which isn’t… a complete dead end. And before any of you ask, I don’t understand what happens to make it so, but I know Cromach here is either involved or directly responsible.”
“Hey, that makes two of us,” jokes Cromach, seemingly not bothered, “Though something that is invisible even to the alicorn of Time must mean that its source is outside of time, right? The question is - what is outside of time?”
“Springs and cogs,” Three raises his foreleg, “I broke a clock in the castle once on accident. It just came pouring out… The guards were really mad, but then I told them I was really sorry, they clutched their chests, and groaned that it was okay because there were enough clocks already.”
Well, that sheds some light on several sudden, previously unexplained guard vacations.
“By definition, I cannot know what’s outside time,” he shrugs, and then he clops his hooves together as if he remembered something, “Alas, when the critical point arrives, that series of events will be completely on you, Cromach, not me.”
“Greeeeat, no pressure at all,” Cromach rolls his eyes, “Any tips that would help me not flush the whole timeline into a toilet?”
“Hmmm… that statuette you left in your Manehattan office is important. Oh, and the usual - trust your heart, your instinct, and most of all your… lower parts,” he flickers, I have no other way to describe it, “Yes, that shouldn’t have ruined anything major. Oh, and where are my manners,” he raises a foreleg for a shake, “My name is Kronos. Or did I already introduce myself? I apologize, focusing on a single moment in time isn’t my strongest suit.”
*THUD!*
Before I can shake his hoof, the door of the diner slams open, and several griffons armed with sabers rush inside.
“THIS IS A STICK-UP! GIVE US ALL YOUR GOLD AND-”
“Seriously, this happens every time I’m here,” Kronos sighs.
“MORE FRIENDS! I CAN GIVE YOU ALL THE HUGS!” Three jumps down from the table.
“Don’t mean to be a stickler for reality, but yer everywhere all the time at the same time,” Zephyr corrects Kronos, undisturbed by what are over ten armed bandit raiders spreading around his establishment, and Three currently pouncing at one.
“GETITOFF! GETITOFF! IT’SEATINGMYFACE!”
Three bandits rush over to Zephyr, and one aims a pistol straight at his head. Four fan around us, pistols and sabers at the ready while the last two walk around, checking under the tables and turning the place on its head. The final one is chasing one very confused griffon crashing into tables with Three around his neck.
“You didn’t hear me, horse?” the apparent leader of the bandits slams his fist against the counter, and hiccups.
“Hmm, what?” Zephyr looks up from his glass, “I am fairly old, true. My hearing isn’t what it used to be.”
“I said -hic- I said-” he burps. The bandit next to him farts out loud, and looks around, “Seriously -hic-”
The third bandit lets out a loud and long burp that might have originally been a sentence.
Cromach snorts.
“Pretty lowbrow sense of humor, Zephyr,” he comments on the bloating and gassy trio now unable to do more than tremble, clutch their bellies, and make random gurgling noises.
“Alicorn of Winds, what do ya expect? Just open a window, will ye?” he replies.
Cromach grabs the nearest griffon by the neck, and throws him through one as if the adult and armed bandit didn’t weigh anything.
“Ahhh, fresh air...” he takes a deep breath in front of the stunned bandits who finally realize something is deeply wrong.
Another bandit tries to raise his gun, and at this point I finally let out all my frustration from the entire summit situation. Fire envelops my foreleg as I punch him. When he smashes into the wall by the door on the opposite side of the large room with an audible crack of bones, I note that I may be a little more wound up than I cared to admit to myself.
“Therapeutic, isn’t it?” Cromach grins while casually slapping the everliving shit out of another bandit while crushing his talons barely holding his gun with his other foreleg.
With only a quick nod, I pick the closest metal chair, and smash the nearest bandit with it.
“Ouch...” Kronos winces in sympathy, and disappears.
“Oh- I- I didn’t- I...” I stutter while staring at the result of my love-fueled strike, namely at a mesh of wood and metal lodged deep inside the torso of a very dead griffon, “That wasn’t even sharp!”
“Tsk tsk tsk,” Cromach pats my back, “It’s no fun if you straight up kill them...” he frowns, “None left for a second round. Makes me a sad catbird.”
In horror, I stare at all the remaining griffons bloated like huge balls and slowly bouncing off of the ceiling while their uncontrolled burping and farting keeps them moving.
“STOP CRUSHING MY NECK, YOU GLOWING BUG MONSTER!”
“Never, you’re soft and cuddly!”
“I’M A BANDIT!”
“I’m a bandaid!”
“Nomad attacks are sort of a tradition by now. I mean, if you are stupid enough to try to raid an alicorn bar, you deserve that,” shrugs Cromach, nodding to the floaters, and sits down to an empty table, “Alright, we got what we came for, aaaand I kinda wasn’t thinking about a way back. Let’s wait for Sunbutt to pick us up and send us somewhere closer to the Holy City. It’s over a week-ish trip by train from here, if I recall correctly.”
The panicking bandit finally realizes that Three isn’t actually doing anything other than cuddling his neck, grabs the beaming drone under his forelegs, scowls at him, and then he realizes there’s no noise other than his heavy breathing. He looks around, sees his floating colleagues, the corpse, the broken window, and one griffon outside already fleeing. Under our glares, he very carefully lowers Three on the floor, pats his head-
“Eeeh… good glowy bug?”
-shuffles backwards to the door leading out, and quickly runs out, slamming the door behind him.
Humming and clanking of metal makes me turn my head, only to see Zephyr levitating some sort of netting and two long poles as well as a mop and a bucket, the last two landing by my chair.
“Yer cleaning yer mess, buggy! There’s a trash can outside,” Zephyr points at the half-griffon half-chair I killed. I mean I didn’t want to, it just… everything just bubbled up and… and why are they both so calm about this?
“Three, go help mister Zephyr to the kitchen,” I block Three’s line of sight of the mutilated corpse.
“Okay!” he darts behind the counter.
Unable to cope with casual murder -well, I mean it was self-defense, technically- I carry the body along with the twisted framework of the chair outside and leave it by the… trash can in the sand. Oh yeah, now there I’m outside, there’s desert everywhere, with nothing else to see other than a wall of living wind looking like Zephyr’s mane circling the diner as if we were in the eye of a hurricane. When I return back, number and number with each second, I start mopping.
Through the broken window, I can see Zephyr setting up a white net between two tall poles while Cromach has procured a glass of something green, and is just sipping it. Short moment later, Zephyr returns with a broom, and starts paddling the floating bandits outside. Three’s already bouncing one up repeatedly with his head.
“Oy, guys, I’ve got a beach volleyball set up out here,” I hear his voice, “Wanna go fer few rounds?”
Cromach peeks outside, then finishes his drink, and vaults through the broken window. In the distance, the fleeing figure of the bandit he originally threw through it screams louder and picks up the pace. Three’s temporary friend is slowly catching up to him, throwing backwards glances towards the diner.
The white griffon looks at the net, then at Zephyr casually steering one floating bandit by poking him, and in the end he shrugs.
“Ah screw it, we’ve got time. Ten points per set? Hey, your Beardedness, you coming? You and I against Three and Zephyr.”
I facehoof, and feel something shatter inside me.
Wringing the blood from the mop into the bucket, I jump out of the window myself, and take a break from morality and sanity, which are apparently overrated anyway.
As I bounce the first bandit ball over the net upon which Zephyr immediately jumps and sends him back, my sudden lack of caring makes me realize one thing:
“Huh, that’s how Comfort and Scream must feel all the time.”
***
*Knock knock knock!*
The knocking repeats itself until Ten rises from the bed and replies:
“I’m coming, I’m coming!”
The bleary-eyed changeling opens the door only to see Bright Star already in full paladin armor staring back with a steel expression. With ice-cold certainty, Ten adds:
“What’s wrong?”
“Princess Luna was attacked by an unknown assailant. Every paladin within reach is being called to the castle for extra guard duty,” reports Bright Star. When Ten rushes to the armor stand in the back of his room inside Bright Star’s Canterlot estate, the older paladin’s eye stop on the bed where, other than the crumpled sheet, lies a rather extremely well-done replica of princess Celestia.
He walks inside, and pokes the plushie over twice the size of Ten.
“Good likeness,” he snickers, “Where did you even get that?”
“Hey!” Ten, halfway inside his armor, notices what Bright Star is doing, and blushes, “...had it custom made...” he mumbles in the end.
“Extra filling in the backside department, I see,” Bright Star pats the plush princess, and with a laugh at the now steaming changeling, he walks out of the room. Considering that he himself did use one of his paladin loyal service requests to spend the night with the real thing many decades ago, he has real appreciation for the quality of the work.
Ten comes out shortly after, slams the door shut, and locks it behind him. To avoid being teased further, he asks:
“How is princess Luna?”
“As far as I know, she’s alive but exhausted and unconscious. We’re supposed to patrol the castle through the rest of the night, and somepony will sort out shift schedule for the duration of the summit later today.”
Too focused on potential threats, the two don’t talk much during their trip to the castle, although Ten notes that he can’t feel any changelings other than Gem around. Of course, that can be simply because of increased magical protection fields and Gem being the top infiltrator around with the most powerful mental signature. As they enter the castle, Ten only shakes his head. He’ll figure it out in the morning. Now, his job is to make sure no threats befall anyone for the rest of the night.
About an hour later, Ten feels his eyes droop, and yawns. In the next moment, he kicks Bright Star’s foreleg, which makes the older paladin blink and gasp.
“Sorry, I must have dozed off-”
“No, you didn’t,” hisses Ten, “It’s the same thing that happened to us in the Crystal Empire! Can you feel any magic nearby?”
Bright Star furrows his brows, his horn flashes, and he scowls.
“Yes, above us. It’s massive. Why isn’t anyone examining something of that magnitude already?”
“Because of the sleeping spell. It kept even princess Cadance out cold last time, and it was happening in her room,” he kicks Bright Star again when the paladin’s head lowers mid-sentence.
“How come it’s not working on you?” he asks as he leads Ten up one floor towards the guest rooms, passing several guards sleeping on the job.
“We have tricks related to our hive mind that help. Don’t think I’m immune by any stretch of the imagination,” whispers Ten as Bright Star stops by the door of one of the many guest rooms, and points, “Alright, lockpicking time,” green fire envelops Ten’s armored foreleg before he punches the door in, and steps into...
...pitch blackness which closes behind him after two quick steps.
“Bright Star?” Ten whispers, turning around and seeing nothing.
“Light of Celestia’s sun, dispel this abomination!” proclaims Bright Star’s voice, and the darkness burns away, revealing a guest room with infinite amount of floor and ceiling spreading into the distance, but with no walls.
Bright Star is standing behind Ten, his horn flaring with golden light. In front of him lies a bed with sleeping princess Cadance and Shining Armor. Between them and the bed, though, stand two figures, one of whom Ten hoped never to see again. Even Bright Star’s eyes bulge for a moment.
“Star Trail?” he chokes out. The ex-paladin is ashen grey, whole left part of his face looks as if it was mauled by a bear, part of his horn is missing, his chestplate is dented and hacked to pieces, and the paladin longsword hovering next to him has cracks spreading all over its edge.
Behind him stands a slightly taller figure covered by black robe, its horn a clean bone glowing red and connected by thin wisps of black and crimson smoke to moaning and groaning princess on the bed.
Ten, however, isn’t paralyzed for even a second. Finally, all his service goals to both the boss and princess Celestia align with long-suppressed personal rage, and with the delicacy of a butcher he slashes at Star Trail.
The ex-paladin expertly parries, his experience outclassing Ten’s many times, but Ten’s ferocity as he grinds sword against sword makes him back off. That doesn’t help at all when Ten darts under the crossed blades, transforms his hoof into a spike, and rams it straight into Star Trail’s neck.
The normally fatal wound has no effect as Star Trail kicks Ten away with surprising strength, no blood coming out of the neck wound.
“Star Trail, what have you done?” whispers Bright Star.
“I have a second chance to make things right,” growls Star Trail, his sword now hacking at Ten with wild abandon.
“There is nothing even remotely right about what you’re doing!” Bright Star raises his voice, “Changelings aren’t enemies anymore, and what the hay are you doing with princess Cadance?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, Bright Star. I don’t even hold betraying me in front of the holy princess against you, not even after the head bug bitch tortured my mind for years. But if you try to stop me this time, I will end you!” Star Trail growls, his horn sparkling from the duel with Ten.
“Can you stop talking and help me here?!” Ten grits his teeth, pushing Star Trail back again.
“Right… right...” Bright Star shakes his head, and darts towards the robed figure. His sword lights up with golden fire and strikes a dark barrier surrounding the enemy.
“I need time!” hisses the unknown equine.
“Tick tock, motherbucker!” Bright Star blasts the enemy with light so bright it makes Ten back off and cover his eyes. That doesn’t bother Star Trail with his back towards it, whose sword slides off of the plating of Ten’s armor.
The shockwave from Bright Star’s spell has knocked the hood off of the enemy, revealing a clean skull with two glowing blue eyes. However, that seems to be the extent of the damage caused magic attack.
“Undead...” Bright Star immediately scowls, putting two and two together. A powerful lich and an ex-paladin revenant, which means one big thing. Star Trail won’t be able to use some holy magic, and in turn Bright Star’s speciality will be extra effective. Of course, that doesn’t put any limit on the lich’s power.
The floor rumbles, making Bright Star jump to the side just as a black, jagged spike erupts upwards. Before the paladin can counterattack, red lightning strikes his sword which he’s rammed into the floor, earthing the magical flow away from himself.
Green light of burning love fuels Ten’s next strike at Star Trail with such force that Star Trail’s cracked sword shatters into shards.
“That’s for Comfort’s and boss’ unborn foal, you bastard!” growls Ten, raising his sword more like a woodcutter about to chop down a tree.
Magical barrier blocks Ten’s second hammering strike, fracturing along with Star Trail’s horn. Ten follows it with a punch which cleaves a hole in it, making it disappear as few more fragments of Star Trail’s horn fall on the floor. The ex-paladin screams even as an undead as the feedback from stopped magical flows rends what’s a connection between his soul and body.
“That one was for Comfort!” the fury in Ten’s eyes is matched only by that in Star Trail’s
His charred horn only sputters few golden sparks now, and the shards of his paladin sword weakly wobble on the floor. Biting his lip, he looks up, and finally realizes that whatever his final attempt at defending himself was going to be, it would take too long anyway.
Ten’s sword, burning with twin golden and emerald flames of love and paladin magic in tune with Ten’s short horn lengthened by the effect of light twisting around it, is already coming down like a guillotine.
“AND THIS ONE IS FOR FUCKING THREE!” screams Ten, cleaving Star Trail in half from his horn down to his belly, his platemail offering next to no further resistance.
However, Star Trail’s limp flop on the floor is drowned by a loud, pained gasp of princess Cadance sitting up on the bed, clutching her chest and choking. Her eyes bulge, roll to the back of her head, and she drop back.
Pink smoke coming from Cadance shortly swirls in the air, twists around the skeletal mage, and seeps into his body. In front of him, Bright Star pulls the sword out of the floor, and back off, gathering magic into his horn.
“Finally, a full divine aspect,” the skeleton laughs, “Let’s see how it handles.”
A red beam intertwined with black smoke hits Bright Star whose armor flashes gold like his horn, smoothly deflecting the beam away. Protection from negative energy and null plane, the bread and butter of experienced paladins trained to face vampires, life-draining magic, and shadows. Complex but quick to cast, and absolutely vital.
Bright Star is about to lunge ahead when a gasp from behind him makes him turn his head. A second beam has hit Ten who withers in the span of a second, his hoof breaking off under his weight, chitin crumpling like paper unable to support the heavy armor as all his energy is drained by the lich. The light in his eyes fades along with his sword clanking on the floor. He finally lands with more a poof than a thud, his body already more dust than solid form.
On the other horrifying leg, Star Trail’s wound knits back together, though not completely, leaving him as a partially cleaved abomination staring at Bright Star.
“Works rather well, if I say so myself,” says the lich, “Now to-”
Golden light bathes the area, making Star Trail stumble backwards and the lich slump and groan. Bright Star’s horn is shining like a beacon of holy magic, keeping evil and both undead at bay, at least temporarily. A flare splits off of the glow, and lazily strikes the lich who bursts into flames, flailing around.
“Star Trail!” roars Bright Star, “You killed Three in front of his king, and now you killed my student in front of me. You did twice what was done to you. You threw away your equinity and life for this? Do you not understand that hate only breeds hate?”
“Not if one side dies out completely as they should. I will find those bugs, and kill them all properly this time,” hisses Star Trail.
“No, you won’t!” the same flare that hit the lich before strikes Star Trail who starts screaming and flailing as the holy fire devours his flesh.
Turning around, Bright Star finds himself staring face to face with the lich free from any fire. Bony talons of pure red magic grow from thin air and grip Bright Star by the neck, pulling him up like a noose. The crushing grip right above the rim of his breastplate doesn’t allow him to focus on magic or telekinesis, making several kicks his only viable course of action.
The lich laughs, possessing no real weight but still being immovable like a mountain.
“Now now, do I try to repair him, or do I simply kill and reanimate you?”
Bright Star chokes and flails, his eyes rolling backwards.
“Decisions, decision-” the lich suddenly screams and drops the paladin.
When Bright Star finally catches some amount of oxygen, he looks forward at the lich struggling under various arcing streams of lightning, pink, blue, and teal, twisting him and seemingly dragging him along back towards Cadance. The paladin tries to push himself upwards, but collapses again, barely feeling his limbs.
“No!” the lich calls out, slowly making the wild energy disappear back into him. He manages to contain it, and stumbles. Further steps only mean further loss of balance, and he can’t walk whatsoever anymore.
Unfortunately, he can apparently still use magic, because his horn flashes, and both he and Star Trail’s charred corpse disappear.
***
“Woooo, that cleared my head!” Cromach wipes his forehead after helping me replace a glass pane of the previously broken window. We finished playing bandit ball ten minutes ago, and when Zephyr remained outside to let the badly bruised bandits go we were sent to repair the window with a spare pane. Apparently, this does happen often.
And yes, the bandit corpse I left by the trash disappeared in the meantime. Don’t know, don’t ask.
I’m sitting in a chair, sipping a cold and refreshing blue drink which, while bitter, tastes of some kind of minty herbage. Maybe if I shapeshift my insides to be able to digest this, my returning worries about what I did will drown. To silence that little voice inside my head, I say out loud:
“You’re not a normal griffon, no matter what you say, mister Cromach. You’re about as common griffon as I am Chrysalis’ grandma.”
“Well, are you?” he smirks, sitting down with his own drink he poured from one of the many bottles on the shelves on the wall behind the bar counter without asking, “Alright, I get it. You won’t let this go, but the honest answer is that I’m really not anyone special, or too special. So, ask away.”
Yes, FINALLY some answers!
Wait… to which questions?
“Oookay, so… how do all the alicorns know you? Celestia, Luna, Zephyr here… and even Kronos. We’ll get to that tiny little detail of him telling you that you were the savior of the world later.”
“Long story,” Cromach raises his foreleg when I instantly take a breath to object another vague deflection, “I mean it. I’ve been involved in fighting some threats which targeted alicorns before. If one has their kind of power, they also tend to have a bullseye on their backs. Now I’m the head of Order of the Silver Sun, and our job is to offer military-style training to anyone who pays, and to find and destroy enemies who use high levels of dark magic or some fragments of divine power.”
Huh, that’s similar to that bullseye thing that Luna told me, at least I think it was Luna. Too much happened too quickly during the past few days.
“What does ‘fragments of divine power’ mean? Like… pieces of alicorns?” in my defense, that was the best I could do with my amount of experience. The only mentions of divinity I can recall are Scream’s incomplete ramblings from two years ago.
“Uhhh… where do I even start?” Cromach scratches his head, “What do you know about gods of this world?”
“Like Celestia or Luna?”
“Pfff, stars no! Alright, a really brief lecture - there are three gods of this world, not some superstitious idols, actual manifestations of the powers of creation, destruction, and potential. Being the big three, they waged a war so that only one of them would remain and become one true all-powerful entity. That kinda screwed the whole reality up and no one was able to win, so they decided to stop and to compete instead. Then they either picked this planet at random or created it to be their battleground, I don’t know which. A long time ago they made an alicorn each into whom they poured some of their power, and those three were what we now call the primal alicorns, the most powerful creatures other than the gods themselves, and by far. Magnus is the last one remaining, so if we have to kick his ass eventually, good luck to us.”
“Wait, WHAT?” I choke on my drink.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it myself if necessary. I understand that suicide missions aren’t everyone’s idea of a relaxing vacation. So, now about the fragments - those are generally any items or creatures containing divine power either created by the gods, like the Elements of Harmony or a bunch of weird monsters including alicorns, or anyone or anything able to channel the divine power permeating this world, like cults or weird machines. Lecture over. We find those things, and if they’re evil, punch them until they stop being evil. I call it lateral persuasion.”
I nod, still coughing out alcohol.
“That was brief,” although there was one word that caught my attention, “Did you say cults?”
“I said many words,” replies Cromach with his familiar patented smug tone that makes me want to put a chair in him. Damn, that went quickly from ‘boo hoo, I murdered someone’ to using it as a figure of speech. Though with his furry ass, I’m starting to consider it a vital part of my thought process.
“I mean, we killed some weird cultist two years ago, all tentacles and badassery. The watch- no… Vigil, right! Ever heard of something like that? That guy was impossible to hurt by almost anything.”
Cromach freezes, but my changeling senses are more than enough to hear his heartbeat quicken, and the almost inaudible quick drawing of breath.
He knows exactly what I’m talking about. Let’s see how honest he really is.
“The Vigil...” he breathes out, “How did you meet one of those bastards?”
“Long story,” I give him his own smug smile. Not so funny now, is it?
“I doubt you know even a tenth of it,” he growls.
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” I reply with a casual, singsong voice, “Two years ago, an alicorn by the name Scream contacted me and my hive, and helped us with... certain things regarding our current home. Later, she wanted me to repay the favor by finding some blueprints she needed, which eventually led to the fight between the Vigil and my hive. It was tough, but we destroyed the cultist. I haven’t heard from Scream since then.”
“Would those blueprints by any chance be related to pillars with some kind of crystal ornaments on top?” Cromach asks slowly, clearly working through what I said in his head.
“Yes, actually. You saw the blueprints?”
“I saw the pillars and the horror they brought. I would do anything to unsee it,” he growls.
“W-What do you mean?” I lean backwards, “Scream wasn’t evil, was she?”
“No, of course you wouldn’t know anything. Scream played everyone after all...” he shakes his head, looks down at the table, silent for few moments, and when he looks up at me, even I can recognize that dead, not a thousand-yard but thousand-mile stare, “I guess you should know at least some results of the chaos you caused. First of all, the love of my life is dead because of you.”
“I… umm… I’m sorry?” is the best I can say without knowing any details.
“No,” he suddenly waves his foreleg which makes me twitch, “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to find anyone I can blame, but it won’t change anything. You, Celestia, Scream… it doesn’t matter. So you have no idea what the blueprints you found for Scream were for?”
“I honestly don’t. She kinda… rambled most of the time. I think she did mention a god or something, but anything she said was really hard to make sense of.”
“It started during our first, I think, year as the newly reformed Order of the Silver Sun. A strange group of cultists calling themselves the Vigil appeared, and we investigated them, found their base, and because we believed they were connected to some entity called The Watcher, we wanted to get rid of them before they became a problem. Of course, our first team of specialists failed, some of whom were my and my lover’s friends. All of them but one got captured, tortured, killed, and flesh-crafted into monstrosities I was forced to destroy for good. Only Connie survived it because she ran away. It was the right call, but she still considers it her fault the others died, and I can see why that’s the case. And that was only when the Vigils were just starting and still weak.”
“As I said, the one we fought was almost invulnerable and strong enough to crush my best warrior filled with love to the brim. Easily...” I mumble.
“Yeah, you must have gotten one of the elder Vigils who came later,” Cromach nods, “Well, the death of our first team was only the beginning. Our second team, few months later, uncovered the spread of strange invisible creatures around Equestria, which when investigated eventually led to the connection with the Vigil. However, that also brought Vigil attention to us, and their assassins killed two of my friends. My lover, I, and our second team destroyed the second base of the cult, upon which they went underground again, but with some help by Scream, Magnus, Chrysalis, and Void we figured out who they were and what they were ultimately after.”
“Which was?”
“They wanted to bring the god ponies currently call Harmony back to this reality which… wasn’t a good idea to say the least.”
“Harmony doesn’t sound bad.”
“From what I gathered, that name is a translation from ancient ponish which doesn’t capture what the god really is. Harmony is really bad. The fact that we are all still alive is a testament that Blaze did everything right.”
“Blaze?”
“Oh, I didn’t say it, did I? My lover was the alicorn of Hope by the name Blazing Light. When the god tried to push through the void rift opened by the pillars which Scream helped the Vigil construct, Blaze bought me enough time to kill the Vigil grandmaster, but facing against a god alone was, of course, impossible for him. Harmony purged Blaze’s divinity and obliterated him. Well, in the end, we destroyed the pillars, defeated the heart of the Vigil, and sealed the heavily wounded god back in the void between realities. Unfortunately, now we know what lurks out there, and that we didn’t stop it, only delayed it again. Blaze is gone, Void is gone, by Void I mean the primal alicorn of Death, not the empty void between realities. In retrospect, his choice of a name was a bit hit and miss. Scream got killed by the Vigil leader after helping them construct the pillars, and a lot of other good ponies died.”
“None of that was made up, was it?” I just ask, trying to wrap my head around it. We needed the help of ancient dwarven technology the world hasn’t even dreamt of, I had the best of the best of Chrysalis’ hive at my disposal, and only when we brought ourselves to our utmost limits, we defeated one of the cultists. Cromach defeated their leader and the Silver Sun members wiped out the rest of the cultists.
“No,” Cromach shakes his head, “I wish it was. Every second, I wish Blaze was still here, I wish I could get the warped reality, all the tentacles, and the gazing eyeballs from under my eyelids, but no, it’s all still there,” he downs the rest of his glass, “No matter how much I try to forget.”
Oh holes…
Now I really really hope that my guys go with the Silver Sun team quietly. Although knowing them, what are the chances of that?
***
One frowns as she stares into a mouth of collapsed tunnel, planks blocking access to the few visible pony lengths somepony could go inside before being stopped by a cave-in. It wouldn’t be accurate that memories come flooding in, but the sight of the tunnel Comfort collapsed during their first escape from Canterlot still brought the unpleasant crushing sensation of One holding the collapsing mountain on her back.
She shudders to shake the feeling off.
“So much has changed,” she whispers. Afterwards, she looks up at the shadow of upper Canterlot, adding, “...and yet so little, apparently.”
She’s standing inside a deep groove in the ground sloping up from the old mine tunnel to reach ground level, so she can’t see anything that’s not straight up, but her enhanced ears can hear faint hoofsteps which coupled with presence growing within her hive mind announces the arrival of Two. One looks at the ground nearby the dirt of which seems to be pressed down in regular intervals. That’s all One needs to know for certain that Two is already here, although invisible.
“How did it go?” asks One.
“I didn’t notice anyone following me, changeling or otherwise,” replies Two, “Can’t talk about Cryo, though. She has the subtlety of an avalanche. From what I can feel,” she focuses for a moment, “she’ll be here in few minutes. Do we set up a trap just in case?”
“You’re better at hiding,” orders One, “Stay up there and keep an eye out for anything unusual. When Cryo gets here, we’ll figure out what to do next.”
“Will do!” Two flies up to the ground level, and quickly looks around, “It doesn’t look as if someone followed us, but if there’s someone easy to track, it’s big blue. Any potential plans of action?”
“If we’re followed, punch first and ask questions later, just don’t kill anyone,” One shrugs, “We can’t afford to kill guards even in self-defense. As for investigating who attacked Novo… I tried to think of anything relevant, but I wouldn’t even know where to start. Hole, few days ago I had no idea that something like a fish version of a hippogriff existed. We don’t know who could consider them an enemy or… anything really,” One sighs, “I was kinda hoping you would come up with something. I’m stumped.”
“Alright then, let’s stick to our original plan then - we return to Canterlot, we find a safe place, then a way to communicate with the boss and see what’s going on inside the castle. That might be enough of a challenge already.”
Two can feel faint tremors coming through the ground, announcing the arrival of Cryo who, despite that, is moving in surprising silence. As the azure queen trots down into the hiding groove, Two looks up at the sky in case some guard pegasus is coming to investigate, and sees nothing. They all wait for several minutes, and then Two jumps down to the other two, and turns visible.
“Did you notice someone following you?” asks One just in case.
“No,” Cryo shakes her head.
“But they will,” Two sighs, “The forest looks as if a train ran through it. We should figure out some harmless disguises and move. I passed lower Canterlot on my way here, and there are tourists still arriving for the summit. Guards are milling around the gates, but there’s too few of them for the entering crowds. We could easily slip in.”
“Miss Connie, here they are!” they hear a cheerful voice which even to their sharp ears wasn’t preceded by any other sound of anyone approaching whatsoever.
As one, the changelings look up at a small, rusty, equine head looking down at them from the edge of the groove above.
Time slows down to a crawl.
“Do we run?” asks Two.
“Knock the mare and anyone with her out, stuff them in here, and then we transform and go back. The city gate might be less guarded than the sewers at this point,” orders One.
Not waiting another second, Two’s horn crackles with electricity, and in the next instant her whole body turns into a lightning bolt which strikes Bubbles’ chin, making the mare do several backflips in the air, and landing Two on the edge of the groove.
“Mom, she’s not alone!” reports Two just as Bubbles belly-flops on the ground, “Get up here, both of you.”
One and Cryo fly up, and see a black, white-maned unicorn floating towards them from the edge of the forest nearby in complete silence. A female minotaur dressed in way less than One associates with them from her experiences with Rift residents runs out of the foliage and quickly joins the other two.
Contradiction lands at Bubbles’ side who shakes her head, and pouts at Two:
“Hey, you didn’t have to do that!”
“You’re to return to the castle. Don’t make your situation worse,” says Connie, “So far, you’re not sentenced to anything, but we need to keep an eye on you.”
“We’ll figure out who framed our king, since you apparently have no desire to deal with the real problem, and in that we’ll find out who attacked queen Novo,” says One.
“Proper investigators will do their job, not a bunch of changeling vigilantes,” retorts Connie, “It might take time, but justice will be served.”
“Yeeeeah,” Two butts in, “Proper investigators sent us to prison without any proof and blamed our king who saved queen Novo, so forgive me if I’m not too keen on trusting you. Plus-”
“Plus,” One points at the boarded entrance to the collapsed tunnel barely visible from up here, “that place is the testament to how your justice works for changelings. I’ll give you one final chance to diplomatically turn around and pretend you didn’t see anything. We’ll figure out who framed out king and come back with their head.”
Connie and Anvil exchange glances, having no clue what One is talking about. On the other hoof, they don’t need to know.
“I wanted to avoid this,” says Connie, “But I’ve got my orders, and those are from someone who actually knows what he’s doing. Come peacefully or in a matchbox. I don’t particularly care which.”
“Two, take the small one, she looks quick, but be careful about the teeth. Cryo, ruin the minotaur’s day a little. I’ll show that smug unicorn some… diplomacy.”
The second lightning teleport punch from Two strikes only the ground this time, scattering dirt everywhere as Bubbles shifts to the side just in time to get barely grazed.
“Eep!” she the demonette squeaks in surprise, already pouncing at Two on reflex.
“Wha-?” Two gets swept into a rolling ball by Bubbles crashing into her, and kicks up with both hind legs while covering her neck and face wit her forelegs.
It works. While Bubbles is seemingly made of steel but flexible cables covered with short plush, she’s light as a feather, allowing even someone fairly weak like Two to free herself easily.
“Soooo… not going quietly?” Anvil raises an eyebrow, glancing the way of Bubbles and Two.
“Obviously not,” Connie shrugs, “Pick one, and don’t be afraid to break a leg. Chrysalis can help us put them back together.”
Huge black blur passes by, Cryo barrelling straight at Anvil already. The minotaur jumps to the side to avoid the bull rush, and the only thing that saves her from losing majority of her teeth is her spotting a black blur from the corner of her eye and curling up mid-air. Cryo didn’t just blindly charge at her, but was quick enough to react to the attempted dodge and swipe with her foreleg at her.
Anvil lands in a roll, and jumps back on her legs.
“There’s more to you than just a big, clumsy brick, isn’t there?” Anvil smirks, taking her two-handed mace from her back.
Cryo rears on her hind legs, and rams her forelegs down with her full titanic might. The ground trembles, making Anvil shift her weight. That fraction of a second is all Cryo needs for her thick hind legs to propel her forward once more.
Anvil’s laughter pierces the air as the colossus heads her way, reminding her of the old times of wrestling polar bears. Finally, an enemy worthy of her. She repeats her maneuver, filled with joy when Cryo reacts the same way, only adjusted even better for her dodge. If Anvil did exactly the same thing, she’d be far away on the ground with her bones broken. However, this time she digs her legs into the dirt after the quick hop away, and meets Cryo’s approaching foreleg with a swing of her mace.
Exactly like hammer and anvil.
As the individual skirmishes of resourceful against quick, and strong against stronger get into full swing, One examines the black and white unicorn.
Unarmed, unarmored, fit but not bulky… battlemage? Likely. Equipment - only a pair of saddlebags, possibly able to contain throwing daggers or something similar. Maybe an alchemist like Gem? No, that wouldn’t work unless the bags are filled with vials containing the same thing or she would get them confused.
With nothing much to go on other than knowing for certain that she is way tougher, stronger, and faster than the unicorn, One opts for the standard way of fighting spellcasters - not giving them time to breathe and prepare.
Only a faint glisten of green announces One’s fast advance ahead in a snaking pattern. She almost makes it to the unicorn before…
...something hits her, swatting her away into the corridor leading to the barricaded mine. She bounces off of the wall, hits the ground, and uses the moment of peace to figure out what the hole happened. It wasn’t a precise strike of an invisible weapon, it was as if she hit an invisible wall, or more like if a wall hit her.
“Alright then,” One grins, “A battle of endurance it is then, little girl.”
Green passes through her chitin again, and she jumps out of the corridor to ground level where the unicorn is just watching from the same position she was before. Behind her, Bubbles flies through the air like a bullet straight at Two. The unicorn doesn’t even flinch.
Not bothering with speed or strength enhancements this time, One rushes straight at the mare. Her world spins as something grabs her by her legs, swings her in a long arc above Cryo and the minotaur, and breaks a fully grown tree in half with her. This does make One wince, although she wouldn’t admit it to anyone. Shifting her love usage again, One kicks herself off of the trunk with an empowered kick straight at the unicorn. Granted, if this hits, it will likely break most of her ribs, but that’s what magic users deserve anyway.
She hits, the blow finally connects. What it connects with, though, is what must be a completely invisible barrier surrounding the mare who grits her teeth a little. That’s when One turns invisible.
The unicorn backs off, but as expected, that reaction is painfully slow to what One can do, and she’s already rearing behind her, pouring love into her foreleg for a punch.
The punch almost touches the mare before stopping who kicks up with her hind legs in response, hitting One without any relevant effect other than a minor shove. Yes, compared to what One usually fights, the unicorn is fairly weak. As the unicorn turns around, One spits goo at her which once again hits the barrier.
This time, invisible One remains still, making the mare turn her head in an expectation of another attack from a surprise angle. Instead, One tiphoofs towards her, cocks her foreleg back, and swings.
Contradiction yelps when her telekinetic field faces something with the speed of a bullet and yet kinetic energy of a speeding train, but to her own surprise her telekinesis holds even without her having to draw upon her other power. Still, the black hoof an inch away from her face does make her frown as she calmly backs off from the invisible changeling now firmly caught and squirming in her telekinetic grip.
“YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME LOSE ANY MORE OF MY HIVE!” a roar makes her clamp her hooves over her ears.
The huge changeling starts flailing wildly at Anvil trying to hide between trees which shatter into splinters when faced with the rampaging beast.
“I think something made her really mad!” yells Anvil, instantly leaping away through the foliage.
What looks strange, though, is that the changeling doesn’t seem focused on her despite it being clear she had to see her escape.
“NOT YOU!” the changeling punches a hole through a thousand-year old tree, “AND NOT EVEN YOU!” with one vertical strike, she grinds a pony-sized boulder into gravel.
Short distance away from Anvil and the unfortunate forest facing Cryo’s devastation, Bubbles once again jumps at Two. She’s the only one who knows who everypony involved is from her time together with Three and Eleven, and as such she has zero desire to actually hurt Two despite the orders not to hold back. Besides, it’s not as if Two is a threat to her.
Then she gets hit by a hurled tree.
The trunk which would easily crush a building bounces off of the ground and the hole into which it pushed Bubbles. The demonette shakes her head, blinks few times, and gets smashed in the back of her head by a rock held in both Two’s forelegs.
“Ouch!” she snaps her jaws at the young changeling who backs off, gasping for breath from their intense battle… or what Bubbles would call playtime, really.
Suddenly, she feels a sting in her side, and her world turns into blurs.
One, having just punted Bubbles into the sky with a love-fueled kick, pats Two’s head.
“What -haah- is going -haah- on?” Two chokes out.
“Cryo,” One nods to the roaring and flailing titan.
Everything is white. Why is everything white? Wasn’t she in a forest in summer a moment ago? Snowing, here in Cant… here in… here up north? Cryo shakes her head, pulls out a spear jammed between her chitin chest plates with her teeth, and rams it into the eye socket of the minotaur foolish enough to attack the queen.
Crushing his ribcage with her hoof, she looks up only to face a muscular minotaur as tall as she is with an axe in each hand. The chieftain’s weapon bites into her chitin and breaks through, making her rear backwards in pain.
Three changelings rush at him to protect their queen, and one receives his remaining axe right through his muzzle. That’s enough time for Cryo to transform her hoof into claws which snap around the chieftain’s neck, and twist. After instant crunch despite the minotaur’s rope-like neck muscles, she throws the corpse into the snow.
“Crack their heads, I want to know where they came from,” says Cryo, and several infiltrators rush off to examine the snow drifts now red with blood of minotaurs, “Most of them are males, which means there’s a camp or a village somewhere nearby.”
She looks at the dark mountains towering ahead. For the past few days, the blizzard has been gathering strength, and it’s bound to strike soon at full force. She, as a queen, has been able to adapt to the frozen northern wastes during their months long march from Canterlot and so have most of her infiltrators. The drones and warriors were growing weaker and weaker, though.
“Your Majesty,” reports the current number One, a warrior trying to keep his voice steady despite the creeping cold, “We lost thirteen warriors, six infiltrators, and twenty drones,” he hangs his head low, “They surprised us completely. I take full responsibility for misjudging the threat.”
“If I had someone who could do it better, I would feed you to the survivors, but I don’t,” growls Cryo, “So take this as an opportunity to be a better changeling and adapt.”
“Yes, your Majesty,” he bows, happy to keep his life in a situation which he knows the majority of changelings wouldn’t survive.
“How do the minotaurs deal with this cold?” asks Cryo.
“Some wear pelts, your Majesty, and others use some kind of… ointment. Mostly, though, I assume they’re just used to this, having been born here.”
“Movement, ointment, pelts,” she walks over to the chieftain’s corpse, rips his head off, and examines it from all angles. Slicing his nose open with her claw, she shows it to One, “This. Structure of nose hair. Have an infiltrator examine and replicate it,” she tosses the head to One, “Trying to warm up just by moving is pointless if all it does is make us breathe more frozen air. Then take all their pelts and use them. If those don’t fit, make them fit. Make the unusable scraps into bandannas for those who won’t be wearing anything. If you find whatever that ointment thing, rub it on them too. We’ll see if it helps. If the weather gets even worse, we’ll need to find the minotaur village or we’ll have to march towards the mountains.”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
With infiltrators scattering into the distance, Cryo resumes leading her hive into the mountains. This inhospitable part of the world bears many dangers, but there’s one huge benefit of it - if even her hive is having trouble with the weather, none of Chrysalis’ spies will ever find them.
Short time later, traps hidden in the snow snap, and chains suddenly wrapped around her legs pull her backwards. She howls along with the noise of blizzard in her ears.
Two’s jaw drops as she sees the unicorn mare’s horn glow sickly, sea green color…
...the same as massive see-through tentacles pulling Cryo away from the bleeding minotaur mare trying to push herself off of the ground and failing.
“Cryo! CRYO!” Two calls out, trying to break through the strange mental barrier surrounding the azure queen’s mind, “Auntie!”
“Whuh? Little beard?” Cryo notices the tentacles thicker than her torso dragging her backwards, “What’s going on? I’m being eaten by an octopus!”
“She’s okay!” reports Two, “Mom, punching time!”
“Already on it!” One charges at the unicorn.
“ALRIGHT, ENOUGH!” yells the mare.
A fresh tentacle rams into One mid-jump and smashes her against the ground several times. Two turns invisible, but gets instantly pulled into the air by something completely invisible, and grunts as she feels pressure tighten against her creaking chitin.
“Miss Connie, miss Connie!” Bubbles gallops out of the forest absolutely devastated by Cryo’s rampage, “Look whom I found!”
Bubbles isn’t alone. On her back, there’s a changeling tiny even in comparison to her, barely awake and making faint running motions with his legs. Limping behind, the remaining Elevens are struggling to get through the uneven terrain to the scene of the battle.
“What are those?” Connie shoves all held changelings together so that she doesn’t have to focus on all sides.
“That’s Eleven!” Bubbles carefully lowers the Eleven on her back on the grass, upon which the little changeling starts wobbling towards One, “He has a message for us and for the changelings.”
“For us?” Connie raises an eyebrow. Anvil has finally gathered herself, limped over to Connie, grabbed three suppressors, and put one on each changeling’s horn. Aside from Eleven, that is.
“...boss said… boss said not to fight. You have to... to come back to the castle... and help, because Three… Three got attacked by some guy... called Star Trail,” Eleven whispers. In the back, some Elevens previously wobbling in pairs to stay upright collapse, which makes Bubbles rush over and start carrying them to the clearing.
“...what?” whispers One in a tone that makes chill run down Two’s spine. Suppressor or not, before Connie turning the message over inside her head can react, One knocks her on the ground, standing on her and shaking her by her shoulders, “I THOUGHT YOU FUCKERS LOCKED HIM UP FOR GOOD!”
“I- d-d-d-d-d- ouch!” Connie bites her tongue when she tries to speak with One shaking her. Invisible force knocks One away, and the unicorn stands up on all fours, “I don’t know who that is.”
“We must get to the castle right the fuck now!” One interrupts her, “Eleven, how are Three and the boss?”
“Three’s okay, miss One. Mister Astray saved him on orders of some Cromach guy who was supposed to keep an eye on him after you escaped. He warned the boss about some things and wants to keep him and Three safe,” head Eleven is being propped up by Bubbles who has manage to recover the remaining ten now lying on the stomped grass nearby, passed out.
“What’s Cromach trying to do now?” Connie rolls her eyes, “Nevermind. Castle, now! We can sleep when we’re dead.”
“Sure...” Eleven wobbles his hoof, “I’ll be right… with you...” and he collapses out of sheer exhaustion.
Connie levitates several Elevens on each changeling’s back, one on Bubbles’, and one on her own. With few still lying down, she simply scoops them all up into a telekinetic hold.
“...wheee...” mumbles one weakly, making swimming motions with his legs.
Pointing towards where One knows is the entrance to lower Canterlot obscured by foliage, Connie glances at One and Cryo, saying:
“Don’t try anything funny, or I’m crushing those little guys and dealing with you next.”
“Monochrome beard is mad,” mutters Cryo. Two smirks.
***
Bright Star knocks on the door of princess Celestia’s room, and waits. Next to him, Ten’s helmet is hovering in the air. This early in the morning, the princess should just be waking up and getting ready to raise the sun. However, nothing happens for several minutes, so he repeats his knock. This time a maid passing by sees him, clears her throat, and says, clearly nervous from talking to a paladin:
“I apologize for disturbing you, sir, but the princess is with princess Luna in the castle infirmary.”
“Thank you,” Bright Star nods, and heads off.
Mulling over whether there was something more he could have done to save Ten would be pointless, but the first changeling paladin’s grim fate didn’t bode well for the relationship already strained by this whole event. First, he has to report to princess Celestia, and then… then he has to tell the bad news to the boss.
After Star Trail and the lich disappeared, he woke princess Cadance and prince Shining Armor up and explained what happened. The princess was crushed by Ten’s death, obviously knowing the changelings the best by now, while the prince rushed off somewhere, mumbling something about security.
Approaching the infirmary wing, Bright Star sighs. He’d been through wars, ambushes, conflicts of all kinds, and he knows how quick and random death can be. The knowledge doesn’t make dealing with it any easier, though, especially the death of somepony like Ten who, as originally Chrysalis’ throwaway changeling and survivor of previous Star Trail’s madness, know best that no tomorrow was certain.
Soon, he finds princess Celestia in a room guarded by two other paladins who lower their heads, knowing full well that the empty helmet Bright Star is carrying means the loss of one of them. The solar princess is sitting by a bed in which princess Luna is lying, both quietly talking to each other until he enters.
“No… not another attack,” Celestia breathes out. Bright Star looks at the floor, and nods.
“Yes, your Highnesses. Star Trail and some lich attacked princess Cadance. From what I understand, this wasn’t the first time. The method of attack was exactly the same - a widespread, powerful sleep spell, sound dampening spell, and this time also a pocket dimension created to avoid any visitors.”
“They trapped me in a pocket dimension as well after I defeated them in the dream realm,” Luna nods, “Any clues to who the lich is?”
“You said it was Magnus,” Celestia tilts her head in confusion.
“What? No, I didn’t,” Luna frowns.
“The guards said they heard you say his name before you passed out.”
“No, nononono!” Luna shakes her head, “I… I understood his -the lich is a stallion, that I’m sure of- intentions when his spell struck me. He wants to become immortal like Magnus, without blood sacrifices, without stealing bodies, or anything similar.”
“But aren’t liches already immortal by definition?” Celestia furrows her brows.
“Yes and no. Eternal existence doesn’t mean eternal life. I’ve known several mages you would consider… dark even though their intentions originally weren’t. There are things gnawing on you when you’re an undead, your body, soul, sanity. We bypass this because we are divine creatures. We and Magnus. He’s the only one who knows the secret to true eternal life without divinity.”
“The lich used some kind of energy draining magic on princess Cadance,” reports Bright Star, “and I believe he managed to complete the spell despite our interference.”
The paladin describes everything he can recall from the battle. When he gets to Ten’s death, Celestia lets out a long, drawn-out, heavy sigh.
“My little changeling, who liked my big butt a little more that was healthy...”
“You don’t know the half of what he dreamt about,” adds Luna, “May he rest in jiggly peace. Does king Beard know?”
Bright Star shakes his head.
“I wanted to find princess Celestia first. I’ll go inform the boss when I’m done here.”
He feels Celestia’s telekinesis grasp the helmet he’s holding.
“No, I’ll do it myself. It’s my duty to inform the families of the fallen,” she shakes her head, and stands up, “Sister, you did say the lich’s spell drained divinity from you, but that you know you’d be okay after enough rest. Could it be because the lich didn’t manage to channel it fully?”
“It’s possible,” Luna nods, “which means that like with Cadance, he will be back for me, and we know the castle isn’t safe. We just don’t know why. There’s good news in this, though.”
“Which is?”
“This isn’t about the summit. Queen Novo simply was the least guarded divine target, that’s all. Speaking of which, you really need to apologize to king Beard, sister,” Luna looks meaningfully at Celestia who nods.
“I will. Sadly, once again I get to realize the full extent of my mistake too late,” levitating Ten’s helmet, Celestia turns to Bright Star, “You did the best you could, Bright Star. Thank you.”
“I know you mean it, your Highness, but right now… words feel incredibly hollow. I’ll feel better once we figure out why the castle’s magic wards are providing us no protection in these dark days,” replies the paladin.
***
“Do you think Celestia is coming?” I ask as the sun sets, and darkness falls on the desert.
“Not sure how regularly, but I assume so,” Cromach shrugs. Seriously, he’s worse than my changelings, “If not, though, it would go a long way to explain why she’s so uptight all the time.”
“You know what I mean,” I roll my eyes, “We’ve been here for a day already. What if someone else got attacked? What if it was her and she can’t teleport us back?”
“I’d be way more worried about her relying on us getting back on our own with tied up Magnus in a bag,” he drums his talons on the table, “Wouldn’t be the first time...”
“Yer a bit too harsh on Sunny,” Zephyr chimes in from the counter, “Heck, I can barely run a diner without forgetting I have stew on a stove, and she has to run a whole country. At our age, it’s sometimes hard to hold a thought… and other things.”
“Yes, the idea of senile Celestia pissing herself in public, and yelling at guards on the lawn to get off certainly fills me with hope for the future,” smack my forehead against the table.
“Hmm, that image does make me want to take things into my own talons,” Cromach rubs his chin, “I mean, there’s a village with a train station not too far north from here,” looking at his backpack occupying one empty chair at our table, he asks, “So, you wanna head off?”
“Right now at night? Wouldn’t it be better to leave when we can see something?”
“I can go in the front,” Three raises his hoof, making pink lights dance around the room before sipping something sweet and chocolate-y Zephyr called Bailey’s when he pulled it out of a swirling hole in space.
“First time in the desert, I assume?” he reaches into his backpack, and starts rummaging in it. When I nod, he pulls out a jingling pouch, “Zephyr, do you still have desert gear for sale?”
“Sure. Just for the big buggo, though,” the alicorn reaches under the counter, and tosses me a fully loaded backpack which casually floats towards me on a swirling cloud, “I don’t have smaller ones.”
Cromach pulls out several gems from the pouch and leaves them on the table. A moment later they disappear.
“Care to explain at least something?” I ask.
“Well, it’s a really dumb idea to walk under the scorching sun. If you have a compass and know where you’re going, which we do, it’s way better to cross a desert at night. Aaand if you have sturdy boots in case of scorpions. I do, and you’re a changeling.”
I close my eyes, take a deep breath. Screw it, Celestia has already proven to be incompetent beyond my worst nightmares.
“Let’s go,” I nod, and wave at the alicorn of Wind, “Thank you for your hospitality, mister Zephyr.”
“Yeah, thanks, Zeph,” Cromach smiles at him as well.
“Have a nice eternity, mister Zephyr,” Three waves his foreleg vigorously.
“See all of ya!” Zephyr taps his forehead and points to us, “Good luck with Maggie.”
And so, we head off into the sandy night.
Sandy night that gets colder and colder as hours pass. Aren’t deserts supposed to be hot? The only source of warmth right now is Three snoring above my backpack.
“I-i-i-i-is it n-n-normal that it’s s-s-so f-freezing?” I stutter out.
“Oh yes,” Cromach glances my way, “Water surfaces and natural storage like trees generally stabilize climate in an area, and since there’s nothing but sand around, deserts heat up easily, and when the heat dissipates at night, they get really cold. If I recall correctly, Zeph normally adds robes to the backpacks.”
“Y-you’re n-not bothered b-by the cold?” I ask, putting Three down, and rummaging in the back to finding something coat-like from white cloth.
Cromach shrugs as I figure out how to put the thing on.
“Not really. I wonder why you’re taking this temperature so bad. You know, changeling and one from the north on top of that. If the robe won’t be enough, we can camp for few hours in a tent. That should help.”
When I wrap the clothing around myself, the relief is almost instant, and with one look at the compass, I get ready to resume heading north.
“I didn’t want to burn love on figuring out adaptations to both freezing cold and scorching heat. Without that, I’m still a bug-like pony, and neither of those species enjoy cold much.”
With some space freed by the clothes, Three climbs into my backpack, and falls asleep again, only his dangling head peeking out.
I sigh.
“I wonder how the summit is going. Hole, I wonder if I’ll make it back in time to see the result.”
“Don’t worry, your Beardedness,” Cromach waves his foreleg, “Once we get to civilization, I’ve got friends who can spare us some walking time.”
“...friends are awesome...” mumbles Three, “...I had a friend gun once. It shot green hugs...”
With soft warmth of love trickling to me from Three falling asleep from gentle rocking of my walking, I power through the night, mostly in silence. As it turns out, Cromach is okay as well, although he’s been yawning quite heavily for the past hour. And eventually, light of the morning flows across the desert, heralding the dawn of the new day.
In the light off to the east, I can see movement.
“Cromach, are we near the town already?” I ask.
“No, we should still be about half a day away. Why do you ask?”
“I can see someone moving ahead. A lot of small figures.”
“Damn it!” he hisses, “You and Three need to shapeshift into ponies or griffons, now!”
“Three, wake up!” I mentally poke him.
“Mmmm? I’m up, boss.”
“We need to disguise ourselves immediately.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
In the next moment, I feel the weight inside my backpack shift, and when I turn my head, a sky-blue, yellow-maned pegasus colt is yawning at me.
My turn, I guess.
A unicorn would be useful, if I don’t want to be a griffon, since me being a pony might cover some of my lack of knowledge about the Griffon Empire in case I say or do something inappropriate.
“Big black unicorn, vivid blue mane, blue eyes,” Cromach appreciates my disguise, “Gotta admit, my heart is getting throbbed real hard here,” his laugh sounds somewhat hollow, though. Did my disguise remind him of something?
In the next ten minutes, it turns out that the figures on the horizon notice us, and a crowd of thirty-or-so griffons in gear similar to ours approach.
“Oh great… more nomads,” Cromach takes off the heavy axe from his back, “Can we be more unlucky?” he narrows his eyes, “Fuck, we can...”
“What’s wrong?” I frown.
“The guys in the back are pulling cages. These griffons are slavers. They’ll surround us, and then they’ll either tranq us or just beat us up. Get ready to kick ass.”
Soon, the slaver ranks split to spread around us, and Cromach straight up charges ahead, axe raised. He cleaves the nearest griffon in half including the sword he was attempting to block with. In a fluid motion, his sweeping swing decapitates another one.
I need to help him, though, because while his furious assault is leaving cripples and corpses in its wake, the swarming slaves are quickly surrounding him.
“Alright, Three, hold on tight!” I say, charging into the fray and feeling tiny legs grasp me through the backpack.
Even as a unicorn, when I swing my foreleg on a griffon who backs off, a burning love blade extends only for a second, and hacks his foreleg off before disappearing. Whenever I punch from out of range, more stabbing or slashing love weapons make up for the distance and permanently disarm, or disleg, enemies. Unlike Cromach, I’m careful not to kill anyone, although if they bleed out later it’s not exactly my problem.
Slashing my way to Cromach now surrounded by a ring of griffons hacked to pieces, I get in there just in time to notice pistols being drawn at him.
I jump in the way when the blasts echo through the desert. Cromach turns his head when I get hit, the bullets doing no damage. I might be a unicorn on the outside, but I sure as hay am used to fighting projectile weapons of way greater caliber than these.
“Thanks!” Cromach jumps forward, splitting the skull of another griffon raising a shotgun.
“Unicorn magic!” yells someone, “Take him down!”
When I turn my head away from Cromach, four griffons are already on me, dragging me down onto the sand. An emerald blade of my hoof stabs on clean trough, but his body is already on me, and in the next moment I’m staring up a barrel of a shotgun.
“Stop struggling or I’ll blow your head off!” says the griffon aiming at me while another one pulls Three out of my backpack and throws him on the ground. I could probably survive that, but I don’t doubt in the slightest they’d try something with Three to stop me.
More gunshots cut through the air. I can’t see what’s happening with Cromach, but I can hear crackling of electricity, even more gunshots, some groaning, and eventually a thud.
“Treat the big guy,” barks someone who sounds in charge, “A griffon like him will fetch a serious price on the market. Keep an eye on the unicorn, he knows some dangerous magic. As for the colt… farmers always need workers, and they like them young.”
A pair of forelegs screws a suppressor onto my horn shortly after.
Two griffons carrying tied up and heavily bleeding Cromach pass me, and throw him into one of the small cages with wheels in the back of the nomad crowd. Three gets thrown into another one, and I, under the shotgun guidance, step into another one.
The good part is that Three isn’t hurt at all, and I’m in a good shape. The bad part is that Cromach is unconscious, and judging by the amount of blood all over him, he’s knocking on death’s door, although one of the griffons is about to treat him.
Sitting down and closing my eyes, I take a deep breath.
All in all, this could have gone a lot better.
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This chapter needs a rewrite.
After all the apocalypse level shit you made Beardy deal with, some griffin slavers taking him down just like that is killing all suspension of disbelief.
9860475
He could always haunt her chairs.
9860428
Tsk, tsk, tsk, and you would flush a whole chapter because of that...
I wonder how long it would take one bandit to put a shotgun to Three's head and threaten to pull the trigger. As for Cromach, while he's strong, tough, and his divinity makes his attacks unstoppable, he's still a squishy semi-mortal griffon, not the entity he grows into over the next two hundred years.
If boss was alone, he could possibly kill them all, but while One made sure he can fight, he's not a fighter. His first instinct isn't to butcher everyone without batting an eyelid.
9860475
Technically, he already had one while she was drugged out of her mind. But sadly, he only almost avenged Three.
9860535
Would certainly be warmer than the cold touch of death.
Yisss! Abandon your sanity at the door. You'll feel better.
Damn... poor ten... I wonder if that had anything to do with cryo going berserk...
I hate fighting liches... they are such pains in the ass.
Damn white bird! You beat the crap out of would ending shit but got knocked out by slavers... rolled a critical failure I see...
9860972
The investigators spot a chair-griffon hybrid. Sanity checks, everyone!
Nope, that was just a memory triggered by fighting a minotaur.
Ohhh yes, very much so.
Well... guns are just the thing - they give enormous power over life and death to those who didn't have to cultivate their own strength and discipline. If Blinding Light had a minigun instead of a divine sword, Dawn of the Silver Sun would have ended very differently. At this point, Cromach can't force his divinity into a non-offensive use yet.
Oh, no. One and Connie are gonna be so angry once they get back to the castle. With Ten gone, and Boss & Cromach...away, I can't even think of a target to safely punch right now.
Liches are just the worst enemies to deal with. If your enemy can't die more than they already are, killing them becomes a real challenge.
Thanks for another chapter! They really make my day.
9861153
Someone's gonna get slapped. The chances are that they'll just smack each other, which Connie would win, because of divine cheating.
And yet, Cromach, Contradiction, as well as Boss' guys technically faced much worse enemies. This one, though, seems to have all the advantages.
Glad to hear that! See you next month.
Ten, he live by the plot and he died by the plot.
Inservice of her majesty's majestic back side. 
Ten we salute you. 
9864056
( y )
o7
9893357
I wonder if his other ego has finally passed on, or if maybe he was able to sustain himself a bit longer, give himself another chance. It would be nice, but you can't save everyone. Besides, I don't want to take all the conflict from your stories!
Divinity doesnt like the lich~ yearns for it's master~
At least 10's soul is alright. Hell, I don't think undead changelings have been covered yet...
9895517
Indeed.
9895845
I can't confirm nor deny what you're betting on, I just don't like leaving loose ends, ehm. I think in the case of this story it's more about storytelling than mystery. Still, quite a lot of people are here from the changeling storyline and won't know.
9895852
Nope, he wasn't lying. Greyscale is only Greyscale.
9896140
Yep, safely under the protection of the alicorn of Death- oh wait, there isn't one.
9900675
I'm not sure, I just woke up .)
Girl's all seven years old, which is ancient by standard changeling age pre-invasion.
9901778
Good. :D
9904438
Neither of them actually need nor want a name. One is much prouder of the rank she achieved than some randomcollection of letters. It's just to present the boss to the outside world. Back home, they're happy not bothering with names. Boss is in charge, and One is the best. Easy.
9904781
- Tourism is the most important part of any adventure.
- I generally either wear black or don't wear anything. That also means I'm usually either pale or burned to red crisp. Nature is evil.
9904786
Greyscale is from "Happiness is what you make of it".
9910163
Nah, no time for that. Too filled with characters already.
Absolutely.
I'd say it's the cover art.
9910291
Aaaawwww...
9904673
Well, maybe, but as King's mate others probably will be happy that she'll have actual name that they can call her. Not like they can complain about that...
9912051
Hugs will prevail
This battle will be legendary!
9860475
I know several ways to bring him back. But these ways will not be good, if these will even work, I suppose.
I dunno. I don't have problems with them usually.
Wait... I'm usually an undead player, they are on my side. Damn, even my very second OC is necromancer!
I thought they was under Scream's personal protection, but...
I 'didn't even noticed this before. Or I did? I did not focus on this.
9913709
Scream was more a patron/helper for the changeling ruler here and there, not an actual metaphysical Charon helping their souls after they passed on, that was Void's territory. Since this is two years after Dawn of the Silver Sun, Void is dead.
9914184
Well, even if would right, it doesn’t will work anyway. You know, dead alicorns isn’t good for bringing back from the dead...
9914284
Oh certainly, since they are both dead.
So, it’s makes less chances to bring him back by making magical body, considering there are probably doesn’t left anyone who’d knew how to make it. But there still other ways what pops into my mind that boss surely will not use.
9914308
They don't have the mind, that's the problem. Normal body wouldn't be a big deal for a changeling.
So, necromancy is all what left...
9914740
Yes, that's exactly the thing we need now - a changeling zombie shuffling around and moaning "Butts..."
9916373
I think it will be the butt ghost. You know, it's hard to make zombie from pile of ash.
9916444
Boooooootyyyyy
"I will eat your butt!"
Imagine the horror of this Zephyr turning out to be the same Zephyr that is Fluttershy's brother. That would suck.
Did you bother asking how to get back? Did you neglect that little thing, thus ensuring that you wouldn't be in Canterlot when you might have actually been useful for once? Did you instead decide that this was a good time to take a day off and play volleyball? Is it your fault Ten is dead? Why, goodness me, yes it is!
11297645
Suddenly, Blaze doesn't look like the worst pony in recorded history.
How are you, Mr. Author.
I am still reading, albeit a lil slower -
Beard really do be actin like Blaze
11494493
- It's... fine. Busy, tired, the usual. I hope you'Re doing better.
- It's not a race. It's military-grade torture. No need to rush.
- The curse of names starting with a B.