The Blueblood Papers: Royal Blood

by Raleigh

Chapter 26

The solution to my problem of getting my letter to Luna past the censors eventually presented itself in its fullness the following morning. I had first intended upon attempting to find her in the dream realm, but that plan was contingent upon me actually falling asleep in the first place and having a nightmare disturbing enough to warrant her attention. Considering the amount of misery this war had brought to countless ponies everywhere, from those of us here at the frontlines to families back at home, it was unlikely that I would have attracted her attention that night anyway. As ever, desperately wanting to sleep seemed to make it thoroughly impossible, and I spent much of the night staring up at the dark, high ceiling and struggling to think of another solution.

With that a miserable failure and few other solutions presenting themselves, the following morning I sat at my desk, nursing a mug of hot Trottingham tea the consistency of mud, trying to determine the appropriate donation in bits to give to the censor to ease the passage of my letter un-molested. That, however, was a risky business, as while office clerks as a class tend to be a rather venal lot who are eager to spice up the mundanity of their daily lives with a modest amount of corruption, it would be just my luck to find one of the few who took his job seriously. Another idea was for me to go to Canterlot directly and speak with the Princesses myself, and any one of the four would do, but I could depend upon Princess Luna to reach an appropriate level of indignant outrage that she would be incapable of remaining quiet. This plan depended upon me being approved for leave, which, if this cover-up went as far as I suspected that it did, was unlikely, which left deserting and risking arrest and court martial.

That left one other option - Saguaro. I could send him back to Canterlot, and I would have been well within my right to allow a refugee from Changeling oppression to live within the vast confines of my palace under the care of my staff who were probably getting quite bored without me around to look after. In addition to removing him from the frontline where Second Fiddle might discover him, I would also receive a modest amount of praise for rescuing the young colt at my own personal expense. Of course, that was not without risk by itself; he could not be sent alone, and if I could not accompany him personally then I would have to find a chaperone whom I could trust and who was also approved for leave to Canterlot; the number of such suitable ponies in the former category within easy reach were so vanishingly small as to be non-existent in the first place.

Speaking of Saguaro, as to be expected he got no sleep that night either, though it seemed to be out of choice in spite of bodily necessity. One could hardly blame him after what he had been through. From what I could gather he had spent the better part of the night pacing around restlessly in the small bedroom he had previously insisted upon having (having discovered this new concept of privacy from his Equestrian liberators and being a teenaged colt of a certain age he was keen to try it out himself, so he had taken to sleeping in a cramped and under-used storeroom along the same corridor as my office, apparently curled up between the crates of tinned hay). I did not see him in the morning, thinking that the last thing he needed was another interrogation from Yours Truly; he would come and speak with me when he was ready, I assumed. Cannon Fodder, before he attended to his duties, reported that Saguaro had spent much of the night attempting to teach himself to fly again by jumping off boxes with his continued lack of success in the matter. It was a more productive method than my usual palliatives to deal with the misery of war, I considered, as I decanted a few glugs of brandy from my new hipflask into the tea to try and make it somewhat palatable.

I would have to get used to hot tea in a desert again, I thought, once my transfer back to the Night Guards had wormed its way through the paperwork-clogged halls of the Commissariat’s offices in Canterlot and was made official. The letter had only just been dropped off at the post by Cannon Fodder that same morning, and it would take a day or two to arrive in the relevant pony’s inbox and a few more to receive the appropriate signatures. Nevertheless, I decided to keep the news to myself until it had been approved, to better keep Iron Hoof believing that I had reluctantly agreed to stay quiet about this entire sordid affair.

I was still ruminating on this conundrum when Corporal Derpy Hooves politely knocked on my office door and entered with the morning’s mail delivery. She trotted in with her usual big smile on her face and the pack of letters for me tucked neatly under her left wing. Ordinarily, I would have been annoyed at the interruption, but after a full morning of achieving bugger all with this problem I was grateful for the distraction.

“Good morning, sir!” she said cheerfully, saluting in that peculiar way pegasi do with the larger feathers on her right wing instead of her hoof. I responded with a mumbled ‘morning’ and with a vague gesture around the vicinity of my forehead, while the mail-mare attended to the business of figuring out which of the letters were addressed to me. She had to close one eye to get the other to focus on the names, but her strabismus barely slowed her down.

Though Corporal Hooves only ever seemed to bring me tedious reports from the Commissariat, poorly-written pamphlets from the Ministry of Information that made one wonder if the entire department was some sort of cruel, elaborate joke on the Equestrian taxpayer, and the odd letter from a distant family member requesting an inheritance should I valiantly fall in battle, she was a welcome sight even though my mood was most terribly black. Her relentless cheerfulness, whether a result of a suspected diminished mental capacity as some callous ponies suspected or a deliberately-chosen outlook on life, was not exactly infectious, but it did serve as a reminder that at the very least there remained something that was still good and equine about our race that the barbarism of war could not completely stamp out.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and produced a small envelope that likely came from Rarity’s personal stationery judging by the tasteful ivory colour and subtle diamond watermark. The foalish scrawl of the address in the distinct hoof-writing and the drawings of three shield-shaped cutie marks in the corner next to the crookedly-placed stamp made the identity of its senders obvious before Corporal Hooves announced it: “Another letter from the Cutie Mark Crusaders!”

“Do you know them?” I asked, taking the envelope and opening it carefully. Corporal Hooves was of that small minority of ponies in the Night Guards who were recruited from Ponyville, in order to make up for the shortfall in recruits from Trottingham, if I remembered correctly. She did not have the distinctive accent and certainly not the sense of intense personal reservation that the natives of that rain-soaked, cloud-smothered island possess.

[Though the Night Guards initially recruited from Trottingham and the Griffish Isles, Ponyville was added as a recruitment area to make up the numbers. Following the Twilight Sparkle Reforms, the four new Royal Guards regiments formed out of the 1st Solar Guard and the 1st Night Guards had dropped the requirement for specific recruiting areas and were open to all subjects of Equestria regardless of place of residence, while maintaining the unique traditions of the regimental system. In practice, however, traditionally-minded officers and the ‘friendship regiments’ recruiting campaign meant that soldiers of the four regiments still tended to be drawn from the same communities as before, though this too began to break down alongside the regimental system in general as the war went on and the system could not cope with replacing losses.]

“My daughter Dinky goes to the same school as them,” said the mail-mare. “She writes to me about the silly things they get up to. Everypony thought they’d calm down after getting their cutie marks, but now they’re helping other colts and fillies get theirs with even crazier schemes.”

“Sounds delightful,” I said. As Corporal Hooves was speaking, the seed of a cunning plan had been planted in my brain and was there finding fertile soil. I urgently grabbed a blank scrap of parchment and a quill and began scribbling down a quick note. “When was the last time you visited home, Corporal?”

She hummed thoughtfully and tapped her chin with her long wing feathers. “Must have been when the battalion was back in Canterlot for re-training,” she said.

“That’s a long time to go without seeing your daughter.”

I signed the note with a hasty signature, not bothering with the official wax seal as befitting a prince of the realm but it would have to do. The letter I had written for Princess Luna in a drunken, spite-fueled haze the night before had been folded clumsily and stuffed inside a nondescript envelope, upon which I had made a crude drawing of a crescent moon with an overfilled quill. I found the stapler hiding on my desk amidst the stacks of reports, a broken antique typewriter that I thought might grant my office a greater air of refinement, and assorted pens (a messy desk implied that I was much too busy to tidy it, thus giving visitors the impression that I actually performed work on it), and used it to affix the note to the envelope.

“Oh it is,” said Corporal Hooves. “I miss her every day.”

“You’ve been working very hard here, and I think you deserve some time off to see your daughter.” I turned the letter over in my magic carefully. “How would you like a week of leave to see her again?”

Her ever-present smile grew even wider and she nodded enthusiastically. “I’d like that a lot, sir! But I don’t think Captain Pencil Pusher would appreciate losing me for a week.”

“Don’t worry about Pencil Pusher,” I said, waving my hoof dismissively; that irritating little stallion would raise hell for losing his assistant just as the battalion’s stores were being restocked in preparation for yet another ‘Big Push’ from Market Garden, and while there were any number of bored, idle soldiers who would appreciate the break from mindless drill and monotonous duties for the opportunity to do something new for a bit, the officious little bureaucrat in incongruous armour would be more upset that I’d gone over his head. “I’ll work things out with him, you just look forward to a nice holiday with Dinky.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“There is just one little favour I need you to do for me,” I continued, and held out the letter with the stapled note. “When you get to Ponyville, I need you to give this letter with this note directly to the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

The thought of entrusting the foals with this vital thing did not sit right with me at all, but at the time I felt I had very little choice in the matter -- I simply had to get the news out there, even if it meant exposing them once again to the horrors of modern warfare in the process, for I knew that at least one of them would be more than tempted to read a top-secret letter to a princess, but I was safe in justifying myself as merely reacting to Iron Hoof’s cover-up. Besides, the more ponies who found out about this outrage the better, from my point of view. From our mutual correspondence I discovered that they were, being siblings of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, on direct speaking terms with Princess Twilight Sparkle and even Princess Luna through their not-infrequent nightmares about the uncomfortable process of growing up. It would be simple enough for them to pass the letter along to either of them.

Corporal Hooves took the letter in her wing. The big, earnestly cheerful smile did not leave her face, though her chirpy voice dropped an octave or two to take on a more serious tone, when she said, “Is this about the thing with Commissar-General Second Fiddle yesterday?”

Her right eye looked at the envelope held by her wing and her left looked at me, who sat there in a dumb sort of daze, and then she tucked the most vital piece of correspondence that I had penned thus far for safe-keeping in one of the many pouches strapped over her armour. Her smile did not wane, but there was now a certain sense of sly cunning to it as she correctly deciphered and then answered the most obvious question that had formed in my head but had gotten lost somewhere along the way to my throat.

“I see lots of ponies as mailmare,” she said, her voice hushed now. “My job takes me all over Virion Hive, delivering things for soldiers. But sometimes they don’t see me, or they don’t think I’m paying attention. Sometimes it’s like they think I won’t understand what they’re saying or doing because of my eyes. It’s silly. I was doing my mail rounds yesterday and I saw Commissar-General Second Fiddle and those soldiers coming back from patrol. He looked very, very angry about something, and the soldiers were very upset too. I saw blood on the ponies’ clothes. He had the provosts arrest them.”

I leaned over my desk and folded my forehooves together, and asked with my voice hushed conspiratorially, “What else do you know?” The walls might have been thick here, but that little paranoid voice in my head told me that it never hurt to be too careful; a pony like Second Fiddle would be desperate enough to do just about anything to save his own hide, and I should know.

Corporal Hooves shook her head, which made her non-regulation fringe flop over her mismatched eyes. “That’s all, sir,” she said. “Everypony’s gossiping about it.”

She was smarter than she looked, and certainly smart enough to use that perception to her advantage where it counted. If I was going to use her as a pawn to expose this bloody conspiracy then I at least owed her some explanation, if not the full story, which would all become very readily apparent should this cunning plan of mine actually pull off in the way I hoped. I beckoned her closer, and she leaned in so that we could whisper to one another. The inexplicable scent of freshly baked chocolate chip muffins wafting from her was a welcome relief from the more usual aromas of sweat and burnt gunpowder that everypony else reeked of.

“Yes, it’s about that,” I said, sotto voce. “That’s why I need your help; this letter contains the whole unvarnished truth about what happened, and it simply must get out there as soon as possible. I cannot get it past the censors and nor can I just go to Canterlot myself without arousing suspicion.”

Corporal Hooves was silent for a spell, one eye tilted to the table between us and the other looking into mine. She then nodded her head and said, “You can rely on me sir, the mail-mare always gets through!”

Relief washed over me like the oncoming tide. “Thank you. And make sure you spend some quality time with Dinky.”

Nevertheless, it still took two more days before I saw the results of the plan, and those were amongst the tensest and most stressful that I have experienced to date. It was not awful in the same way that being gassed was, of course, but more in the way that waiting to undergo some sort of life-saving but dangerous medical procedure feels. Throughout those two days I had no possible way of knowing if Corporal Derpy Hooves was successful or not, and indeed my overactive imagination conjured up all sorts of obstacles that might be in her way: the train delayed due to sheep on the line, or a dragon attack, or Changelings had gotten to her, and so on. The worst, however, was the intrusive thought that the intrepid little mail-mare and the three fillies might be successful in delivering the fateful letter to Princess Luna, only for her to read it and arrive at the same conclusion that Field Marshal Iron Hoof had come to -- that this sort of bad news was best left suppressed for the good of the war effort.

I largely kept to myself, Cannon Fodder, and Saguaro in that time, leaving the confines of the office only to attend important meetings to remind ponies that I was still alive. Iron Hoof was easily avoided, not being a particularly outgoing and sociable stallion, but I seemed to encounter Second Fiddle far too frequently for it to be entirely coincidental -- in the corridors on the way to somewhere, on the next table over in the mess during meals, in meetings, or just out and about. We never spoke, but I could see and feel him staring daggers into me, as though to silently remind me of what he had gotten the Field Marshal to tell me on his behalf. That the castle was positively heaving with ponies meant that should his fear and guilt get the better of his weak will, the presence of countless witnesses should stop him from ensuring my eternal silence. The hope that he would receive his just reward far sooner than he would ever realise was the fuel that sustained me during that horrid period of purgatory, or I might have succumbed fully to despair.

The denouement finally came in the early morning, when I had been lying awake on my cot after yet another night of fitful, broken, dreamless sleep. It wasn’t quite dawn yet, but the faint light of early twilight seeped through the pale, thin cloth that covered the gaping open windows, which cast the room in an eerie glow. The chair, the desk, and the mess of things on it were outlined in soft blue. It was around this time, in that odd moment between night and dawn that always felt a little strange and unreal, that I heard the sound of muffled raised voices from the corridor beyond the heavy wooden door. I could not make out the words exactly, but that combination of the sheer volume necessary to be audible through both stone and wood plus the distinctive accent made it very clear who the louder of the ponies arguing just outside my office was.

I could not get back to sleep anyway, but I thought getting up to tell them to be quiet might at least help me feel better about it. So, I crawled out of the cot, trotted on over, affected a particularly grumpy expression as though I had just been woken up, and threw open the door.

“You made my soldiers into murderers!” roared Lieutenant-Colonel Fer-de-Lance. Second Fiddle flinched from the big, angry mare. The two were standing in the dark corridor directly in front of my door, but Second Fiddle was closer with his rear turned slightly towards me, and I assumed that he had been trying to stop her from barging into my room.

“How dare you speak to me like that!” he snapped back, when he recovered. “Who do you believe, me or that tabloid scum? I did my duty, and so did your soldiers. If there was any justice I’d have had a medal for this!”

“Not only have you dishonoured yourself with this atrocity but you drag ponies of my regiment down into your filth! You have just wiped your arse with our Colours and you expect me to applaud it!” Fer-de-Lance snapped her head to look at me, standing there at the door and blinking gormlessly, and she thrust a newspaper held aloft in her magic at my face. The headline, when I pulled my head back so I could actually read it in its entirety, was ‘Equestrian Soldiers Accused of Village Massacre’.

“Prince Blueblood,” she began, her voice dropping back down from intense screaming to just at the upper level of merely ‘loud’, “is this true?”

I quickly skim-read the article and gathered that the newspaper, which I now saw was a copy of the Foal Free Press of all publications, had gained exclusive access to a letter sent from Yours Truly to Princess Luna implicating senior Equestrian Army officers, including a certain Commissar-General and the Field Marshal himself, in not only perpetrating the atrocity but also attempting to cover it up via blackmail. From what I could see it was light on the specific details, but I imagined that was a necessity for a paper run by foals, who had somehow found the time to pivot away from scandalous gossip to hard-hitting investigative journalism.

“He’s lying too,” said Second Fiddle. “He’s just trying to sabotage my career; he’s jealous that a common pony outranks him.”

“Be silent and let him speak,” hissed Fer-de-Lance with sufficient venom to silence the stallion. She looked at me and repeated her question, almost with hope that the answer would somehow be ‘no’ -- “Is this true, sir?”

Before I could answer, I felt a sudden chill in the air, as the ambient temperature had plummeted from a sweltering early morning to what is ideal for a champagne bucket filled with ice. The corridor in which we stood receded into an impenetrable gloom at either end, as though the sun that was just starting to rise had been snuffed out. The candles on the walls had become clouded in mist, and the warm yellow light they provided cooled to a dim, icy blue; water condensed on the stones surrounding us and glistened in what little pale light remained, giving the walls and floor an unpleasantly slick, oily look. The darkness behind Fer-de-Lance and Second Fiddle coagulated, becoming a shifting and roiling morass of shadow creeping along the floor and leaving wisps and tendrils of itself lingering in the dark recesses of the hall. The two confirmed that I had not lost my mind and had started hallucinating when they turned around and stared, transfixed, into this crawling abyss. It took on the rough shape of a huge, dark pony with outstretched wings, filling the entire width of the corridor. There came the sound of silver horseshoes on cold stone, and with each sharp, echoing ‘tap’ the shadow became more defined, more ‘real’.

Princess Luna emerged from the black and stepped into the corridor. Her mouth was a thin line against her muzzle, slightly downturned at the edges, and her eyes narrowed into slits as she peered down her sharp, aquiline nose at the three mortal ponies quivering before her. Her horn shone with the icy glow of the full moon on a cloudless December morning, and she presented a neatly folded sheet of parchment - my letter. Ever the one for theatrics, she indulged in a few moments of silence, through which I could only hear the elevated breathing of three ponies including myself as though we had all been suddenly encased in a bubble, before speaking in a measured, calm voice:

“Answer her question, Blueblood, if you would.”

Second Fiddle stepped forwards before I could, and pleaded in a quivering voice, “Princess! I can explain!”

She did not seem to see or hear him, and merely unfolded the sheet of parchment as though it was an old and sacred text. “Please answer Lieutenant-Colonel Fer-de-Lance’s question, Commissar Blueblood.”

At the mention of her name, Fer-de-Lance immediately dropped to her front to prostrate herself in the old manner before the Princess of the Night, pressing her nose into the slick stones. Luna raised her hoof, cupped it around the mare’s cheek, and with a few encouraging nudges managed to slowly coax her back into standing. Fer-de-Lance had always carried herself with the intense arrogance of a Prench noblemare who had not only been brought up to think that she is always right, but continued to believe it in all evidence to the contrary, but here, now that her rage, justified this time, had faded, I saw not fear as with Second Fiddle but an expression of anxiety that was still alien to her.

Something in Luna’s voice compelled me to respond immediately. “It is,” I said, and swallowed hard despite my mouth being curiously dry. “I saw it.”

Fer-de-Lance breathed a dejected sigh, then turned her head away as though to hide her face, cheeks glistening with tears, and muttered ‘merde’ under her breath.

“I see,” said Luna, and the temperature dropped another couple of degrees until I could see my breath fog before my eyes. “Second Fiddle, a word in private. Now.”

“Your Highness!” Second Fiddle shouted, stumbling forwards onto his hooves to throw himself at Princess Luna’s silver sabatons. She made a small step back away from him, and her cheeks became tinted red with embarrassment. “Please, I did everything the way you wanted!” he begged.

“Second Fiddle, this is…” She trailed off and took a moment to compose herself again. “I am offering you the dignity of conducting this privately. It may be the last one I will offer you.”

He apparently did not hear her, because he carried on with his pathetic babbling, and even I was catching second-hoof embarrassment as a result of all of this. Though I had fantasised about this moment after I stumbled across that ghastly scene in the Medusita clan’s home, I could not have pictured it developing quite like this. As before, Second Fiddle would not, or simply lacked the mental capacity to, accept the consequences of his sins, and just like a foal, he could only fire off excuses like shrapnel from a cannon in the hope that one of them would either lessen or erase whatever consequences my dear Aunt Luna was planning on inflicting upon him. It was always somepony’s else’s fault, and I realised that it happened to be me for much of his life. Now, however, it was Princess Luna’s.

“You said it yourself that war is hard and cruel!” he continued. “That we must do our utmost to ensure a quick and crushing victory over the enemy, so ponies must be hard and cruel in order to win. I did what you have always demanded of your Commissariat, Princess; I discovered a threat to ponykind and I destroyed it.”

I could only exchange an awkward look with Fer-de-Lance, who quietly whispered to nopony in particular that she had some very important duties to attend to, made a quick bow before the Princess who had already forgotten about her presence, and cantered off into the darkness. As I watched her disappear down the shrouded corridor, the darkness disturbed by her passing like smoke, through the gloom I could just about make out the shapes of more ponies, whom I assumed to be soldiers and clerks drawn to this rather loud disturbance.

Second Fiddle pulled himself up clumsily, but his strength seemed to be failing him and his limbs quivered as he stood. Towering over him, Princess Luna was motionless, save for the gentle wafting of her mane on unseen winds, and was perfectly silent. In this stillness I could hear only the blood throbbing in my ears and my own shallow breathing. Though one might think that this unnatural cold was a relief in this muggy and stifling climate, a sharp pain in my chest accompanied every breath, my body was wracked with shivers, and my horn was turning curiously numb. The hush dragged on, interrupted sporadically by the quiet whispers of the ponies just beyond the scant light, until Second Fiddle scraped together what little courage remained at the bottom of his psyche.

“I did everything right!” he shouted, looking around as though ponies might rush to support him. They did not, so the excuses continued to flow. “I helped you set up the Commissariat -- regulations, rules, policies, ethos, and even the uniforms! All I did was put all of that into practice out here on the front. Those ponies were hiding an enemy of Equestria and I did what was necessary.”

One of the stars in Luna’s mane flared in a bright nova and then vanished. “Leave,” she said in a voice that was quiet but held within it the power and authority of thousands of years of alicorn rule.

Though the order was not directed at me, I felt a subconscious compulsion to slip backwards through the door of my office. It was only that my hooves had become rooted to the spot, as though my horseshoes had melted into the stone, that I did not obey immediately.

“But Princess,” said Second Fiddle, reaching out towards her with his hoof, “I-”

“Leave.” A constellation in her mane erupted in bright flashes and died.

Second Fiddle did not need to be told a third time. Apparently realising that the hole he had dug for himself was much too deep to climb out of, he took a few stumbling steps backwards, his hooves slipping on the icy, damp stone, before he violated the old etiquette about not presenting one’s rear on royalty, turning himself around with all of the grace of a devastatingly drunk diamond dog, and galloped off down the corridor with his shortly-cropped tail tucked between his hindlegs. The rapport of his horseshoes striking the stone lingered long after the darkness swallowed him.

The murmurings of gossip and chatter continued, and as the ice-cold veil of darkness began to lift by degrees and the sultry heat of the morning returned, I could see the uniformed staff officers and ponies in collars and neckties congregating around either end of the corridor. Though they kept their voices reverentially hushed in the presence of the Princess, I could make out that most were speculating wildly on what they had just witnessed. Most were unaware of the specifics, as unlike Colonel Fer-de-Lance they did not wake up at frankly absurd times in the morning to read the newspaper before everypony else could, but rumours invariably spread, and what Corporal Derpy Hooves had seen of Second Fiddle must have been witnessed by other ponies and discussed around campfires and mess tins.

Princess Luna was a statue, save for her mane and tail swept along by cosmic winds that seemed a little more turbulent than usual. Her cold, hard eyes, burning like alchemical fire from within, stared like a panther stalking prey into the darkness through which Second Fiddle had fled. The steely, lean musculature under her coat was tense, as though she might at any moment bolt at any moment, catch up with the pony who dared to drag her Commissariat’s name into the mud, and stomp his head into pulp beneath her dinner plate-sized hooves.

The urge to break the awkward silence had become overwhelming. “Well,” I said, nudging my backside against the door to open it, “I don’t think you’ve seen my new office, Auntie. Why don’t I show you in?”

Her gaze slowly slid onto me, her mask-like expression not changing, but as I held the door open and then scrambled out of the way Luna silently stepped inside. When I shut the door firmly behind me, hopefully to block out what we might discuss from the ponies still lingering outside, she lit her horn with a soft, soothing glow, like the moon reflected off a still pond, that was bright enough for me to see but not so much that it would hurt my eyes. She stood there in the middle of the room, and away from the prying eyes of the common ponies her posture relaxed from the rigid, upright, towering demeanour she usually carried herself in; her shoulders slumped, her head dropped, and her back was no longer ramrod-straight. Now, I could see that she looked tired, exhausted even, with even darker rings around her dark eyes, and her scowl was not the practiced look of aloofness she often affected, but one merely from lacking the energy or will to maintain even a neutral expression.

“Please, take a seat,” I said, pointing to the soft cushions by my desk. As she sank down into them, I trotted over to my drinks cabinet. “You look like you need a drink.”

“It’s five in the morning, Blueblood,” she said wearily. I poured her a snifter of brandy and a weak whisky and soda for me, so that she would not feel left out, of course.

“Yes, but you’ve been up all night.” Her role as Celestia’s night-shift cover was well-known, of course, but it looked as though it was having much the same effect on her as it did with ordinary, mortal ponies.

“There are more and more nightmares each night.” She took the snifter of brandy from my aura and drank it a little too quickly, for she screwed up her face and coughed. I couldn’t help but smile at that as I took my seat not behind the desk as was usual for me but on the cushion next to her. “As the war worsens so do the nightmares; they find fertile soil in the minds of soldiers and civilians caught up in this to take root in, and I cannot help everypony alone. These are horrors that cannot be purged in a single night, so many nights I find myself helping the same pony again. One Princess of the Night is not enough.”

“So why do you do it?” I asked.

Auntie Luna looked up from her glass, looking now more like a pony than an immortal alicorn goddess, with all of the vulnerability and flaws that come with mere mortality. “Because it is my duty,” she said firmly. “The same reason you sent me that letter. You could have remained silent and allowed Second Fiddle and Iron Hoof to get away with this, and there would have been no risk to you, but you did not. I see that my trust in you is not misplaced.”

Her words made me feel a little uncomfortable, causing me to sink down in my seat and look away from her eyes; my reasons, as you, dear reader, have already discovered, were not quite as altruistic as ponies like to think. Yet they continued to project those expectations upon me, justifying my actions for me after the fact because the belief in the great Commissar Blueblood was of more comfort than a neurotic little princeling merely doing his best to survive.

“What’s going to happen to Second Fiddle?” I said, nursing my ‘mouthwash’. “I’m surprised you let him go.”

“I wanted to kill him,” growled Luna, and she placed her now empty glass on the desk next to us amidst the piles of papers and folders. “I trusted him, and he betrayed that trust. A thousand years ago I would have strangled him with my own magic and left his corpse out for the sport of the vultures who followed him. However, though my honour calls for his blood I will do this the way my sister would want it to be done; he will be suspended from duties immediately, then the Commissariat will conduct a full investigation for a court martial. This time, there will be no repeat of what happened with Scarlet Letter.”

“Still, you let him run away.”

“Where will he go? There is nowhere he can run to where we will not find him, and even if he flees into the desert he will find no safe haven there. Who will want to protect him now?”

I nodded gratefully. “And what of Iron Hoof?”

Princess Luna sighed, pursing her lips as she seemed to be mulling over just how much she could tell me. “The conduct of the war on this front has suffered under his incompetent leadership for far too long. A replacement will be found.”

“I can’t imagine Parliament will like the two of you interfering in military affairs again.” Especially after the last time, I mentally added.

“The law states that an alicorn princess cannot lead ponies-in-arms into battle,” said Luna with a sneer. “Under Twilight Sparkle’s advice, Celestia and I have chosen to interpret that edict in its strictest possible sense; directions, orders, and advice given from behind the safety of a desk in Canterlot do not count as ‘into battle’.”

Luna stopped, paused, and looked out at the dim light of dawn filtering through the dingy cloth curtains, steadily growing brighter with each minute. Halfway across the continent, Princess Celestia was raising the sun as she did for every morning. “I blame myself for this,” she said, not turning her gaze away from the window.

“In Faust’s name, why?”

“Second Fiddle approached his work with such zeal and fanaticism that I could not help but be taken in by it; he speaks no hyperbole when he says that he helped to build up the Royal Commissariat from almost nothing. In fact, I was so impressed by his relentless drive that I could not see the rot developing before my eyes, and only now has that veil been lifted.”

“Don’t feel too bad about it,” I said. “That’s what he does. He clings to the tails of other ponies, and they will drag him along because he tells them what they want to hear in the hopes that they will reward him with the attention and prestige he craves. And yet, I think he hates that he must do this, that he cannot stand on his own four hooves like a stallion should. Whatever success he does achieve he will always be reflected from a greater pony, forever the second fiddle, which is a damned shame because he’s really a bloody good violinist. If only somepony had told him what his cutie mark truly represented, then perhaps this appalling mess could have been avoided.”

Luna finally took her gaze from the faint disc of Celestia’s sun visible through the thin curtains, just nudging its way over the city skyline silhouetted as a rippling dark line at the lower end of the fabric. She tapped her chin thoughtfully, and made a cryptic smile with her lips that her eyes did not follow. In spite of my words, it was her fault, at least partially, and I did want her to feel at least a little bit bad about her role in enabling Second Fiddle. It was the nature of an organisation like the Royal Commissariat, so very tied up in what one moody, mercurial little pony wanted, that allowed and downright encouraged ambitious, petty, and militarily incompetent individuals like Second Fiddle to slip in and cause problems. The organisation had been set up to watch over the Royal Guard, but who was watching over the commissars? The Princess seemed to think it was her peering over their shoulders, but she could not be everywhere at once and she was especially amenable to arse-covering lies dressed up as flattery (which I myself had taken advantage of). She was good at hiding it behind her cold and distant demeanour, but even she could not conceal it from me -- this affair had shaken her more than she was letting on, for why else would she come to me of all ponies to discuss a matter this sensitive?

“You’re quite perceptive, Blueblood,” she said, interrupting my idle musings. Then, with her voice dropped to a more sombre timbre, “He reminded me of myself a thousand years ago, wilting in Celestia’s shadow, at once dependent upon her for everything and hating her and myself for it. She was right, and she is always right in the end; this base militarism is unbecoming of modern ponies, and I fear that my words have only encouraged the likes of Second Fiddle and Iron Hoof to justify their own failures.”

With that, she rose elegantly to her hooves, and I followed suit clumsily. In that moment the warmth and the vulnerability of Luna the Pony who had sat across from me on a cushion and lay bare a portion of her soul had been covered up by the cold steel armour of Luna the Princess. The transformation in how she carried herself, merely a reversal of that when she had entered my office, was instant and startling. Even her voice, when she spoke again, became the soft, measured, authoritative one that commanded the attention and lives of her countless subjects.

“I will return to Canterlot,” she said. “Twilight Sparkle’s reforms were only the beginning, and there is still much work left to be done before the sword of Equestria is reforged.” She took a few long strides to the door, almost gliding over the rough and uneven stonework, then paused. “I heard that you are returning to frontline duties with my Night Guards, is that true?”

Blast, I had almost forgotten about that. The small sense of triumph that I had felt in outwitting Iron Hoof had just been crushed under her gilded hoof. “Yes,” I said, trying to hide the growing fear inside of me. “I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to remain at this post, given what happened under my watch.”

Her knowing smile returned. “Would that all of my officers show such integrity. Besides, I thought your talents were wasted behind a desk. Good day, my nephew.”

She moved to open the door, but I called out after her and she paused, a quizzical expression on her sharp features. “Saguaro,” I said. “The only surviving witness to the crime, I can’t exactly take him with me. Would you take him back to Canterlot with you?”

“I think I can do one better.” Her smile became genuine, rather than almost painted on. “I remember you mentioned that he still lacks a cutie mark. There are three fillies in Ponyville I know who specialise in helping ponies find their marks.” I apparently had not hidden my expression well enough, because she added, “He will be allocated to appropriate, adult foster parents, and given the education he needs, as well as access to the same therapy services as returning veterans.”

[Social services and state welfare were expanded over the course of the Changeling War to support families who had lost breadwinners and provide for the growing influx of refugees seeking refuge from the war to Equestria. This formed the framework of further social reforms following the end of the war.]

“Thank you.” That was one thing off my mind, but that still left one other, or two, rather. “And Hive Marshal Odonata? She has a daughter.”

Luna’s smile faded. “Do you believe the nymph is yours?”

“There’s no way of knowing for certain,” I said, omitting the fact that Elytra had my eyes (which still left sufficient doubt in my mind to allow me to dismiss the threat of a possible succession crisis once I finally kicked the bucket, not that I would have to worry about that after said bucket-kicking). “Odonata has been a very cooperative prisoner and has not once violated her parole. Her insight into the workings of Chrysalis’ inner circle could prove invaluable in the right hooves, far better served in Canterlot than out here.”

“She and her nymph are also at risk of assassination here,” said Luna thoughtfully. “Very well, though the presence of a Changeling Purestrain in Canterlot unsettles me, perhaps it is best I keep her where I can keep a close eye on her. She is your prisoner, Blueblood, so I shall trust your judgement on this matter.”

I barely trusted my judgement on any matters, personally, but at least with her and her daughter out of the way I could better concentrate on the grim business of trying to keep myself alive. The remainder of Luna’s stay was brief -- only long enough to convey her instructions that Second Fiddle was to be arrested and held in Dodge Junction pending the investigation and court martial, and for me to collect Saguaro, Odonata, and Elytra. Of course, the presence of a Princess arriving unannounced in the early hours of the morning in which no gentlecolt should be up and about, even only for a few hours, caused all sorts of panic amongst the officers here.

I went to find Saguaro first, while Luna was in the courtyard where she had parked her chariot and was chatting with Market Garden. When I found him, he was still throwing himself off of the top of the stacked boxes in the storeroom he called home. He had improved somewhat, as the enthusiastic but clumsy flapping of his wings arrested his descent just enough for him to land delicately upon the cobbled stone floor, but still not enough to become truly airborne. I am no expert in such things, but I wondered if perhaps another approach might help.

[For the benefit of creatures without wings reading this, young pegasi and griffons typically learn to fly naturally at around the start of adolescence as their wings and magic grow to support them in flight. Ancient pegasi of the warrior castes would throw their foals off of clouds to try and accelerate this process, which might be the origin of the myth that jumping off high things helps. Blueblood doesn’t say, but it’s probable that Saguaro picked this up from somewhere and had been using this repetitive task to help himself process the trauma he had just experienced.]

“Saguaro!” I called out to him, just as he was climbing up the crates of canned apples to make yet another futile attempt. He had arranged these boxes into something resembling a bisected step pyramid about three times the height of an average pony, so that he might be able to climb up them more easily. Halfway up, he stopped and looked at me with the usual sullen expression of a teenager being interrupted by an adult. “Come down from there and follow me. Princess Luna is going to take you to your new home.”

“I don’t want to,” he said. Saguaro had become moody and irritable since the incident, and his keen sense of curiosity about a whole world that had been opened up for him by his liberation from the Changelings had been crushed by what he had witnessed. It was gut-wrenching to see, truly, and it felt like nothing I could do would help him. Of course, it wouldn’t; there’s no quick fix for this sort of thing, no magic words that will erase from his young, impressionable mind the horror he had witnessed.

“If you ask her nicely she might teach you how to fly.”

He stared, mulling it over, and then hopped down the crates to the floor. Some measure of the precocious young colt seemed to seep back into his personality, for as we made our way to the courtyard where I imagined Market Garden was still squirming with Princess Luna’s surprise visit he suddenly, after a lengthy period of silence, asked, “Does she really make the moon go up and down?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“Oh.” He paused to think. “The Changelings said Queen Chrysalis did that.”

“And they lied, remember?” I chuckled. “When this unpleasantness is all over you can go and watch her raise the moon in the Winter Moon Festival.” The first one had taken place in Ponyville just the previous year, and, from what I had read in the society papers and heard off-hoof from others who were there, had very nearly been a disaster, which seemed to be a common theme with my dear Auntie Luna and important social events. Unlike her more experienced sister, she was still ill at ease with the sorts of public engagements expected of royalty these days.

As it happened, he was much too star-struck to ask Princess Luna for flying lessons; when I left him in the courtyard with her, Saguaro was still staring up at the alicorn in a stunned silence, with his jaw hanging open, his cheeks flushed red, and his wings spread to their fullest extent. My Auntie made a valiant attempt at small talk, now that all avenues for conversation that did not involve self-aggrandisement with Market Garden had been exhausted, but could only coax stammering replies of one syllable or fewer out of him and settled for the occasional polite smile, while the guards she had brought with her kept a wary eye on him.

I then set off to retrieve Odonata separately, having reasoned that it would be much easier to bring them one at a time rather than try to corral a moody teenager and a captured enemy general at the same time on my own. I found the former Hive Marshal exactly where she had been in the weeks since her capture -- in her room, still under the watch of two guards, who were by now bleary-eyed, leaning on their muskets, and awaiting the end of their shift, where she had made something of a home out of what had been a bare and spartan little chamber. The few small items that she had requested, and that I had approved, were arranged neatly around the room; most of which were books, having few other ways of passing the time stuck trapped inside. Elytra was in a cot that I had Cannon Fodder procure for her, snoozing happily with one hoof in her mouth and the other wrapped around a stuffed ursa minor doll.

“Prince Blueblood!” greeted Odonata, rising from her bed and tossing aside the small paperback novel she had been reading. “I thought you had forgotten all about me. It’s only been Market Garden visiting me lately, asking all sorts of questions about swarm tactics and logistics and it’s all so boring.”

She was still tall, towering, and intimidating, but her frame seemed to have lost much of its imposing bulk. The slightly emaciated, cadaverous look only made her appear more threatening, however, and I wondered how much longer she could go on without having to feed off a pony before starvation invariably takes its toll.

“I’ve been busy,” I said, “with the war and all that. You’re being taken to Canterlot for safekeeping.”

“For more stupid questions from more boring ponies: ‘how many drones does Chrysalis have in her army?’, ‘where is she getting all of those muskets from?’, ‘how do Changelings breed?’.” Odonata grinned inanely at that last one. “I suppose I ought to pack then. I’ll miss our little talks, Prince; perhaps when this war is over and I have to find something new to do with my life, since conquering defenceless pony tribes for Queen and Hive will no longer be a viable career option, we should see if we can’t rekindle what we once had?”

“You mean the time you tried to get me flogged to death?” I said -- my back would still ache at inopportune moments as a result of that particular incident. “I think I’ll give that a miss, thank you.”

Odonata smirked at me. “And here I thought we shared something together,” she said as she started collecting her meagre possessions around the room. “However, I mustn’t keep the Princess waiting. At least I shall have a royal escort when I am dragged through your streets in chains. It’s not quite the triumphant march into Canterlot that I had dreamt of, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“How did you know the Princess is here?” I blurted out. The tiny barred window in the room was too high up and did not afford a view of the courtyard that would allow her to see Luna’s absurdly pointy royal chariot parked there, I assumed.

“I heard her outside the door,” said Odonata with a casual shrug, as she placed the books on her bed and arranged them into a bundle, “and that Second Fiddle, too. Then your guards graciously filled me in on all of the details, and I must say, ‘I told you so’ just doesn’t seem enough.”

I looked behind me where the two guards were suddenly finding the floor and ceiling much more interesting than our conversation, and though I took a moment to memorise their faces just in case I felt like marking them down for some sort of onerous duty, it was inevitable that Odonata would find out about this anyway. My hope, now dashed, had been that I would be far enough away so I wouldn’t have to listen to her smug comments about this entire awful affair.

“It was an aberration,” I said flatly. “Not to be repeated.”

“It was an escalation,” she sneered, turning to face me fully now that she had finished collecting her things and tied them up in a neat bundle. “Don’t be naive. Once the gates of Tartarus have been opened and the monsters within are set free, it is very difficult to round them up and force them back inside their cages. Second Fiddle was not the first weak-willed officer to snap under the pressure of command and resort to such extreme measures, nor will he be the last. Each time the public outrage will fade, until it merely becomes acceptable in your pursuit of final victory.”

“No,” I snapped. The indignation rose up within me unbidden, fueled by the memories of what I had seen amidst the burning tents. “Only if we let that happen, which I won’t. I’m not ‘naive’ enough to think that this won’t happen again, but punishing Second Fiddle and Iron Hoof will at least set the precedent that this is not acceptable and will have consequences.”

Odonata fixed me with one of her knowing stares, one I knew by now to be less cold and contemptuous than it was probing. Still, she surprised me with the directness of her words: “Do you truly believe that?”

What I truly believed was not as important as what ponies thought I believed, but her question forced me to consider just how fragile the truth, the real truth, ugly and unvarnished, really was; almost as bad as the lies that held together my shuffling, ignoble career. “I couldn’t have done this alone,” I insisted, meeting her gaze. “Equestria as a whole will have to confront this horror head-on and reckon with what it wants to be, now that it knows what lengths its own kind will go to -- the Magic of Friendship has brought us so far and yet we’re still capable of sinking to the depths of barbarism. We are more than this,” I added, just as Odonata was about to interrupt. “Just as you believe the Changelings are, and what they could be without Chrysalis’ grotesque excuse of a philosophy.”

“If you say so,” said Odonata. “I believe other ponies have said such things before, Princess Celestia amongst them. When you see her again, perhaps you should ask if there’s any truth to what the ponies in the Badlands say about her. Better yet, I might ask her myself.”

I snorted and shook my head. “Are Purestrains capable of having conversations that don’t turn into ridiculous mind games?”

Odonata paused thoughtfully, and then said, “Chrysalis encourages it; her underlings wasting time trying to undermine one another means we have no chance of organising any real, coordinated opposition to her rule. It means only the strongest and most cunning of Changelings can succeed, or the ones who can make the Queen happy, at least. She thinks it's the same thing. Now, it’s become instinct, and I just can’t help it.”

She had mercifully finished packing, which was picked up by one of the ponies on guard, and after collecting Elytra delicately with her hooves and storing her safely in that odd little pouch under her wing carapace, Odonata was finally ready to leave. I escorted her in a merciful, contemplative silence through the corridors under the watchful gaze of the armed guard, past the bewildered officers and bureaucrats, and finally out into the courtyard.

There, Luna observed the Purestrain’s approach from the other side of this large, packed parade square with one of her usual domineering glares calculated to invoke as much dread as possible in mortal minds. To my surprise, and secret glee, it seemed to work on Odonata too, who, finding herself having to cross a wide-open courtyard surrounded by armed Equestrian soldiers, having cleared a path for her, all watching her intently and in the presence of one of perhaps two ponies who could possibly give Queen Chrysalis a run for her money in terms of sheer intimidation, appeared to have lost much in the way of her arrogance. It was a transparent piece of theatre, to force the enemy general to slowly walk across this scrap of dry, parched land, while leered at by the common soldiery who had conquered her swarm and city, their banners fluttering victoriously in the breeze, as one half of Equestria’s ruling body watched on from atop her royal chariot, but it had absolutely worked in utterly crushing Odonata’s inflated sense of self-worth. Her steps were slow and faltering, and her head was bowed low in a defeated, helpless posture. Perhaps it was only now, before the one pony she could not cow with sheer presence and reputation, that the true emotional weight of what her surrender meant had finally made itself felt.

“I’m sorry I can’t stay,” said Luna, as Odonata silently mounted her sleek, pointy, gothic-inspired chariot with some difficulty. Saguaro scrambled around behind Luna away from the Purestrain. “Both Second Fiddle and Iron Hoof have… I hesitate to call them ‘friends’. They have ponies within the Commissariat and the Ministry of War who may try to obstruct the course of justice to save their own careers, those who are not intelligent enough to know when to abandon a lost cause. Celestia and I must make haste to stop them.”

Her royal guards, those of the Night Guards who were lucky enough to avoid frontline duties for now, boarded the chariot, while fresh pegasi, the ones who did not pull on her journey here, were leashed to the yoke. They were just about ready to go when Saguaro jumped off the chariot, raced back on over to me, and threw his thin, spindly forelegs around my neck in a clumsy hug.

“Thank you for getting me out of the pod,” he said.

Feeling a little awkward and knowing that everypony was now watching me, I patted him on the head and told him that he was welcome. I saw Luna watching, smiling softly, and if I didn’t know better I’d have thought she had put him up to it. Saguaro reluctantly released his embrace and trotted back to the chariot, and as I watched him try to pull himself up, insisting to the guard that he could do it himself, I realised that I would miss him. Even Odonata too, who observed the whole thing with faint amusement, and Elytra would be missed, and as the pegasi went through their final pre-flight preparations I felt a sudden pang of loneliness.

I stood back, while ponies cheered and beat their hooves for their Princess, which she reciprocated with a smile and a polite wave, as the burly pegasi flapped their wings, muscles straining with the weight of the chariot and its passengers, and pulled it down the runway cleared for them. As I watched the chariot ascend, soar, and shrink into slowly-lightening blue of the morning, becoming smaller and and smaller until it was a mere speck, I considered that although I had ‘won’, in the sense that I was assured that I would come out of this most recent mess with my life and reputation intact, there was no sense of triumph. Cannon Fodder put it best, when, apparently having slept through Princess Luna’s visit or was otherwise occupied with the myriad things in war that cannot cease even with a national scandal unfolding before us, he wandered into the courtyard, and even out in the fresh air I was alerted to his presence by the oncoming wave of body odour.

“Was that Princess Luna, sir?” he asked, watching the speck disappear into the blue.

“Yes, it was,” I said. “She’s going to sort out our problem with Second Fiddle for us.”

“As the Princess wills,” he said, in the verbal equivalent of a shrug; that Luna and I seemingly had it all in hoof was apparently enough for him. “Now what do we do, sir?”

With Princess Luna now gone, normality, such as it is at the frontline, reasserted itself in this dreary little courtyard, like jelly returning to its original form. Corporals and sergeants regained control over their soldiers, drill exercises continued, while others lounged about awaiting orders. Staff officers and bureaucrats darted around them, dodging the marching formations, idle ponies, piles of equipment along the way, carrying their usual stacks of paper to and from offices and conference rooms. Like that, the misery that I had endured over the past few days faded, and with it those hellish moments prior to it - assaulting the breach, and before that being gassed, and before that advancing up that damned hill, and so on. All of it drifted into the past, as all things must inevitably do, and yet their legacy lingered like the family ghost in the drawing room, accompanied by the spectre of further horrors to come.

This was no victory for me, merely the continuation of the status quo thus far. Now, there was only one thing left to do.

“We go back to work,” I said, and the war would drag on.

Comments

[Bookeater_otaku]

I especially liked Luna entrance. It was dark, terrifying and otherworldly.

A bit sad to Leave the Fort and the politics of the Badland ponies behind but also exited to where Blueblood will get in trouble next or what new things you will bring onto the war board.

[paladinwolf]

This was phenomenally well done! The intrigue was a nail biter, and I have been hoping that there was a way for Blueblood to get message through so that justice could be served. I honestly thought that he would not manage it so soon. The ending bit is gold...
memegenerator.net/img/instances/67528503/hi-hi-ho-its-off-to-war-we-go.jpg

[PuppetXMaster]

so glad i got a new chapter to read before work, gives me that extra boost to my step

[Grumpy]

Have to say. After waiting for a new chapter (and missing it due to holyday crazyness). I felt Bluebloods stress as i was reminded of everything.. Immidietly snapping me back .Bringing in Derpy Hooves really helped ease up the mood. Shes simply a bundle of joy. Brought me a smile when she spoke about Dinky..
Honestly i was worried about the Letter .Expecially that it went to CMC and then even more worried as it went into a public press but seems Princesses quickly picked it up. Princess Luna entrence, her showing off her might and majesty was increadible.. Fer-de-Lance reaction,bah she really cares about her troops. Shame what happened. I hope we see her again,perhaps Princess Luna will renember her and do something good with her.
I still feel Second Fiddle got it easy but suppose that is right way to go about it. I cant imagine what he done after running from Luna. Pure histeria and panic id imagine.

Saguaro, got a good end. Awesome to see. Would enjoy reading even just a few sentences what happened to him. If he managed to recover or not. DId he did something with his life. He would deserve as much id feel.

Odonata .. They really have increadible talks she and blueblood. Elytra and Odonata arcs feel incomplete thought. I mean they moved on,will have their own turbolent lifes away from Blueblood. Id had hope perhaps he would take them to his Palace but the questions between her and Blueblood feel unresolved. Perhaps id hope for them to both open up and perhaps go for relationship but i suppose that would be way too sudden.

Chapter was really satisfying.That ending was perfect by the way . Only what missed from it was "A cup of tanna sir?" type of thing but it still was amazing

[Bugsydor]

Good that Best Pony was there to save the day. Those wandering eyes see a lot more than people expect.

Farewell to Second Fiddle. Don't let the door hit him on his way out.

I liked the little scene with just Luna and Blueblood.

[Wydril]

11167442

Good that Best Pony was there to save the day.

Hell yeah!

[Eroraf86]

Good old "more than meets the eye" Derpy. Nobody worries about The Ditz overhearing them, which makes her the perfect candidate for some super sneaky subterfuge shenanigans.

Damn, Luna, you scary. Judging by the mention of the stars in her mane dying, I'm wondering if her anger in that moment was stirring something of her alter ego. If Nightmare Moon had emerged in all her glory to grind him into icy dust, I certainly wouldn't have objected.

Odonata's arc has consistently been a pleasant surprise to follow. While it's clear that she is still ruled by the instincts and training instilled by Chrysalis and her regime, her capacity for rational thought and genuine sympathetic moments gives me hope for her future prospects. And I am VERY curious as to the eventual fate of little Elytra, though I don't envy her circumstances: a pony-changeling hybrid, born of the union of high-ranking opposing officers, amidst a tragic and dramatic escalation of the conflict between her parents' species? She'd almost be safer as a semi-permanent research subject in Twilight's basement.

[Iron Comet]

I kind of hoped we would see the consequences of events dragged out. All the consequences. Because Blueblood has set more than one set of hornets nests to stir.