Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

New Blood

A perfectly ordinary large town, all things considered. Sure, the architecture was a little peculiar, and the cycling light in the sky unnatural and quite bothering, but aside from that everything was as one would have expected it. Ponies out and about, unsuspecting, guards mostly present close to the central tower but not so much elsewhere. A town unprepared for an attack, though every town would be unprepared for an attack coming from within.

The ponies there were somewhat peculiar. Not all of them, she'd spotted a couple of more normal mares and a filly too, among others, but the majority had a strange look to them. Like they were made out of the same crystal that made up the bulk of the buildings and infrastructure. She'd been told that was a normal thing, and other ponies up north looked like that back home too, but she'd never bothered to check.

The most annoying thing was having to work while everything was so damn bright. She understood why the ponies didn't sleep during those hours, it would have been impossible with the sky lit up like that, but she was still extremely annoyed that it meant having to spy on them in those conditions. How they could go about their lives without being bothered by the conditions was a mystery to her. She did wonder if, won the war, the Queen would rid that world of that horrible curse.

She wasn't sure what would be done with the place after it was conquered, though. She didn't care, orders were orders and her job was following them, but curiosity was still a natural and required part of her job. She'd find out eventually, she supposed. Operations had apparently been delayed slightly, but it wouldn't be more than a month before they'd conquered the place.

She would have thought their next war would be against dragons, though she knew it would take decades before that was started. Not that she was annoyed by the sudden shift towards the new objective, she had in fact quite wished for a change of scenery at some point after months of keeping her eyes on the same area trying to spot signs of a rebel group. She was fairly certain she'd been watching over an empty patch of forest the whole time, but it was still better to have had eyes there than not to.

She wasn't particularly happy about the new working conditions, true, but at least the place was nice to look at when the light went away. The ponies seemed quite happy to be there, too. Some would probably die during the attack, she knew, although familiarity with military strategy told her they'd probably be taking most of them hostages if possible. Better to have something to make their enemies surrender over than to simply enrage them and push them to fight until destruction. They had no hopes of winning, of course, their guards were not many and not equipped for war and they certainly were not hiding an army anywhere, but it was still most efficient to keep efforts to a minimum where they could.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Ah. Nightmare sleeper agent in the Crystal Empire. I suppose it's too much to hope that she learns to appreciate what her assignment has to offer in comparison to the oppression back home. Luna's going to pick the most loyal for any espionage work, regardless of her sanity.

Also, yeah, Stella has some monumental issues. Subscriptions, really. The question is whether she ends up saving Twilight from something that doesn't deserve to kill her.