Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Count Down

Twilight got off the train, just barely not rushing and keeping her walk speed contained. She already knew what she would find there of course, and getting there seconds faster wasn't going to have any noticeable consequences, but she was nervous and channeling that nervousness into her legs was always a good way to get it out. But she couldn't do that, she had appearances to maintain and an image to preserve, not without reason given her role, and so all that nervousness stayed boiling in her and she began to fear it would build up too much and find some other way to much more violently burst out at the worst possible time.

She finally got to the scene of the crime. As she'd known, all that was there was a hole. A hole where a house and a portion of the road had been. No one had been hurt, but there was little to feel thankful for in that. The house had been empty and the street left without traffic as work was being carried out there, the workers themselves off to eat lunch when the spell had gone off. No one had been hurt because whoever was behind everything had chosen that would be the case. If, under one hoof, the fact that they weren't interested in senseless carnage just yet was reassuring, under the other the way they'd carried out the whole thing in broad daylight in the middle of a city was more terrifying than merely scary. Perhaps however not too surprising when they had already been able to pass undetected through all her castle's defences, if with a notable distraction there.

No scale there. Not like Twilight expected herself to find it when no one had in the time it had taken her to get there, but the idea that it had been removed without anyone noticing anything was, again, terrifying. Ponies had been looking right there. Unless their terrorist could walk freely inside the blast radius, or had bribed the entire city into playing along, the only reasonable assumption was that they were using some fairly advanced cloaking or invisibility spells. That too was worrying. They were clearly smart, the control on display over the reactions was proof enough of that, but it seemed they were quite powerful too. That would mean even if she tracked them down, somehow, taking them on wouldn't be easy.

On the matter of tracking down the culprit, however, she was expecting to have something to work with soon. Two attacks without any communication was one attack too many. The point about danger had been made, that about control and ease of access to lived in spaces as well. There was nothing else that needed to be shown off, and clearly they didn't simply want blood. So, sooner or later, one way or another, they would start to make requests. They'd gone through too much effort already for the whole situation to resolve itself in those empty threats.

Comments

[Speckle]

This actually makes me curious regarding how Stella's reign of terror will end: she can't keep up this ruse forever, even if The Stallion hasn't shown up lately. To be perfectly honest, the way she's going about doing things and dragging it out, I don't think she's serious about facing Twilight. I don't even think she's playing mind games, because what she did to Chrysalis was nothing more than spiteful torture. I think she's just being extremely petty about someone she knows is better/stronger than her, but that's just me.