The Nightmare Knights Become A Band

by SwordTune

Verse 35

She wanted to stay in her dorm and keep reading all the comics Spike had left behind when he moved. They were actually pretty good. But, there were only so many hours.

Smolder picked up her books off her desk. Even if classes were over for the day, the worst part about school was that the work followed them back to their free time. Spring vacation was just a few weeks away, but before the hallowed time of sleeping in and lazing around could come, there were midterm exams to contend with. The weight of each test was measured in textbooks, and there were a great many of them. As if six subjects for the six Elements of Harmony were not enough, a five-page “further studies” paper had been assigned to every student, connecting lessons from their guest lectures to at least one of the six core topics.

With her heavy bag of books, quills, paper, and ink, she flew over the heads of the other students and followed the halls to the library. She wondered if Ocellus was still in there. She went straight to the library after their classes were over. It was a little intimidating, studying with a creature and neurotic as Ocellus, but she was definitely a strong motivator.

Of course, the scene in front of her was the other side of the hard-working coin: Ocellus was passed out, sitting on a cushion with her head slumped on a textbook. A student's pillow. At least she wasn’t alone. Yona and Sandbar were studying together, pulling up a bunch of cushions to sit on and trading notes with each other for their upcoming tests.

“You two got here early,” Smolder folded her wings and flopped down on a pile of pillows.

Sandbar looked up from his book. “No, I think you just got here late.” He leaned back and looked outside the window. It was bright out still, but the sharp angle of the sunlight stretched out every shadow between the school and the horizon. “It’s like six o’clock. Where have you been?”

“That’s not important.” Smolder turned away and quickly settled her eyes on the slumbering Ocellus. “When did she finally clock out?”

“Yona not sure Ocellus did.” The young yak demonstrated her meaning by nudging the table a few times, shaking Ocellus back and forth. The changeling tilted about in an unconscious stupor before clutching onto her textbook and muttering half-formed garbled sentences regarding rocks and generosity.

Smolder patted her friend on her head. “Guess we can’t fault her. Honestly, I should be studying more for the tests.”

“Yeah,” Sandbar chuckled, “I thought I knew Equestrian history, but there’s so much about the Wonderbolts that I didn’t even know! It’s all stuff I never thought about before.”

“And Professor Fluttershy’s class hard too.” Yona produced a glass jar with a beetle inside from her backpack. “Easy to keep bug alive. But not sure what test will be about.”

“You brought yours?” Sandbar inspected the jar lid closely. He tapped the glass, and after a few shakes, the beetle shuddered and skittered around on the glass. “Aren’t you worried it’ll get crushed under your books?”

“Nope,” Yona laughed, patting him on the back. “That’s why Yona keeps Sandbar around. Boyfriend good for carrying textbooks.”

Smolder looked away from the two of them for a moment. Even as the sun dimmed, she noticed the light from the windows was brighter than usual. Ponyville’s pegasi had been pouring down snow the past few days, and now they were scheduled to leave the skies clear to let the snowmelt into the ground. What resulted were scintillating white patches all across Ponyville that were turning orange and pinkish as the day rolled away.

It had been cold all day, but sunny. Perfect for snowball fights or skipping homework. She didn’t think it was a coincidence that the two students missing from their group were Silverstream and Gallus. Perfect days led to perfect evenings, after all. Who’d want to spend a perfect evening studying?

“Hey, lovebirds,” Smolder leaned into Yona’s teasing of Sandbar, “know what happened to our actual lovebirds? I thought they’d be here by now.”

Sandbar shrugged. “Gallus left campus right after class. But I haven’t seen Silverstream all day. I thought she took a sick day or something.” He turned to Yona. “How ‘bout you?”

“Yona not notice anything but Professor Fluttershy’s lecture notes,” she admitted.

“Midterms are in a few weeks,” Smolder said, thrumming her claws against the table. “What could they be up to?”

---

Luna could almost peek inside the dragon’s nostrils as they glowed as hot as embers, puffing out smoke like a locomotive. “Princess Twilight, even considering their offer is ridiculous.” He directed his ire towards the changeling delegate sitting across from him. “The changelings don’t need more rain, they already have swaths of farmland. They’re just being greedy.”

The changeling snarled. “Bold of a dragon to call another creature greedy.”

“Spira, that’s enough,” Twilight put her voice between the two delegates. She gave the changeling a warning glance before turning to the dragon. “Ashwind, you’re being unfair. The data is clear, at the rate the changeling kingdom is growing, they will have food shortages in four or five years. The benefit the Dragonlands will get from Equestria’s rain is purely economical.”

As Twilight simmered down the conference, Luna projected a whisper towards Rainbow Dash, the two of them sitting to the right of the Princess. “How did you talk me into coming?”

She opened her mouth to respond, but she doubted she could say anything without being heard, so she elected not to disrupt the ongoing debate. Just to be sure, the Wonderbolt seated next to her, Spitfire, gave Rainbow Dash a firm kick to the leg to remind her to keep to herself.

As Twilight tried to balance the three nations’ delegates, Luna entertained herself with a sharp focus on the hippogriffs. Tall, alert, and regal, the general sent by Queen Novo as a delegate kept to himself for most of the conference. Just behind him, he was accompanied by a younger girl. Luna quickly recognized her as one of Starlight’s students. Yet, if her memory served her well, the girl was completely different from her usual self.

Quiet, demure, and restrained, Silverstream might as well have not been a part of the delegation at all. She merely observed, even going so far as to lower her head when the hippogriff general was addressed as to not draw attention to herself.

“Princess,” the general spoke up amid the spat between the dragon and changeling, “I feel I should remind every creature present that Mount Aris will face tropical storms come this spring, which will disrupt our pearl farming sector.”

“Your concern is noted, General Seaspray,” Twilight said. “And I know Equestria’s businesses have been expanding because of Mount Aris’s bank cards. We will try our best to provide support to your kingdom when the storms come.”

“I’m sorry, Princess Twilight,” the dragon delegate, Ashwind, hissed his words with a sharp forked tongue. “Aren’t such cards a ‘purely economical’ interest?” He reached out with an open claw towards Luna. “Princess, you know what the dragons are facing, don’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Luna quickly sat up and corrected her posture.

“I was in the Crystal Empire when the shadows attacked,” he said. “Princess Luna, you stood for unity between dragons and ponies during that time, don’t let it go to waste. You know why so many dragons have started business in the Empire. We need a source of crystals as much as changelings need their crops.”

“That’s right, and it’s why the Princess would like to resolve this in every creature’s benefit.” Luna gave a slight nod to Twilight to take the reins back on speaking. However, the Princess simply raised her brow and jerked her head towards the delegates, pushing Luna to keep speaking.

She let go a silent sigh before looking the dragon back in the eyes. “Why is the Dragonlord so interested in building farms in the Dragonlands? The world is growing, and other industries are growing with it.”

“Looking at the world as a whole,” the delegate replied, “dragons are still outcasts. You’ve seen it. The Dragonlands is different from the rest of the world because we have no exports. Equestria’s rain will change that and put more food into the world’s market.”

The changeling, Spira, knocked her hooves against the table and waved around a ledger in protest. “Princess Luna, that’s simply not true! Annual reports from major Equestria companies prove that the dragons already have means of purchasing crystals. Dragons are five times more likely to be hired for construction, cooking, catering, and cosmetics. They don’t need the rain at all!”

“Cosmetics? Dragons get treated like lab rats in those jobs.” The dragon delegate stood up from his seat and roared across the table. “We’re not an extra body you just can throw at the jobs no other creature wants to do!”

Twilight stepped up and put a magical barrier between them. Neither delegate backed down, however. In fact, they simply began shouting even louder, pushing their voices through the veil. The dragon’s face changed from one sentence to another, becoming angry and appalled at every word the changeling said.

“Oh jeez,” Twilight wiped the sweat from her forehead. She gave Luna a look of deep apology. “I think this is going to take a while.”

---

Starlight wrapped a magic bubble around a kernel of popcorn and floated it up into the air. An accurate, pin-point bolt of magic blasted down mid-flight, scattering sparks of magic and buttery goodness all over the studio’s carpet.

Svengallop shoved Tempest, although he moved himself a lot more than he did her. “Quit encouraging. I’m almost done making a list of lighting equipment we’d need for the performance Luna wants to do at the Rainbow Falls. I need absolute, undisturbed focus.”

“Right, because you always stop annoying us when we ask for it,” Tempest retorted. Svengallop shot her a dirty look.

“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “We’ll stop.”

But she immediately looked at Starlight with a grin, pointing to the bag of popcorn. Both unicorns stifled their laughs and popped one more kernel before Svengallop began pulling hairs from his mane.

“Sorry, Sven,” Starlight poured a cluster of the soft and savoury kernel into her mouth. “But Luna’s not here right now, what do you expect us to do?”

He pointed through the window to a simple piece of evidence outside the recording room. “Lightning Dust’s doing a good job.”

On a beanbag chair, the bright-maned pegasus was wrapped in a fleece blanket with headphones in her ears. Tempest and Starlight both set their guitars down and faintly shuffled their way out of the recording room. They couldn’t make out what she was listening to, but they could hear something playing out of her headphones.

“I think she’s asleep.” Starlight prodded with her horn.

“Aw, look at her. You’d never know she was just a loudmouth if you only saw her sleeping.” Tempest sat down on the floor and leaned up against the beanbag.

“You sure you don’t want one for yourself?” Starlight pushed another chair over and nestled her way into its squishy confines.

Tempest simply shook her head. “Too soft. I learned how to sleep pretty much anywhere after I ran away from home. It’s useful when you’re camping in a cave twenty miles away from the Crystal Empire in the middle of a blizzard. But I can’t stand the beds. Especially here, they make everything out of clouds and it’s just too soft. I feel like I’m going to fall through.”

“You know what, you and I don’t get to hang out a lot,” Starlight said after a while, “but you should swing by the school when you have time. I think you could teach my students a thing or two. There are a lot of international students who’d love to hear what it’s like of a pony to live outside Equestria.”

Tempest raised a brow. “I’m not that good at sharing feelings and stuff. But I can give a pretty good lecture on why ponies keep getting nearly destroyed by monsters and villains.”

Starlight smirked. “Hey, learning’s all about seeing different perspectives. I think it’ll be a nice change of pace.”

“Wait, seriously? I guess that wouldn’t be so bad. But don’t expect me to work a friendship lesson into my stories, okay?”

They whispered back and forth, Tempest trying again and again to test Starlight’s resolve. But the School of Friendship prided itself on being open to all creatures, and that included being a space for all sorts of views and opinions. Starlight assured Tempest she had no problems with her particular brand of teaching, as long as the students stayed safe, of course.

Ding.

The bell hanging just above the studio’s door chimed. Tempest and Starlight turned to find Luna shuffling her hooves in.

“That was unspeakably,” she groaned, “boring.”

Author's Note:

Lightning Dust chillin' with a CD player:

Comments

[Yoshifan30]

Boy a lot of things just happened so Smolder and the others are getting ready for spring break but first they had to get ready for the next test of their lesson and I wonder what they're up to if they go to the concert but meanwhile Luna is having some issues about this whole situation and apparently the changelings and the dragons are having a little disagreement and the hippogriffs are also there as well and things are not going too well for either of them meanwhile Svengallop still trying to come up with the idea for their music and special effects and everything and starlight and fizzlepop are talking to each other which is nice to see that they are communicating with each other which is nice and it's kind of cute seeing Lightning Dust artwork as well but I wonder what's going to happen next