Letters to the Princess

by Shaslan

Chapter 8: The Perfect Team

The windigo screamed, and Flurry pumped her wings frantically as she ramped up to meet it. One heartbeat, two, then one final frantic flap and she collided with its face, slamming both her forehooves into it and looping away with another bone-crunching kick from her hind legs. The windigo might not have bone, but it could certainly feel pain, and the high-pitched scream that summoned the storm took on a new pitch of pain.

It lashed out with a gout of frostbreath, and Flurry Heart ducked and wove through the sky, a crazy pattern of spirals to evade it. The windigo followed, screeching in fury, fixated on her. And Cozy Glow, spear at the ready, saw her chance and took it.

She dove at the Windigo, blade outstretched, and the enchanted blade pierced the ethereal skin. Raw, elemental force rushed out, a blast of freezing air so cold it froze her hair in place, but she kept her wings beating even as ice crystals sheared and fell from them with every flap.

The windigo screamed anew and wheeled on her, and Cozy disengaged and dove away. The icy fangs snapped shut on empty air, and then she was looping around to join up with Flurry.

With the ease of long practice, the two of them moved almost as one, soaring through two counterpoints of a complex swirling manoeuvre, working their pegasi skill to turn the windigo’s own storm against it. It squalled and thrashed, teeth coming within inches of them — but alternating jabs from Flurry’s sword and Cozy’s spear kept it turning in midair, impotent and enraged.

As she looked through the windigo’s semi-transparent body at her mare friend, Cozy Glow felt a surge of fierce pride. Of possessiveness. Look at this mare, this beautiful mare. She’s strong and fierce and beautiful, and she wants to be with me. Me.

“Now, Cozy!” Flurry swooped in close and dealt the beast a sky-shattering punch that split the air like a thunderbolt.

Cozy felt another pulse of — of affection, of love, maybe — and she obeyed, swooping in to deliver the final blow. Flurry was…she was incredible. She had to know all sorts of crazy fire spells that would solve this particular problem, but she was sticking to just her flight and super-strength. Perhaps she had noticed that when she wielded her more powerful magic, Cozy became twitchier. Edgier. A little closer to…to something. Powerful magic users and Cozy Glow did not mesh well, and Flurry Heart was kind enough to adapt.

Was it possible to be grateful for something and resent it at the same time?

The windigo was reeling and Cozy was swooping in to finish it off. This monster had all but wiped out one of the Crystal Empire’s outlying villages. Destroyed their crops, killed two ponies. It was a monster, and it would not change its ways.

It was, as Flurry had suggested, the perfect outlet. A way to work off some steam.

A way to use those violent urges, as she had said, productively.

Cozy Glow had cleared it with Doctor Healing Word. Everyone agreed. It might help her, to find a way to release her pent-up aggression. And it would be productive. Only Rarity had hesitated, but when pressed, even she had agreed that it was, without a doubt, productive.

The mission statement was clear. Drive the monster away. And if you can’t….well.

But when the moment came — when she hovered there, her spear poised above its eye, Cozy Glow faltered. She had not taken a life in twenty years. Not since she was thirteen years old.

She looked into the snow-swirl eye of the monster that thrashed beneath her, and she found that she could not cross that line again. No matter how healthy it might be. How productive it was. If she did it again, there would be no going back.

The windigo lashed its long, sinuous neck, and Cozy was thrown loose. For one terrible, endless second she plummeted, end over end — and then the windigo was upon her, sharp fangs fastening on her leg, shaking her like a dog shakes a rabbit —

— And then Flurry Heart lit her horn at last, and the world flared into golden light.

The windigo shrilled out one final, desperate scream, but the golden light pierced it and punctured it, and the storm and the windigo that made it were blasted from existence in one single, horrifying surge of raw magic.

That same light caught her, and then lowered her gently to the floor. Winked out of existence as soon as the task was accomplished. Flurry knew she would not like to be held in a magical grip a moment longer than necessary. Cozy had not told her about precisely the disciplinary methods her parents used to use on her, but she thought Flurry might have grasped some of it, nonetheless.

Cozy Glow lay on the snow, and tried to understand what she had just seen.

Flurry Heart had killed. Flurry Heart had killed a living being right in front of her, as though it was nothing. Cozy Glow remembered how it felt. The look on her father’s face. The light as it left her mother’s eyes. She remembered, and she rolled sideways and vomited a mess of steaming green vegetable matter into the snow.

Still shaking, she looked at Flurry, so effortlessly graceful as she alighted beside her. “You — you killed that thing like you’ve done it before.”

Flurry Heart lifted one wing and let it fall again. Careless. Casual. “I have.”

She opened her mouth, and closed it again. She tried once more; no sound came out. On the third try, when her voice finally came, it sounded very small and far away. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a reason I suggested this as a way to work out some of our tension.” Flurry attempted a smile, but it was an abortive effort. “I’ve done it before.”

Her heart thundering in her chest, Cozy Glow struggled to her hooves. “You said — you said we were going to drive it off — you said a healthy outlet, not — not—”

More vomit. Her breakfast spewed onto the ground alongside her lunch.

Didn’t Flurry know her at all? Who she was? What she had done? Didn’t she understand that — that she couldn’t — that she mustn’t —

“I need to go home,” she whispered, and her mouth tasted of bile. “I need to see Doctor Healing Word.”

She hunched over in the snow, trying to drive the images from her mind. The smell. The blood. The flash of a blade, and the sweet cleansing touch of the flames.

No. No. I’m not that pony any more. I’m better. I’m recovered. Just like Doctor Healing Word says. I make my own fate — I am not controlled by hate. I’m better. I am.

“I’ll teleport us home in — in a minute, Cozy.” Flurry Heart was venturing a little closer, and Cozy reared back, hoof outstretched to ward her off.

Don’t come near me. I — I’m a — I was a monster. I might — I don’t know what I might do. Even though I’m better now. I am.

“But I wanted to show you this…so you could understand.”

“Understand what?” Cozy choked out. “You did this — for me? You’ve been out here k-ki-killing monsters to — to prove some sick point?”

“No!” Flurry said, eyes widening. “No — to show you who I was.”

“Who you were?”

She had gone insane. The princess had gone insane. She had gone to the very brink of sanity, and she was pulling Cozy there too. The smell, the blood, the blade, the fire — no, no, no. I’m better I’m better I’m better.

“You asked me, on our first date, about the Sombrites.”

Finally, the flashing images in Cozy’s head stuttered. The screams faded — just for a second — into the background, and her ears pricked up.

She remembered that conversation. I know what it’s like to be the smartest pony in the room. In every room. She remembered the way the firelight danced on Flurry Heart’s shining curls, burnishing them. Turning them golden and red, like fire themselves.

She remembered that first checkmate.

Flurry took her by the hoof and drew her away from the mess she had made on the pristine white snow. Seated herself on the ground at a safe distance. Helplessly, Cozy let herself be pulled along.

“When I was twelve, I was…going through some stuff. Puberty, especially alicorn puberty, is no joke. All those uncontrollable bursts of magic that I’d work so hard to control were back, and worse than ever. I’d break a throne by sitting down, I’d make a jungle sprout in the middle of the castle when I sneezed…I once turned half the court into crystal ewes by accident.”

Flurry Heart looked miserable, but Cozy smiled. The image of all those stuffy ponies turned into little fluffy sheep, Cadence and Shining Armour totally out of their depth as their court baa-ed and bleated around them.

“And the Crystal Heart was just making everything worse. Amplifying it. My mom was at her wits end. She tried to tell me to study, to feel, to talk it out with a therapist, but it wasn’t working. I just felt…stifled. Lost. Angry.”

Her voice was cold on that last word, and Cozy’s smile faded.

“And then the Sombrites happen. I say that like they came out of nowhere, but it wasn’t like that. They were…our ponies. My people. And they were saying all this…crazy stuff. That Sombra hadn’t been evil. That we’d unjustly exiled him. That my mom and Aunt Twilight were wrong.” She ran a hoof through her dishevelled mane. “And they were gathering support. People who were dissatisfied with the way things were, who wanted power, wanted the land reclamation to go faster, wanted to shake things up — they were all suddenly congregating under one banner.” Another pause. “The Sombrites.”

Though she rolled onto her side to face Flurry more fully, Cozy kept her lips sealed. She hadn’t heard Flurry talk this way in a long time, and she wanted to hear her out.

Flurry’s eyes were very far away. “And then they started using mind control magic.”

“They had this leader — his name was Shadowhame, or that was what he was calling himself. Nopony’s actually born with a name like that, are they?” A hollow little laugh. “Shadowhame claimed to be Sombra’s son, or something. Whoever he really was, he had some of Sombra’s spells. He knew the magic. And he used his supporters to round people up, and then he’d cast Sombra’s spell on them. Hundreds of obedient servants, out of nowhere. Hundreds of soldiers.”

“My parents were talking about a battle, maybe calling in Aunt Twi and Auntie Tia. But I didn’t want to wait. Didn’t want to let more people get caught by him. So I snuck out at night. Went to find him.” She gave a heavy sigh. “I wanted to fight him. Duel him, like Aunt Twilight duelled Tirek. I wanted…I wanted to be a hero. Can you believe that?”

Cozy Glow imagined a tiny little Flurry Heart, earnest and desperate, wings spread as she pled for peace. So different from the twelve-year-old she had been.“Yeah, I can believe that.”

“I was pretty good at invisibility spells, and for once, my magic was working the way I wanted. No misfires, no malfunctions. Just…I’d want it, and it’d be done. I could feel the power of the Heart, pumping into me. The hope of the crystal ponies that we’d save them and this would be over.”

“I found him, in the end. In the middle of another mind control spell on a bunch of innocent ponies. They were terrified.”

Cozy Glow scooted a little closer. The official version of the story that she had read before had been…very different to this. No mind control. No pre-teen princess single-hoofedly trying to save the world.

“What happened?”

Another shrug. “We fought. I’d thought it would be easy — emotions were running so high in the Empire, and I was so pumped up on power I didn’t see how I could lose.”

“I know how that feels.” Cozy thought of the rush of stolen magic, the way the horn had felt on her forehead. The way she could see the leylines all around her, see just how to pull and pinch and make the world fall into place.

“But it wasn’t like duelling with my tutors or my dad. He was…Shadowhame was…vicious. He didn’t hold back, so nor did I.” She looked at her hooves, and her voice grew very quiet. “I thought if I killed him the others would be freed.”

Cozy Glow sucked in a breath. A killer. Flurry Heart was a killer. Just like me.

“I was wrong.” In those three words was all the agony of a lifetime, and Cozy finally reached out to press a hoof to that of her marefriend.

“There was a reason Auntie Tia chose you for me. And it wasn’t just the…the cleverness stuff. It was…this, too.”

Her mouth dry, Cozy nodded. She would have given her life rather than interrupt the story now.

“So I…I killed him. Shadowhame. I blasted him out of existence, just like I did that windigo. And when it didn’t work, when I couldn’t free the enslaved and Shadowhame’s lieutenants were stepping in to continue the mind control spell he’d been performing when I interrupted…” she shook her head. “I banished them. I had…the haziest image in my head of this spell I’d read about in Aunt Twilight’s library. Starswirl’s shadow realm spell. She praised me when she found me reading it. Said I was like her when she was a foal.”

Cozy jerked her head from left to right in a silent denial. She could imagine no one less like Princess Twilight Sparkle than the mare before her. Twilight Sparkle was a liar. A jailor. Flurry Heart was…real and raw and kind. In a way the Princess of Canterlot would never understand.

“Anyway, I pictured this spell. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked. It sent them all away. All of them. Shadowhame’s body, his followers…and the mind-controlled ponies. Even the victims that they were still in the process of converting.” She looked down. “All of them. A thousand years, gone.”

Very slowly, Cozy Glow let out a breath. “I’m…sorry, Flurry. I didn’t know.”

Her lips compressing, Flurry Heart swallowed. “No one does. No one knows it happened…like that. About Shadowhame, or that I did it on my own. Mom told everyone she had given me her blessing, showed me the spell.”

“They’re all—” liars, she had been about to say. All the princesses are liars. But this was Flurry’s mother, and Flurry was a princess, too. “They’re all the same,” she finished, a little lamely.

“Maybe.” Flurry shrugged. She lowered her eyes again. “After that, I got…worse, if anything. My mom could feel all these emotions roiling in me, all this guilt and pain and hate, and she just…she didn’t know what to do. So she pointed me at her problems, and let me vent.”

“Vent?”

“I hunted the windigos almost to extinction. Just like this one here. Fought them one by one until the few that were left stopped coming back. After that it was rogue dragons, the chimaeras, the cerberi, the wights, the basilisks…everything that moved, that bothered the Crystal Empire, I fought. I killed them and I hunted them and chased them out of our borders.”

Cozy Glow pressed her hoof against Flurry’s foreleg.

And Flurry looked at the ground, and whispered the last of her sins as though it was the greatest of them all. "I killed the last six kelpies in the world.”

“Kelpies?” Cozy shook her head. “I thought they were a myth.”

“They are now. Aunt Luna hunted most of them down a few thousand years ago, but there were…well, there were six of them left. Aunt Twilight sent me there. She had spared them, but…they were taking foals from a town down south, and they weren’t receptive to her friendship ambassadors. So she sent me in to solve the problem.”

Lives, snuffed out by the hoof that Cozy now held. Lives, snuffed out by her own. They were no different, and that was…something. But she had looked up to Flurry. She had believed her to be better. She had wanted to be better for her.

All of the rage and pain that boiled inside her, and she had kept it in — because Flurry was better, and she would be horrified if she saw the monstrous mess that was the true Cozy.

But all along, Flurry had been doing exactly the same thing.

Helplessly, Cozy Glow clutched her marefriend’s hoof. She wanted her mother. She wanted her doctor. She wanted Flurry.

“What’s…what’s your point here?”

If Flurry thought that opening up would persuade Cozy to do the same, she would be disappointed.

“My point is…” Flurry sighed. “How many lives have you taken, Cozy?”

Cozy Glow’s blood ran cold. How many lives have you taken? How many ponies have you killed? How many times had she been asked that question, by hungry reporters or high-society Canterlot ponies desperate for a thrill?

Their eyes all lit with the same dark hunger. Waiting for her to name a number, so they could gasp and ride the delicious thrill of being terrified. Being in the same room as a monster. What a story to tell their friends, their grandfoals.

“Why?” Her voice was bitter. She knew exactly why she was being asked.

“How many?”

She looked up into Flurry’s eyes, ready to see that same hunger, and she found only sadness.

“Seven.” The number was pulled out of her before she could stop it.

Seven ponies.

“Exactly.” Flurry Heart could not see the faces, could not hear the litany of the dead. “My point is, Cozy, that I’ve taken…a lot more lives than you have. I’ve ended species. I stopped keeping a toll of individuals a long time ago. I try to be better now, but — when a problem comes, my first instinct is to use violence to solve it.”

“It was different. Those weren’t…”

They weren’t ponies.

“Is it not murder, just because it’s not a pony? They were still sentient, most of them. And I still did it.”

“Why?” Cozy asked again, but this time it was not an accusation. This time it was the same question ponies had hurled at her all of her life. Why did you do it?

A shrug that was horribly, achingly familiar. She had seen that emptiness before. Seen it in the mirror. “Because I was angry. I was angry and out of control, and it seemed like a problem I could solve. Why did you do it?”

A familiar phrase. And for the first time in her life, Cozy answered that question honestly. No deflection, no dissimulation. “Because I was…angry. It seemed…it was the only way I could fix it. The only way to feel better.”

“And since then?”

“I…try…to be better.”

“Do you see?” Flurry asked, and Cozy began to think that she did. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

Comments

[Shaslan]

11369987
Thanks for the catch! When i'm typing the same two-word names over and over my brain tends to get muddled

[asdtroi8895]

I don't think sending Flurry out to kill stuff is very good for her.

[Ciphers]

11373745
Genocide stuff either