Time to Shine

by Easysnuggler

50. Up And At Them

“The fire of friendship burns in our hearts.”

—Mi Amore Cadenza to her daughter

50. Up and At Them

Cloud, light, wind, dark, swirling with ice in circles and circles, cold wind singing softly then louder and louder, from clouds and night, day and pale sunlight, snowflakes, made of sparkling frozen dust and with blue hailstones for eyes they hungered and wanted and needed and wandered through the trackless white waste. Flying through the sky the spirits of emptiness and silence, were questing, and seeking… something, anything to feel, and to freeze. Growing from the breezes between the snowflakes they thundered through the skies, icy hued, utterly incorporeal, and deathless, everlasting, and immortal. Spirits born from despair, like sought like and they gathered in ones and twos then dozens, then herds. The sound of winter thunder filled the air, and the snowflakes grew larger and more complex.

Hooves and whinnies pounded through bare streets. They swirled through the spires and up and down the paths long denied them. They stalked into every vacant door and window. Through every chimney, past every nook and cranny swirling and swirling in concentric circles growing larger as they gathered in, hoof-fulls then dozens, then a legion. They turned and burned with an icy cold, cleansing purifying crystalizing and constructing triple vortex with their bodies. They slowed and gathered in ordered ranks three deep and a hundred across, walking in opposing concentric circles around the focus of a crack in the crystal, a break in the mirror, a smashed and icy mound of frozen snow, the final barrow marker of a vanished empire.

Flurry stirred.

The astral ream surrounded her. A colorless haze beyond reality. The white snows of her ancestral home paralleled her and surrounded her. Flurry Heart was here, Flurry Heart was there. Balanced on the cusp of immortality. She could choose death and abandon this world. See her mother, see her father, see her soul sister, her loved ones and her betrothed. Run in the green realms of the hereafter. She could walk with her sisters’ sons in the realms of the unliving…

Or she could stay here, in this frozen wasteland of death. Her mother was dead, dead, dead, her betrothed was dead, dead, dead. Skyla, her soul sister was dead, dead, dead, and her sisters’ sons, twins, those two beautiful colts dead and dead. She wailed inwardly, emotionally unmoored. Her people, her people, had she saved her people? No. She could hear the silence. She could _feel_ the silence. They might be somewhere, but they were not here. With a sense of growing horror, she knew she had in fact cut herself off from all the friends and family she had ever known. She had missed with her final stroke.

Nothing was here. Well not nothing. The Nothing. The shadow on the future, they watcher on the wall. The betrayer servant of the nightmare king and the author of her sorrow. IT was there. In the real world. She could sense it clearly. Far away south and west, half a world away.

It was free to hurt and kill and maim for all eternity, never to pass beyond to a final rest.

She was her mother’s daughter. Her body was broken beyond repair. Her mother had cared for her realm and her people above all else. Had fought and died beside her kin to kelp the realms safe. And now she was the last scion of the Crystal Empire. She had been a full alicorn in the prime of her life, had been unlike her mother, had been born into her magic. She had been struck down at the apex of her own disjunction spell and cast here across time. She could use that, use the distance and perspective to force open a crack back into the real world. She had trained at the hooves of the princess of Magic in all the branches of magic, but this was a darker magic.

The Crystal Empire and its people were all her mother had cared for, and she had passed that care to her daughter. As the last of her line. She knew the spells of Tambelon, and the necromancy salvaged from the Empire of the dead. She knew Sombras crystal magic had built upon that inheritance. Her friends and her family were all dead. She could use that too. She knew death was not the end no matter which path she chose. She would not give in to despair.

She would wield it as a weapon. Shadowing her here in the realm between reality and the beyond were the herds of despair. She could sense them galloping through the empty streets of her capitol. She lashed them to her will, aligned her spirit to the axis of the crystals laid out before her… and breathed in ice.

Her dead horn glowed. She began to draw on the power of her empire. The crystal buildings drained of their color, turning from blue to grey to white to clear as if they were made of simple ice. The true-blue crystal heart itself became lighter and clearer as did the palace, starting at the bottom nearest her icy barrow. The clarity began to gradually climb higher and higher up the spires and buttresses as the snow fell more heavily. Soon the entire empire shone like a pure white diamond.

Still the wendigos circled. A single clear wind spirit strode from the herd. This was larger than the others. Older, leaner, wilder. It stepped between the circles of the spirit equines and walked with a perfectly timed stride.

There was no need to seek a soul jar or a focus. She already lay at the center of power. Already ascended. Already dead. Already she had made a sacrifice for the spell. The magic cost her nothing but herself. Twilight would have approved. No dark necromancy this, but pure magic of her soul.

The empty essence of winter walked up the stairs to the flat balcony of the crystal palace, hooves barely clicking on the clear crystal. Spirit legs strode through the snow and ice as if it were water, sinking into the powder like a ghost sinking into that snowy hill.

There was silence. The wendigos had stopped their pacing and turned towards the balcony.

There was a swirl of ice and dust snow and powder. It encompassed the whole mound. A horn as clear as any icicle lifted from in the snow. Her breath was cold, her eyes an icy blue, her mane was crystal too. The queen of ice reborn Regina Glacies stepped from her snowy barrow. Spread wings fantastically long were white as snow and everywhere that Flurry went the ice was sure to go.

Wendigos bowed before her. She walked through them without a word. The wind picked up. They took flight as she passed, crossing overhead in aimless circles, passing through solid snow and ice, crystal, and rock, as the sun of dawn peaked over the horizon powerless to warm the day.

There was so much to do. But she had all the time in the rest of her un-life to do it in.