Part One Hundred & Nine
Chips rolled the jeep to a stop just behind the line of artillery guns and a pile of shells. Nightshade leaned back in the passenger seat, sunglasses perched close against her eyes. The Thestral fanned her leathery wings; sweat flaked off the membranes.
Flurry Heart sniffed and climbed down from the back. Her jumpsuit clung to her fur by itself, and the alicorn did not relish the added weight of her armor. The crystal band levitated off her head and landed on the hood of the cooling engine.
Nightshade nodded. “Crown watch. Got it.”
Chips glanced up at the noonday sun and shielded his eyes with a claw. “Reminds me of New Mareland.”
“The north is hogging all the rain,” Nightshade whickered. “So much for the Mild West.”
Flurry waited for the other jeeps to pull up. A few axels sagged close to the ground. The New Marelander griffons parked in a row before clambering into the bed and unclipping their boxes of cargo.
The alicorn levitated out her battle armor from three other jeeps. Griffons gave the floating plates a wide berth as they shuffled through other boxes of rations for the siege. A griffoness ducked under the gorget with pinched eyes as it levitated over her head.
Flurry set the pieces down around her and began to fasten everything together. She suppressed nickers of annoyance at the touch of hot crystal against her feathers. Damn it. Should’ve asked for a cooling enchantment or something. Her horn glowed, but she caught herself.
Ice spells would weaken the crystal and make the metal joints stiff. The alicorn grimaced and clipped the gorget to her neck, working out the stiffness against the padding. Her wings extended as she locked the wing joint armor into place.
The griffons prepping the line guns avoided staring at the alicorn. The heavy artillery was aimed low, towards the factories of the undercity. Las Pegasus loomed to the west; the cloud city on the topside cast a long shadow across the plains and dry terrain beyond the defenses.
The Changeling artillery outranged the Reichsarmee. They had positioned several batteries atop the casinos or in the sky-parks. The encirclement on land had halted several miles away, and the land between the city and the besieging army had been churned apart with shellfire. Trucks and jeeps idled behind the long line of heavy guns. If it came to an assault, it would be a brutal ground push to the undercity with artillery raining down from the resort above.
A shadow briefly eclipsed the sun as one of the elder dragons circled back from the sea. Ember’s dragons had flown lazily over the ocean and banked back, eyes watchful for attempted patrols. The Hegemony’s Luftwaffe had apparently abandoned Las Pegasus to its fate. Reconnaissance had spotted ground crews in the cloud bases above the undercity, but no sorties had flown out to contest air dominance.
Behind the siege, Tzinacatl warbands scoured the desert and secured the pipelines. Every night, keening war cries echoed as bat ponies chased down stranded soldiers. The advance had been fast, and if Flurry was honest with herself, sloppy. Between Ember’s surprise pincer attack on arrival, the gap in the lines to Las Pegasus, and the attempted breakout, the Appleloosan Protectorate was a mess of breakthroughs and encirclements from the Southeast to Las Pegasus.
But an army of dragons, bat ponies, and griffons had made it to the outskirts of the final city in Changeling hooves. Estimates from before the Battle of Canterlot placed 200,000 Heer soldiers in the south. That did not count war veterans, settlers, civilians, or the Kriegsmarine under Admiral Mimic. Flurry doubled the number in her head.
400,000 changelings. 500,000 ponies. Nearly the amount of Canterlot. At least, that was the prewar population of Las Pegasus. With the Appleloosan Protectorate relocating or draining the populace as part of the Love Tax, that estimate could be wildly off. Flurry levitated her helmet over her horn and locked it into place.
Chips smacked his beak and drummed his talons on the wheel. The New Marelanders stared ahead over the line artillery, avoiding twisting around to watch the alicorn dress. Flurry rolled her eyes under the helmet. “I’m decent.”
Nightshade blew a bubble between her fangs. It popped and she scrunched her nose. The gum stuck to her dark blue fur. She pawed at her nose with her left wing. Chips raised a claw behind him to signal to Flurry.
“Where’d you get gum?” Flurry asked. The bat pony ceased struggling for a moment and pointed her wing at Chips. The alicorn turned her helmet to him. “Can I borrow a few sticks?”
Chips leaned across Nightshade and rummaged through the glovebox with one claw. He pulled out a revolver with ruffling wings. Flurry plucked it out of his claw and brought it over to her muzzle.
“Sorry,” she apologized. “That’s mine.” The Princess popped open the cylinder and inspected the one bullet. She spun it closed with her magic and set Applejack’s old revolver down in her saddlebags stored in the jeep’s bed. Forgot I kept-
The Princess barely caught the package of bubblegum lobbed at her helmet. Chips had thrown it blindly over his shoulder to her. “New Mareland original, Princess!”
“It’s old as shit,” Nightshade mumbled. “Think that company went under when Beakolini invaded. Surprised I can still get bubbles.”
“Gum don’t expire,” Chips scoffed.
Flurry tucked the package against her gorget and the neckline of her jumpsuit. It stuck out slightly. The packaging had a playing card of a joker; a swirly-eyed mare in a harlequin’s hat beamed above the metal. “What’s the radio say?”
“Meet up’s, good,” Nightshade summarized. “Be careful. You’re going to be in range of their artillery. Recon spotted two trucks heading out from the barricades.”
“Only a Breezie’s dick,” Chips probably disagreed. He felt the alicorn’s stare and finally turned around. “You’re at the very edge of their range,” he translated.
Flurry nodded, walked around the jeep, and through a clearing in the stacks of shells. Shirtless, and occasionally totally naked Reichsarmee soldiers worked to load and adjust the artillery. They kept their beaks down and focused as the Princess walked through the line.
General Mudbeak waited in full dress uniform with a cap under his wing. Four soldiers with assault rifles waited behind him. Flurry was grateful her helmet hid most of her surprise. The elderly griffon had actually cleaned himself up. He still looked nervous, but his eyes were clear and mustache combed. The overall look was slightly ruined by the sweat stains on the brown jacket under his wings, but Flurry was already sweating worse in her armor.
“Where’s the meeting?” she asked in Herzlander. General Mudbeak placed the cap atop his head and pointed to a distant hill. A ruined town sat below it, barely more than two dozen houses. Before the war, it was called Goodspring for the water source, but the Appleloosan Protectorate had relocated the ponies elsewhere.
Only the brick frames remained, bracketed by craters from lobbed shells from Las Pegasus. The hill was to the east of Goodspring, and it provided a decent over watch of the flat terrain leading to the city. Shame it’s in range.
The Reichsarmee was filtering the water from the nearby aquifers; the changelings had destroyed the pumps and dumped fertilizer in the pipes. The entire area around the floating city had been steadily bombarded for the past two weeks. There was no cover for an advance.
Las Pegasus had been an oasis in a dry stretch of land, but it was heavily dependent on food imports from Appleloosa before the war. Without the rest of the Appleloosan Protectorate and cut off from the Changeling Lands or Olenia, it was a matter of time until the city starved. The Changelings knew it and the Reichsarmee knew it.
Flurry Heart and General Mudbeak slowly walked ahead of the guns towards the craters. She swung her head to the griffon. “Do you want to teleport there?”
“Can you teleport all five of us?” Mudbeak returned. A wing jittered to the guards walking behind them.
Flurry did not bother answering. Just say no. Her horn glowed and a large bubble slowly formed around the group. Two of the guards slowed in nervousness, but the alicorn kept walking ahead. Flurry felt her bubble clip the end of one of their tails.
“Sorry,” she called back.
The guard did not respond.
“Admiral Mimic leads the Kreigsmarine,” Flurry said aloud. “Governor Plexippus ruled the area. He’s in command of the Changeling Heer.”
“Admiral Mimic is not in charge of the navy,” Mudbeak said slowly. His eyes wandered around the golden shield surrounding them. The magic crackled and sparked, and there was a dull hum in the air. “Hives Admiral Lysander commands the surface fleet.”
“What’s left of it,” Flurry snorted. “Fine, she’s the submarine one.”
“Yes.” Mudbeak undid a coat pocket and inspected a few folded papers. Satisfied, he nudged them back into place with a talon. “It’s a cowardly way of war. No self-respecting griffon would shove themselves into a metal tube. Do changelings like cramped spaces?”
Flurry thought about the tunnels under the ghetto in Weter. “They don’t mind them.”
“We already have to shell their bunker complexes into Maar’s Hell. They’re too complicated to storm.” Mudbeak glanced at the shield warily. “Princess?”
Flurry kept walking. When he did not continue, she sighed and prompted him. “Yes?”
“Is this shield going to explode?”
“Not unless I want it to,” Flurry answered.
It took an hour to reach the hill. Flurry was morbidly surprised to find it was an earth pony cemetery. The original settlers of Goodspring had buried their families there for at least three generations going from the headstones. The hilltop was dry and covered in sagebrush.
The alicorn stopped in a relatively open area between several different gravesites. A few clans of earth ponies had lived in the area. The last markers were simple wooden planks with names and dates of death. Flurry squinted through the eye slits to read the nearest one.
Whiskey Rose: A Lily of the Valleys. Always Remembered.
The date was during the Great War, and the wooden board was cracked. Flurry swung her head back to Mudbeak. “Did they pick this location, or did you?”
“It was not their first pick,” Mudbeak squawked. “They’ve gone back and forth over the past two weeks. It was their idea for a direct meeting.”
Flurry Heart had not met any of the changeling intermediaries that eventually contacted General Mudbeak. Her role was simple. She backed up and the four soldiers parted. The alicorn walked backwards until her armored flank skirt bumped against the rear of the bubble shield with a crackle of electricity. One of the guards peered back with a tan beak and wide green eyes, then snapped his head forward at the distant truck engines.
The bubble shield amplified the noonday sun. Her magic was gold, and it intensified the rays coming down into strange, shifting refractions resembling pillars of flame on the exterior. Flurry didn’t bother anchoring the spell to anything on the hill. She kept her horn primed.
The truck engines faded to the west. Flurry counted two by sound. One of the griffons swung a radio pack down between her wings and adjusted the dials. She listened for a moment. “Forward acknowledges,” she whispered quietly. “Contact imminent.”
The gorget and helmet were stiff, so Flurry partially turned around to look behind her. From the hill, she had an excellent view of the wide, curving line of the encircling trucks, half-tracks, and towed artillery. She could also see three elder dragons the size of small mountains lounging to the southeast. Ember would be there.
The Dragon Lord had agreed to help scout for the encirclement. She maintained her dragons would not be used to storm the city. The anti-air atop Las Pegasus could probably pierce dragon scale, and Flurry had overheard the Tzinacatl warbands running counts of dragons from Amoxtli.
Ember had brought nearly a thousand dragons to war, leaving a scattering of older, younger, and crippled dragons on the Dragon Isles. It was comparable to the dragon migration from prewar. But a thousand dragons can’t fill a frontline.
Flurry turned back around. And the Changelings don’t know they won’t be involved in an assault. Around twenty black shapes slowly flew up from one of the cratered valleys to the west. The alicorn tugged the pack of gum free and shoved three sticks of bubblegum into her muzzle.
She smacked her lips nosily, causing one guard to look back at her. She grinned with bubblegum running through her teeth. He turned back just before the first changeling landed at the edge of the cemetery.
It was a Queen’s Guard in bright blue armor. Flurry wasn’t necessarily surprised by that, but the guard was young with short fangs. He glared at the five people under the bubble shield with a shotgun slung under a buzzing wing, then sent up a green flare from his horn. He began to pace with restless legs, blue armor clanking. It was slightly too large for him.
The remaining shapes descended one by one. The alicorn counted the uniforms. Another Queen’s Guard landed first and moved to his partner, followed by three changelings in blue uniforms with ocean waves on the bars of their collars. All of them were armed with submachine guns. The remaining twelve changelings were in black standard uniforms. They fanned out in a half circle around the hilltop. One set down a radio and put on a headset, speaking in a low voice.
The admiral and the governor landed. Admiral Mimic was a short mare; her eyes were a brilliant ocean blue under a darker blue cap. Chrysalis’ trident crown was embossed in gold leaf on the top. As a whole, the changeling’s uniform was pressed and impeccable even in the unexpectedly hot day. She adjusted her stance to seem taller.
Governor Plexippus landed last. In contrast to Mimic, he was sweating in a disheveled black uniform. A white undershirt was exposed at the collar, and he did not bother with a hat. His head fin was slick with sweat. The stallion was well into his forties with a scar running down the side of his neck that cracked the chitin. It was faded gray, and his green eyes were tired.
General Mudbeak twitched his wings and pulled out the folded sheet of paper. Wind blew across the bubble and through the sagebrush atop the cemetery hill. The griffon cleared his throat. “A-as an officer of the Reichsarmee of Kaiser Grover VI-”
“We’ve wired the dockyards, airbases, and parts of the cloud infrastructure to blow,” Mimic interrupted with a clipped, dual-toned accent. Her Herzlander was almost flawless. “Any attempt to assault the city will be met with force. We will bring the topside down on the undercity and bury it.”
Mudbeak stuttered for a moment, then placed the paper down in the dirt. “So your adjutants said,” he finally remarked. “We are aware. Your defenses will be destroyed.”
“Half a million ponies will die,” Mimic claimed. She looked past Mudbeak to the Princess standing in the back of the shield.
Flurry smacked her gum.
“We would like to avoid that,” Mudbeak continued. “As I was saying: I am an officer of the Reichsarmee and today I negotiate on behalf of Kaiser Grover VI.” He held up the paper. “This paper is a direct offer from his desk: Lay down your weapons and surrender the city, and the Kaiser pledges to protect every changeling under your command.”
“Are we supposed to believe a scrap of paper?” Plexippus hissed behind Mimic. His Herzlander was nearly as rough as Flurry’s, and the alicorn quirked her muzzle. Who’d he learn it from to sound like that?
“This offer is generous,” Mudbeak scoffed back. “Considering the state of our captured scouts and pilots if we ever recover them, this is more than you deserve.”
“If you want Las Pegasus intact,” Mimic countered, “withdraw your forces and allow us to evacuate oceanside. We leave with equipment and changelings to the Olenian Peninsula in waves. We will take ponies as a precaution, but we will leave-”
“No,” Mudbeak shook his head. “You are surrounded, Admiral, by land and by sea. This is an offer of surrender, not a negotiation.”
“What of our civilians?” Plexippus asked. His right wing buzzed twice.
“Under the current standing of the Griffonian Reich, every changeling within Equestria is classified as a potential combatant,” Mudbeak waved a claw. “You are shapeshifters. This pledge from the Kaiser is to all changelings residing in Las Pegasus.”
“You’ll kill us all,” Mimic rolled her eyes.
“We will not,” Mudbeak promised. Flurry watched sweat pool under his wings.
Mimic frowned at the griffon for several moments. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re standing under her shield. You’ll let her kill us. Or are we supposed to believe you’ll stop her?”
Flurry smacked her gum and started to blow a bubble.
“She sank every ship that tried to leave,” Plexippus said behind Mimic.
Flurry popped the bubble and worked her jaw. “Not all of them!” she finally called out. “Your admiral sank the last one!”
“So you claim,” Mimic sneered far too quickly and casually. The green-eyed changeling behind her did not look surprised. His right wing buzzed three times.
Flurry pulled the gum back into her mouth and chewed loudly. She kept her helmet still, but her eyes went past the two changelings to the varied Hegemony soldiers. The black-uniformed Heer spread out behind the Queen’s Guard and Mimic’s marines.
“The Kaiser will take you under his wing,” Mudbeak read directly from the page. “This is not an offer made lightly. You will be guaranteed safe conduct to the prisoner-of-war camps in Hayston and Albion, and you will be held until the war’s end under our guard.”
“Your lines are overstretched and there’s a storm over half of Equestria,” Mimic snorted. “A few victories don’t make that cub a conqueror.”
“Better than a few defeats,” Flurry quipped back. Her voice was slightly muffled by the wad of bubblegum. She ran her tongue over her molars. I fucking hate bubblegum.
“If you want the airfields and dockyards,” Plexippus interrupted, “we withdraw without issue. Any attack and we’ll blow the city.”
“There will be no withdrawal,” Mudbeak retorted. “The city will surely starve. It’s burdened with refugees from all across the south. Be reasonable.”
“Ponies will starve first,” Mimic hissed. She looked over Mudbeak’s head.
Flurry met her eyes and shifted the gum into her cheek. “Why do you think that’s going to work?”
The admiral bit her lip with a fang. “Excuse me?”
“Your radio calls me the Alicorn of Death,” Flurry shrugged both armored wings with a flash of crystal. “I’ll give you credit: you didn’t haul a foal out here like Trimmel did. But that didn’t work either.”
“You care about your ponies, Princess,” Plexippus stated. His right wing buzzed again. “You would not be here if you did not.”
“Changelings are supposed to be clever.” Flurry threw her helmet back in exasperation. “You’re supposed to trick us. Chrysalis took even that from you. All you have is cruelty now.”
“Enough,” Mudbeak interrupted with a glare backwards. His eyes were more nervous than they should be, but Flurry closed her mouth and resumed glaring at the gathered changelings. The griffon twisted to the changelings. “If you did not come here to surrender, there’s nothing further to discuss.”
“If you do not allow us to withdraw,” Mimic countered, “we have no choice but to hold as long as we can. The siege will leave you with nothing. No dockyards, no airbases…no ponies.”
“If that’s the case,” Flurry snarled, “I might as well fly in there myself.” Her horn pulsed and the shield crackled with blue sparks. The changelings beyond the bubble shield tensed. “Save us all the trouble of waiting several months.”
Plexippus looked past the shield to the southeast. Flurry suppressed a smirk. From the hilltop, he could see the dragons. His left wing buzzed twice. The alicorn watched with bemusement as the changelings slowly tried to flank the shield.
Then she carefully dropped her expression as one of the black-uniformed changelings shifted his shotgun with a wing to aim just under a Queen’s Guard’s exposed neck. They aren’t trying to flank us. She buried the realization deep.
“We want the guarantee announced over the radio,” Plexippus said. “All channels.”
“You can’t trust that!” Mimic hissed to the changeling behind her.
“If it broadcasts out and you break it, no changeling will ever surrender to the Reichsarmee again,” he continued.
“We will do so tomorrow,” Mudbeak agreed.
“No,” Admiral Mimic spat. “If you do not withdraw by the end of the week, ponies will-”
“Stop.”
Mimic stopped, if only because the shield flexed from the magic in Flurry’s voice.
The alicorn remained behind the four guards. She spat the gum out into the dirt. “I have heard it all before. I have run out of tears to shed. If you wish to walk this path, I will follow. I will walk over their corpses and yours until we reach the Changeling Lands.”
Mimic’s sea blue eyes flickered at the mention of her home. She took a deep breath. “We do not surrender Las Pegasus.”
Plexippus looked at the dragons, then the alicorn, then the back of Admiral Mimic’s head. One hoof shuffled over the other, tugging on a sleeve. Flurry exhaled and her horn glowed brighter.
She felt the switchblade folded inside a hole in his hoof. The Governor buzzed a wing and looked over his shoulder, but remained where he was. The standard soldiers had surrounded the marines and Queen’s Guard, but shifted in place nervously.
Plexippus closed his tired eyes for a second, then looked up at Flurry Heart. He met her gaze through the slits in her helmet. Neither said anything for a heartbeat. Mimic noticed the cold look and tracked the gaze. Her head began to turn around.
Flurry opened her mouth. “If you’re going to do something, you’re in the place to do it.” Her wings extended to gesture around at the cemetery.
Plexippus flexed his hoof and the switchblade sprang out. Mimic had enough time to twist her head back.
She opened her mouth in a shriek of surprise just before Plexippus stabbed her in the throat. The smaller mare struggled against the stallion with flailing hooves; her hat fell away. The two Queen’s Guards reacted quicker than the marines and drew their weapons, but one fell to the shotgun blast and another turned in time for the shot to spark off their armor. A marine managed to kill one of the soldiers before falling.
Two bullets sparked off Flurry’s shield. Mudbeak and the four guards tensed, but Flurry looked to the griffoness with the radio. “Call in that we’re fine.” The griffoness flinched at the shots bouncing off the shield, but held a receiver to her beak.
A shotgun slug ricocheted off the shield. The last Queen’s Guard was dragged down by three of the soldiers after landing a bolt of magic that shot through one of the Heer. They struggled to hold him down and stab him in the gaps of his blue armor. Knives flashed in green magic.
Plexippus straddled Mimic, throwing her onto her buzzing wings and twisting the switchblade. He held it with the hole in his hoof. “I’m sorry,” he hissed out. Mimic gurgled something in response.
The last one to die was the young Queen’s Guard that first landed. The changeling did not beg; he died snarling and hissing at the other changelings. He tried to pull a grenade free before one knife finally plunged into an eye and the body stilled.
When it was over, nine black-clad changelings stood shakily in the cemetery. Governor Plexippus staggered upright above the body of Admiral Mimic. She died with her eyes open just before the tombstone for Whiskey Rose.
“I want your word!” Plexippus hissed.
“You have it,” Mudbeak said. “And the Kaiser’s word-”
“Fuck him!” the changeling snarled. He flung the switchblade against the shield and it sparked off. His hoof shook. “Hers!”
Flurry Heart finally stepped forward. Her armored boots kicked up small plumes of dust. “I promise,” she said down to the Governor. “Surrender accepted.”
“Including civilians.”
“Yes.” Flurry paused. “Unless you’re talking about Rockfeller or-”
“My wife,” the changeling panted, “and my daughters. You don’t set a fucking hoof in that city until we say so. You try anything and we blow it all up. All of it. Everyone.”
Flurry Heart looked past him to the floating clouds in the distance. “I agree. I give you my word.”
“H-how,” Mudbeak coughed and cleared this throat, “how long do you need?”
The alicorn wasn’t sure what he meant until she considered the dead. Shit, this is going to look bad. “How many Queen’s Guard are in the city?”
“Less than a dozen,” Plexippus answered. “The Kreigsmarine will try to blow the port. I need a week.”
“Three days,” Mudbeak said surprisingly quick. He turned back to the griffoness. “Radio it in. We’ll keep recon patrols, but no attack under any circumstances. Ignore any fighting.”
The changeling licked his fangs and stared down at Mimic. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t sink that last ship,” Flurry nickered.
“I know.”
Flurry considered the dead mare, then her horn dimmed. The golden bubble shield burst into sparks and faded away. Mudbeak and the griffons froze.
Plexippus staggered back and his horn glowed green. He nearly drew his pistol from the flank holster, but the changeling caught himself and waved his wings back. The soldiers behind him hesitated before lowering their weapons.
Flurry stepped forward to the body near the gravestone, then stomped her hoof on Mimic’s head. She stomped again on her neck. The alicorn wiped her bloody hoof on the crisp blue uniform, then walked backwards.
Plexippus flinched at the ruined, headless body.
“Take her back with you,” Flurry shrugged her wings. The crystals chimed. “Changelings lie. Say I killed her after she said something that pissed me off. That might buy you time.”
“How did we get away then?” Plexippus asked dryly. He dragged the body by one rear boot away from the alicorn. His hooves were still shaking.
“Griffons stopped me,” Flurry cast a glance at Mudbeak. Her horn glowed and the bubble shield resumed around the group.
The changelings left their other dead on the hilltop, and carried two of their wounded back to the trucks hastily. They sped away. Flurry Heart frowned at the retreating vehicles from her vantage point. “I did not expect that.”
“Nor did I,” Mudbeak coughed. “Blessed Boreas, we’ve always heard rumors the Hegemony’s military branches hated each other, but not to that degree. The Governor was the one that wanted the meeting. He must have wanted to see if he could surrender. Why did the Admiral refuse?”
Flurry said nothing. She began to walk back east, stepping over the bloodstain from Admiral Mimic. The other griffons followed this time.
“Did you truly not destroy that ship?” Mudbeak asked.
Flurry had to fully turn around in her armor. “No.”
“The reports said you flung a submarine into it.”
“The submarine sank it,” Flurry nickered. “They had orders to.”
Mudbeak looked to the city to the west. He wiped a shaking claw cross his head feathers after removing his cap. “I do not wish to see what Maar-spawned madness comes of these parasites when we reach their cursed land.”
Flurry thought about Grover’s answer. “The seas will boil and the sky will burn.” Her eyes moved east. She had seen the bomber fleet parked at the eastern air bases. She had seen part of them over the Battle of the Celestial Plain, striking the Hegemony’s supply lines in targeted raids.
But the Reich was holding back over Equestria. The walk back was quiet.
On the first day, nothing happened. Las Pegasus continued to occasionally fire artillery down into the no mare’s land. Dragons made sweeps across the ocean. General Mudbeak radioed the surrender agreement, and Canterlot repeated the broadcast across every channel.
On the second day, gunfire broke out in the undercity and explosions rocked the dockyards. The Reichsarmee and the Thestral warbands remained alert, but the explosions stopped after two hours. The gunfire ceased by nightfall.
By dawn of the third day, flags drifted down from the clouds. Chrysalis’ trident fluttered in the winds over the craters before being trampled by the wheels of the advancing Reichsarmee. Scouts entered the undercity, then flew up to the clouds. Radio messages traded back and forth until nightfall.
On the ninth day, the Diarch of Equestria entered the undercity of Las Pegasus with her Thestrals to a crowd of jubilant ponies and former slaves. She toured the dockyards and factories, now being used to house thousands of Changeling prisoners-of-war guarded by griffons as the railways were linked back to the east. Dragons lifted ruined submarines out of the docks where they had attempted to be scuttled. Just before dusk, the Princess ascended to the upper city to meet with the Reichsarmee command. And the higher profile collaborators that tried to flee.
The hangings started on the tenth day.
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I wonder if we'll see Mr.Horse in all this, amazing chapter as always
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I've mentioned this before, but I just can't do Mr. Horse. It's too much of a meme. I'll slip in Goodsprings, a reference to Cass, even a reference to the Joker playing card the Courier has from Fallout: New Vegas, but I cannot do Mr. Horse. I'm pushing it with Archon Proteus being basically Joshua Graham but Bird.
I do like Mr. Horse's Las Pegasus in-game, however.
That internal fighting would make even the empire of Japan uncomfortable. Damn Mimic though, never surrendering because she had a way out, hop on a submarine and sail into the sunset.
I've reached the depressing stage of finally being caught up with this one. Tried to pace myself to not catch up too quickly, but alas, here we are.
Absolutely phenomenal work my friend, keep it up
Genuine infighting now. Canterlot was one thing, and this was a rather extreme circumstance, but this was still flat out two branches going at it. Mudbeak is right that shit is just going to get more insane as they get closer to the Changeling Lands.
"the seas will boil and the skies will burn"
Shit is he talking about the Mushroom I was suspect he hides in his sleeve somewhere , because none in the right mind would drop it on equs that would make land unlivable for themselves and if he wanted to use it he has to wait to reach bad lands and that means now.
Well, this was almost refreshing to see.
Even Flurry was thinking it, where'd all the conniving changelings go?
Waiting for opportunity, looks like, seemingly in short supply even for changelings in this stage of Chryssie's rule.
They really have begun to lose who they are, just as Thorax lamented.
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Be heartened, this story updates with a frequency disproportionate to its quality.
Most writings here with prose as solid as this, characters as compelling as these, expertly handling themes as these, telling a story as epic as this, and depicting a setting as convincingly as this...
Their update cycles are usually several months.
And they're worth every day of waiting, make no mistake.
We just really lucked out with this one and this author. Just imagining the sheer workload...
Worth every day for this one, too, just so it's clear.
Whelp time for Flurry to put on the Alicorn of the Rope title again and take care of at least three known collaboratiors. I do like how the changeling governer was like "No I don't want a promise from you. I want a promise from the walking apocolypse that is standing right behind you chewing expired gum." Gives the same kind of energy as bringing a necular warhead to the negotiations.
So from what I understand Los Pegasus was indeed the last city in the south. Now the only path is west through the Old War battlefields until getting to Ancorage and Vanhoover which sit on the edge of the old borders between Equestria and the Changeling Lands. If we are in a WW2 setting I would see these cities as like the anchor points for the Changeling's own Sigfried line. It will be upon that line that something bad will happen like that nuke but that is mere speculation.
Either way I do expect Flurry to make another trip back to Canterlot or at least I hope so. I would like some more interactions with her and Grover.
Goodsprings? Ain't that a kick in the head.
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I am heartened, this update schedule is unheard of for a story of this quality. Mad props to the author.
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Mimic had her reasons for staying. We'll see next chapter.
11728477
I used to update near daily but slowed down.
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So, reading between the lines, Plexippus figured out one of the subs sank his changelings; he's boxed in by everyone with only one way out: Trust that the Reichsarmee will actually keep their word. (This was actually Grover and Flurry's plan to get surrenders. No changeling is gonna try surrendering to the ponies.) He walked Mimic into an ambush under the pretext of judging how genuine the offer was.
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Where was the Cass reference? Must’ve missed it.
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Well, considering that the ship had a sign asking to not be sunk with the submarine as the intended audience, I don’t think that was too great a deduction.
Though I must confess I’m intensely curious now as to what was compelling enough for the admiral to be willing to essentially commit an elaborate suicide.
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It's addictive enough that I'm re-reading the story from the start again. Already on Chapter 41 after a single day's reading! (Recovering from a broken arm gives one plenty of time to go back and see what details were missed,)
11728391
That's totally fair, I look forward to how the story develops as they continue to push west
11728486
I've been meaning to ask, what happened to the changelings that stayed in the Reich? Are they in internment camps or did Chrysalis get them like she got Thranx?
Honestly not that surprising to see. The breakdown in the chain of command within the Hegemony was almost immediate post-Battle Of Canterlot. We saw glimpses of it in the previous chapters, but this is the most clear-cut example so far. The remaining Changelings forces in Equestria are in a full-blown route. Plexippus was obviously able to see that trying to hold out in Las Pegasus was a fool's errand. And if the Changeling Navy was sinking any ships that tried to surrender, Mimic would have to go.
We're going to be seeing many more instances of this sort of thing in the future. Mutiny, betrayal, surrender. All will become more and more common as Flurry pushes across the sea to Olenia and the Changeling Lands proper.
My big concern now, however, is the nuke.
From where you're lying, Mimic, it must seem like an 18-karat run of bad luck.
Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.
As cursed as it may sound, in the frame of this story I found this chapter "wholesome".
Finally we're seeing something beginning to stir within the Changeling military. It is not just Jachs anymore. This wasn't inter-service rivalry - a changeling high-ranking commander just decided it's worth the risk to abandon the Queen and surrender to the enemy with hundreds of thousands of his soldiers. Even if by the end it's only going to be a small fracture of the military that surrenders - it will be a success.
And let's not forget another important fact: a large Equestrian city just got saved alongside half a million ponies. It is a glimmer of hope for post-war Equestria. Every intact city and every surviving pony matters for the future.
Mr House on this would be nice. Or maybe a mr. Andrew Ryan.
Ryan is the type who would snarl and spit on Flurry's face if he hang, all the while grinning.
Flurry Heart so far has been good about hanging mostly just collaborators and the worst of the changelings so unless stated otherwise this seems like the most peaceful takeover of a city. The Changelings are starting to learn their queen will kill them all and I can't wait to see more.
Time to see if we are three for three and find a group of Earth pony supremacists in the Appleloosa Protectorate.
Collaborators die. And I dint think the agreement protected Pony Collaboraters. So Changeling troops and civvies are protected as are the slaves. And Flurry gets a lot of military gear captured for her troops.
On the tenth day of warfare my true love gave to me
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Equestria fell (and Pax Chrysalis was established) on a foundation of corpses. The fall of Chrysalis' empire and the rise of a new Equestria will necessarily require another foundation of corpses, both willing and unwilling. Even Celestia will admit as much later on (and do nothing because she doesn't feel like getting her hooves dirty).
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I almost think the first day should be one Panzerkampfwagen as it does fit with the lore, but I'm hesitant at the prospect of having to sing that 10 times.
And now I'm caught up too. Darn.
Such an incredible epic. And now we finally see Flurry's hardline stance bear fruit. Only took ruthlessly slaughtering tens of thousands of her own helpless ponies to finally take a city relatively in-tact.
I wonder if Chrysalis did the same thing early on in The Great War? Razed a few pony towns and then used them as examples of what anything but unconditional surrender results in...
Flurry now reminds me of The Operative from Serenity: Doing things he knows full well are utterly monstrous and beyond any hope of redemption, in order to build a world where no monsters will ever be needed again. Yet, also knowing that he'd have no place in such a world.
I'm wondering now if Flurry is holding out hope for Twilight's recovery, not just because she desperately wants to have even just ONE blood relative alive in the world, but because she feels that Equestria isn't a place where a "monster" should sit upon one of its thrones. Like she's been saying for a while now: she's not a good princess; and I'm finding it hard to envision her retaining the will to lead ponies when the world no longer has need of a weapon like her...
I also can't wait to see how she and the Kaiser eventually..."resolve things"...
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Ah, but she didn't spare "the kids". She killed the son because he would have inherited the title, and her objective was to eliminate the nobility as a potential political adversary - not out of any sense of justice. The fact that it was part of a premeditated mass-murder, contingent on few actual confirmable crimes and a LOT of hearsay - provided by a mare well-known for fabricating hearsay as part of her own objectives in securing herself a comfortable living under the Hegemony - is VERY believable. It's the sort of thing you find throughout history when we read of the villains of Earth's past.
This wasn't a matter of a young filly lashing out emotionally. She justified it to herself as "the greater good".
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Beryllium didn't throw anyone out onto the street. His FATHER did. Because for nobility, marrying out of wedlock creates bastards, which endangers the line of succession and therefore inheritance. It's a matter of practicality, not cruelty, which puts it one up the Morality Scale from Flurry Heart's reaction to it. And that's not even considering the basic moral judicial code that "the son does not inherit the sins of the father".
On top of which, the entirety of that story comes from Cozy Glow. Whose entire racket is misrepresenting facts to defame others. That Flurry Heart uses her second-hoof testimony with zero corroboration, to assign a father's action to the son who is subordinate to the father, is on par with shooting a soldier who fed a starving civilian their rations and who then obeyed an order from their commanding officer to retrieve the rations. And not because he necessarily DID any of that, but because some other civilian with a reason to lie about it said so, and nobody bothered to check to see if it was true.
Because that would get in the way of killing off the nobility, which was the actual entire point. This is what's known as "fabricating charges for political purposes".
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...She did verify the information, though. Thorax literally says he verified at least half of the reports. Additionally, these reporfs aren't just coming from Cozy Glow, but from her group of fired servants she protected. ALL the decent nobles are either in hiding or dead, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of the nobles she executed were collaborators who willingly enslaved their servants the second they could. ALL of them deserved to hang.
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No? That's not what she yells at them, that's not what she rants about, and that's not what Flurry Heart talks about in private afterwards. To Flurry, it was about them being assholes to her ponies. If she just wanted to consolidate power and remove opposition, she would've ordered her army to sack the Estates District, not setup an elaborate trap with multiple steps. She would've done something to the foals, Princes in the Tower style. If her motivation was unlimited power! she'd be way, way worse.
But...not everyone is going to view it that way. Ponies have seen Flurry Heart be deceptive and vicious, and that carries over to everything else. When Flurry put on her big girl pants and started doing government stuff, Jacques pointed out that she snipped the ELF's hardline support across the political spectrum with her picks. Sunset squared-up because she saw the gambit...Flurry just picked ponies she thought would do a good job and acknowledge the ELF's contributions. There was no higher gambit.
Same thing with the "Crystal Empress" question: Flurry Heart is just placating us as she wraps power around her pointy horn! One day, she will give the Palpatine speech! She will declare the Second...Crystal...Empire! Equestria will be no more!
Flurry doesn't want to put herself above her aunt or her mother. That's it. It would probably be easier to merge everything into one polity and work from there instead of the "dual-Princess" thing she actually did. There's nothing stopping her from doing it except her. She's not thinking about the optics; she's thinking of her family.
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Probably the big reason she spared AJ.
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Flurry makes clear that the nobility are a hindrance, she wants them gone, and that leaving any scions alive to claim their respective titles would be detrimental to the purge. It is a purge, one thought out aforehoof, and is not just a seventeen-year-old throwing a tantrum about ponies "being assholes" (she is perfectly fine with ponies being assholes so long as she does not deem them to be a hindrance to her objectives).
That is even brought up regarding the survivors - to minimize the potential for revenge, Flurry has them split up and fostered all over the country. So yes, she IS doing something with the foals, but she has clearly drawn the line at needing to have something to accuse a pony of before hanging them. Actually proving the accusation? Pfft. A servant said so and Cozy Glow gave the go-ahead. Good enough for any politically-motivated purge, really.
She is being an absolute pragmatist with the goal of eradicating the Changeling threat. She sees the nobility, notions of due process, and numerous Equestrian ideals to be a hindrance to that, says so, and discards each in turn for "the greater good". It's the entire reason Rarity and the entire ELF leadership is upset with her. Equestrian morals, to Flurry Heart, got in the way of Equestria's survival, so she dispenses with them as she sees necessary, and she repeatedly says so.
EDIT: Regarding the notion that it would have been EASIER to just "sack the Estates District" - I can think of half-a-dozen ways that would have resulted in fewer than half of those she was targeting actually being captured. How would it work if even half-a-dozen significant families escaped by teleporting or walking on clouds, just as two possible examples?
Flurry's army was still securing Canterlot against the Changelings. But march on the majority of its Unicorn-heavy population? Summary executions in the street are a hell of a lot harder to justify, hide, or explain away than simply inviting all the movers and shakers who STILL want to be movers and shakers to a dinner where the liberating Princess wants to talk with the movers and shakers. Somepony who voluntarily exposes their throat to you because they trust you not to cut it is a much easier victim than somepony who sees you marching down the street dragging their neighbors out to be shot.
EDITEDIT: Just FYI, I'm not bashing your writing here. I find this all to be quite grounded from the perspective of historical realities. While it's clear Flurry Heart committed mass-murder as a matter of purging a bureaucracy and social class she considered detrimental to success against the Changelings - who themselves present a Holocaust-level threat to the world at large, not just Equestria - it's also clear that she WANTS to be just and right in doing it. It's equally clear that she doesn't have the time or resources to do it lawfully or morally. The result is one hell of a story, and I love it.
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I'd like you to re-read not only what you just wrote, but also apply the "verification" claim to Beryllium. What you're arguing is not that the story regarding him was verified, but that there's a 50/50 chance it was. And regardless of whether or not it was verified, the story itself does not present HIM as committing any form of capital crime. Not treason, not murder, not anything but obeying his father's demands to cease his relationship with a particular filly. He was killed because he would have inherited the title from his father, a title Flurry wanted to dissolve. And I'll remind you that Flurry was a foreign leader with no authority whatsoever regarding the disposition of Equestrian titles.
Indeed, you just argued that fully HALF the accused were hanged on non-verified accusations - which is a bigger claim of mass-murder than even I was making. I was assuming, though I didn't say it, that as many as 90% of those hanged were indeed guilty of treason by dint of collaboration with the enemy.
On top of which, a fired servant's word is the word of an accuser - NOT of a witness. If I work for you, and you fire me, and I go to a court and say you did so because you wanted to hide a pile of bodies I discovered in a closet, the court does NOT say "well that's a wrap, off to the gallows". Because for all the court knows, I said this only to get back at you for firing me. If you REALLY wanna lower the bar that far, feel free, but you're making my point for me.
The fact remains that there were no trials and there was no real concern about verification because it wasn't about dispensing justice. It was about dispensing with the noble-based bureaucracy which Flurry blamed for helping cost Equestria the war.
Incidentally, I find one intriguing notion about the combination of the original Diarchy's abdication and the eradication of the Unicorn nobility, in that the Diarchy received their powers over the sun and moon from the Unicorns as part of the pact founding Equestria.
That pact secured the Unicorn nobility's hereditary lands and titles, so stripping those away not only from those guilty of treason but also their heirs violates the foundation of Equestria itself - and, were any sense of law or logic to apply, would also break the spell which transferred Solar and Lunar powers, reverting them to the Unicorns. Were Celly and Luny to insist on retaining those powers at this point, it would be nothing more than theft.
11731727
I mean, those nobles were given "due process" though. Certainly with regards to how any monarchy does it. As the sovereign of the land, Flurry Heart is the final authority on guilt and the "just punishment" for any crime brought to her attention. This is technically true today in most existing monarchies and was especially true in historical ones. There's no "preponderance of the evidence", discovery process, jury of peers, or anything else like that. And specifically where nobility is involved, the sole determiner of guilt is the sovereign they're beholden to. Claims are presented to the monarch along with any evidence(or even just "evidence") supporting the claim, and the monarch decides if it's sufficient and then passes judgement.
How things happened in the Chrystal City with Sunburst and the others? That was pretty spot on for a traditional monarchy-style "trial". The accused were brought out, testimony was given, and then Flurry decided if she believed the evidence presented. That was due process.
To say she was acting to remove political hinderances in this instance...I mean, were they political hinderances? I don't know that UnknownError has actually bothered to explain enough about Equesrtria's pre-war political system and how much actual power any titled nobility realistically had. We can assume there was a House of Lords allegory, sure; but I don't think that was ever explicitly stated. And even if there was, the nobles didn't seem to have any levies or retain any personal armies that they could use to to actually oppose anything Flurry did or tried to do over any objections they had. They were entirely impotent. At best, those nobles maybe could have tried to leverage financial influence to oppose Flurry? Presumably? But Equestria's economy is so borked at present that hard currency is almost worthless anyway. Ponies can't eat gold, or heat their homes with it. The whole nation is running on a command economy with its citizens being issued rations to keep them alive. There's nothing that money is good for.
Now, that's not to say that Flurry isn't a deeply emotionally traumatized teenager prone to acting rashly more often than not. She clearly is. And while she has demonstrated herself to be quite clever where her survival is concerned, what she hasn't necessarily been shown to be is politically clever. Blackpeak proved as much. Flurry is not an experienced
handhoof at The Great Game and she doesn't have any clue how to outmaneuver political opponents on a purely political landscape. What she is good at though is steamrolling anything that stands in her way when they try to oppose her. See: Blackpeak and Kemerskai.However, she also does not seem to care about acting against merely potential threats that could move against her down the road. Otherwise she'd be exterminating communist and republican factions left right and center. But, her attitude has largely been: "as long as they do what I say right now, that's good enough". Even though those groups clearly aren't going to be her most avid supporters in the fulness of time, she doesn't remove them, even when they aren't quiet about their discontent. In the first meeting of Flurry's privy council, Gabriel all but vows that Flurry will face future opposition from him and his faction if they don't get true representative government in Nova Griffonia. Flurry just asks if he's going to cause trouble right now, and when he admits he's not, she shrugs him off and moves on.
The nobles never made a move to stand in Flurry's way, nor did any of them say anything that seemed to suggest they ever would. So it's highly unlikely that political pragmatism had anything to do what Flurry did. That motivation doesn't fit with how she's behaved towards purely political factions either before or after that night. Events and motivations in the story seem to suggest that she was just pissed at them for exploiting her ponies for personal gain.
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Flurry Heart was not any part of Equestrian heritage, government, nobility, or other form of authority when she dissolved the Equestrian nobility. She was absolutely NOT "the sovereign of the land" outside of the Crystal Empire.
So, ah, WHAT "due process" are you talking about?
She was a foreign liberator who took it upon herself to summarily execute hundreds of Equestrian authorities, half of which I've been told were on charges nopony verified as true. The specific example of Beryllium, even IF true, did not in any way encompass a capital offense, but he was hung anyways along with the rest.
That's simply murder, conducted under color of law, by a foreign monarch with no Equestrian authority at all.
But this lets me touch on something I wanted to discuss anyways: that Princesses of Equestria hold their title not from Heredity but by Acclamation. I was quite impressed that Unknown actually included that in Flurry's coronation ceremony - which took place quite a bit later. That said, there IS no "heir" to the throne in Equestria, because it is a combination of Unicorns (feudal nobility), Pegasi (military dictatorship), and Earth Ponies (representative republic). The result was a parliamentary democracy, with the Diarchy ruling not as Queens but as Princesses.
Given that we're taking a show made for little girls involving colorful horses very seriously (this is a fic about a Hearts of Iron mod), then if we are going to talk about it at all we have to accept that there was a very serious reason for this within the scope of Equestria At War's fiction. There's an easy answer right at hoof: Princes and Princesses are positions with no innate authority. They are authorities-in-waiting.
A Princess who rules by Acclamation does so not because the law or other force of government stands ready to impose her diktat upon the populace, but because the populace itself accepts her rulings. That is how the Princess (rightfully Empress) of the Crystal Empire became the Princess of Nova Griffonia to begin with, and even then it was only amongst those creatures who granted her Acclamation. It didn't include the actual government. Her rulership over Nova Griffonia is largely a matter of Rule by Conquest, having counter-revolutioned the revolution in very explosive fashion, but that Conquest was only made possible by the original Acclamation which provided the support to make it possible. She then liberated, and laid lawful claim to, not only the Crystal Empire of her mother's era, but that of the pre-Sombra era.
None of that extends to Equestria. She came with fire and sword, as a liberator of somepony else's nation. She did not argue that Equestria no longer existed, nor that either Celestia or Luna were no longer its lawful Princesses. In short, her claim to having any right to dissolve Equestrian titles is as valid as the United States declaring the Royal Family of the United Kingdom to be commoners. It's a non-starter.
So what were, and are, the Princesses, exactly?
Guardians.
That was the entire point of granting the power of raising Sun and Moon to Celestia and Luna. The Unicorns divested themselves of that power, but retained their lands and titles. It wasn't "just because". It was a contractural power-sharing agreement, along with the Pegasi committing themselves to weather control and the Earth Ponies committing themselves to land stewardship. Celestia and Luna proceeded to address every major threat facing the nation, and while we don't know just how secure things were before Luna's Banishment, we do know that afterwards there were so few threats that the very idea of needing a standing army beyond the Royal Guard went out the window.
Ultimately, Celestia and Luna failed as Guardians. So did Twilight. Flurry Heart has stepped up to the plate and is doing a bang-up job of dealing with the biggest threats to Equestria (and Equus as a whole, for that matter), but the ELF and Rarity are entirely correct in pointing out that she has been throwing what made Equestria what it was in the first place out the window because it is inconvenient to the Current Cause.
And that's how she ended up committing mass-murder. Because she does not have the time or resources to mount a legitimate judicial inquiry on any authoritative basis, so she simply dispenses with it rather than risk repeating the failure of the Equestrian Liberation Front.
Let me end by playing Discord's Advocate here: had she given that decision over to Sunset Shimmer - who actually WAS recalled and empowered by Celestia, and therefore has the right as a General of Equestria to declare martial law - then at least a tribunal could have been justified. But instead, we have Cozy Glow, a mare whose entire career revolves around libel, slander, and extortion, presenting her libel, slander and extortion to Flurry Heart as the central evidence for hanging hundreds of ponies from the proverbial yardarm. Verification was lax, where it was attempted at all. This is the kind of thing Beria did under Stalin, and while Flurry Heart is no Stalin, Cozy Glow is absolutely a Beria and always has been.
This makes for a much more interesting story. Let's not pretend that in our mutual adoration of Flurry for what she's gone through and accomplished, that she doesn't also have the blood of innocents on her hooves.
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Woof. Oh no...
So, there is no nobility in ShowEquestria. Okay, there's Prince Blueblood and Jet Set and Fancy Pants, but there's no titles beyond Prince or Princess really mentioned. Fancy Pants seems like an aristocrat, but no stated title. There's, uh, mayors? Celestia's nobility is largely a fandom invention that was scoped into Equestria at War. There are noble titles in the mod; they come up a few times. Vaguely. Mostly in ELF events where they're put on trial for collaboration by Starlight and Trixie, no names really mentioned, and they basically get-off scot free unless you spend political power and have Twilight seize all their titles for herself as a Daenerys Targaryen overly long title joke. What happens beyond that is not really mentioned. They certainly aren't killed. The nobles in popular fanon mostly exist just to annoy Celestia during court. There's no official answer or a map of noble titles and partitions, show or mod.
For P&K: Equestria's pre-war political system, according to Flurry, was run by the point of Celestia's horn. That's...not the whole truth, but she's closer to it than most Equestrians want to admit. The nobility existed as a holdover from Pre-Celestia Equestria, way, way back to the Concordat of the Three Tribes and Princess Platinum, who is basically a mythical figure. Most of the noble lines had made up family trees tying them back to somepony important. Twilight and Shining's parents were very, very minor. Celestia had spent several centuries slowly centralizing the Principality of Equestria with a bureaucracy answerable to her, and incorporating local, mostly independent earth pony democratic institutions. At one point, probably post-Discord, the nobles had actual power, but not anymore. Stalliongrad was ruled by a council of Boyars before the revolution. They did a really shit job and kept news from Celestia until the situation exploded. Beyond that...
Nobles didn't really do much anymore except own things in their "demesnes" with their generational wealth. Flurry never gets a straight answer if any of them actually passed laws or interacted with the local governments of the areas they had on paper. (That's work, so probably not.) Celestia was slowly phasing them out, and they were happy to "horn it up" in Canterlot and hang out around the Princess. (Just Celestia, nopony cared about Luna unless they were trying to win points with Celestia.) They probably looked down on new money industrialists. Celestia was definitely popular enough to just go, "swiggity-swooty, your titles are mooty," and there's not much anypony could have done about it. (Well, fuck-up the economy maybe with mass bank withdrawals.)
Celestia had time to play the long game and that's not something she was interested in doing. She could already act unilaterally. She got her sister back on the throne, made Cadance a Princess, made Twilight a Princess, released Discord, so on and so forth from the show. Celestia never had to ask any of her little ponies if it was okay if she did that. She had Raven Inkwell and an army of bureaucrats to manage things.
Author Answer: I have no fucking idea what the nobility does in Equestria at War. I have no idea if they actually exist in the show. That's why Flurry never actually gets a straight answer about what they do, why they still existed, and what their purpose was. What happens to them is a reference to what happens to them in the ELF events, one of the few times they ever come up. I spent more words than the mod acknowledging them. (Note: Equestria is being reworked. This may change.)
Were they a threat to Flurry? She's an alicorn. She's way more comfortable pointing her horn at people than the others were. Define threat? She could have arrested all of them, carefully corroborated evidence over several weeks, held trials over several more weeks, judged them guilty, and revoked their titles...but they were assholes. Flurry was trying to get the situation under control after shelling Canterlot, having thousands of Changelings prisoner, and lynchings in the street. Her army finally unified under her, but in practice it's a mess of militias and ragged remnants of the ELF. Flurry wasn't going to "waste time." She also just spared the 'lings that abandoned her aunt even if she really didn't want to, and she emotionally rebounded onto an easy target. She frays pretty badly over the course of the Canterlot arc, culminating in her grandparent's house. She is never given the time, nor takes the time, to recover until The Alicorn and the Griffon.
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EDIT: (Decided to move this part to the top, since it's the main thing being discussed.)
That is precisely my point. She didn't want to waste time, and she thought they were assholes, so she discarded due process and simply murdered the lot of them. A lot of whom had it coming, a lot of whom didn't, since after all if we're going to lower the bar for hanging to "they were assholes", most of Flurry's closest compatriots would have swung beside them.
The determining factors to date have been who Flurry cares about, who is in her way, and who is an obstruction or an ally. That's understandable and makes narrative sense, but what has people apparently upset about it is that I point out that Rarity is correct; it's also murder.
Actually there is. There is even a Kingdom of Canterlot, per the show. It is reasonable to infer that Blueblood will always be a Prince, and never a King, simply because the nobility of Unicornia deferred that authority during the creation of Equestria from the Three Tribes, along with the power to raise Sun and Moon. As you point out (and I already mentioned), this has to be viewed with the framework of the EaW mod, which takes hugely dramatic licenses that, in many cases, no one who ever worked on the show would go along with. Especially not Beakolini.
So when I'm talking about this, it's not merely in terms of what the show said about anything, but what EaW adds to that. The show, for its own part, shows elected local officials - mayors - alongside titled nobility, both historical and current. No one, however, argues that Princess Platinum or Prince Blueblood got their titles by any means other than heredity.
EDIT: Also, Platinum was as "mythical" as Starswirl the Bearded, of whom she was a contemporary.
Yet neither title exists without either a Kingdom or Empire being in play. Princes and Princesses can be delegated authority by a higher power, but have none intrinsically of their own. They otherwise exist as placeholders for the preceding authorities - their respective Kings and Queens.
But in the case of Equestria, the preceding authorities were the Three Tribes, one of which had a Commander and another of which had a Chancellor. Of the three, only Commander Hurricane can definitely be declared his nation's leader. "Chancellor" is a title which only has a single real-world instance where it became the head of a state: Germany, after the Kaiser abdicated. Before that, the position of Chancellor was simply that of being secretary to the Kaiser. We have no idea if the Earth Pony nation followed a similar path or not (although the German-style clothing in the show seems a dead giveaway). Otherwise it's a secretarial position, particularly under an embassy - which suits Puddinghead's role in the show, but means she wouldn't have been the actual Earth Pony leader per se.
Thus the only verifiable source of a Prince, or a Kingdom, is from Unicornia. Equestria inherited the nobility of Unicornia as part and parcel of the union of the Three Tribes, and the Unicorns gave over their powers over Sun and Moon as part of the bargain.
So what was Unicornia? ONLY Canterlot? Or is that merely where the Kingdom's capital resided, with Duchies and Counties and Marches devolving from it before the formation of Equestria? EaW apparently chose the latter path by naming a variety of nobles and ranks for same in order to, as you noted, hold them for trial on treason charges and other mentions in related event fiction.
Do they "do anything"? Does the modern-day Royal Family of Great Britain "do anything"? They're still Royals and still have actual claim to a LOT of land the British Government relies upon for income - a major reason Britain doesn't "do away with the monarchy" is that the deal they made was to guarantee titles, positions, and stipends in exchange for BORROWING the land much of the Government's buildings now sit on. Abolishing the deal returns the land, and anything on it, to the Royals, which would basically bankrupt the country overnight. Equestria's situation may be similar.
That is true of most real-world nobility throughout human history. The extended legal argument of the Bishop of Canterbury regarding Salic law in Henry V, for example, with its references to people who had been dead most of a millenia even by Henry's time. Most of Shakespeare's plays about various royals and related events - such as MacBeth, the Henriad, and Richard III - are half-fabrication at best, intentionally defaming or boosting this historical figure or that in order to firm up popular beliefs in claims made by the rulers of his day. Western Rome versus Constantinople? The Sunni Caliphate versus the Shi'a? It is AMAZING how many people in all of these obtained wealth, power and status by claiming connections so distant as "the cousin of the daughter of the brother of the uncle of the Prophet, peace be unto him".
Within the context of EaW, nobility is an entire political spectrum which numerous nations embrace, to include the actual titles, or equivalents, of Kings, Queens, Dukes, Counts, and even Marchionesses. What in Tartarus is a Marchioness? It's a female ruler of a region considered "one day's march", usually a bordering region. Marches make up Counties, Counties make up Duchies, Duchies make up Kingdoms, Kingdoms make up Empires. The Crystal Empire, at one point, had to include at least two Kingdoms, because the entire point of being an Emperor is to be one step above a King.
Equestria, for its part, included at its founding at least THREE separate nations which joined together, but it did not adopt Imperial structure... not in the show, and not in the game, despite the fact that for the Kingdom of Canterlot to be subordinate to any higher authority, someone had to be the Emperor/Empress...
...or, and this is my view, the imperial power was avoided by creating the station of Princess as a form of Guardianship for the nation as a whole. A position of respect, but not of higher legal authority. A position requiring its holders to do so by Merit and Acclamation, not by Heredity. You had three widely-divergent political systems come together out of the Three Tribes - what you're seeing in the show, to begin with, is a compromise hybrid system of government.
Thus, the nobility was retained, but the position of King was abolished along with the position of Queen. Prince Blueblood can rise no higher than Prince, because there is no King or Queen to succeed, despite there being a Kingdom of Canterlot. In the strictest legal terms, he would be on par with Celestia and Luna, but since his position is hereditary and he never had to seek acclamation, he has essentially zero power beyond his inherited lands, wealth, and accordant social status.
And while it is true that Celestia did all of the things you point out, it is also true she did so with the full Acclamation of her subjects. She didn't have to ask for the simple reason that no one wanted to ask, because they trusted in her to the point that her very name became half-deific even within the scope of the show.
There are few real-world examples of this, but one would be the WW2-era Emperor of Japan, who was "raised to reign, not rule". This was because, as a partially-divine personage drawing his lineage from a goddess, the "mundane" things involved in actual rulership were considered beneath him. This led to his Cabinet doing things which they convinced themselves he "wanted" them to do, or things which they knew he didn't but they could convince others he did. Which led to a cabal being able to drive Japan directly into a war of conquest against China, and then against British, Dutch, and French colonial holdings, without the Emperor signing off on anything.
They respected him so much that they drove Japan to burn around him.
Everytime there's long comments here it's always a poor talk.
Woof. Finally, barely made it. Caught up with it all. Just a few days no biggy. Anyway, I have been loving this story so far, its so cool and I have enjoyed the ride thus far.
Kinda do hope the little scene with Celestia and Luna was a small sign of hope in Luna that she will finally do the right thing. I could be wrong, still be nice though.
Cant wait to see Twilight's eyes open, to see the Bug Queen's head roll and for peace to return to the world. For now anyway. Would be kinda interesting to see Jets start appearing. Gotta be around this time surely. But we will just have to keep reading.
I have a feeling Flurry will very much end up like Lelouch vi Brittania in the end.