• Published 9th Jun 2022
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The Princess and the Kaiser - UnknownError



Princess Flurry Heart of the Crystal Empire and Kaiser Grover VI of the Griffonian Reich meet. They will reclaim their empires, no matter the cost.

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Part Thirteen

Flurry Heart collected the empty bottles and arranged them in a circle in the dirt. She had five, and waited for Rainbow to finish the sixth. Given how the pegasus chugged cider, she wouldn’t have to wait long. She braced the rifle against her shoulder and fired downrange again. There was a ping as she knocked a helmet off a stick.

“Damn, I could barely see that,” Dusty commented to Barrel Roller. “I’d have given a left hoof to have an infantry mare that skilled, no offense Rainbow,” Dusty laughed.

Rainbow stopped chugging her cider and belched in reply. She wiggled her wing stub. “Maybe the Princess takes interest?” she asked. “Hey, Princess Flurry! What’s your tax rate?” she called out.

Flurry would have taken the mockery poorly from any griffon, but Rainbow was always like that. Flurry wiggled her wings and stuck up two feathers on both. She didn’t look back at the pegasus, but she heard Rainbow snort and cough up some cider.

Dusty Mark, Rainbow Dash, and Barrel Roller sat on some old truck tires in the scrapyard outside Evergreen and swapped cold ciders in the early spring snow. Rainbow had discarded her jacket and sat on top of it, along with Barrel Roller. Dusty kept her green winter jacket on. Flurry laid before them against some sandbags, wearing a white camouflage jacket and pants. She had a submachine gun lying next to her with some empty clips that needed to be reloaded.

It was the one she stole from Blackpeak’s guard. Thorax had given it back, as a belated birthday present. She made good use of it: the helmets downrange were now more hole than helmet. This week was shooting practice; Far Sight would show up later.

When she turned sixteen in eleven months, Flurry Heart would legally be an adult. The Nova Griffonians would ask her to file for citizenship. They’d also probably ask her to renounce any claim to Equestria or the Crystal Empire and disown her title, but Flurry planned to refuse.

Blackpeak would bend before she did. The alicorn was confident of that. His reelection prospects were shaky. Alexander Kemerskai had already announced he was running against Triton Blackpeak on a conservative Republican ticket. He promised to bring jobs back to the griffons, mostly by passing labor laws against the cheap wages of the pony minority. Kemerskai’s election would be the ultimate feather in the eye of the Griffonian Reich. Blackpeak was running on his traditional campaign of a low tax rate and doing the bare minimum to keep her ponies alive, and sometimes not even that.

Flurry was tired of it. She wasn’t going to let either of them win.

Grover was going to turn sixteen just a few months after her, during the spring and before the election. He’d be coronated Kaiser of the Reich, and he’d be able to keep his promise.

Princess Flurry Heart: I, Grover von Greifenstein, swear to the Gods that I will help you reclaim your throne when I come of age.

That would certainly involve invading Nova Griffonia. She hadn’t gotten any letters from him, but she could launch attacks from the frontier when the invasion started, pinning down the militias on the coast. Nova Griffonia would fall quickly, then the Reich and her ponies could sweep south into the Crystal Empire and Equestria.

The Aquileians posed a problem. The Aquileian ponies would help her; they had lived in the ghettos for years and assimilated with the Equestrian and Imperial refugees. The New Marelanders, what few lived here, were in the same position. But the Aquileian griffons hated the Reich, and Grover by extension.

Flurry hoped to negotiate with Grover a few token concessions to placate them. They liked their ‘Little Flurry;’ the Aquileians were barely better than ponies to the native Nova Griffonians, and she had worked hard to maintain her relationship with the veterans. All Grover had to do was offer some pardons and reunite some families.

Surely, he’d agree to that for her help.

She hadn’t told anypony her plan. They’d spend the next year trying to talk her down if they knew. Thorax had enough problems trying to hide a few thousand new refugees in the mountains. Blackpeak turned a blind eye to the frontier and the thousands of unregistered illegal refugees. If Nova Griffonia was attacked, it wouldn’t matter there were extra ponies to take up arms and fight. Kemerskai might care, but his Republicans would be too busy fending off the Reich to send loyal griffons into the mountains to deal with monarchists.

Flurry fired the rifle two more times before reaching for another clip on her belt. Her hoof came back empty. She blinked; she’d been out here longer than she thought. Flurry pushed herself up into a sitting position, then pulled the submachine gun clips towards her. She also levitated over an old box of ammo. The bullets lifted up and began to slide into the clip.

“That’s cheating, Princess,” Rainbow called.

Flurry stuck her tongue out, but carefully gripped some bullets between her feathers and slowly reloaded while holding the clip between her front hooves. Her wingspan was enormous for an adult, let alone a fifteen-year-old. If she had been born a stallion, there was a crass joke about a pegasus with big wings. It didn't apply to mares.

While reloading by hoof, Flurry busied herself by firing lazy blasts from her horn towards a reinforced metal sheet to her right. The sheet was already glowing hot and half-melted. It was a convenient source of heat for the trio behind her.

“You keep doing that and I’m going to have to take off my jacket,” Dusty warned.

“What kind of Princess am I if I can’t keep my ponies warm?” Flurry joked back. “You done with that cider, Rainbow?” she called, keeping her eyes on her aim.

“Geez, I’m not that much of a drunk,” Rainbow hiccupped.

“I’ve known you for years, Rainbow, you are,” Barrel Roller slapped her side with a wing. He had lost most of his right ear during the push north and had a scar running down the side of his muzzle. His orange eyes were still cheerful and bright; they distracted from the scars.

Flurry finished reloading the clips, but stood up and stretched her wings. She walked back to the adults. Her crown was resting on a spare tire; Flurry didn’t like wearing it when practicing. She didn’t want her horn to heat up too much and damage the metal. She slipped it back on with her hooves and shook her head to readjust her curly blue and purple mane.

“You want one, Princess?” Rainbow offered her a cider bottle.

“She’s too young,” Dusty rebuked.

“Bah,” Rainbow scoffed. “Ponies in Ponyville drank younger than her.”

“That explains a lot about the stories of Ponyville,” Dusty chuckled.

Rainbow’s face darkened and she squeezed the bottle between her hooves.

Flurry saw an opportunity to step-in. “Thanks, Rainbow, but I’ll pass. I’ve been meaning to ask a serious question.” She glanced between the ponies.

Rainbow saluted with the bottle. “Your humble subjects are at your service.”

“Why’d we lose?” Flurry asked.

The trio looked away from her.

“You didn’t lose, Princess,” Dusty finally said after a pause.

“Don’t argue about words, we lost,” Flurry countered. “What happened? Spike wasn’t there for Canterlot, and he won’t talk about Starlight. Nopony knows anything about where she is.”

“Starlight’s dead,” Rainbow mumbled.

Barrel Roller looked alarmed. “You’re sure? The Changelings would’ve shown off her body. They never even claimed they caught her. I wasn't at her part of the front.”

“Last time they claimed that with a fake, Starlight blew up a whole garrison. Trixie had some fireworks show a big, fat Chrysalis gorged on love,” Dusty laughed.

“I don’t know, I guess,” Rainbow admitted, “but I saw her after Trixie got encircled, just before the front collapsed.”

“I heard the Changelings leveled Neigh Orleans to kill her,” Dusty commented.

“That was Trixie,” Rainbow shook her head. “She didn’t want her hometown to belong to the bugs, so she gave one Tartarus of a final show.” Rainbow swallowed a sip of cider. “Starlight looked real bad, like the fight just went out of her. Said she didn’t want to hide again. I was flying when the front collapsed. I led some of the planes north to provide support."

“And we’re grateful for that,” Barrel interrupted. “We wouldn’t have been able to break out without air support.” He took his own sip. “Speaking of Tartarus,” he changed the subject, “what’s left of S.M.I.L.E released most of the dangerous stuff to harass the Changelings. They got so fed up they collapsed the whole cave system with a massive bombing run.”

“Tirek?” Dusty asked with a grimace.

“Nopony was stupid enough to let him out.” Barrel laughed. “I hope he died screaming under a rock,” he whickered, then took a drink.

“Where’s Discord been? He could help, right?” Flurry asked.

“That’s a good excuse to start ignoring the idea of civilians,” Rainbow scoffed. “He said war was boring and didn’t want to get involved.” Rainbow blinked and looked melancholy. “I thought Fluttershy ran off with him after the war, but Zecora swears she’s seen her in the Everfree Forest.”

“Zecora’s still active, right?” Flurry asked.

“Yeah,” Rainbow brightened up, “she did some freaky Zebra stuff they got in Zebrica and riled the whole forest up years ago. It ate up Ponyville and ruined the view from Canterlot for Chrysalis. I hid out there for a while and helped out before the uprising. She retreated back to the forest after the ELF collapsed. I don’t know how many ponies are with her.”

“S.M.I.L.E’s gone as well,” said Barrel. “The Jaegers tracked down Sweetie Drops in Manehattan. Used her wife as bait.”

Rainbow snorted. “I heard Blueblood over the radio. Guess he decided to go down with the ship this time instead of running horn-first to New Mareland again.”

“New Mareland’s gone,” Dusty reminded the pegasus. Rainbow shrugged her one wing and took a drink.

Flurry sighed. “Who’s left?”

Nopony answered her.

Us.

“Rainbow,” Flurry began softly, “I’m sorry, but what happened in Canterlot? How'd we lose?”

Rainbow took a long drink. “We were doing okay, pushed up outside the mountain, but Chrysalis had her panzers lined up outside the Celestial Plain, west of Canterlot. We got our hooves nailed down trying to besiege the city; we tried an aerial landing and infiltration to get the mountain open. Starlight was sure that Twilight was being held there. I begged her for the chance to go in.”

Rainbow looked back at her missing wing. “We lost most of the Wonderbolts; I lost a wing to a bullet and a knife fight with a Jaeger. Scootaloo and Misty Fly dragged me down Mount Canterhorn. Chrysalis’ tanks pushed through our infantry and we had to retreat.” Rainbow sighed. "Starlight was sure that if we got to Twilight, ponies would rally everywhere. They'd stop being afraid."

"I should've been there," Flurry whispered.

"No, Princess," Barrel cut off, "the deal was to take you after Canterlot had been liberated, not before. If you'd been there during the retreat, there would be even more panic and chaos."

I could have helped. “You said something about tanks,” Flurry noted. “Would tanks have helped?”

“We got a ship with a bunch of tanks from the Reich in Manehattan, to the surprise of everypony. The griffon with them said we had you to thank for that,” Barrel raised an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah, but there was supposed to be more,” Flurry snorted. “A lot more. The blockade ruined everything. Did whatever show up help?”

Barrel struggled for a moment, but relented at Flurry’s stare. “We didn’t even get them to the frontline before it collapsed. I know Sun Flare really wanted them; he died with them during the last stand to buy time.”

“What if they got there earlier? Before they blockaded Manehattan?” Flurry hoped that Elias and the single ship managed to escape. The Changeling radio in Canterlot didn't boast about Griffonian tanks being defeated.

“Princess, please, don’t bother yourself about what-ifs,” Dusty said, reassuring the alicorn with a hoof pat to the wing.

“I’m not bothering myself about it,” Flurry replied. Celestia and Luna’s muzzles flashed through her mind and she ground her teeth for a moment. She shook her head. “That’s it?”

“It was a good try,” Barrel saluted with a wing and raised his cider. Dusty met the toast with her own bottle wrapped in her gray magic.

“No,” Rainbow burst out, “it wasn't. Starlight and Trixie fought over everything.” She waved the cider for emphasis. “We needed more ponies, but they only wanted volunteers. We needed to conscript. We needed guns and factories to make them.”

“A lot of ponies were too weak,” Barrel protested. “We were liberating Equestria, not bringing back sixteen-hour shifts.”

“A bullet can kill no matter who is firing it,” Rainbow retorted, “and we wasted time setting up camps.”

“It wasn’t a waste to stop and help ponies,” Barrel admonished. “The Changelings started draining towns and villages as they retreated,” he explained to Flurry. “They left ponies in the streets, barely alive. We had to stop to give them medical attention.”

“I wasn’t talking about those camps,” Rainbow muttered.

“Rainbow, ponies had to work with the Changelings to survive,” the pegasus said tiredly. Flurry sensed that this was a common argument.

“I didn’t!” Rainbow shouted. “I lived in the Everfree! I lived in sewers! I lived on a single cloud for a month!” Her wing flared out. “Rarity makes uniforms for them now!” the mare ranted. “She probably still does; she didn’t even fight in the Great War. She ended up in a camp with her boss.” Rainbow’s lone wing twitched angrily.

“And Applejack?” she continued. “I came to her after the Everfree swallowed up Ponyville. She was running some plantation, harvesting apples with a bunch of her neighbors as slaves. She refused to join us. She was going to relocate to Appleloosa and restart. Said she couldn’t join or the Changelings would kill her whole family,” Rainbow scoffed.

“That’s fair, Rainbow,” Dusty offered, but her gray eyes were looking far away.

Rainbow’s magenta eyes narrowed. “They hanged my dad for what I did.” She leaned towards Barrel. “I know they beat him before they did it. I thank Celestia that my mom died in the air attacks on Cloudsdale.”

She took another drink. “Then, Wind Rider got on the radio and said I wasn’t a true pegasus,” Rainbow snorted. “That prick got to lead some supremacy club in Manehattan and ride Governor Lilac for years!” she yelled. “Starlight saw all that and just locked him up, him and a thousand others. She posted garrisons to protect those traitors from getting lynched by all the ponies their hooves trampled on for years. Said it wasn’t the Equestrian way.”

Rainbow waved the bottle around. “He should have swung, and all his friends!” she shouted. “Everypony in those camps should’ve been shot. We wasted so much time on them, and now they’re right back to where they were, probably even worse.”

“And Applejack? And Rarity? Would you shoot them?” Flurry asked. She kept her tone neutral.

Rainbow drained the last of her cider and glared at the bottle. “She made this with the sweat and tears of her friends,” she commented with a scrunched muzzle. “She sells it all over Equestria; the bugs love sweet stuff.”

The pegasus’ eyes teared up. “Maybe she treats her workers better than most, but that’s not enough. Maybe she thinks it’s the right thing to do, but it’s not!” Rainbow whinnied and reared back to toss the bottle. She hesitated as the sunlight caught the glass and made a rainbow.

She deflated and her one wing drooped. “What does ‘loyalty’ even mean anymore? Friends? Country? Princess?” She glanced at Flurry Heart. “I would have died for them once. Now, I…I don’t even know anymore.” Rainbow let the bottle slip from her hooves. Flurry caught it in her magic.

“Starlight and Trixie were fighting to bring back the Equestria they knew,” Barrel commented in a low tone.

“That Equestria lost,” Rainbow muttered. “We lost.”

“What would you do, Princess? If you were in charge, how would you fight?” Dusty asked. Her gray eyes swept around the scrapyard at Flurry’s destruction before settling on the alicorn.

Flurry sat and fiddled with the bottle between her hooves. She moved it towards the other bottles with her magic and placed it in the center of the ring.

“Rainbow’s right,” Flurry summarized. “Forced conscription, seizures of gold and other valuable metals. Take weapons and equipment. Set a rule, like every collaborator that wasn’t enslaved has to have three ponies that worked under them speak in their defense. Hang or shoot them if nopony speaks up, then and there. Keep them for trial if somepony does.” Rainbow’s muzzle scrunched and Dusty hummed.

“That,” Barrel stammered, “that’s barbaric, Princess. Everypony has a right to a trial.”

“Too much time,” Flurry shrugged. “The faster we move, the less time the Changelings have to drain towns and villages. Even if they did, we keep rushing them. Cut them off from the next town.”

“A lot of ponies would die doing that,” Dusty remarked, her tone casual.

“Yeah,” Flurry conceded. “A lot of Changelings, too. No prisoners, not even civilians. They'll just use mercy against us. When we make it to the Changeling Lands, I’ll adjust my position on prisoners.”

“Princess, that’s not right,” Barrel protested. “That’s not what Equestria was about.”

“How many changelings surrendered?” Flurry asked aggressively.

Barrel’s wings twitched, but he rallied his courage. “Most fled, but there were a few-”

“None,” Rainbow cut off. “None worth anything. Chrysalis has a habit of ordering deserters shot if recaptured. Surrender isn’t accepted in the Changeling Hegemony. Any changeling worth anything joined Thorax a long time ago.”

“It would make the reprisals in controlled territory worse,” Barrel replied. He stood up from the tire and glared at Rainbow. Rainbow snarled back.

“They’re all dead anyway,” Flurry stated. The trio of adults quieted and stared at her.

“They’re killing us slowly, every year,” Flurry continued. “I hear about the Love Tax, but I don’t hear about programs to encourage ponies to get together and make more little ponies. Chrysalis doesn’t plan for the future; she doesn't have an heir. She can’t imagine a world without her and that tower in Vesalipolis. She will kill everypony and proclaim victory on the ashes.”

“The deer in Olenia are still around,” Barrel said uncertainly.

Flurry almost laughed. Olenia had been Chrysalis’ first target, a test site for the new method of tank warfare. Olenia was on a southern peninsula from the Changeling Lands and separated from Equestria by a narrow strait at Vanhoover. The deer never really got along with the Princesses, and Celestia had only dedicated token medical supplies to their defense. Ponies didn’t want to go to war back then, especially not her mother and father.

We could have broken Chrysalis early, before all of this.

Olenia had surrendered after three months of fighting while Celestia and her mother watched. Flurry vaguely remembered a sad and broken deer at a dinner in Canterlot. Celestia had given a speech on the radio and issued a note of protest. Flurry imagined that Chrysalis still kept the letter around to laugh at it.

“The deer in Olenia complied and look how well that went for them,” Rainbow challenged. “Hay, I shot a couple of deer. The Changelings threw them at us first. What do you hear about them now? Nothing.”

“Thorax doesn’t hear anything from the Olenian Protectorate,” Dusty noted.

“That’s not going to happen to Equestria,” Barrel said defiantly. “Sure, we lost, but Starlight and Trixie weakened the Hegemony. They lost a lot of equipment they can’t replace. A lot of tanks and aircraft. Chrysalis drafted a bunch of changelings, but she’s still overstretched; it’s worse than before. Southern Equestria is basically abandoned. She only won because she threw everything she had at us.”

“And that was enough to crush us,” Rainbow countered. “We need better equipment, and more of it, to launch an attack."

“Blackpeak’s got it in his armories,” Dusty said and took a languid sip of her cider.

“We start a civil war, and Chrysalis is going to dance across the border before we can even think about going south,” Barrel snorted, stomping a hoof for emphasis.

We end it quickly, when Grover attacks, Flurry thought. We go south. “Chrysalis and the Reich are going to fight each other eventually,” she said instead. “She can’t help herself. She’ll probably try to attack Nova Griffonia when the Reich does just to claim more territory and finish us off. We’ll have to pick a side, and the Reich is the only choice.”

“Weren’t they friends with the Changelings? The griffons might agree to a deal,” Rainbow commented with a frown.

Flurry shook her head. “No, he won’t. I know Grover,” she said with confidence. She fired another laser towards the reinforced metal sheet and punched clean through it again.

“I’ve read your letters,” Barrel remarked. “You don’t sound like friends.”

Flurry turned away from the smoking metal and stared at him long enough for his wings to twitch uncomfortably.

“I apologize, Princess.” He pawed at the dirt.

“Apology accepted,” Flurry said and fired a blast that melted the remainder of the metal. The four ponies basked in the heat for a moment.

Rainbow tilted her head and straightened a feather on her wing. She clicked her teeth. “My wing still itches,” she groused. “The one I left in Canterlot. How does that work?”

“Phantom pain,” Dusty replied.

Rainbow shook her head. “It doesn’t hurt. It’s just itchy.”

“There’s a pegasus that does prosthetics in Ambergleam,” Flurry said. “I’ve met her a few times on my birthday.”

“Yeah, Thorax told me,” Rainbow shrugged. “I’m waiting. I still got four hooves.” Rainbow looked Flurry up and down. “You got a plan when you turn sixteen?”

“You could join a militia,” Dusty offered. “Hay, most elect their captains. You could be in command of one out in the frontier.”

“Kemerskai would blow feathers,” Flurry chuckled. “No, I can’t do that.”

“What do you wanna do?” Rainbow asked.

“Fly,” Flurry replied. “I want you to teach me how to fly a fighter.”

Rainbow blushed. “That might be difficult. I’m not supposed to be here and I can’t exactly claim to be somepony else. Not many one-winged, rainbow-maned mares around.”

“It won’t matter once the war starts,” Flurry stated. “They’ll welcome a skilled pilot. And me.” Flurry pointed a wing at Rainbow’s side. “But you’ll need a prosthetic. I want you to be able to fly away if you get shot down.”

Unlike the ground forces, Nova Griffonia’s air force was centralized under the government. The navy was as well, but a lot of Aquileians served, including their best admiral, Josette Fierté. Jacques, her mailgriffon, already introduced Josette to Flurry Heart at her yearly veteran meetings.

The air force was the only branch of the military that was relatively pro-Republican; a lot of the griffons that escaped the Griffonian Republic joined the air force. The air force largely belonged to Kemerskai, but there were still air wings of native Nova Griffonians. If Flurry signed up immediately at sixteen, she might be able to sway more of the frontier-born pilots to side with her when the time came.

“You’ll need to learn the basics before you join up,” Dusty remarked. “Duskcrest’s got access to some old fighters. Good enough to learn the ropes.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Fine, as the Princess commands. Why do you want all my empty bottles?” Rainbow pointed at Flurry’s circle of bottles off in the dirt.

Flurry stood up and brushed the dirt of her pants. “I’m working on a spell.”

“Did Far Sight teach you it?” Dusty asked.

“No,” Flurry replied, “its my own spell.” The alicorn missed the nervous glances between the adults. She trotted over to the sandbags and crouched behind them. Flurry took off her crown again and peeked over the bags at the bottles. Her horn began to glow. The adults behind her quickly stood up and backed away.

Flurry stuck her tongue out as she concentrated, narrowing her eyes. A little blue bubble formed over Rainbow’s empty bottle in the center of the ring. Flurry’s horn pulsed with energy. The shield flickered for a moment. Nothing happened for a few seconds.

Dusty Mark stuck her head out from behind a large truck tire. “Your shield spells are great, Princess,” Dusty called. Flurry heard the confusion in her tone.

“It’s not a shield,” Flurry whispered. Her horn glowed a brighter blue.

The little bubble buckled outward suddenly and exploded into a flurry of blue sparks. It sounded like a soap bubble popping. The glass bottles shattered and the shards flew a few hooves in every direction.

Flurry ducked to be safe. After a moment to breathe, she looked over the sandbag. The ground was scorched black in a ring and littered with glass shards.

The lone bottle in the middle sat untouched. Flurry picked it up in her magic and levitated it over, taking it in her hooves. It wasn’t hot to the touch and looked perfectly fine. Flurry smiled and replaced the bottle.

The adults emerged from their hiding places, looking embarrassed. Dusty the unicorn approached first. “I’ve never seen a shield like that before. Your father’s shields were solid, but you want yours to explode?”

“Like a grenade,” Flurry answered, “except anypony inside will be safe.”

“That’s a good spell to get somepony out of trouble,” Dusty nodded. “You’re practicing to cast it on other ponies?”

Flurry nodded. Teleport in, shield to draw attention, blow the shield out, teleport away. More time to charge means a stronger blast, so I need to balance between speed and strength.

Dusty stared at the scorch mark on the ground. “Did you know I was an archaeologist before the war?” she asked randomly. Flurry shook her head. Dusty sat and pulled her cargo pants down to reveal her cutie mark: a quill and chisel. “Ironically, I didn't want to look over old books and artifacts in a museum. I took my son with me when I traveled.”

She glanced back at Rainbow. “Always hated that Daring Do got all the attention raiding temples and stealing artifacts,” she smiled. Dusty pulled her cargo pants back up and walked towards the broken glass.

Rainbow rolled her eyes and grabbed the last cider.

“I lived here for several years out in the frontier,” Dusty continued. “I found some old ruins along the Crystal Mountains; found more on the coast. The Nova Griffonian government cut our funding and kicked us out. Then, the war happened.”

Dusty stepped around the broken glass and circled the lone bottle left standing. “Before any griffon ever came here, the entire north belonged to the Crystal Empire. It was sparsely settled, but we dug up some artifacts. When Sombra cursed the Crystal City away a thousand years ago, the outposts fell apart. A lot of the crystal ponies remaining moved south to the Princesses; their descendants lost their colorful shiny coats over the years. It left the north open for the Griffonian Reich to cross the ocean and settle some griffons centuries later. I was going to write a paper about it.”

“What’s your point?” Barrel asked.

“This was our land long before it was theirs,” Dusty closed, “maybe we should take it back.” She turned to Flurry. “You’re the heir to Princess Amore, the last Crystal Princess, the one who abdicated the title of Empress of the Crystal Empire to get closer to Celestia and Luna.”

“Cadance never claimed we were directly related,” Flurry stated flatly.

“A lot of ponies believed it, though,” Dusty chuckled. “They still do.”

“We’re outnumbered,” Flurry pointed out.

“Are we?” Dusty asked. She looked at the single glass bottle standing in a ring of shattered glass. The unicorn knocked it over with a flick of her horn.

“We can’t start a war over a thousand-year-old claim,” Barrel Roller admonished. “No griffon would ever recognize it.” Dusty shrugged and returned to sitting on her tire. She glanced at Flurry and smirked as she walked by.

“I didn’t know you had a son,” Flurry commented, knowing it was a bad idea.

“He died in the trenches outside Tall Tale. His name was Short Sell. His talent was never in archaeology, but he liked helping out. I don’t know if his father is alive.” Dusty settled on the tire.

“I’m sorry,” Flurry apologized, “for asking.”

“Never apologize for asking, Princess,” Dusty said. “Everypony has lost somepony. The only thing we can do is keep going and make the losses mean something.”

Flurry looked at the bottle laying in the dirt. She levitated it upright. She looked over her flank at Barrel, Dusty, and Rainbow. They decided to share the last cider between them.

Barrel will never agree to a war with Blackpeak. Thorax and Spike would agree with him. Some ponies would be too scared. We’d have to end it quickly.

Flurry Heart turned back to the cider bottle. Her little blue shield flickered into existence around it, then exploded with a flash. The bottle remained upright and unharmed. Little blue flames surrounded the bottle on the scorched ground. She continued to practice her new spell while the adults watched.

I’ll have to start it, Princess Flurry Heart decided. And end it. Myself.

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