Part Forty-Seven
It was very, very dark.
Flurry Heart drifted through the darkness. She was very tired, and wanted to close her eyes, but they already felt closed. There were sounds, far off in the blackness, but the alicorn couldn’t move her ears. She couldn’t move anything at all. Everything felt numb.
“Shock her again!” a voice roared.
Flurry felt a brief twinge in her chest.
“Again!”
Flurry realized it was Spike. She wasn’t sure what the dragon was trying to do out in the darkness, but his voice shook with absolute desperation.
“I don’t hear a heartbeat,” another voice said despondently.
Flurry recognized Far Sight’s nasally tone, but never heard it so broken.
“Again!” Spike roared.
The twinge returned, a little stronger, but faded back into nothing.
“Go back to compressions,” Spike ordered.
“Sir Spike…” a voice answered, sobbing.
Flurry tried to reach out with a hoof. Don’t cry, Jadis.
“Boreas, hear this prayer from your faithful servant,” Duskcrest whispered in the dark.
Flurry tried to raise an eyebrow, but couldn’t move. I never knew he believed in the Trinity.
“Do not take this child. Usher her back on your golden wings,” he continued.
“Celestia,” Dusty’s voice echoed, “you dumb bitch, for once in your fucking life actually answer a prayer and do something.”
Flurry tried to laugh, but couldn’t open her mouth.
“You never listened before,” Dusty raved, “so listen now: I will kill you if she dies. I will hunt you to the edges of this world and shove your sister’s horn so far up your ass you’ll cast magic out your mouth.”
Dusty and Duskcrest’s prayers overlapped. They sounded equally desperate.
“Come on, kid,” Rainbow’s scratchy voice drifted from above the alicorn. “We all love you, don’t leave us, please.”
“She’s gone,” Arctic Lily’s broken voice echoed from behind Flurry.
“Shut up!” Rainbow screamed.
“The Crystalling only works on the living,” Arctic replied.
“Magical Depletion,” Far Sight muttered.
“If you open your mouth again, I’ll cut your head off!”
Flurry left a slight jostling, but the sensation faded.
“You can’t leave us, Flurry,” Spike cried. “Our entire family is gone. I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t say it enough.”
Flurry tried to sigh. I’m sorry, Spike. Mom said I’d destroy our family.
“You piece of shit!” Dusty screamed and broke from her fevered praying. “What kind of destiny is that? You give her a cutie mark and kill her?”
“My parents named me after the Heart,” Heartsong whickered. “They believed in you, and prayed to you with Amore. You give her a mark and kill in the same breath? You were always a lie!”
“She did it,” Lily stated. “Look around us.”
“It wasn’t worth it!” Jadis shouted through choking sobs.
“It was to her,” Lily said quietly. “She deserved a crown.”
Flurry almost smiled. She was very, very tired. It was never about a crown.
“Flurry,” Thorax whispered. His voice sounded very close. “Please, listen to me.”
“Her heart stopped,” Far Sight said in the distance. “She’s gone.”
“Thorax, you’ll kill yourself trying to give her love,” Dusty wept in the darkness. “She’s not a changeling.”
“You’re the most stubborn pony I ever met,” Thorax continued. “You always were, from the moment you were born. You were always a fighter. Wake up, please.”
I’m sorry, uncle. The other voices receded into the black.
“You are not allowed to quit, Princess,” Thorax said in a dual-toned hiss. “Fight.”
Flurry Heart concentrated on Thorax’s voice.
“Fight,” Thorax ordered. “Come back to us. We need you, Princess.”
Flurry’s muzzle stung. The other voices returned.
“She’s dead, Thorax!” Far Sight shouted.
“Fight, Princess! Or don’t! You never wanted to listen to us before!”
The other side of Flurry’s muzzle stung. I’m tired, Thorax, Flurry tried to snarl.
“If violence is all you’ll listen to, fine!”
Her barrel and chest stung with a series of jabs. Flurry tried to open her mouth and shout at the changeling.
“Pull him off!” Jadis screamed, and the jabs ceased.
“What the hay!” Rainbow shouted.
“She never listens to anything else!” Thorax shrieked. “Ever! Get up, Princess!”
The voices overlapped into a cacophony of shouting. It echoed and reverberated in the darkness around the alicorn, but Flurry wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.
“You want to quit, Princess?” Thorax’s voice cut through the noise. “You just want to leave us all with Chrysalis? And Grover? Wake up!”
His voice swirled around Flurry’s head, and she tried to growl and roll her eyes. Fine. She concentrated, trying to move anything, then summoned everything she had to open her mouth and yell at Thorax.
Flurry Heart inhaled.
Her ragged, gasping cough cut through the voices in the half-melted basement.
And Thorax shrieked in pure joy.
Flurry coughed again and struggled to breathe back in. Every breath took conscious effort. Her ears rang and her nose was clogged. Her eyes were closed, and her right eyelid felt weighed down by something. She only felt distant pins and needles in her body.
“Impossible,” Far Sight mumbled.
She felt large claws gingerly scrub at her head and around her muzzle. “Keep breathing,” Spike whispered. “Don’t open your eyes. Just breathe.” In a harsher voice, he said, “Get every damn medic in the city. Bring up one of the respirators the bugs used on the test subjects.”
“You want to use that?” Lily whickered.
“She can barely breathe on her own.”
Flurry tried to say something in response, but her jaw only trembled. She gave a short, ragged cough.
“Go!” Spike rumbled.
Hooves and claws scattered.
“Get her up on a bed,” Thorax said. “Cadance and Shining’s room. It’s large enough. I’ll get the equipment set up.”
“Teleport?”
“Too risky. Carry her.”
Flurry felt the claws scoop her up and she dangled against scales, belly up. Her wings and legs hung loosely underneath her, and an arm propped up her head. “Breathe,” Spike reminded the alicorn. Her head bobbed slightly from movement, but Flurry could barely feel anything.
Flurry felt the pillows resting under her head after a particularly painful exhale. It made her want to fall asleep, and she faltered and coughed. A sharp pain radiated up from her foreleg as Spike’s talon broke the skin. “Breathe,” he growled loudly. “Don’t fall asleep.”
Flurry coughed and tried to open her eyes. She only managed the left eye. Every color of the rainbow swam in her vision, but she couldn’t close her eye again. She focused on breathing and the splotch of purple and green right in front of her. It sparkled.
Spike tore strips from the bed covers and wiped at her ears and the top of her head. The bedsheets came back red every time and he tossed them away. Flurry’s ears bobbed, uncoordinated, and sounds were muted. The dragon kept reminding her to breathe every minute, and dug a talon into her foreleg if she took too long. His scales glittered in the light.
After several minutes, Flurry scraped enough blood off her tongue in slow movements along her teeth. “Heart,” she croaked in a painful exhale, and raggedly breathed back in.
“Flurry, don’t talk. Just breathe.”
“Heart,” Flurry repeated.
“The Heart is fine. You fixed it. Breathe.”
Flurry’s eye finally focused. Spike’s scales were shiny and partly transparent. One arm was bleeding heavily from missing scales. He wrapped a strip of bed cloth around it. The Crystalling. Flurry’s eye slowly rolled down to her ash-covered, pink fur. She wasn’t sparkling.
“Don’t try to open your right eye,” Spike said. “The crown is melted into the fur all over your muzzle. The eyelid’s covered.” He wiped a strip of cloth under her open mouth. “You’re fine, Flurry,” he said, more to himself than to the alicorn. He adjusted her hooves and wings while Flurry gasped. She could barely feel her limbs move, and her eye wandered to the balcony.
Sunlight poured in from outside.
“Shield,” Flurry rasped.
Spike glanced at the balcony. “You did it,” he assured her. “The shield’s out there.” He clutched her foreleg with a claw. “The storm’s fine.”
Flurry took a deep breath and felt her chest rattle. “Show,” she exhaled.
Spike didn’t reply and kept wiping blood away from her ears and mouth, wherever he could without dealing with the hardened bits of molten gold in her fur. “Show,” Flurry repeated with a wet cough.
“Breathe,” Spike stated.
Flurry stopped breathing and tried to glare at him with her bloody blue eye. Spike dug a talon into her hoof hard enough to draw blood, and Flurry heard the bones in her foreleg pop. She still didn’t breathe.
“Fine,” Spike growled.
Flurry inhaled.
“Thorax was right,” the dragon laughed bitterly. “You are the most stubborn pony ever.” He picked the alicorn up and braced her head against his shoulder. He held the dangling alicorn to his chest as he stepped towards the balcony.
He stopped halfway there as Flurry breathed in again. “What?” he asked in a tone of complete bewilderment. Flurry’s functional eye could only see the scales on his chest. “That’s…” he trailed off and stepped forward slowly. The rebuilt wooden balcony creaked under the dragon's weight.
Spike stood on the balcony for some time, clutching the alicorn to his chest. Flurry tried to slowly move her eye to see the city, but the angle was wrong. “Shield,” she whispered in a low voice, and coughed.
Spike seemingly remembered he was holding her, and slowly turned her head. His claws held her gently. “Breathe,” he said absently as his green eyes rapidly flicked over the city.
Flurry inhaled as her eye wandered over her home.
The Crystal City sparkled in pink-tinged sunlight. Crystal ponies, scarred and lean and broken and tired, stumbled into the streets, staring at their coats with wide eyes. Griffons joined them, gaping at shining feathers and fur and flexing partially transparent claws. Flurry’s eye slowly wandered upwards to beyond the shining buildings. The sky was clear. The storm wall was gone, but she didn’t see the shield.
The sky was pink in every direction.
The shield was pink. Flurry looked again.
The sky was pink in every direction, all the way to the horizon.
The shield stretched into the horizon, in every direction.
Flurry’s head lolled and she looked down at her flank. Her pink fur was emblazoned with the Crystal Heart, surrounded by a blue shield and wreathed in blue flames.
The Empire will be yours, my Amore. Take back what was lost.
“Breathe,” Spike reminded Flurry, and she inhaled again with a wet cough.
They went back inside as teams of ponies and griffons stormed through the palace with medical equipment.
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I wonder if thorax will be a Crystalling
Called it!
Hooray for Flurry!
Now we just have to hope Princess of War Crimes lives.
11407861
Surprisingly she hasn't committed that many war crimes. The no mercy order was a war crime, and you could argue that she has committed crimes against peace. Otherwise I believe everything is legal.
media.tenor.com/s6zxDT7zqwEAAAAC/letsgooo-letsgo.gif
LET'S BUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
11407804
Was wondering the same thing. Wouldn't Flurry be surprised to see him in his pastel-beetle-with-pincers-for-horn form!
Also, if the shield really does stretch all the ways to the coast and covers Nova Griffonia, that would pretty much ensure to any remaining doubters of Flurry's right to claim the territory and those within (or their right to claim her as their ruler, as the case would be).
If it did stretch that far, it would also negate any advantage Chrysalis' atomic arsenal would have. Problem solved!
...I wonder if it stretches over Yakyakistan as well?
11407902
Eh, they haven’t had a Geneva convention anyways so it’s all legal
+100 to legitimacy
awesome chapter mate keep it up cant wait for the next chapter
crazy chatper, i didn't even read it, but it's so cool, keep up the good work
😊
11408049
Personally I would have gone with lilly a communist saying she deserves her crown as the max legitimacy, but having the crown melt it to her works
11408049
I’m imagining something very…not good looking. That can’t stay. Where’s the +100 to Legitimacy come from?
Anyway, this was great. Honestly, while there are a lot of really good Equestria at War fics, this has to take the cake. Hands (or your other appendage of choice) down.
I was once told in Sunday School
"God answers every prayer, every time. The answer is usually 'No'. "
Girl really went “I will literally stop breathing over this,” lmao.
Best bug, skittle or otherwise.
Also, dude rather literally went with the “if you die I’ll beat you until you wake up (and then beat you some more)” strat and it worked.
This is killing me
Wholesome bug moment
Something I just thought of is that Thorax would likely be able to tell Flurry is still alive, because of his emotion sense abilities. He can feel all the love and despair for what Flurry did, but he can sense her emotions too. Her heart stopped, yes, but her mind is still working so he can likely feel her exhaustion, pain, her devotion, all of it. But at the same time, he can sense it fading, so this entire scene of him trying to talk to flurry, is his gambit to keep her in the world and it’s heartbreaking. His screams of joy when flurry finally announces herself with a cough, to me it just shows how desperate he was to keep her ALIVE.
I can't believe she's alive!!!