Part Ninety
The soldiers guarding the checkpoint stomped their hooves three times as the procession approached the bridge. It was a simple station, only piled sandbags, ugly concrete, and ponies sitting on pilfered velvet chairs stopping anyone attempting to cross. The Changeling barricades had been broken down during the assault and in the first few days; what was left was a formality as Canterlot was secured.
Flurry Heart stared at the chips along the bridge’s stone railing from errant bullets. Like everything else in Canterlot, the bride was sleek and elegant marble with purple accents, but the luster was damaged by faded bloodstains and battle damage. The Changeling soldiers currently held in dozens of warehouses in Lower Canterlot had repulsed several frenzied attacks on this bridge during the uprising. One of five into Upper Canterlot, the bridge the alicorn was standing before was a chokepoint for any non-flier.
The heavy machine guns that once rested on the sandbags had been moved to the castle, secured with thousands of Changeling weapons from the surrendered garrison. Flurry did not seek them out. Sometimes as she laid in her cot during sleepless nights, she reached out with her magic and felt their presence in the bowels of the castle. It would be trivial to trot down there and find out how many of her ponies died to each gun.
A dozen ponies in ELF gray now stood at attention, having left their stolen chairs at the column’s approach. The guards were dwarfed by the size of Flurry’s escort; nearly fifty ponies led by Frosty Jadis in purple uniforms formed a barrier around the Princess. The crystal mare spoke briefly with the commander of the checkpoint, a nervous unicorn who constantly eyed the alicorn scanning over her bridge.
Flurry wore her full armor. Towering over adult mares and stallions, her purple crystal drank in the sunlight and swirled with subdued patterns of flames. She was easily visible coming down the street, yet the ELF soldiers still looked surprised.
Or intimidated, Flurry amended to herself. She hummed under her helmet, smashing a spent bullet case flat under her heavy greave with a solid clop. Most of the large debris had been cleared from Upper Canterlot, but Flurry had spied shell casings scattered along the curbs all the way from the castle.
Two Reich knights flew over the bridge, flying low and banking towards Middle Canterlot. Nopony commented on them, nor tried to stop them. The Reichsarmee had technically ‘partnered’ with Flurry’s army to take control of Canterlot, but Colonel Sunset had rolled her eyes at the reports. “They don’t stop for the checkpoints, they don’t agree to be scanned, and they fly their own patrols,” she had summarized in a sardonic report two days ago.
The two armies hadn’t been in close proximity or forced to work together until Canterlot. Even then, the core of the Reichsarmee was still pushing west at a snail’s pace, bogged down as the Hegemony did everything in their power to slow the advance and hold out until the rainstorms. Flurry tilted her helmet up to the sky for a moment. She peered north, spotting the faint pink tint on the horizon. It was a sunny day, but dark clouds were gathering. The rains would come soon; it was already hailing against her shield at the Crystal Empire.
Flurry angled her helmet back down to shelter her exposed jaw. Through the eye slits, her icy eyes swept over the rooftops before the bridge. She was standing on one of the main streets that ran all through Canterlot to the mountain gates. The estates and palatial houses that flanked her were currently being ransacked. Ponies in purple outfits loaded silverware and anything valuable onto trucks haphazardly parked onto previously well-manicured lawns.
The mansion to her immediate right had been fully cleared. The truck started up with a rumble and eased its way out of the front yard, leaving behind a gutted mansion with broken windows. A mare ran out the mahogany double doors in a purple uniform, carrying a small gilded teapot in her teeth. The soldiers in the truck whinnied in laughter as she tossed it to them in her magic, then leapt aboard. The truck turned around Flurry’s escort and moved slowly down the road, axel visibly sagging under the weight of looted materials.
Flurry had decreed the mansions would be opened for housing, split between barracks for her soldiers and the thousands of homeless ponies from Lower Canterlot. Large portions of apartments and storefronts burned, and all the repair efforts were being expended on the airship dockyards and the road. Canterlot would be ugly for a long time. Sunset had argued that rebuilding it would bolster Flurry’s legitimacy; Tempest simply pointed to the alicorn’s wings and horn with her own jagged stump and ended the argument.
I need to set a date for the coronation, Flurry reminded herself. Then, I need to have a meeting about the reconstruction. Then review the resettlement of Lower Canterlot. Then the Hegemony prisoners. Then…
Flurry sighed. She needed to do a lot of things. Instead, she strapped on her armor to walk through Canterlot. She shoved the growing list of things she needed to do out of her mind. Her horn pulsed with the detection spell again. A few of the soldiers tensed as the magic washed over their fur, but her guards did not react, instead scanning the rooftops and windows of the mansions.
A filly wandered out of the mansion the soldiers left, a maroon unicorn with chubby cheeks. She sniffled and sat on the front lawn besides an overturned chair dragged from the house. Flurry stared, easily visible over the heads of her soldiers.
The filly glared back with teary eyes.
Check with Limestone about the foals, Flurry added to the mental list. The bodies had been taken down from the gallows several days ago. She was busy with Cozy Glow the night most of Canterlot’s remaining nobility were executed. Somepony had a list of heirs that feasted on cake while their parents were dragged away.
Probably Thorax. We’ll need to split them up. War made orphans, and Sunset had taken an interest in reorganizing part of the pre-war Cutie Mark Crusaders Club into a youth organization to help settlement and adjustment for young ponies. Like the communes and worker factories, it was all a temporary measure to keep Equestria walking.
Which goes back to the reconstruction. Flurry turned back to Jadis as the crystal pony ceased speaking with the checkpoint commander and limped back. She kicked a spent case to the side with her awkward gait as she approached.
“Princess,” Jadis dipped her head. “We’re still sweeping through Lower Canterlot. We think a few Changelings might have hidden out in the burnt districts. Middle Canterlot is secure.”
“We’re going to Middle Canterlot,” Flurry said aloud. “The Plaza of the Arts, then two blocks down.”
Jadis bit her lip. “There’s a lot of ponies, Princess.” Her eyes widened. “I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you,” she said quickly, “but we could get some more ponies and-”
“This is enough,” Flurry declared. She swept her wings at the alert soldiers, crystals slicing through the air with her feathers. Most had learned to always keep two body-lengths away from the Princess due to her wingspan. The knifelike crystals extending from her wings helped. The alicorn was still too encumbered to fly, and her feathers just recovered.
“As you say,” Jadis agreed reluctantly. She eyed Flurry suspiciously, doubtlessly aware that the Princess had set off without informing any of her commanders, but also too loyal to refuse an order. Flurry nodded her helmet to her, then to the stallion commanding the checkpoint. The pony seemed grateful for the acknowledgement and turned back to the sandbags with his soldiers.
Flurry Heart and her guards marched across the bridge. She leaned over the side to check the river flowing down the mountain. The debris was gone, including the body she spotted when she entered the city. Chrysalis’ black arch still remained in front of Canterlot Castle, but the Hegemony was being stripped from the capital piece-by-piece.
The armed cordon was alert and wary. Ponies couldn’t fire very accurately on the move; rifles and submachine guns were in hoof’s reach, but a moving pony was a trotting ambush target. Flurry summoned her golden bubble shield around herself as she walked in the center of the guards. Her ponies didn’t comment.
Jadis was the only crystal pony in her escort; the rest were ELF veterans. Most wore the Imperial Snowflake now, or the Elements of Harmony under the purple armband. An older mare with sagging eyes twisted her head to look at the bubble shield. Flurry smiled under her helmet at her, and the mare returned to scanning the street with a spark of hope in her eyes.
Flurry dropped the smile once the mare’s tail was turned. Hope doesn’t build roads, doesn’t feed foals, doesn’t win wars. There was a truncated list resting on her cot in her appropriated office. Flurry had left it there this morning; a rough summary of the rebuilding costs and expectations, based upon the damage in the east.
Flurry would spend the rest of her life paying the costs to rebuild Equestria and the Empire. If she was immortal, it would be decades before it resembled anything from before the war. The weather system was in tatters and the ecology was bereft. Animals that once looked to ponies for guidance and help were skittish and afraid. The factories and dockyards were still functional, but the Hegemony didn’t care about the damage to the environment; their own land was proof enough of that.
The Changeling Lands were always rumored to be a blighted landscape; it spawned a race of parasites and face-stealers after all, and the rapid industrialization of the past few decades did it no favors. It was all concrete and smog now, a black cloud that hung over the continent for years before the war. Thorax rarely spoke about his home. He had once told her it was legendarily beautiful a long time ago, but something happened that changelings couldn’t agree upon.
The Crystal Empire, the Changeling Lands, Old Equestria, the Thestrals, so much is gone. Even before the war. The alicorn’s mind wandered, letting her cordon lead her down the road. Ponies noticed the procession and began to shout, but the shield and armed guards deterred another herd from approaching. The joy of liberation had worn off with the rounding up of the Changeling prisoners and the ugly work of rebuilding.
Flurry and her guards entered Middle Canterlot properly, taking one of the main roads that ran through the city to the mountain path. There were few automobiles, even fewer than normal for Equestria. Ponies didn’t take to cars very well before the war, and none could afford one in the Hegemony's economy.
A single black convertible was parked halfway on the sidewalk, clearly a Changeling luxury model with a messy white snowflake painted on the hood. Flurry snorted at it. Does that mean it’s mine? I should learn how to drive.
Flurry could fly a plane, but nopony ever taught her how to drive. Celestia famously preferred her chariot for public appearances, and Luna simply walked or flew. It was part of the Equestrian commitment to sustainability, just as Winter Wrap-Up or the Running of the Leaves or a dozen other silly events that had been forgotten over the years.
Beauty doesn’t stop bullets. Flurry regarded her armored hooves. Ugly, thick purple crystal, already marred with slight scars that swirled in the light from the noonday sun. They matched the scarred cobblestone she trod upon, and reflected the state of Equestria better than anypony wanted to admit.
Flurry Heart would be Princess of Equestria and the Crystal Empire, a full integration of both lands that crystal ponies like Arctic Lily once feared, but now welcomed. The Crystal City was the largest city in the world, and while Canterlot was grander and more intact, it lacked the space to grow on the mountain.
The Crystal City was only limited by the Crystal Heart, and it now spanned across the north of the continent. Fields and farmlands were already expanding beyond the industrial center, and Arctic Lily had cobbled together a ‘four-year plan’ to restructure the city into a proper imperial capital. Governor Josette had already connected a few of the railways into the Nova Griffonian frontier to the Crystal City’s network, but the only line to Equestria was still the northern rail from Canterlot, bisected by the shield.
Flurry shook her head. Not thinking about it now. The alicorn had heard Jadis refer to herself as an ‘Imperial’ in a conversation with an ELF member, and wondered how far that spread. The Crystal Heart’s shield covered a large part of northern Equestria, including most of Stalliongrad’s territory. She had claimed everything under the shield was hers under the radio, and it was true enough with Grover ceding Nova Griffonia.
I know that’s going to be a conversation, Flurry huffed. I can already see Sunset and Limestone rubbing their hooves. “Oh, is it the Empire or Equestria? Ponies won’t like that. We’re the Equestrian Liberation Front.” She abruptly stopped and took a deep breath, raising her foreleg to her chest plate and exhaling. Her unarmored jaw twitched with energy.
“Princess?” one of her guards asked. The ELF pegasus fluttered her wings and checked her rifle subconsciously. Flurry stared at the Imperial Snowflake on her right foreleg, then the Elements of Harmony armband on her left.
Which one do you prefer? Flurry let the question go unsaid and jerked her head forward. The group moved forward, wary of the several dozen gawking ponies crying out for Flurry’s acknowledgement. She waved a wing absent-mindedly while her unicorn guards cast the detection spell where they could.
The group slowed near a ruined bar. A dozen armed soldiers had lined up nearly forty ponies against the storefront window and held them at gunpoint. A Reichsarmee squad matched from the opposite sidewalk. Flurry blinked in realization that both armies wore gray uniforms, albeit the ELF’s uniforms were slightly lighter in color.
Flurry dispelled her shield and sliced her wings down. The crystals chimed in a signal and her guards stopped. Jadis shifted and grabbed her rifle, eyeing the street in front of the column.
“What’s going on?” Flurry called out to the soldiers holding the ponies at gunpoint. A mare in a cap broke from the firing line and trotted over, carefully slinging her weapon by her side on approach. The pale pink earth pony bowed before Jadis, several body lengths away from the Princess.
“Rise,” Flurry acknowledged.
The mare stood and removed her cap. “Just a standard sweep, Princess.” She pointed to three unicorns slowly moving down the line of ponies in front of the window. “We’re checking for changelings.”
Flurry studied the civilians. Most wore dresses or jackets for pockets, but it didn’t hide the scarring around their hooves, horns and wings. They just looked tired. A few appeared better off, and they were uniformly more nervous. The hardened ponies holding them at gunpoint were more ragged than all of Canterlot's citizens, years of living in the Everfree or running partisan attacks dulling their eyes and bristling their fur coats.
The mare in command was no different. Her eyes were cold, looking through Flurry, or perhaps at something beyond her, what she represented more than the tall, gangly filly she actually was.
To be the Crystal Empress is to be the Empire. It is a burden, daughter, not a gift.
“Are you ELF?” Flurry asked. The mare’s uniform was a stained gray, homespun and cobbled together.
“Daisy Valley,” the mare nodded. “Ponyville native and commander of this militia.” She waved a rear hoof backward at the soldiers. “I’m under command of General Limestone.”
“Did you know my aunt?” Flurry returned.
“Everypony in Ponyville knew Princess Twilight,” Daisy answered. Her eyes clouded briefly and she hesitated. “She’s still a Princess, right?”
“Now and always,” Flurry said immediately.
“Good,” Daisy nodded, then nodded again. “Good.” Her tail whipped against her rear leg.
“Do you want help with the spell?” Flurry offered. The unicorns were making good progress, but they were clearly fatigued from spellcasting. One’s nose was bloody.
“I don’t want to impose, Princess,” Daisy whickered in surprise.
“It’s no trouble,” Flurry lied. Her horn still had an ache in the base, but nowhere near as blindingly bad as the night of the battle. A golden glow enveloped the spiral sticking out from the top of her helmet. The thin pink felt regrowing on her horn smoked slightly.
A few of the ponies in the row were terrified. Daisy barked a command for her soldiers to step back. Flurry locked eyes with one sweating mare standing next to a tired dockworker with chipped hooves. Her coat was ruffled, but still healthy. The unicorn's lips trembled.
Poor disguise. Flurry cast the spell and let it blow through the street. The Reichsarmee soldiers tensed at the magic, but none of her soldiers even twitched. The spell hit the line of ponies in front of the bar’s open window.
The mare was not a changeling, but the stallion next to her erupted into green fire as his shapeshifting abilities failed. A thin, young changeling in oversized coveralls looked just as tired and resigned as his disguise. He said nothing as the mare shifted away from the green magic with a whinny of fear.
The changeling stood completely still, blue eyes looking up at the clear sky. He didn’t move or lunge or even say anything. The street was quiet as the spell reached its maximum distance.
The soldier in front of the changeling fired her rifle and shot him through the head. The changeling crumbled to the ground with a faint splash of blood on the window behind him. The other ponies in the line-up appeared relieved. The stallion to the right of the changeling spat on the corpse, but refrained from doing anything else with the Princess watching.
Flurry swallowed. “Was that necessary?” she asked aloud.
“They had the opportunity to surrender,” Jadis commented from the side of her mouth. “Standing orders are to execute any changelings found disguised behind the front lines.”
“Whose orders?”
Jadis blinked and twisted her head. “Yours, Princess. Before the Crystal Empire.”
“Bah!” Daisy snorted. “Probably stripped off his little black uniform and found some dead dockworker. They do it all the time to try and blend in until they can escape the city.” She waved her hoof at the rest of the line-up. “Get moving, everypony! Thank you for your cooperation!”
Several wanted to approach Flurry, but the armed soldiers deterred them. Flurry waved her wing again and nodded to them with a plastered smile affixed to her muzzle. The stallion that spit on the corpse waved back.
“Serves them right,” one of the Reichsarmee griffons squawked in Herzlander to his squadmate. “Ruined our beer as well as our language. Did you see that bar?”
“Show’s over,” the other said in a lower voice. “I don’t want to stick around Maar’s Daughter.”
“You afraid?” the first needled in a high-pitched, reedy screech.
Flurry turned around to stare at them from her helmet’s eye slits. The chortling griffon quieted and let his squadmate usher him away with the rest of his friends. The Princess clicked her tongue and returned to the soldiers.
Daisy and several earth ponies unceremoniously stripped the corpse and flung the body into a wooden cart parked along the sidewalk. “We’ll take the body to be burned at the end of the day,” she assured Jadis. “We have enough to worry about without disease. Learned that from the Everfree.”
The mare that stood next to the changeling shuffled slowly down the sidewalk, eyes wide and hooves shaking. She abruptly collapsed against the wall, then stumbled down an alley and cried. Daisy’s ear cocked at the noise and she turned around.
After an assessment, she scoffed. “You know,” she said conversationally to Jadis, “I sold flowers in Canterlot a few times. Those ponies always looked down at Ponyville from their high horns before the war. No wonder they collaborated. Too soft for war.”
“Ponyville had a reputation as well,” Flurry countered.
Daisy’s ears pinned back at the rebuke. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. She didn’t say anything else and bowed again.
Flurry waved her away with a wing. “Dismissed.”
Daisy led her ponies up the street, back towards the castle. Flurry summoned her bubble shield and took her place back at the center of the guards. “The Plaza of the Arts,” she said aloud.
Jadis took the lead again, moving with a native Canterlot soldier. Neither spoke to each other, but each watched their side of the street with practiced ease. Flurry noticed the smear of blood on the sidewalk from the dead changeling, then passed the mare sobbing in the alley.
I should feel something. Flurry knew she should. The ‘ling was young, probably her age or younger. If he served, he would have been a trainee or a conscript, not some hardened Heer officer that kicked ponies for a living. It was possible he didn't serve at all and was just some terrified civilian trying to blend in.
Flurry thought about the changeling filly in the cupboard that she shot in the Crystal City. She was younger than the alicorn, and Flurry didn’t feel anything about her, either. The changeling had a short-barreled shotgun, fighting with a squad of Changeling soldiers. The alicorn didn’t know how young she really was; she only sensed the weapon and the squeak of the cupboard door. Why even fight?
The answer came to her with a glance at Jadis. Because we were killing them all, Flurry realized. We were fighting in her house.
She caught herself and her wings jittered. Not hers. Ours. Ours that they stole. There was a large crowd of braying ponies at the Plaza of the Arts, and Flurry first thought it was for her.
But they were facing the wrong direction, crowded in the middle of the thoroughfare. The Plaza was situated in the middle of a roundabout, perfect for artisans to show off their skills at painting, sculpture, music, or theatre. Flurry had a vague memory of attending some play with her entire family, but she couldn’t remember a thing about it.
The Plaza once had a large marble plinth and seats for an audience, but it had been replaced with a rearing statue of Queen Chrysalis years ago. The statue was gone, only a single leg remained affixed to the marble base, sticking out from a crowd of unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi. Several soldiers stood atop the plinth, pointing into the crowd.
The noise was deafening and Flurry couldn’t pick out any voices. But she could pick out the corpses swinging from the lampposts ringing the roundabout street. They circled the road, each two-pronged lamppost bearing two corpses, except for one that the crowd surged around. Ropes had already been fastened to the extremities with nooses hanging low and ready to be hitched upwards.
Flurry broke rank, dispelled her shield, and moved towards the lamppost, using her wingspan to clear her way through the guards. They briskly trotted after her to keep up; Jadis lagged behind. The herd didn’t notice the tall armored alicorn striding towards them, too caught up in dragging a mare and stallion to the lamppost.
The ELF soldiers atop the plinth shouted for order, but few in the crowd listened. Whinnies of victory overwhelmed any calls and commands. Flurry’s horn pulsed. A wave of rough telekinetic force staggered the crowd and jostled them. Most finally turned to the street to see the alicorn approaching. All except for a dozen in the center of the herd bowed, nearly two hundred ponies.
Flurry raised her wings and stepped around the prone ponies. A few shifted away on bent knees; Flurry did not tell them to rise. The soldiers atop the plinth leapt or flew down, also moving through the crowd. Mare, stallion, filly, and colt waited in a suddenly quiet thoroughfare.
She didn’t see any foals in the crowd, but it was a interclass gathering of dockworkers, craftsmares, artisans, and veterans judging from the scattered outfits. A few glanced up at her while she trotted by, but most looked down. The dozen in the center inclined their heads, but remained holding onto the stallion and mare.
The stallion was a mundane, brown earth pony with a short-cut mane. He had been beaten; one eye was swollen shut. The mare was a dark red unicorn; her mane was sandy, but it had been roughly shaved like Flurry’s own. Her tail matched her mane to Flurry’s disgust. Both ponies were naked other than their fur.
Flurry scanned over the herd carrying the two ponies to their deaths. Like the crowd, it was a mix of every tribe. A pegasus mare had roughly stuffed a rag into the unicorn’s muzzle. She was sobbing and struggling against her captors; the stallion had been beaten badly enough he wasn’t resisting.
Flurry kept her wings raised, and took a deep breath. “Rise.”
The crowd did so slowly, shuffling away from the soldiers that raced to catch up to Flurry. Jadis limped up just as the commander from the plinth shoved his way through. The alicorn ground her teeth at the growing horn ache.
“Are you in command?” she snapped at the stallion. He wasn’t an Imperial; he was wearing an ELF uniform with the Elements of Harmony on his foreleg.
“Princess,” he dipped his forelegs partially. His soldiers echoed him.
“Rise,” Flurry repeated in a clipped tone. “What’s going on?”
The commander blinked at the Princess, then gazed to the lampposts. “Justice?” he offered uncertainly.
Flurry gave a severe glare to the crowd restraining the two ponies. “I’ll rephrase,” she growled out. “Why is a mob hanging two ponies and what are they accused of?”
“They were brought to the square,” the commander answered with a nervous tilt of his head. “It’s what we’ve been doing.”
“What?” Flurry bit her lower lip.
“We listen to the charges, then decide whether the charges have merit,” the stallion continued. He was an older earth pony with a southern drawl and a scar running into his mane. His graying hair was exposed when he removed his cap to wipe his muzzle.
“And then you hang them?” Flurry snorted. “Who decides if they have ‘merit?’ What’s the process? Who are you?”
The stallion bowed properly this time, as best he could in the crowd. “Balanced Scale, Princess. I was a judge out of Rockville before the war. I was assigned to this task by the Field Marshal. It helped quell the lynchings.”
Jadis’ ear flicked and she looked at the crowd with a flat muzzle. Flurry could guess her thoughts. This is a lynching. At least it isn’t going from street to street.
The alicorn hummed with an exhale. “What are they accused of?”
“The stallion profited off the Hegemony’s exploitation of Equestria,” Balanced Scale explained. “The mare…” he paused and blushed.
Flurry worked her jaw and gazed down at him through the eye slits of her helmet.
“The mare slept with Heer officers for favors,” he reluctantly explained at her glare. Flurry regarded the accused mare. She was pretty, even without her mane and tail. It had clearly been shaved as a humiliation, but apparently that wasn’t enough of a punishment.
“Sleeping with changelings is punishment enough,” Flurry declared. A few in the crowd laughed, but the pegasus grappling with the mare bared her teeth.
“She sold information to them!” she rasped. Some heads nodded beside her, but the mare shook her own head desperately. Muffled, teary shouting sounded through the rag.
Flurry considered her. “How do you know?”
The pegasus wrenched the unicorn’s head up with a headlock. “Look at her horn! No divots! Fancy whore sold us out!”
Flurry studied the sobbing mare’s horn, then examined the crowd. Many of the unicorns had divots drilled into the base of their horn to limit their spellcasting. Most of the veterans that surrendered with the fall of Equestria were punished with clipped wings, leaden horseshoes, or weakened horns for their ‘defiance’ during the war. Feathers could regrow and hooves could heal, but many unicorns would never recover their full potential.
Flurry took a deep breath. Her horn throbbed, but she forced the detection spell and preemptively sniffed to hide the trickle of blood from her nose. “What proof?”
The pegasus stared blankly up at the Princess.
“What proof?” Flurry repeated.
“L-look at her!” the pegasus stumbled. “She’s healthy! She ate well!”
“You know her,” Flurry stated.
The pegasus snarled and shoved the unicorn down. “Yes,” she admitted. “She was our neighbor, me and my brother. We helped the ELF, and she reported us!”
The mare whinnied something through the rag.
The pegasus kicked her savagely in the barrel. “Y-you did!” she insisted with a broken voice. “I know you did! You knew we were helping and you sold us out! They killed him because of you!”
Flurry removed the rag with a flick of her horn. “Let her talk,” she ordered.
The mare sobbed. “I swear to Celestia… I didn’t do it. Please, I didn’t.”
“Wrong Princess,” Jadis snorted from beside Flurry.
The mare crawled forward towards Flurry, checked by a stomp on her back from one of the guards from the plinth. “A few others vouched for the story,” Balanced Scale elaborated from the mare’s other side. “She was a known collaborator and widely suspected of selling information to the bugs.”
“Suspicion isn’t proof,” Flurry answered.
“Well, the commander is dead and it’s not like she’s going to admit to it,” Balanced Scale responded with an apologetic grimace. “Those who accused Scarlet Letter, step forward,” he ordered to the crowd.
The pegasus and five other mares trotted forward and knelt before Flurry Heart. She waved her armored hoof impatiently. All mares. Is this a thing? “It could’ve just been VOPS,” Flurry said.
“They had informants,” Balanced Scale acknowledged. “Her name isn’t on any of the surviving lists, but a casual relationship wasn’t likely to be kept in the records.” He looked to the side. “Not like they kept anything on the Generalmajor’s activities.”
Flurry blinked heavily, then switched to the stallion. “What about him? Profiteering?”
“Cut and dry,” Balanced Scale said with a nod.
The beaten stallion mumbled something.
Flurry gestured for the soldiers to bring him forward with a jerk of her horn. They practically dragged the earth pony up to the Princess. “Who is he?”
“Whistle Whittle,” Balanced Scale replied. “Woodcarver out of Middle Canterlot.”
“I built chairs,” the stallion mumbled.
Flurry turned to Balanced Scale. “Slave labor?”
“Just chairs,” the stallion continued. One of the soldiers shoved him to his knees. “For my family,” he gasped out as he hit the ground.
Balanced Scale waved a hoof at the crowd. “Those who accused Whittle, step forward.” Three stallions limped forward and bowed. One struggled with a crooked knee and Flurry stopped him with a flare of her horn, helping him upright.
“Rise,” Flurry repeated. “You worked for him?”
“The bugs made us haul lumber to his shop,” the middle of the trio answered. “Every time this asshole made something, good ponies carried it on their backs up to some mansion for the bugs.” Ponies nodded in the crowd around them with lashing tails.
“Did you work for him?” Flurry repeated. “You said the Changelings made you do it, not him.”
“Well…” the stallion attempted a shrug of his hoof, then stumbled on his leg and nickered angrily. “That might as well be working for him!”
“Speak,” Flurry said down to the beaten earth pony.
“I took commissions,” he answered listlessly. “I built everything myself. No assistants.” The stallion’s hooves were worn, but from years of woodworking and not from leaden horseshoes. “I didn’t have a say in who they sent, or why. I wasn't involved.”
“You did nothing!” a stallion in the crowd whinnied.
“They paid me,” Whittle coughed. “And I fed my family. They would have shut down the shop and sent me to the dockyards if I refused. Put my foals on the street.”
Flurry assessed the stallion’s age, guessing early thirties. “Did you fight in the war?”
“No,” Whittle rasped. “I wasn’t drafted.”
“Coward!” a voice shouted out in the crowd. Several repeated the cry. The ELF soldiers beside Whittle shared a hard look, then roughly picked him back up from the ground. Flurry had extended her wings and flapped them in warning, making the crystals slice through the air with a chime.
“Neither of them fought in the war,” Balanced Scale said.
“That’s not…” Flurry started and inhaled. “That’s not a reason to hang them.”
“It would help, Princess,” Balanced answered blithely. "Neither worked with the ELF as well."
Flurry shook her head and turned back to the trio of stallions. “Did he oversee the logs? The furniture? Did he laugh and shake hooves with the Changelings while you suffered?”
“I bet he did,” one snorted.
“Bet his wife laughed at us,” another added.
After a moment of silence, Flurry growled, "Where's his family?"
The stallions gaped at the alicorn’s open hostility. The one in the middle stammered, “W-we didn’t do anything to them! We’re not monsters! They’re fine!” His friends nodded beside him.
Flurry groaned. “If the Changelings hurt you, that’s with them, not Whittle. This wasn’t slave labor or mass exploitation.”
“You hanged all those parasites!” a voice in the crowd shouted.
“Does he look like a noble?” Flurry belted out in a dry voice; she tried to pick out who shouted at her, but nopony met her eyes. “Do you want to hang him because he had a better life than you?” she continued at a softer volume. “The Changelings would have worked you anyway.”
“It’s not fair,” the stallion in the middle whined petulantly. He raised a hoof and showed the markings from his leaden horseshoes, now removed. “They paid him while we worked to the bone for years. He knew we were suffering.”
So did I. Flurry shook her head. “Release him. And her.”
Balanced Scale frowned. “Princess?”
“Let them go!” Flurry called out. Her wings flapped again in warning. Jadis and her guards formed a proper cordon around the alicorn. “We’re done!”
The herd took several steps back, but most hesitated. Flurry stomped a hoof into the ground and cracked the stone. “We are done!” she shouted out, and her voice rippled through the crowd. “No more hangings!”
There was a moment of silence, then the pegasus stepped forward with teary eyes. “She sold out my brother!”
“She says she did not,” Flurry answered.
“And you believe her!?”
“I don’t know,” Flurry admitted, “and you don’t either. What about the others? Did she sell out more family and friends? Or are you just upset that she lived better than you?” The Princess twisted her helmet to the trio of stallions. “You want to kill a father because he had a better life than you? Because he didn’t fight?” The stallions looked away.
“Yes!” the same voice from earlier shouted out in the crowd. It was a filly’s voice, high-pitched and young. Flurry did not see the crier.
Flurry Heart unclasped her helmet and yanked it off her head. She reared up onto her hind legs and sliced her wing up at one of the nooses, neatly severing the rope with a sound like a windchime. She seized the falling noose with her magic and looped it around her neck, letting it dangle against the metal gorget like a macabre necklace.
The Princess of Rope kept her wings extended over the crowd. Her height let her be seen by everypony. Flurry glared at the herd, twisting her bare head with a grimace. “I had a better life than all of you. I am sorry for that. Do you want to hang me as well?” she challenged.
The crowd was very quiet, and not even the unseen filly had a response.
“Leave,” Flurry snarled.
The crowed backed away at the edges first, fraying into splinters of smaller herds and retreating from the thoroughfare. Flurry Heart shoved her way forward towards the plinth, giving Balanced Scale a side-eye to follow with his own guards. Scarlet Letter and Whistle Whittle were left alone by the lamppost they nearly died at, but remained on the ground in shock and disbelief.
Flurry Heart bent her legs and leapt atop the plinth, cracking the foundation’s base upon landing. She levitated her helmet back onto her head, leaving the noose in place against her gorget. Balanced Scale climbed up after a rearing hop.
The alicorn levitated Jadis up beside her. The crystal pony squeaked at the magic enveloping her, but pinned her ears in embarrassment upon steading herself against the shattered remnants of Chrysalis’ leg. “I could have made it up,” she insisted.
Flurry Heart spun in a circle, counting the lampposts and watching the crowd disperse. “Is this all from today?”
“This week,” Balanced Scale answered. He swallowed. “Princess, ponies want justice.”
“What’s the difference between revenge and justice?” Flurry interrogated. “You said you were a judge.”
“Justice is impartial,” Balanced Scale nickered. He sat on his flank and wrung his cap between his hooves. “Ponies are running each other down in the street, looking to clear grievances. This is an outlet.”
“Hanging the nobility wasn’t enough?” Flurry huffed.
“There are thousands of bugs down near the dockyards,” Balanced pointed out. “A lot of them deserve the rope far more than these ponies. I admit that. We don’t hang them all, but if we hanged none the streets would run red during nightfall.”
“A woodcarver isn’t a war profiteer,” Flurry retorted. “Who said he was?”
“You did,” Jadis said quietly. “Anypony profiting off the Hegemony.”
Flurry Heart choked on her tongue. “That…” she stammered, “that is not what I meant. Businessponies, bankers, CEO, major corporations, nobles. We’re not killing bakers for selling bread.” The alicorn stared at the bodies hanging from the lampposts, then to the two ponies stumbling to their hooves.
Scarlet Letter and Whistle Whittle shared one look between each other, then left in opposite directions. They moved slowly, wary at the stares from the soldiers and lingering ponies along the sidewalks and abandoned storefronts. Frosty Jadis observed the unicorn.
“She won’t make it back home,” the crystal pony declared. “That pegasus had murder in her eyes.”
“It’s been nearly a decade,” Balanced Scale said. “Long time to build up a grudge. Ponies aren’t as forgiving as we pretend. If we were, I wouldn’t have had a job.”
“Jadis, are you seriously okay with this?” Flurry asked in exasperation.
The blue crystal pony’s muzzle glittered in the sunlight as she thought about her response. “The Crystal City was a mess,” she said, “but it was done quickly. We killed who we needed to kill and moved on.”
"The Empire isn't Equestria," Balanced retorted in his drawl. "No offense to you, but you're just one tribe. Pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies have history. Not all of it good, no matter what that Hearth Warming's play says."
"I do not wish to discuss your flawed history," Jadis responded in an archaic lilt. "You at least have a play. We have nothing."
“Crystal ponies screamed for the death of foals,” Flurry refocused.
“Yes,” Jadis confirmed. “You have forty thousand soldiers stuffed in warehouses besides the harvested love they helped extract from Equestria, guarded by your soldiers. Ponies can’t get to them, but they can settle a grudge between a neighbor with a sharp kitchen knife.”
“Which we are preventing with this show,” Balanced Scale added. “The alternative is stretching our forces even thinner trying to stop lynchings. We’ll have to kill citizens to quell the bloodshed.”
Flurry stared blankly at the lampposts. Kill changelings, kill my subjects, let them kill each other. She tried to pick an option she could live with. She couldn’t find one.
Amore chose parties and festivals. The alternative was rebuilding the Empire, taking back everything lost to the snow. She would have died miserable after years of effort.
“The first year of the war,” Balanced Scale suddenly mused, “there was a truce during Hearth’s Warming. Just for the night. The bugs didn’t celebrate it, but they stopped shelling and listened to us sing.”
“Not in the Crystal Empire,” Jadis nickered. “I remember there was a sneak attack that we countered with a forced avalanche. We have the Crystal Faire, not Hearth's Warming.”
“Hearth’s Warming Day,” Balanced Scale said, “tanks rolled across our trenches. Heard the commander that stopped the attack was executed.”
Mom wanted Thorax to be King of the Changelings.
“Sounds like the bugs,” Jadis agreed. “Heart have her, Chrysalis deserves a thousand torments.”
We’re going to have to burn them to the ground.
“Not just her,” Balanced Scale said.
Thorax knows.
“Of course.”
He always knew. From the moment I arrived on that dock.
“Make sure they make it home,” Flurry said aloud. “Jadis, go with them.”
“P-princess?” Jadis was jolted from her reminisce with Balanced Scale.
“Go with them,” Flurry repeated in a rush. The alicorn twisted around on the plinth until she spotted the street sign she wanted. “I know where I’m going.”
“Princess, I have to insist-”
“Go with them. I don’t want them run down in the street.”
“I don’t know where you’re go-”
“I’ll meet you back at the castle.” Flurry’s horn glowed. She vanished with a snap, reappearing down the street and surprising several dozen ponies gathered on the sidewalks. Before they could bow, she snapped away again.
Flurry Heart appeared in the midst of a Reichsarmee squad. The griffons squawked in alarm and one fumbled his rifle, clutching it like a stuffed toy. She vanished in another snap, slamming back into existence at an intersection.
The alicorn glared up at the street sign, then vanished again with a quick glance down the road. She reappeared and snorted blood from her nose, then repeated the process. It was faster than walking, and the horn ache took her mind off everything else.
Flurry nearly overshot her destination, then realized she was on a mostly deserted residential street and cut the spell. She took a heaving breath and trotted forward. They can probably find me if they need to, she assured herself.
The street she walked on was undamaged from fighting, which boded well, and the townhomes lining both sides of the road were quaint, two-story houses. None of them looked remarkable in anyway. Unlike the main streets and the castle, the Changelings didn’t bother to remake most of urban Canterlot. They torched Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.
Flurry feared they did the same to her grandparent’s house.
She counted down the numbers on the mailboxes. A few of the houses appeared to have been looted, so she tried to temper her hopes. Could be a museum.
Her hope immediately returned. Maybe that means there’s something left? Chrysalis shipped nearly everything of value to Vesalipolis, all of the Princesses’ remaining items from the city’s fall. Only a few unrecognizable pieces of junk were left from Twilight’s old tower, and only Spike could probably remember what they were.
Flurry Heart stopped at the number she remembered and breathed a sigh of relief. The townhome was intact. The alicorn did not remember what it looked like, but the red door had no battle damage or scars. She smiled under her helmet, raised a hoof to her chest, and inhaled.
Her armored greave bumped against the noose.
Flurry Heart ripped it off with a huff and tossed her head back. She peered up and down the street, but didn’t spy anypony within eyesight. She tensed and cast the detection spell one final time, letting it pulse through the residential block.
No hidden changelings jumped out at her, and there was no motion from the house. We must have cleared this area early. Flurry paused. Did nopony look? I guess it wasn’t important. Night Light and Twilight Velvet died with the ELF. Spike was busy with Twilight. We can use this area for housing. After this.
Flurry trotted by the mailbox and walked up the steps to the red door.
I don’t even remember what they sounded like. I don't even have a picture of them.
She shifted her hooves on an unassuming brick porch. It was a townhome like all the others on the street, not the place of royalty or nobility, but a simple home. Her mother had been adopted; Mi Amore Cadenza grew up in a small village near Vanhoover and never quite lost the rural accent that endeared her to her crystal ponies. It thickened noticeably when she spoke passionately, which was most of the time.
I don’t remember the name of the village. The Changelings probably burned it down.
Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor were from the most mundane of royal pedigrees. House Twilight had a single page in any guidebook to Canterlot, a late addition after Twilight’s ascension. Her parents were an editor and an astronomer. Neither were noble.
My entire family is gone.
Flurry Heart raised her hoof to the red door.
“Not just her.”
The purple crystal swirled.
“Of course.”
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11589411
Yes updates?
Hooray new chapter.
Flurry is starting to realize how others might interpret her orders differently than how she intended. That or she's looking back on an order she made in the heat of the moment and thinking "Ah fuck, why did I say that?"
And now we see it. A child trying to rule a Broken, Scared, and very angry Nation. The early days of the War where being a Warlord was enough are no more. Now she must become a Monarch. The Nation will take decades to rebuild and develop. Trials will be held for the accused and the those found guilty will hang. While those found innocent will live in fear for the rest of their life.
And we still have a large swathe of Equestria to liberate. This is going to get worse before it becomes better.
You really capture the bleak, emotional numbness of wandering a world at war and a city recovering from abusive occupation.
Of witnessing so much horrible shit that it doesn't even elicit a proper reaction anymore.
And kudos to Flurry for trying again and again to make good decisions in crushing circumstances, to be a Princess of her ponies.
Even when the decision is hard and even when she doesn't know if it's the correct judgement or not, she just keeps trying.
I can't help but wonder at the extent to which Grover has had to struggle with the same. Much has been teased at and alluded to, particularly whenever the narration follows or features the Kaiser.
My heart goes out to all of them, even the hateful, vengeful ones.
I wish Flurry especially could just catch a break. Little hope in sight for the moment, unfortunately.
Keep up the good work, author.
It's a fantastic story, no matter how happy it gets or how bad it hurts.
11589475
Things are pretty dark right now. It's about to get really dark.
I've been teasing it on the EaW Discord Server, but two chapters to go before the big moment:
The Alicorn and the Griffon
There's a tag on this story that's had precious little love for several hundred thousand words.
I've kept it on the story for a reason. I just have to get there.
11589491
The romance or sex tag?? Hehehehehehe
Would be a bit funny turning this story into a Clop story in the middle of it
11589421
Ayyyyy 👍
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More updates?
Flurry is perilously close to falling into the same position as everypony around her. Everypony wants blood. Everypony has lost so much. At the end of the chapter it seems like Flurry is realizing she is no different and will have to ask herself why she is doing what she is doing. Why? Why kill the traitors and not the monsters who asked for turncoats, enslaved her people and so much worse still?
What will be more intresting is if Flurry does actually compromise on the principle that is keeping her from outright masacreing the bugs like occurred in Crystal City. Thorax knew from the beginning this was going to be Ponies versus Changelings and Flurry giving in will make everything that much more ugly. What's worse is that the changelings are justifying every cruelty that is coming their way with everything they've done and the atrocities they are commiting to stall the advance.
11589491
You know just what to say to keep the anticipation going.
I am very excited to hear that.
So much implication in the chapter name alone.
However it goes down, it's sure to be cathartic for everyone, us included.
Reminds me of a lot of what happened in formerly occupied Europe after the end of the Second World War. Neighbor against neighbor, revenge killings in the dark, blame. All the blame. People always forget that eventually the killing has to stop but the guilt remains. And there are issues long after people go home. Fathers lost to there family's. Those that had surrendered used by the winners of the War. Did anybody know the French used captured Japanese soldiers to attempt to retake Vietnam? They used surrendered troops to attempt to rebuild there overseas empire. I wonder if something like that would be something Flurry could do? Get them out of Canterlot and send them elsewhere to work.
At this point, who is she kidding? "Necessary" includes disregarding any considerations of even potential innocence for entire classes which happen to be inconvenient to the new political order.
Well that's more than she did for the stallion she had executed for fathering a filly out of wedlock... certainly not for treason. After all, he can't inherit (he ain't a filly), and as young as he was, he likely never took an oath of fealty to Celestia. He's otherwise no different from any of the foals who were spared. "Old enough to hang"? For what?
But even for stronger charges, apparently mere hearsay evidence does the job: the gossip of servants with axes to grind, presented with zero corroboration, compiled by a mare with every reason to exaggerate or misrepresent the information to advance themselves by implicating others. It's straight-up what Cozy Glow DOES, and is in fact what Flurry openly expects of her.
The judge and mob did better by their lynchings than Flurry did with bottles of Amontillado. An actual judge presided, allowed for corroborating witnesses, and while Scarlet Letter selling information was "suspected", her being a collaborator was "known". Flurry argued against the one, but not the other, and both are hanging offenses, but she walks anyway. As for Whittle...
I guess political inconvenience overrides justice? Oh wait, not even the judge knows what justice is:
Justice can't be both "impartial" and "an outlet". The one nullifies the other. If he was a judge in Old Equestria, that says a lot.
Nice of the Princess who asserts absolute dominion as the only legitimate nobility to clarify that capital crimes are totally not about "selling out" in general, but the scale of selling out. Kind of an important distinction to make, especially since the scale of the charge and the intended target means we can dispense with all the niceties of needing a judge, and just get straight to the hangings on the uncorroborated word of any single creature who had a bone to pick.
Hell of a precedent to set, Princess.
This was the impression I had gotten from this chapter. Marauding soldiers stealing and murdering their way across a city. Of course, what is shown here and in the video differs massively in context, but I find the title and actions shown to be quite apt. Public executions with little evidence, looting of homes, and a general disregard for the consequences, as well as for those who are/ were wrongfully accused/ harshly treated based off little evidence.
EDIT: The video DOES NOT show the actions I've described here in ANY detail.
Yeah, Flurry came off as a huge hypocrite in this chapter. Pardons a mare who had sex with changeling soldiers for favors but executes a colt for having a child with a servant when he was… what? 15 or 16 years old? His father threw the servant and child out on the street, but I doubt the son would’ve been able to change the outcome of that at all.
She only killed him because he was a noble. The mare wasn’t a noble so she gets to live. That’s how this comes off as. It looks like gossip is only valid if it confirms her own biases.