Eris's Riddle

by hahatimeforponies

Ilium

"Wow, I never knew Chancellor Puddinghead was such an asshole."

"I, wait... what? Rainbow Dash?" Twilight nearly dropped the book when she heard the pegasus interrupt. Yet there she was, sitting crosslegged on top of a nearby bookshelf. In positions of varying degrees of comfort, the others reclined on the floor between them. "When did you guys get here?"

"Uh, sugarcube..." Applejack quirked a brow and adjusted her hat. "You've been reading aloud for about ten minutes now."

"Oh..." The unicorn pouted, and sank back a little in her seat.

"Well we didn't say stop!" Rarity chuckled, sprawled across a fainting couch. Nopony was quite sure where she found it.

"Uhm... okay, I guess... now where was I..."

---

The soulless, synchronised flapping of hundreds of pegasus wings, beating in time to a dull, thumping drum pierced the sound of the howling wind around Mount Olympegas. Though hunger weighed them down as much as their armour, the soldiers found courage in the pounding beat, and were lured on by the prospect of showing their compatriots their place. Commander Hurricane's centurions were only too happy to remind the troops of this goal, and did so at every opportunity the gaps in the wall of noise afforded them.

Ahead of the march, Hurricane kept a keen eye on the ground below, her course following the overgrown roads down the mountain to Troy. All the while she had a sly grin plastered across her face, and only rarely tore her eyes away from the ground. While Private Viola was quite relieved to not be at the brunt of her abuse, it concerned her that something was preoccupying Hurricane so. Several times she asked what was wrong; was something bothering her? Was there anything in particular that warranted such focus? Every time she inquired, she received a careless handwave in response, occasionally accompanied by a frustrated growl or mutter, and sometimes connecting with her face if she got too close. She knew better than to protest. Either way, nothing about this situation sat right with Viola. Commander Hurricane clearly wasn't herself, the army was especially riled up, and marching the day after the summit's collapse seemed a tad rash, even for Hurricane.

Viola shivered a little in her armour. She didn't normally feel the cold, but even she thought it was a bit chilly for her liking.

---

From the other direction came the muffled march of scores of hoof-falls on snow. A disorganised flying column of earth ponies, dragging rudimentary cannons through the coldest wind any of them had ever felt, only the fire of hate in their hearts keeping them going. For some, this was not enough; from time to time, an individual dropped to the ground, their body already as ice, never to rise again. Chancellor Tiramisu ordered they leave them there - there was no time to lose. Brandywine was shocked by this callousness, but the masses seemed to agree, and they kept marching. Every turn of this whole escapade filled her with doubt. She knew Tiramisu was paranoid, but this was a whole new level - she wasn't even moved by the deaths of her fellows, and their blindness in following her was just plain disturbing. Still, she was sworn to carry her burdens, and suppressed her qualms for the time being. With any luck, this would all blow over as soon as Tiramisu got bored.

She gritted her teeth, and pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders. It would take more than a blizzard to stop her.

---

Atop the battlements of Troy, Princess Platinum surveyed the scene with a wry smirk. She knew the pegasi and earth ponies would arrive any hour now, and was determined to be ready for them. All of the city's finest archers and mages were lined up along the ramparts with orders to shoot on sight. All the entrances were sealed with enchanted barricades, and every last ounce of the meagre supplies they could scrape up was holed up in the city's cellars for siege. Clover the Clever kept her station by the Princess, fear and uncertainty scraping at the back of her mind. As far as she was concerned, this whole endeavour was utterly insane - the bubbling over of racial tensions into open conflict at the worst possible moment. Still, she kept her mouth shut. Examples had already been made, and she didn't want to be counted among them.

"Charge!" The shriek came from an uncertain direction. A few archers drew arrows and looked around frantically, but Clover knew better. There was only one thing that could be attempting to charge the top of a battlement, and it was hiding in the storm clouds above. She dropped prone and scurried behind a parapet in time to watch three figures shoot from the cloud layer, each one arcing their path to sweep an archer from the battlements. A fourth pegasus attempted to charge Platinum, lagging a little behind his peers.

Crack.

An arc of lightning jumped between the cloud and an ethereal sphere enclosing the royal, coursing through the pegasus in the process. Momentum carried his body to the edge of the battlement, colliding with the parapets with a wet crack, and sliding limply off to the moat below. Clover gulped, and chanced a look out of cover.

Above them, the heavens opened. The clouds dispersed as individual soldiers took them away, hitting them to hurl a lightning bolt or deliver a blast of driving snow, or just hiding in them until they had a chance to strike. Behind the clouds, Commander Hurricane watched the scene with a malicious grin, Private Viola cowering to the side. For the briefest of moments, Clover's eyes met with Viola's. The distance made details hard to pick out, and conversation was impossible (not that their superiors would tolerate such a thing), but their expressions said everything that needed to be said. It let each of them know that they weren't the only ones carrying doubt into this battle, they weren't the only ones harbouring the idea that something was very wrong, and just maybe, they weren't the only ones who hadn't completely lost their minds.

"Fire!" came another cry from the ground, rapidly followed by a series of dull thuds and booms. The noises brought eerie silence across the battlefield, through which the soft whistle echoed. The defenders had only the briefest of intervals to contemplate this, before the cannonballs connected with the stone of the upper battlements.

Crack.

The barrage tore through the masonry, all aimed at the same spot. The cold made the stones brittle, and they easily split and shattered. The second volley tore a hole clean through the walls, more than big enough for a pony to fit through. The mages quickly set about closing the gap with shields, but with the cold weakening their magic, they were little match for the third round. The pegasi were the first to capitalise on the breach, with the first earth pony guerrillas still charging across the plains. Archers worked as fast as equinely possible, but with the strength of this blizzard, the arrows barely made it further than the moat. At the top of the hill, Clover could just about pick out the outline of Tiramisu, barking orders to the cannon crews, next to a hapless-looking Brandywine.

"Give it up, Platinum!" Commander Hurricane grabbed her attention again. She hovered with impunity before the unicorn defence - arrows and javelins tumbled uselessly to the side as soon as they were let go, and the weakened spells were mere breezes by the time they reached her, drowned out by the storm around them. "There's no way you can win this! Pegasi are masters of the cold!"

"Try all you like, you ruffians, Troy will never fall to the likes of you!" Platinum yelled back. They could barely hear each other over the roaring wind; the blizzard had only gotten worse since hostilities opened.

"We don't want Troy! We only want your submission or your blood!"

"I knew you pegasi were just treacherous swine all along!"

"Pah! Your ignorance never ceases to amaze me. We know about the wendigoes..." Private Viola threw Hurricane a double-take. The Commander didn't miss a beat. "... and we know that to beat them this needs to end, now."

"Wendigoes? What in the heavens above are you talking about, you dolt?"

"Wendigoes?" Clover muttered. The bottom fell from her stomach. Hurricane's word was hardly the most reliable on the subject, but the fact that she even knew their name was suspect.

"Don't play dumb with me! You know exactly what I mean!"

"Maybe the cold is getting to your head, featherbrain, because I know nothing of the sort!" Leaving them to argue, Clover slipped away, dropping quietly over the edge of the battlements. She wasn't sure what she was going to do, but she knew something was very wrong, and this certainly wasn't the way to fix it.

The snow by the moat was exceptionally thick, and the moat itself was frozen over. If there were wendigoes about, then this battle was only going to make them even stronger. At this rate, she feared Hippaea would be nothing but ice by the end of it. She hurried away from the castle, escaping the notice of the marauding pegasi above, and the earth pony artillery on the hill... save for two. She could barely make out the two other figures rushing to join her, one descending from the clouds, masked by the driving hail, the other sliding down the hill and wading through the snow to meet her. They met somewhere in the middle, and simply exchanged nods. They didn't waste time on introductions - each knew something was wrong, and both time and horsepower were of the essence.

"So what's the plan?" Brandywine spoke up, shouting to be heard over the wind.

"We need to stop the fighting, somehow!" Clover clutched her whipping robes tight to her body.

"Uhm..." Viola tapped the unicorn on the shoulder and pointed back to the castle. Pegasi were starting to crash to earth as water vapour froze out of the air, leaving them at the mercy of the wind, and unicorns on the battlements started collapsing. Behind Brandywine, the rate of cannon fire had been dropping off dramatically as the ponies attending them passed out from the cold. "I don't think anypony can fight in this..."

"This is worse than I thought..." Clover muttered. They had perfect views of their respective leaders, still shouting with their remaining strength to anypony who was listening, as the ice started to claim them too. Tiramisu miraculously remained on her feet as they froze over, barking at the wind to keep firing right up to her final breath. Platinum sprawled over the parapets of the city walls, adamant that her beloved Troy would never be taken, and Hurricane didn't even feel the cold claiming her, as she defiantly called out for the unicorns' blood. Fear struck in their hearts, Clover, Viola and Brandywine backed up to each other, shivering as the blizzard around them intensified.

"Hey... why aren't we frozen yet? We're the only ones still standin'!" Brandywine furrowed her brow.

"I... that's it!" Clover's face lit up. "We're still alive because it's not as cold where we're standing, which could be because we're not fighting, and if that's the case then it must be wendigoes!" Her smile quickly slid away when the triumph of her deduction drained off. "On the other hand, we're dealing with wendigoes..."

"W-wendigoes?" Viola and Brandywine gibbered in unison.

"Wendigoes are malicious ice spirits, bringing harsh cold wherever they go. And, as we're painfully aware, they're attracted to things like hate, violence, and..."

"... Discord."

"What?" Clover wheeled around to face the strange voice behind her. Sprawled out in the snow, sipping an iced drink from a glass and wearing a pair of blacked-out glasses, was a curious, serpentine beast, with a lion paw and an eagle claw.

"Lovely weather, don't you think?" he chirped.

"What in the hay is that?" Brandywine yelled. Viola cowered behind her.

"Who are you and what did you do?" In a flash of light, he disappeared from his lounging spot in the snow, and reappeared, draped across Clover's shoulders like a scarf.

"Oh, I'm insulted! You were just on the cusp of calling me by name, and you've already forgotten..."

"What... discord?"

"Anyway Clover, it's hardly me you should be asking. I thought it was..." With another click of his fingers, Discord vanished from her shoulders. Instead of reappearing, four misty white streaks descended from the clouds, assembling into the vague shapes of ponies. They had hollow pits for eyes, their arms were missing, and their manes whipped behind them, releasing flakes of snow into the wind. All four spoke with one voice - the same voice as the curious serpentine beast. "... those pesky wendigoes..." Clover's jaw dropped.

"Starswirl's beard..." With another flash, they vanished, and Discord reappeared in their place, hovering with a devious smirk.

"Well, I think it's about time I hit the ol' dusty trail..." He circled around them, effortlessly sailing through the air in spite of the wind. "... I think it's going to get pretty dead around here soon..." With an echoing, non-directional cackle, he dove into a pile of snow, covering the three of them in it, and disappearing completely.

"What did he mean, get p-pretty dead soon?" Viola gibbered.

"I think we might be running out of time..." Clover spluttered, throwing snow off herself. She turned back to Viola and Brandywine, struggling to wade through the depth of snow. It seemed like it had gotten deeper around their feet while they were talking. She could tell by their trembling, and her own numbness, that they wouldn't last much longer in this. Still, she swallowed, and painted determination on her face. "... but I think I have a plan."

Comments

[Lium]

The plot thickens.

[Streamline]

Yay, an update! Now, I have something to read.

[Northwest Brony]

Can't wait for more!

[catrianheir]

Here I am just casually reading having a good time, yucking it up, when suddenly BAM!!!! the freaking chapter spontaneously ends!! Talk about a cliff-hanger.

[Tribal Typhlosion]

Finally a update I thought it never came

[Tribal Typhlosion]

Nothing new.....

[SennenRyu]

Indeed, Discord. That's just about the best time you could leave, as it only gets more awkward the longer you keep talking to the last survivors of a species you've just engineered the extinction of. Speaking of which, this Discord, or at least, Discord from back then, seems a lot more malicious than the Discord we see in the show. Don't get me wrong, Canon Discord is a magnificent bastard, but he's not exactly a murderer, indirectly or otherwise.

[Mecha G]

I cant believe no one has pointed out the clicking. Shouldn't it be snapping?