The Days She Spent

by Frazzle2Dazzle

The Day She Found The Cake

The cold didn’t stop for the conquerors of Equestria.

Day by day, the temperature dropped, snow flowing down the mountains and covering the landscape, leaving it as pure white as the Crystal Empire.

Cozy Glow would’ve done anything to be rid of it. She wasn’t some… Child who desperately yearned for a snow day, a break from reality to have fun with frozen water, of all things. She was one of the most powerful creatures in Equestria!

But it seemed the Windigoes didn’t care.

They had tried dozens of times, but there wasn’t any magic for the Bell to take from the ice spirits, and Tirek didn’t even bother trying to take it from them.

Chrysalis had tried sucking them dry of feeling, but had to stop as she spat a black goo out. ‘Liquid hate’ she had called it.

Cozy could only scowl as they flew by, icing over the land, freezing lakes and rivers, making Equestria almost completely unlivable.

And what use was she for her homeland? She may have despised its values, the ponies that lived in it, but it was hers, and she didn’t want to let these monsters of ice and hate take it from her! She wouldn’t be looked down on by them! She wouldn’t-

She wouldn’t lose.

She wouldn’t be left alone because of them.

For now though, Cozy could only focus on wearing the warmest clothing she could find in the castle as she did what she did best, learning new things. Without anyone to stop her, books about anything from the most mundane to the most devastating were free for her to read in the Canterlot libraries.

She had worked hard pretending to be such a good pony at that damnable Twilight’s school of Friendship, the effort she put in now was small by comparison.

…Though it would help if it weren’t quite so tedious. And boring.

She didn’t know how Twilight did it, all that studying, how she could remember all these inane facts about horn pressure and thaumic leverage and everything and anything to do with the infuriating horn she now has on her head.

Death beams? Cozy found those to be surprisingly easy, just a point and shoot thing.

How to banish untouchable spirits of ice? You’d have better luck explaining how the sun and moon work to her.

Cozy was miserable here in this castle. She didn’t even have anyone to talk to, Tirek having decided to conquer the Everfree and drain it of magic while Chrysalis left to reclaim her Hive, or kill them, or whatever she decided to do to her former buggy subjects.

Meanwhile, Cozy was the only one who felt she had to make some effort to put things right in Equestria, to try and actually make something of their victory.

But without any help, without anypony to talk to, she was slipping more and more into frustration, anger, despair…

The worst thing for her, though? She couldn’t eat.

It was such a mundane activity, something that took so much time, something so… Normal. She couldn’t help but be driven to madness by its absence.

It wasn’t like she didn’t have the ability to eat, the feast following their victory had been proof enough for her of that, but with nopony bringing food to the castle and the Windigoes killing plants left, right, and center, there wasn’t anything left for the filly to eat, and she suspected the captured ponies she’d sent to find food wouldn’t be returning.

Maybe that was part of her punishment… Karma for having taken over Equestria? Maybe she deserved it.

But looking at the miserable child, alone in the library with a frown on her face, one can’t help feeling bad for her. Pity, almost.

Right now, she isn’t some dangerous tyrant trying to kill everypony she thinks wronged her. She isn’t some psychopathic mastermind trying to indoctrinate the masses.

Tears of frustration in her eyes, book after book of everything from fire to seals to Ancient Equestria and ghosts, all I can see is a child.

Scared and alone and…

---

“…In need of some company?”

Cozy scowled as she heard the voice, “So it wasn’t a dream. Wonderful.”

“On the contrary, I think you’re the dream. I look forward to seeing which of us is right.”

Cozy looked around the room, trying to see the source of the voice, again, and also failing to see it, again.

“Ugh… What do you want?” she slammed the book closed, something to do with fire spirits or the like, and tossed it to the messy pile next to her, “Here to tell me I need friends again?”

“I’m not here to taunt or correct you. I’m here to keep you company.”

Cozy got out of her seat, heading to the doorway as she tiptoed around piles of books, “I don’t need correcting and I don’t need company! I don’t need anypony!” she slammed the door to the library closed behind her, sighing as she leaned against it.

“Perhaps not…” the voice speaking out again made her flinch before she glared up at the air again, “But I don’t bow to your whims either. My company is yours, whether you want it or not.”

Cozy growled, looking like she wanted to stay something, but took a deep breath in before slowly letting it back out. Silently, she turned away from the library and started her trek down the hall, intent on just getting away.

“I see you require more convincing of my good nature,” the voice echoed out around her.

She remained silent, passing door after door down the stony halls of the castle, her hoofsteps the only sound she made.

“Perhaps I could tell you of something you want… Something you desire… Something you’d give the world for right now…”

Her pattern of hoofsteps stuttered, but she didn’t stop walking, though her ears seemed to be more open now.

“Perhaps it would interest you to know… Where the last remaining cake is?”

That was enough to stop her hooves, one paused in the air as she almost pulled open the door to the room she claimed.

“The last… Cake?” she echoed back.

“The last one in all of Canterlot. The castle may have been cleaned of crumbs, but there’s one special residence in this city that still has an intact cake.”

Cozy scowled at that, “Try a better lie next time. Any cakes would have gone stale or rotten by now,” she said as she shoved through the door.

“On the contrary, your city is plagued by the only thing keeping it fresh.”

That actually cause Cozy to fully stop before she could get into the massive bed and bury herself in the sheets and blankets.

“It’s frozen?”

“Indeed. And all it needs is just a little… Magic to bring it back to its full delicious power.”

Cozy didn’t want to turn around. She didn’t want to give in to the temptation set before her with that offer, to let this mysterious voice win.

But it had been a week since the food had run out in the castle. A week without eating, a week without being normal. She could hardly stand it.

“Fine…” she growled out as she turned around, “Show me the cake.”

---

The voice led her out of the castle and down into the city proper. It wasn’t somewhere Cozy had actually tried to spend time in, to explore and know her new ruling city, having been to busy with trying to find some way to get rid of the nuisance keeping it so lifeless.

All around, the streets were covered in snow and ice, windows shattered from the cold and glass littering the streets.

It wasn’t at all what Cozy wanted this place to be. She didn’t want a wasteland. She didn’t want a barren city of ice and snow. She didn’t want rule over the lifeless stones and statues and-

Statues?

Cozy had stopped, the voice cutting itself off as it noticed her delay.

“Hmm? Something piqued your interest, Cozy?”

“Why is there a statue there?” she raised a fetlock to point at the street, where a grey form in the shape of a pony, covered in a layer of snow and ice, was standing.

“Hmm? Oh… Oh! Uh, it was a recent addition being put up before your takeover.”

The voice sounded… Hesitant. And Cozy decided she liked that, “Oh really? In the middle of the street? I’m not buying it,” she walked closer to the ‘statue, trying to make out more. Was there a shirt on it?

“No, I think it’s just a statue. Perhaps we should ignore it and get back to finding that cake, yes?”

“Ohhh, somepony wants to tell me what to do now?” she gloated as she moved around to view the grey thing from where she saw the head was, “Well you can shove that up… your…”

Cozy’s voice trailed off as she looked at the head of the- the pony in front of her.

The stallion’s face was frozen in a scream, his mouth open and his eyes wide in terror, she could still see his eyes shrunk to pinpricks behind the layer of ice covering them, and one hoof outstretched in vain.

“…I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to see that.”

Cozy could only stare at the stallion, and the despair on his frozen face. “What happened to…”

“He… He was still in Canterlot when the Windigoes returned to Equestria. Making their way through the city, he just… Happened to be in their path.”

Cozy looked on blankly, her mind at war with itself, a part of her proclaiming she didn’t care, while the other couldn’t stop imagining the process, the pain, the frozen scream-

She abruptly turned away, her mouth in a frown and her face stony.

“How pointless,” she huffed hollowly, “Where’s that cake?”

“…Yes. The cake.” The voice echoed back.

---

It wasn’t even a minute before the voice led Cozy to the house. Laid out on a table, bright and colorful with pink and lime frosting, a cake sat there as promised by the voice. It had a message in bold letters, ‘Happy Birthday’, on it, and three candles sticking proudly out of it before she tore them off.

She didn’t see any more frozen ponies that day. She didn’t see any more of that fear.

She had gotten the cake.

But even as she grabbed it, flying it back to the castle, she couldn’t bring herself to look at it, her stomach feeling sick.

She couldn’t bring herself to eat the cake that day.

And the voice was gone before she could ask it why.

Comments

[Wooden Wheel]

I'm interested to see where this story goes. The premise is good.

I see the pattern with the title of the story and the title of the chapters, is this a story of a week?

I was going to say that the voice was a kind of nightmare entity, but the fact that it has information and knowledge foreign to Cozy makes me reconsider that thought.