A True Princess

by bahatumay

Adored By All

“What have you done?” Cadence breathed.

“Oh, you know,” Cozy said, sounding eerily calm among the screeching umbrum. “Just ensuring my place as ruler of the Crystal Empire. And after that, I'll conquer the rest and crown myself Supreme Empress of Equestria!”

“You won’t get the chance,” Cadence said, lighting her horn. She cast the spell.

But Cozy formed a shimmering shield around herself and it ricocheted off. She returned fire, but Shining formed a shield of her own.

He glared at her, daring her to try to breach it.

But Cozy had no intention of trying. Instead, she powered up a blast of crystal energy and shot it at the floor below.

While Flurry and Cadence had wings and so instinctively spread them when the floor disappeared beneath them, Shining was not so lucky, and hit the ground hard.

Cadence dropped to check on him. She looked up, furious, her eyes narrowed, her teeth bared, and her horn blazing.

Cozy flew in circles, protected by the shield as Cadence fired blast after blast of magic at her. A few stray shots made the umbrum outside screech, pained by her love magic, but this was drowned out by the sound of glass shattering from her stray bolts.

Cozy giggled. “Ooh. Let’s see, here, um, seven, fourteen, sixty-three years of bad luck there!” She laughed. “Not that it hasn't been a gas, but I really must be going.” She reared up and blasted the ceiling, sending stones crumbling down.

Flurry did her best to cast a shield, but the stones were heavy, and she grit her teeth, struggling, until she disappeared under the avalanche of rubble and crystal.

Cozy casually blew off the tip of her hoof and flew away.

---

Ten minutes earlier…

The door to the train carriage opened, revealing six familiar friends.

“Yona like being back in the Crystal Empire,” Yona said, taking a deep breath in through her nose.

“That makes one of us,” Smolder grumbled, shivering. “I’m freezing my scales off here. I don’t know what the Cutie Map was thinking, sending us way the crack out here, but it better be good.”

As if on cue, a blast of magic rattled the Empire, and screeching ponies of shadows emerged from the ground.

The six watched, dumbstruck.

Smolder was the first to speak. “I just had to open my mouth,” she muttered, grabbing her head with a claw.

“You just had to open your mouth,” Gallus agreed. He turned to Ocellus. “Ocellus? What do you have?”

“They’re the umbrum, the shadow ponies!” she gasped. “I- I thought the Crystal Heart kept them all imprisoned!”

“Something must have happened to it,” Sandbar realized, horrified.

“Crystal Heart Recovery Mission!” Silverstream cheered.

Smolder grabbed her beak to shut it. “Let’s see if we can find Princess Cadence, first.”

Bolts of magic came pouring out of the castle, colored a familiar blue.

“Ooh!” Silverstream turned to Smolder and grabbed her shoulder, shaking her. “Quick! Say something about free burritos!”

---

There came a knock at the castle door.

One of the umbrum opened it to see a blue griffin standing smartly on the doorstep.

“Greetings, guys,” he said easily, giving them a smart salute. He paused. “At least, uh, I think you’re guys?” he amended hesitantly.

The umbrum looked unamused.

He cleared his throat and continued in a voice of supreme self-importance. “My name is Gallus, and I’m the griffon representative from Griffonstone. We’ve heard there’s been a regime change here in the jolly old Empire, so we came to see if we needed to re-establish trade routes, determine how we would receive your tributes of bits, advise where you should construct additional pylons; you know, that sort of thing.” There was a brief pause. “If you do have the tribute of bits, I’ll be happy to take them now,” he offered hopefully. “Just to get that taken care of right away.”

There was the faint sound of hoof on forehead in the background.

The umbrum started forward, teeth bared, chittering.

Gallus took a slow step backwards. “Now, now,” he said nervously, “I don’t think you’d like to risk an international incident-”

“There will be none left other than the umbrum,” one said. “We have waited centuries for this, and we will leave you destroyed in our wake along with the ponies.”

Gallus clicked his beak. “Yeah, let’s just skip ahead, then, shall we?” He dropped to his stomach, revealing an orange dragon behind him, arms spread, head thrown back, her chest full of air.

They barely had time to register this before Smolder breathed out a long stream of fire over him.

The umbrum were forced back, screeching in pain as the magical fire burned them.

“Dragon fire,” Smolder said proudly, pounding on her chest with a fist. “Works every time.”

The umbrum screeched again, warning the others of this new threat. Her dragon fire clashed with the dark magic, canceling it out; but she was still only one dragon, and the umbrum were swarming. Before long, Smolder was starting to get winded, and they found themselves surrounded, back to back.

“Anycreature have any other ideas?” Gallus asked.

“Quick, Smolder, say something,” Silverstream urged.

But before she got the chance, Cozy landed in a three-point stance. “You again?!” she shrieked.

“Where’s the Heart?” Sandbar demanded.

“Take a wild guess,” Cozy growled, magic brimming on her hooves. She shot a beam, hitting Silverstream.

“Silverstream!”

And then her shrieks turned to laughter. “That tickles!” she said.

One of the umbrum hissed. “Light magic can’t hurt them,” she said as if explaining the obvious.

“Oh, well, I’m sure I’ll think of something,” Cozy snarled. She crossed her forelegs over her body, forming a bubble shield around her body. She rose up into the air. “If I can’t hit you with magic, I’ll hit you, with magic!” she screeched, and she brought her hooves down.

With an explosion of dust and debris, she crashed right through the ground into the next floor below. She waved a hoof to clear it and counted the groaning students. Her brow furrowed as she only counted five. She looked around, then looked up.

And her vision was suddenly filled with brown.

Yona had managed to jump out of the way of the first impact, remaining on the higher level. She landed hooves-first, and the force of the impact was enough to break through the floor again and send them both crashing down to the next level below, landing hard enough to leave a crater from the impact.

“Yak smash,” Yona said proudly, if a little disorientedly.

Cozy rolled over to a prone position and coughed. Crystal magic sparked across her body, healing the various cuts and bruises she’d received, and she let out a cry as the magic fixed the hind leg that had broken under Yona’s weight in the landing. She stood up and irritably dusted herself off. “You guys think you’re so clever,” she hissed. “But if you knew anything, you’d know the Crystal Heart is an unlimited supply of magic. All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. And you don’t have any rainbows on your side this time.”

“Actually-” Silverstream started.

Cozy looked up and to her shock, realized that they were all glowing and floating.

“-mm, yeah, we do, yeah,” Silverstream finished brightly.

“I’m starting to think you’re the one who doesn’t know anything about magic,” Sandbar said.

“You’d be surprised at what we can do together,” Gallus agreed.

“Friendship is magic!” Yona shouted.

“You should try it sometime,” Smolder added smugly.

A beam of light burst from each student, converging together to form a rainbow of light above them. The completed rainbow shot further up into the air, split into two, and came back down, the two bands spiraling around each other.

Cozy Glow could only stare as the bifurcated rainbow came barreling towards her like a runaway train. It hit the ground in front of her and wrapped itself around her like a tornado of light. She instinctively reared up and tried to form another shield around herself, but the magic of the Crystal Heart passed right through the rainbow like it wasn’t even there. The vortex grew brighter, and the blast turned everything white.

When it cleared, Cozy lay sprawled out on the ground, eyes unfocused, her cutie mark back to the regular rook motif; and the Crystal Heart, now separated from her, lay spinning nearby.

The students cheered.

Cozy rolled over and made a desperate crawl for it, but Gallus was faster. He scooped it up in his claws.

This is when they realized that despite their beauty and power, the rest of the world doesn’t pause for rainbow lasers. Umbrum swarmed around, shrieking, desperate to regain control of the Crystal Heart for themselves. Gallus let out a shriek of his own and flew up, dodging their reach.

“We’ve got to get it back to the dais!” Sandbar shouted. “That’ll trap them again!”

Gallus looked around at the gathering umbrum and made a quick decision. Four of them could fly and be outside in no time; Yona and Sandbar would have to make their way to the top floor on their own. “Smolder, go long!” he called, and he hurled it like a frisbee.

With practiced ease, Smolder snatched it out of the air, held it to her side protectively, and started flying, beginning a desperate game of keepaway.

The umbrum shrieked and swarmed, but Smolder blew a wall of fire as a diversion and smashed through a window to escape. Somewhat disoriented, she tossed it back to Gallus.

Gallus swooped through the broken window, caught it, and flew until he was surrounded, and threw it to Ocellus.

Ocellus squeaked as she tried to catch it. She desperately scrabbled for it, but it bounced off one hoof, then the other, then the first one again, and finally she lost control entirely.

Thankfully, Silverstream was already on her way. She grabbed it out of the air and aileron rolled to the side, dodging the umbrum from one side, but quickly finding herself overwhelmed on the other. She screamed, and then saw her salvation come in the form of a giant shaggy yak who had made it back into the fray. “Yona!” she yelled as she hurled it.

Yona caught it and let out a yell and charged forward, head lowered. The first few umbrum she hit went flying by sheer force, but the others quickly adjusted their tactics. They swarmed behind her, grabbing onto her hind legs and weighing her down, draining her momentum and quickly dragging her to the ground. She was unceremoniously turned over and pinned down, and though she struggled valiantly, promising all manner of smashings in store for her assailants, the umbrum began digging through her coat.

“Where is it?”

Off in a nearby alleyway, Sandbar was walking, trying not to draw attention to himself while knowing that he already stood out just for not being a crystal pony.

And then he nearly walked right into a small umbrum.

“Hi,” he said uncomfortably.

It looked at him.

And then screeched.

Well, that hadn’t worked. Sandbar started sprinting. The dais was in sight, but he could feel their approach. He looked around urgently, but all he could see was his friends struggling with the umbrum as even more were looking at him like Yona looked at a smashable object. Not seeing any other option, he summoned all his earth pony strength, lifted the Crystal Heart over his head, and threw it as hard as he could in a desperate attempt to restore it to its rightful place through sheer, dumb luck.

They watched with bated breath as it sailed through the air, careening towards its spot between the two points.

And then a light blue umbrum leaped up and caught it with her teeth, bringing it and their hopes to a sudden, harsh stop.

The students gasped.

“You see?” one gloated, sliding aside so it could walk by. “Powerful as it may be, your magic of friendship still has limits. You never stood a chance. And now, with the Crystal Heart, there’s nothing that can stop us! Ponies first, then all others will-!”

But just then, a gleam of magic made them all look.

The umbrum who had caught the Heart had carefully slid it back into its place on the dais. It began spinning and glowing brightly, and she sat back, as if enjoying the show.

“What? No!” she shouted. “Betrayal! Treachery! How could-?!”

The umbrum burst into flames, and Ocellus pointed towards the Heart. “Pretty light,” she said helpfully, as if that explained everything.

Now restored, the magic of the Crystal Heart bloomed, and the umbrum were unceremoniously dragged back into their prison by beams of sparkling magic.

But they were not to be denied their chance at revenge.

Flurry Heart’s ears pricked as she heard a familiar scream. Cozy had been scooped up and dragged backwards, carried through the air and back into the prison with the umbrum.

There was a brief pause as everycreature took a moment to process what had just happened.

And then Flurry Heart dove in after her.