Lashes & Bites
Snowblind
by crowmagnon
Chapter 4 - Lashes & Bites
"What in Tartaros?"
I am jarred from my study of the town below by the sudden shrieking of a deformed pony above me. Immediately, I draw my senses back in order to focus on the immediate threat.
How? How did one of those wretched creatures find me, let alone approach without my knowledge? Of course... the wind. The very technique I used to observe the ponies in their town, casting my mind out on the wind generated by my new pets, dulled my senses to my immediate surroundings. But that very same ability should have allowed me to detect the pony's approach long before it reached me. I should have felt the heat radiating from its body. Felt the flapping of its puny wings struggling against the gale.
An assassin. That is the only explanation for the presence of this mutant. Only a highly-trained agent of the Sun and Moon could have approached me and remained completely undetected. Indeed, it is leaping down and charging while declaring to her Princesses that she will eliminate the Windigoes. My pets recoil away from the heat that the assassin is giving off, and even I feel discomfort as it draws closer.
"Go," I command, directing the Windigoes to the town below. "Seek the six and see to it that they are separated!"
The Windigoes wail and flee from the mountain, eager to do as I say so long as it means getting away from the assassin. Deadly as they can be, they are such pathetic, fragile creatures.
I am not so delicate. The mutant launches itself at me, hooves reaching out for the attack. I spread my wings in response, then flap them at the would-be assassin. A look of shock and panic fills the mutant's face as it finds itself facing the concentrated force of an entire blizzard.
-----
As most of the ponies in the square filtered out, a few frustrated glares were shot between the scattering group of friends. This left the witches of the Everfree alone with Twilight, but as the Ranger was quietly muttering to herself, the pegasus and zebra took a moment to whisper between themselves.
"I did not think I would ever see that side of your friend, Rarity," Zecora said, casting a glance toward the white unicorn before she went out of sight. "Do you think she may have been magically touched to make her rant and rave so much?"
Rainbow shook her head, though. "Nah. I don't blame you, considering what she's usually like. She just turns into a total drama queen when it comes to her little Spike."
Zecora nodded in understanding. "And the strife between your wealthy friend and her little sister... was it Apple Bloom?"
"Yeah, it's tough between them. I think last Waking Night was the only time in years they've been together in the same room."
Zecora looked her apprentice in the eye with absolute seriousness. "It may be that my dreams were merely nightmares. Phantom visions that make me needlessly scared. But until the possibility of Winter's eternal grip has ended, I think it would serve us well to see your friends' hearts mended."
To that, Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Geeze, Teach, it's not like we need the world to get covered in snow and ice for me to want to see my friends make nice. I'll go beat some friendship into their heads, then curl back up in my nice warm bed."
"-And now it'll fester and when the blow-up happens it'll be ten times worse but the job'll get done and Winter Wrap-Up will be on time and everypony will be happy and maybe they'll forget all about why they were so mad in the first place or at least feel good enough to work it out unless somepony gets so frustrated because they didn't resolve the issue that they just explode and give up on their assignments so they can go on a rampage and take it out on the pony they're mad at thus ruining their assignment as well and it'll spread to the others and snowball into shouting and chaos and fighting and before we know it Ponyville will be burning and IT'LL BE ALL MY FAULT!!!"
Rainbow and Zecora were broken from their own conversation as Twilight's muttering moved into the 'apocalyptic failure' phase. Seeing that the purple unicorn was starting to hyperventilate before the inevitable 'disproportionate punishment' freak-out, Rainbow sighed and stepped away from her mentor while she still had a small window. "'Scuse me, Teach. Since Will and Fluttershy stormed off, looks like I've gotta handle this one." Twilight didn't notice the brightly colored pegasus approaching until they were practically nose-to-nose, and Rainbow shouted, "Atten-SHUN!"
In an instant, Twilight's back was ramrod straight, her head held high as she looked around for her subordinates with a steely gaze. It was an astonishing transformation, switching from the prone-to-panic Twilight Sparkle to Lt. Sparkle, ranking officer of the Everfree detachment of Luna's Rangers. A leader who would show confidence and steadfastness as an example to the ponies under her command.
Finding that none of them were present, however, Twilight focused on Rainbow Dash and relaxed. "Was that really necessary?"
"Considering you looked like you were about to start puking all over town square? I'm gonna say 'yes,'" Rainbow replied, unable to keep from smirking when this made Twilight's face flush with embarassment. Rainbow then reached out to put a hoof on Twilight's shoulder and asked more softly, "Hey. You've been seeing somepony about that, right?"
"Y-yeah. Of course," the unicorn replied, laughing it off. "You know me. Sure, I stress over the small stuff, but I always pull myself together when it counts, right? And Fluttershy's been such a great friend, helping me work through my issues. Right... Fluttershy?" She looked to her left, then her right. "Hey, where'd Fluttershy go?"
"She and Will left after Rarity threatened to burn her mane off... remember?" Rainbow sighed. "And as long as we're on that topic, Zecora and I kinda had another reason for swinging by. Well, Zecora does. I was just trying to enjoy a late-morning snooze like a normal pony--" An annoyed cough from the zebra behind her cut Rainbow off and set her back on track. "Right. So, like I was saying--"
This time, it was Twilight who cut her off as something up above caught her eye. "What in Tartaros?" She broke away from Rainbow, her gaze slowly drifting downward as her eyes followed a large snowflake on its way down until it landed on her nose. One flake among many, she noticed, as the sounds of confused ponies could be heard rising up all over town. "This is ridiculous! Cloud Kicker told me there was no sign of a rogue snowstorm coming this way! Don't tell me the weather team is goofing around up there!"
Rainbow stepped back. "Uh-oh," she muttered, seeing confusion transition directly into anger on Twilight's face. On the one hoof, it was anger directed at an outside source rather than turned inward, but that just meant it was all the more important to stay out of the blast radius. "Twi, before you jump to any conclusions, this might not be--" The unicorn had already turned tail and was running down the road toward the Ranger station between the town and the Everfree forest. With a groan, Dash took off running after her. "This might not be the weather team's fault," she shouted after the unicorn, but another chill gale howled through the town, drowning out her voice.
Seeing that Twilight wasn't stopping, Rainbow grit her teeth and put more effort into catching up. Twilight Sparkle was fit for a unicorn, as was to be expected of a Ranger tasked with hunting and battling ferocious monsters, but Rainbow was still considerably faster at her top running speed.
She never got the chance to reach that speed, however, as she focused so hard on closing the gap between her and her friend that she failed to notice the ice building up on the streets until it was too late. The way that the ice seemed to trail Twilight, it allowed the unicorn to run unfettered while Rainbow suddenly found her hooves slipping out from under her and fighting for traction. One sharp turn at an intersection later, and the rainbow pegasus found herself slipping and flipping onto her back.
Rainbow yelped and cried out for help, only to have her pleas muted by the wailing winds as her inertia caused her to sled down a narrow alleyway. She grunted in pain repeatedly as she found herself bouncing off the walls of the two buildings like a pinball before coming out the other side. From there, she found herself sliding down a sloping hill.
Her velocity increasing the farther she slid, Rainbow nervously looked ahead. Seeing that it made a sudden turn with a drop-off just beyond it, and not so much as a guard rail at that, she struggled to flip over onto her stomach and work her wings through the flaps in her winter jacket. The left one popped free immediately, but to Rainbow's horror, she found that the right one had slipped out of alignment with the flap when she was getting bounced around!
With the ledge drawing closer and closer with every fraction of a second, the half-bound pegasus squirmed and struggled to free her other wing! A few times she thought that she could feel her feathers pushing their way against the flap, only to get jostled back out of position. Time itself slowed down in the face of gravity's cruel and imminent embrace.
Despite the way the sensation of zooming toward her doom seemed to draw itself out, however, Rainbow didn't actually find herself with any more time. Thus, before she could get her right wing out into the open, the pegasus found herself ramping up over the edge of the drop, arcing up just a bit before curving off into a free-fall.
With nothing else to try, Rainbow clenched her eyes shut to shield herself from the sight of the entire planet rushing up to smash against her, madly flapping her one free wing as hard as she possibly could! For the most part this simply sent her spiraling down in a corkscrew instead of a straight line, but as she plummeted toward the frozen earth, she suddenly felt the biting cold of the wind on her right wing.
Rainbow's rose-colored eyes popped open at that sensation, and she saw that by some miracle, her bent and crooked wing had slipped free in mid-fall. Quickly and instinctively spreading them both, her rapid descent curved off into a dizzy, wobbling glide. Her downward velocity proved too great to recover from, however, and she found herself plowing through the snow and leaving a deep trench behind her before she finally came to a stop.
She lay on the ground, half-buried in the snow for a while. It actually helped shield her from the freezing wind, so she wasn't in an enormous hurry to get back up, but eventually the pegasus pushed herself onto her hooves and shook the snow from her body. A few exploratory flexes of her legs and wings told her that, thank Celestia, nothing was broken or knocked out of place.
Rainbow then looked up at the sky and narrowed her eyes at the blizzard that was coming down. "Alright. Windigoes are sounding a bit more likely now. And they have a sick sense of humor! Ow..." With that, she started limping back into Ponyville.
-----
All across town, everypony was enduring the same freak snowstorm. At one of the larger ponds near Ponyville, shortly before Rainbow Dash took her spill, Pinkamena had finished putting on the extra-sharpened ice skates that she would use to break up the ice into smaller, more easily melted segments. Once they were laced up, she looked back over her shoulder and nodded to her musical acquaintances. Vinyl Scratch, Ponyville's resident DJ, grinned widely and gave the poet an enthusiastic hoof-pump while the prim and refined Octavia gave a simple nod, her expression as stoic as Pinkamena's own.
As Pinkamena turned her attention to the frozen pond and pushed herself out across the ice, Octavia's brought her bow up and began to play a hauntingly beautiful melody. At the same time, Vinyl used her magic to start up her sound system and play a pre-recorded track of an opera singer's vocals that rang out through the unicorn's speakers in synch with Octavia's playing.
The few other ponies present simply watched as the poet glided across the ice in time to the music. Her movements were geometrically precise as the blades of her skates carved through the surface of the frozen pond, but the musical accompaniment gave her a graceful rhythm to move to. The other volunteers for the ice-breaking team watched the blending of functional efficiency and artistic expression, feeling inspired by the example set by their team leader.
And then Vinyl got bored.
About three minutes after the song had started, sound exploded from her speakers as Vinyl sped up the vocals considerably, switching up the timing and playing her console like an instrument. Octavia shot an annoyed glare at the DJ, but she quickly rose to the challenge, her bow dancing across the strings to match the tempo Vinyl had set. Likewise, Pinkamena's body went from smooth and graceful motions to a quick, passionate and jerky dance across the ice that made her spectators lean back in surprise.
At the same time, the bass from Vinyl's speakers shook the ground and cracked the ice where it had already been weakened by Pinkamena's skates. As the segments started to break apart into blocks, however, Pinkamena did not trip and fall into the freezing cold water as one might expect. Instead, the pink poet started skipping from block to block as she made her way back toward the shore. All the while, she somehow kept to the beat that had many of the gathered ponies bobbing their heads along with it. With a final crescendo followed by three beats of tooth-rattling bass, Pinkamena gave a hop, skip and a jump back onto solid ground. She bowed her head while ponies stomped in applause.
"Wow, that was great!"
"Where'd you learn to skate like that?"
"Uhh, we aren't going to have to do it exactly like that, right?"
"Hey, why's it snowing?"
Pinkamena blinked in surprise at that last one as everypony tilted their heads up. She brushed her mane away from her eyes, gazing up to see a veritable blizzard coming down.
"Vinyl Scratch! Look at vhat you haff done," the cellist exclaimed in her smoky Stalliongrad accent. She quickly and efficiently put her cello back in its case to protect it from the weather. "Your vulgar catervaulink has shaken ze snow loose from ze clouds!"
In contrast, Vinyl let out a shriek and started panicking as she reached out with her magic to yank the vests off of every pony in the vicinity and hurriedly cover up her console. "Me?! No way! Yeah, I turned it up to eleven, but I know for a fact I have to kick it up to at least fourteen before it starts rattling the sky!"
The two musicians began to bicker more heatedly despite the temperature going in the opposite direction. Ponies muttered in distress and confusion as a freezing wind blew around them, the surface of the pond freezing over again in a matter of minutes. Soon, the ice-breaking team were surrounding Vinyl's console and taking their vests back so that they might have any little bit of protection from the unexpected cold. At the same time, Vinyl struggled and fought against them in the hopes of protecting her machinery from the weather's onslaught.
Pinkamena shivered, but not just from the cold. Everypony was too busy arguing amongst themselves to notice the poet's blue eyes widening, seeming to fix on something far, far away.
"A frozen heart so cold it burns
Giving all and yet she yearns
For the very heart she spurns
Dying when the season turns"
Her eyes then snapped back to normal and she shook her head, feeling slightly dizzy. She tried to hold onto the words that had pushed themselves through her, but with no pony there to hear them, they fled her mind and floated away on the howling wind. "Ergh... I have to find the others," she muttered to herself as she took off running back toward town.
Before she got too far, though, she stopped herself and jogged back toward the group surrounding Vinyl and Octavia. "Hey! Get yourselves somewhere warm, for Celestia's sake." She then ran off again in earnest, shaking her head as the other ponies watched her go. "Seriously, not enough sense to come in out of the cold," she groused as she forged into the blizzard to find her friends.
-----
Twilight raced through the town as fast as her legs would take her, heedless of the weather around her. Her body shimmered with the glow of a magic field that mitigated the effects of the cold and elements. She was so focused on getting to the outskirts of town that she didn't even notice that the worst of the storm was behind her as though stalking her and keeping any pony from following her trail.
Up ahead, just a quarter mile outside the edge of Ponyville, the building where Luna's Rangers were stationed came into view. Aside from its location setting it apart, the Ranger's station stood out by being one of the few buildings in the town and outlying farms to be built from stone and brick. Though not nearly large enough to be considered a proper fortification, it was a sturdily built structure dating back to the founding of Ponyville itself, when monsters slipping out of the Everfree had been a far greater danger to the fledgeling settlement. Twilight looked up to the top of the watchtower that rose up from its center, and upon catching a glimpse of purple up there, she focused her magic on teleporting to it.
At the same time, Scootaloo shivered and kept herself wrapped up as warmly as she could. When her mother, Nocturne Striker, had been assigned to keep watch over the Everfree Forest during the Winter Wrap-Up, she had insisted on helping out and keeping her company. When the temperature had dropped even farther, however, Scootaloo found that even with a natural resistance to the cold that was common among pegasi, the Mare-Do-Well cape and wide-brimmed hat simply weren't enough to keep her comfortable.
Even so, she had insisted on keeping watch atop the tower while her mom was downstairs brewing up a hot drink for the two of them. After all, if she ever wanted to follow in her mother's hoofsteps, Scootaloo would have to be tough enough to handle a little weather. That's what it meant to be a Ranger. Strength, determination, eternal vigilance, and the ability to keep a cool, calm head in any situation.
Then Twilight Sparkle suddenly materialized in front of her in a flash of light, shouting, "Sergeant Striker, I need a sitrep on this blizzard NOW!" With all the strength, determination and cool-headedness she could muster, Scootaloo screamed and shot straight up into the air.
Twilight blinked as her eyes quickly re-adjusted from the flash of teleportation. When she didn't see Nocturne in front of her to give a report on the rogue weather as expected, she looked up and let out a strangled gurgle of her own at the sight of Scootaloo struggling to hover so high above the ground. The little orange filly's wings were flapping frantically like a hummingbird's, but doing little more than giving her a few more seconds to look down and see just how far she had to fall if she didn't make it back to the watchtower.
"Hang on, Scootaloo," Twilight cried out as she quickly reached out with her magic to wrap a telekinetic aura around the filly and pull her back down to safety. "Don't worry, I've got--"
Before she could surround Scootaloo in the purple aura of her magic, or even finish reassuring her, a gale-force wind suddenly blew at them. Blasting them both with flurries of ice and snow, the freezing wind also sent Scootaloo spinning head over hooves as it blew her away from the tower, out of Twilight's telekinetic range.
Scootaloo screamed with terror as she felt herself get snatched away from Twilight. Unable to tell up from down as the wind spun her around, she clenched her eyes shut until she used the meager strength of her wings to right herself. Even without the wind and weather feeling like it was cutting through her, however, her wingpower simply wasn't enough to keep her in the air.
"Scootalooooooo!" Seeing the young pegasus starting to tumble away toward the ground, Twilight instinctively leapt from the top of the tower. The filly fearfully cracked open one eye to look over and see Twilight jumping toward her, her forelegs outstretched in front of her despite being much too far away to reach. Then, with a flash of magic, the unicorn popped out of sight, teleporting right under Scootaloo as she fell so that she could catch the pegasus.
Once she felt Twilight's legs wrap tightly around her, Scootaloo gasped. A flicker of hope twinkled in her eye as she pleaded, "Teleport us back! Teleport us back!"
"I can't," Twilight replied, concentrating on her magic. Teleportation didn't affect inertia. If she tried to move them back to the top of the tower, they would still be falling fast, and simply smash against the building instead of the ground below. Not to mention how dangerous it was to attempt teleporting with a passenger, especially in a high-adrenaline situation.
Of course, she didn't have time to explain all this to Scootaloo, who wasn't the most scientifically proficient filly in town to begin with. So, after simply hearing Twilight say that she couldn't, her eyes widened in horror. It might not have been very Ranger-like, but she took the only course of action available to her.
"MOMMMYYYY! HELLLLLP!"
With the filly screaming her lungs out right into Twilight's ear, the unicorn winced as she rushed to put the spell she was working on into place. Quickly calculating the angle of their descent, she focused her magic on a point above the ground below. A purple beam shot down from her glowing horn, forming a hastily-constructed force field in the shape of a flat disc.
Cold sweat poured down her face, freezing into glassy beads as she held Scootaloo tight and struggled to modulate the strength of the field in a matter of seconds that she could count on her hooves... and without having to use her hind legs. If done properly, it would absorb the impact of their descent and then disperse, granting the two ponies a safe landing. Too weak, however, and it would pop like a soap bubble the moment they touched it. Too strong, on the other hoof, and she could only hope to use her own body to protect the filly from the worst of the impact.
There was no time for either second-guessing or testing, however. She sucked in a deep breath just before they hit the shield...
The two ponies hit the shield with enough velocity to knock that breath out of Twilight's lungs, but the good news was that Twilight could feel it bending at the point of impact, absorbing the energy of their fall as they sunk into it without breaking anything.
The bad news was that the field didn't break either.
As the tension built up in the magical membrane, there was a split second when Twilight realized that while it had caught them as intended, it was not going to break and allow them to fall through to the ground below. As a result, the best course of action would be to dispel it immediately. In the race between Twilight's reflexes and physics, however, physics won as the action of falling into the magic field was met with an equal and opposite reaction, and the ponies found themselves getting flung back up into the air by the magic trampoline that Twilight had inadvertently created.
Unicorn mare and pegasus filly both screamed again as they found themselves arcing back up into the sky. Sent spinning end over end once again, Twilight's horn lit up to attempt the spell once more, but this time she was too disoriented to aim properly. Even if she could properly modulate it, the chances of positioning it where they were going to land before they hit the ground was now virtually nonexistent. There was a moment of hang time at the apex of their ascent before the inevitably disastrous fall...
A fall that never came as Twilight simply hung in the air. At first she didn't believe that that's what was happening because the world still seemed to be spinning around her, but she soon found that it was her eyes that were spinning from dizziness, not her body. Once her sense of equilibrium returned, she realized that she and Scootaloo were not plummeting toward a bone-crunching encounter with the ground, but instead were being gently lowered.
"Mom!" Scootaloo shouted with joy (and again, right into Twilight's ear) as she looked up past the unicorn to see a lightly armored bat-winged mare with a coat the same shade of purple as her own mane. She struggled to pull herself up out of Twilight's grip to hug the black-maned thestral, only to shake all three of them with her squirming.
"Whoa, whoa, wait until I set you two down, kiddo," Nocturne chided with a fangy grin, flapping her bat-like wings hard to keep both Twilight and Scootaloo aloft as she took them back to the base of the watchtower. Once there, she carefully landed and let go of Twilight. She then pried her daughter out of the unicorn's hooves to wrap her own legs and wings around Scootaloo.
It was a bit of a struggle as the Lieutenant's body had apparently started locking up once the immediate danger was over, allowing the realization of what had just happened to actually register in Twilight's mind. All the countless tiny ways that it could have gone horribly wrong playing through her brain. And it was her fault for startling Scootaloo so badly to begin with. If she hadn't teleported up there shouting her head off, she would have never been in danger in the first place, and Nocturne was probably going to take it out on her just like Rarity did when Spike got hurt, and then she would prove that despite being quite nice most of the time, thestral fangs weren't just for show, and...
Seeing that Twilight was starting to fall into her own thoughts, Nocturne held a wing in front of Twilight's face and rubbed the little claws there together in such a way as to create a series of sharp snapping sounds to bring the unicorn back to the present. Once she saw consciousness start to return to Twilight's face, Nocturne immediately embraced Twilight.
"Wha... Sergeant?"
"Thank you," the thestral whispered, her tufted ears laying flat. "I heard shouting, but by the time I got back outside and saw what was happening, I just... I wouldn't have made it in time. If you hadn't saved her... Thank you."
Scootaloo, just shy of hyperventilating after the ordeal she had gone through, took a few deep breaths and pulled her hat off to salute Twilight. "Y-yeah. You were almost as cool as Mare-Do-Well, Twilight! I mean... Lieutenant, ma'am!"
Twilight blinked in surprise. Feeling her face heat up at being praised and thanked instead of berated, she pushed Nocturne away and held her at foreleg's length. "I... I just did what I could," she muttered before another cold gust blew at them, reminding her of her original purpose. Standing up taller, she said, "And right now I need to get in touch with the weather team. I need you to fly up there and ask Cloud Kicker how she could have let a rogue blizzard this size slip out of the Everfree."
Nocturne shook her head. "Not from the Everfree, Lieutenant." She reached over to tousle her daughter's mane, causing the filly to grunt and try to squirm away. "Scoot and I were watching the forest the whole time. I may not have weather mojo, but even I could tell that this storm didn't come out of there.
Putting her hat back on her head, Scootaloo pointed off into the distance. "I think it came from thattaway," she said while Twilight followed the direction of her hoof. Anything in that direction was completely invisible thanks to the snow pouring out of the sky, but Twilight had memorized the map of Ponyville and its surrounding areas since she was assigned there, and realized Scootaloo was pointing in the general direction of a tall mountain clear on the other side of town and miles away.
Nocturne mused, "Is that the direction Derpy went? I could've sworn I heard her shouting 'I just don't know what went wrong' shortly before the storm hit." Giving Twilight a concerned look, she tilted her head and asked, "Hey, you don't think...? I mean, Derpy's clumsy, but she isn't clumsy enough to cause this, right?"
Twilight was too busy boggling at the fact that Nocturne had heard that to answer at first. Looking at her subordinate's ears, she was once again stunned by the apparent truth behind the rumors of thestrals and their almost supernaturally keen hearing. "I... don't think so," she replied. "I gave her a compass to help her keep her bearings, so she should be halfway to the southern nesting grounds by now."
"Lucky Derpy," Scootaloo interjected, shivering from the cold. "I bet any pegasus in Ponyville wishes they were in her horseshoes right now."
-----
Derpy wished she were in anypony else's horseshoes. As long as those shoes were somewhere far, far away from where she had found herself.
Wanting only to help, she had rushed to the aid of the Windigo-haunted griffoness. Even though she didn't know the griffon, she was more than willing to extend love and friendship to the stranger. The Windigoes, sensing what was coming, recoiled away. The snow-white griffon, however, rather than react with gratitude, had spoken to the Windigoes. Not out of fear or defiance. It was more like she was commanding them.
And then the griffon spread her wings, and even though the icy spirits fled from the mountain and made for the clouds above Ponyville, Derpy had felt the air pressure drop precipitously. She couldn't even spell 'precipitous', but she knew what it felt like, and so she reflexively flapped her wings just as the griffon did the same.
Gale force winds howled around the mountain. Ice and snow lashed out from the griffon's wings with such velocity that any pony caught in its path would be ripped to shreds, and the cold was so fierce and consuming that whatever would be left over would have any spark of life or warmth left in it completely extinguished in less than a second.
It was this cone of death that Derpy found herself flying away from as fast as her own wings would take her, though one eye drifted down to let her see the state of her attacker. The griffon seemed astonished that she had avoided the concentrated blizzard, but surprise quickly transformed into a furious sneer as the griffon reared up onto her hind legs. She spread her wings out wide once again, and what Derpy had assumed to be downy feathers flew off of her body.
It was not feathers that had covered the griffon, giving her an elegant and beautiful appearance, but snow. With that soft layer shed away, Derpy felt fear twist in her stomach as she saw what was underneath. There was nothing soft or gentle about the griffon's appearance anymore.
Though there may have been some who would still consider her beautiful and elegant, it was the elegance of razor sharp edges and stark simplicity. A layer of ice surrounded the griffon's body, shaped and molded into armor that would have glittered like crystal if not for the thick clouds blocking out the sun's rays. Likewise, her wing feathers were not like those of any bird or pegasus Derpy had ever seen. Rather, each 'feather' was a blade of ice so visibly sharp that it hurt just to look at them.
The only parts of the griffon's body that did not exude swift and vicious lethality were her headfeathers and the tuft at the end of her tail. A brilliant white mane seemed to explode from the griffon's head with a matching effect at the tip of her tail, wafting and sparkling even in the dim winter light. The effect made Derpy gasp with how much it reminded her of the Princesses when she had been fortunate enough to see them. Celestia's mane had always flowed like that, as if in a perpetual breeze. Its colors were warm and comforting, like a sunrise on a clear spring morning, offering the promise of a bright, blessed day. By contrast, Luna's starlit mane seemed to hold all the mysteries of the dark, sacred night.
The 'mane' and tail of the griffon, however, while flowing in a similar manner, reflected none of the kindness of either Princess. They seemed to freeze the very air around the griffon, causing snow to fall around her. At the same time, her 'hair' whipped and lashed about as if caught in a fierce wind rather than a gentle breeze.
In every way and every aspect, the griffon's appearance reflected exactly what she was. A cold, remorseless predator.
And her blank white eyes were fixated on one little grey pony.
Tears of unmitigated terror streamed down Derpy's face, freezing into little pellets of ice before they hit the ground as she wailed, "I just don't know what went wroooooong!" Her cries echoed off the mountain and rang in her ears as the griffon spread her bladed wings and took flight after her. With powerful flaps of her immense wings, the griffon pursued Derpy. "Wretched coward," she snarled, her voice ringing like crystal as she sent more frozen gales at the pegasus. Each time, it was only her uncanny talent for feeling the wind and air pressure that saved Derpy from plummeting to the earth below as a flash-frozen husk. She would sense it coming just in time to change her course and avoid the deadly blasts.
In flight, the huge griffon had the clear advantage in wingpower and pure speed. Derpy, however, was lighter and more nimble. More than once, she just barely twisted out of the way when the creature chasing her dove in for the kill, talons like icicles slashing through the air where the pegasus had been just a split second before. This kept her alive, but she couldn't make a dash for Ponyville because the griffon's speed would allow her to catch Derpy in open air. By staying close to the mountain, she was able to give herself a small amount of cover.
But she was also getting tired.
Derpy was not a weak flier. An uncoordinated one, perhaps, but she had been more than ready to go the length of the bird's migration route and back, after all. And given her usual navigational difficulties, she was prepared to go at least three times that distance without rest if need be. Guiding the southern birds back north was not a race, however, and it allowed her to pace herself. Being pursued by a monstrous griffon, adrenaline pumping through her system while flying as hard as she could through air so cold that it burned her lungs with every gasp, her stamina was rapidly draining.
Her pursuer had no such issue. If anything, she drew strength from the very conditions that were weakening Derpy. Knowing that it was only a matter of time before her luck ran out, Derpy whimpered as she barely ducked under another vicious slash of the griffon's talons. This time it was close enough for her to feel the very tips of her pursuer's talons brush against her back, so cold that she could feel her wings start to numb just from that bit of contact.
It did, however, give her a moment when she was out of the griffon's sight. Before it could arc back around, Derpy quickly dropped out of sight, finding a small alcove in which to hide herself.
Derpy shivered and covered her mouth with her hooves to try to mask the sound of her labored breathing. She pressed herself as tightly as she could against the stone, praying to Celestia and Luna that the monster chasing her might leave.
Though it seemed like it was drowned out by the pounding of her heartbeat, the pegasus thought that she could hear the powerful wingbeats of the icy griffon fading off into the distance.
Derpy took a deep breath and allowed herself to let out a small, frightened whimper. That whimper immediately turned into a strangled scream when three talons stabbed through the stone above her, tearing and ripping away her cover as easily as if it were paper. In less than a second, the pegasus was exposed again, this time with the griffon looming directly above her.
"Did you think that you could run from me, assassin?" The griffon glared imperiously down at the wall-eyed mare, who instinctively tried to crouch down as small as she could.
"Assass-s-si-sin? N-n-no, I'm n-not..."
The griffon brought down a claw over Derpy, pinning her to the stone. "Do not attempt to lie to me, mutant," she growled. "I know that your precious Thief Princesses sent you. However skilled you may be, though, they should have sent more."
Derpy whined in pain as the frigid claw seemed to drain her of what little strength she had left. "P-pleas-se, I-i-i d-don't ev-v-ven kn-know who-o-o y-you are," she whimpered, her voice weak and her teeth chattering so hard that she feared they might crack against each other. Why was this happening to her?
Leaning down to look at Derpy with her blank eyes, the griffon sneered. "They didn't even tell you? Why am I surprised? So twisted by greed and megalomania... No doubt they wanted all of their ignorant, servile little slaves to believe that they and they alone had wielded the Elements of Harmony. Band together with traitors and thieves who would be willing to strike the name of Gertrude of the Snowheart clan from their history books so that their descendants would never know that there was any creature willing to stand against them when they fell into decadence and corruption."
Gripping Derpy's slackening body, Gertrude held the pegasus aloft. Awareness was fading, but Derpy heard the griffon say, "That arrogance will be their undoing. Soon the world will know of my return, when I liberate the Elements of Harmony from those foul tyrants. And you, my little assassin... you will help me reclaim them from their current Bearers."
Derpy couldn't even find the strength to keep her eyes open, let alone reply. With those words ringing in her head, her eyes rolled back and her consciousness slipped into a frozen void.
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Woo~
This chapter was absolutely brilliant!
1848569 Thanks!
I worked really hard on it, especially the Twilight and Derpy sections, so I'm glad you liked it.
Another great part, and I really liked what you did with Depry, nicely done :)
1904451 Thank you very much. That means a lot.
I have to admit, for a little while I was worried about whether or not I'd be able to do right by Derpy here. As much as I enjoy the 'Ditzy Doo' characterization of her as fanonized in the Lunaverse or Rainbooms & Royalty (hard-working and utterly devoted single mom with a minor disability) I really wanted to try to celebrate the derpiness from her original, unedited canon appearance.
Of course, in the process, she ended up in the role of a horror movie victim here... but hey, she'll have plenty of company in that regard before the story's over!
1907294 I do like the return to that version of her. Slightly klutzy, good hearted and an over all good person. As for her ended up a victim, she does fight back, and many she'll become a key part of saving the day in the end. Maybe coming out of nowhere when it looks the darkest for a Big Damn Hero moment, only to not quite save the day as only she can.
Why the BUCK had this story not gotten any more reviews? Seriously this story is so perfect, better then anything I read in a very long time and poor Derpy, forced to side whht the villian, talk about a twist...wonder if Gilda will be in this? Or Trixie or any of the other villians....or at least Discord if anything, I mean come on, God of Disharmony and Chaos, you want him on your side
Wow....so bat pony huh? And Scootaloo not part of the CMC? That's new if I ever read such but very well made, shit, is getting serious now....I LOVE IT! Octavia's voice is so odd but not bad in the slightestand VINYL!!! Love that mare, damn, you should be a published author by now my friend
This is magnificent!
I'm really liking this version of Pinkamena.
Now that is one awesome villain design. Great illustration.
"a hop, skip and a jump"
I believe the appropriate response here on the Internet is "I see what you did there!"
Tensions are rising, lives at risk, and Gertrude both reveals her name and continues to live in her own little world. Find out what will happen next time, on SNOWBLIND!
Forgot to mention this in the last chapter or so, Pinkie is really SCARY when she wants to be... and Threstral, no idea where that came from.
That is all.
Speaking as someone who summoned Retcon the Meta...so odd now to know that this version of scoot's mom is so different from canon
9802207
Yeah, I cribbed a bit from the Lunaverse for Nocturne, since it was long before the show gave Scootaloo actual parents. I always liked the idea of her mom being a batpony with a dangerous job, with the major deviations from the Lunaverse being that Nocturne is the one who's alive and raising Scootaloo after her husband died in an accident, and the fact that she's an actual batpony while in the Lunaverse, Night Guard pegasi are just glamoured up to look like that.