Luna felt the anxiety.
It was a constant, quiet thrumming in the crystals – or crystal, singular – that made up the castle at the heart of the Empire. The smooth floors, the flawless steps, ever perfect, seemed somehow brittle under her hooves. They never showed the slightest change, never the slightest threat of cracking, breaking, sending her tumbling down into a jagged blackness; in a dozen different ways she knew it as a fact that they would not, but...
Luna could not shake her but.
It was not hers, this anxiety, but still she felt it. Everpony did, certainly those within the castle proper, and it reached farther out into the castle’s environs. The castle thrummed in harmony with Cadence. Not alive itself, but certainly...coloured by the life within it.
Affected, might be the word. Attenuated. Sympathetic.
The changes of the last month were subtle, perhaps surreal. To Luna’s eyes – accustomed to the fickleness of dreams – the differences were like that between night and day. Huge and manifold; where light had spilled gaily, now it trickled. Shadows huddled together in high corners where, a season ago, no such shadows had hid.
The crystal ponies walked more and ran less, save when moving alone, in which case they adopted a hurried, get-there-already sort of canter. Laughter had not abandoned this place, but it echoed with a note of embarrassment these days, an I’m-not-supposed-to-be-here self-consciousness. It was a sort of laughter that could easily be made to flinch.
Luna could well empathise, in a way no other Equestrian – not even her resplendent sister – could. After all, for Equestria, the evil king Sombra was a story. A horrible story, but one swallowed up by the gulf of more than a thousand years. For these meek and sparkling ponies, his memory was barely a thousand days old, let alone such a grandiose measure of time as months or years.
Temporally speaking, he was still quite near to them.
This generation that arranged flowers, tended colourful sheep, reached with mitted hooves into glowing ovens, and carefully copied the notes from a millenium of missed classes had also been the one to break stones and shuffle along in chain-gangs.
Shining Armour and Mi Amore Cadenza had inherited a gentle, peace-loving, and fundamentally spooked people.
Such thinking left Luna sullen and going no where. Her habit of wandering she put to use. She smiled, and said soft words, and did little things to ease the worries of those crystal ponies she passed.
This was not her house to put in order – some small part of her resented the imposition upon her nature; felt angry and put upon – but in the month since Shining Armour’s absence she had promised dear, wise, passionate, silly young Cadence her help. Even if what ‘help’ meant had expanded a little around the edges; had come to mean not only looking for Shining Armour a world away, but looking out for Cadence herself, right here in her own home as well.
As needs must, so be it.
Luna, walker of the maze of dreams, had not learned the layout of the castle in all this time. She had not needed to. Her mind elsewhere, she patrolled her wandering, hours-devouring circuit.
Shining Armour was proving frustrating, and stubborn in the extreme. In the first days, the task of finding him had seemed so easy. It would have been, had there been anything normal happening.
Luna had first stepped through Cadance’s own fretful dreams, seen the beguiling, smiling, elusive stallion as Cadance saw him, and walked headlong into the dreaming equivalent of a brick wall. Twilight Sparkle. Spike the Dragon – Hero of the Empire himself – the Element bearers; a hundred friends and family and acquantinces of Shining Armour; every attempt to bridge their dreams to his had met with the same infuriating, same impassable result for Luna.
She had never seen such a defence. Her power could break through it, but there, the world was a different place. Shining Armour was not in a burning down house, where the walls might be knocked in or the door kicked down, and he scooped up and rescued unharmed in the hooves of his wife. In the world of dreams, the pony was the house, and the pony, and the fire, all at once.
It didn’t have to make literal sense. Luna understood. She was the only one that truly did.
Sufficed to say, force was not an option.
The filly had proved a timely discovery. Not a lucky one, as another might have considered her, for Luna did not believe it to be luck when she had trawled, proverbial nets wide, all up and down the far-distant, oft-forgot Coral Coast for such a span of time, dragging the pink alicorn along all the while.
It was Cadence who had first tickled the small, nameless foreigner from the masses ‘beneath’ them.
“How did you do that?” Luna had asked.
The answer she got, of light and love images and love lines was as vague and unsatisfying to Luna as, she begrudingly realized, her explanations of dreams and their ways had likely to been to Mi Amore.
Even so... cautiously, carefully, the two alicorns had treaded their magics together. Fitfully, inconsistently, they made progress.
Why a child would dream of Shining Armour at all, how she knew him, why Luna could step through her and not be hindered, when the unknown defence had stopped the same passage from all others... the questions hung heavy around them.
Shining himself raised even more. He had been off-putting, even eerie when Luna had finally popped the latch and stolen in through the proverbial window of his metaphorical house. Finding him should have been the end of it. Instead, Shining Armour, in his dreams, had proven evasive, skittish, and – Luna lacked a better word – distorted.
There was no such thing as ghosts, yet, even so... something haunted the stallion. He was a far-cry from the straight-laced, uncomplicated, noble and life-affirming fellow she had first shortly following her own return to the world.
Wherever the two alicorns met, Cadence asked constantly, “check again.”
Luna oft had the same reply. “They’re not sleeping. I looked to their dreams five minutes ago, when last you asked.”
“They could be asleep now. Or her. Or him. Check again.”
Luna sighed. Closing her eyes, she let her consciousness prod gently at the dream. “No. Still not.” And, because she could not stay mad, she added, “I’m sorry.”
Cadence's head fell. “It’s alright.” She nodded, as if in agreement. She turned and stared at the empty throne, perhaps to listen to it. “It’s alright.”
Taking her seat, she cradled the velvet the cushion from his, twin to her own. She hugged it, buried herself in it, until only her eyes peered out over the top, hidden in the shade of her pink hair.
The impression she gave was of a child. To Luna, she very much was. A sad, wise, heartbroken child. The eyes of Princess Mia Amore Cadenza were narrow, and they were focused.
Luna was more intrigued than worried, but there was some worry. Some. “Punch?” she asked.
Cadence was slow to respond, as if her thoughts had needed to return from many miles distant. In all likelihood, they had. “Sorry?
Luna gestured the grand door, thrown open and empty. “I believe I saw some made downstairs. I intend to have a glass, perhaps two. Shall I bring you some? It had a most promising fruity hue. Perhaps strawberry, or watermelon?”
“No... I, thank you, no... I just need to think. Thank you, Luna. Thank you.”
“As you wish.”
Cadence’s ears flattened back. She sat in silence, squeezing the pillow of Prince-Consort Shining Armor to her, and found little succour in it.
Luna left her be.
Cadence did not speak, because a distressed and royal figure speaking to themselves in a setting and context such as this has a decidedly different sort of implication about it then, say, a normal pony speaking to themselves and their audience of house-plants after getting home from the shop with their groceries. It would have been too alarming, somewhat melodramatic, and, at the end of the day: rather corny.
So Cadence did not speak. Instead, let us burrow into her mind for a moment – quite harmlessly, rest assured – and borrow her thought.
As she sat huddled, sullen and squeezing, her thought was thus:
My Shining Armour... She squeezed tighter, she could just about scent a cold trace of him from it.
She breathed deeply of it. They're not going to like this. She'd have to ask one more favour of Luna, a big one, from she who had already given her so many in this trying time. Cadence considered whom she was dealing with.
Actually, she might like it. Maybe.
When the runner came she reluctantly set the pillow down and adopted an appropriate poise.
The runner bowed. The rush she had been in was evident at the edges of her otherwise formal voice. "It's the Grey Port griffons, your highness, as requested."
"Wonderful, yes, thank you. Send Burgomaster Gadroon to me right away. He knows the way around." Cadence actually smiled despite, for the last month, her frustrated dealings with the inky-grey griffons giving her little reason to. Certain slanted questions on the burgomaster's part regarding Shining Armour's disappearance had been...less than well considered.
"Shall we arrange a platter for the griffons' refreshment?"
"Yes, please do." Cadence pieced together her plan. Images flashed in her mind (which we, in the narrative, have since withdrawn from, more's the pity) and she felt better already.
Luna went where she pleased, and here and now, it pleased her to return. A pitcher of punch and a series of matching crystalline cups drifted after her.
The runner to whom she nodded acknowledgement – who was named Snow Sprinter – lowered her head and stepped aside, then hurried away with Cadence's requests.
"The mystery is solved: it is both strawberry and watermelon, and the ice cubes are shaped like little flowers. Is it not cute?" She jiggled the pitcher and it made a sound of clinkle-clankle. "Of course it is. Importantly, however; it is refreshing, for brooding is thirsty work."
A table, plain and wooden, drifted through the ornate doors and planted itself shamelessy at Luna's side. On it she set the assorted things. Juice and ice sloshed and settled. She leaned closer to Cadence. "Somewhere between us and the Coral Coast there is a lie, or an evil, or a most terrible string of chances. Mind who you trust."
Their eyes met. Cadence whispered, "I will." She flicked her eyes to the door.
And on as quick a cue as that, Luna twirled about. "Ah, Burgomaster Gadroon. A pleasure. Before things begin, I insist, try the punch."
The Burgomaster, who was not a young griffon, wrinkled and probably a bit dry of tongue, took the offer.
Luna was, partially, fishing for a spit-take. Certain smidgens of her modern education had come from Pinkie Pie, after all.
And, at the moment of Cadence's discretion, the raven-coloured burgomaster did not dissapoint.
"Are you sure?" Luna asked, neatly sidestepping the juice and nudging the spluttering, squirrely old griffon to his feet. What she asked was rhetorical, she knew, because there was fire in Cadence's eyes, and a smile on her lips.
"I'm serious. No more waiting, Luna. No more relying on magic and laying here, moping. Celestia's agents, the reports from your griffons, Gadroon, which, might I add, are lately beginning to contradict one another, except on the point of finding my husband – none of it's worked!"
"Now, it's very simple. I'm going to make a request. You will oblige it. It's really quite reasonable. Then I'm going. I'm finding him, and I'm bringing him back."
She paused. She sipped at a glass. "Mm, oh my, that really is good punch."
"Did I not say thusly?"
Gadroon had been Burgomaster to the sleepy, frosty fishing city of Grey Port for forty-six years, and for a solid four decades plus change of that it had been a remote and content city-state, two hundred miles from the nearest Equestrian habitation. Two hundred frozen, stark, impassable, lovely miles of good fencing and quiet living.
Then the neighbours had moved in.
Gadroon choked off an unhappy sound as he regarded Princess Cadence's mostly friendly, slightly crazed eyes, and tried to stop the shaking of his knees.
Oh dear... This is going to end poorly.
And where's Twilight? Shouldn't she be throwing her weight around too?
A thousand days is a little under three years. Not enough time for the wounds to heal, but you'd say "three years", not "a thousand days". Even if it's metaphorical, the wording's still a bit strange.
6943656 The wording is to reference the thousand + years since Sombra's banishment. The difference between the Equestrian's perspective and thd crystal ponies' perspective on this genocidal dictator and the atrocities he comitted.
6943781 I get that, but a better phrase would be "decades or centuries" instead of "months or years". It's been years.
So.....Cadence went Terminator on him or what? Because the way you described it, sounds like Gadroon got chokeslammed.
6943891 You mean, like, "I need your clothes," Terminator? Cadence hasn't done anything overtly threatening, if that's what you're asking. Gadroon is just feeling overwhelmed, caught between a moon and a heart place. Heart place, geddit?
6943415 Your question ties into a common hurdle in writing. Twilight Sparkle and Celestia, while mentioned, will have rather limited roles for this story. Point being: four alicorns actively on the move would simply be too much power - they'd either blow-through every single challenge or, alternatively, they'd encounter a challenge capable of going against four alicorns together, which would by definition make every single other character in the story entirely useless. The options in that situations then are to throw some extreme nerfs, buffs or plot contrivances around, and I don't want to do those. Certain story decisions lock a story into certain patterns, after all.
It's the exact problem we saw with Tirek's episodes: When Twilight Kaio-ken'd x4 can blow up a mountain, the legitimate strengths and abilities of the other five characters in her circle of friends sort of stop being legitmate. It was all the magic, but none of the friendship.
Its for this same reason that the Avengers are written out from Daredevil (the show) and Ant-Man (and both hang lampshades on this exact point quite brilliantly.)
So...long answer here... yes, Twilight Sparkle and Celestia are obviously invested emotionally, and concerned and all good things, but their own lives and considerable responsibilities don't let up just because they presently want to do something else.
Whereas Luna is more of a free agent, her responsibilities seem to be whatever she chooses for them to be, and even then her power has been in a more limited capacity here.
Summation: alicorns can totally steal the story if I let them, which isn't fair and would be sloppy because it's not their story. It's Shining Armour's. Or Flotsam's. There's room for one deeply involved, deeply invested and painfully distant alicorn, and that role was either going to go to Shiny's sister or Shiny's wife. There'd be a quite different rainbow of tropes in play if I'd based this story on the filial relationship, rather then the matrimonial. Does this answer your question?
i can see only stormy seas for him and her in the future.
6944128 Eyyyyyyy
But still...what did she do? Gadroon doing the spit take and all, and the trembling, was that just because of being in Cadance's prescence while she was monologuing?
6943805 I'm cool that you disagree with the wording on 'days', but I disagree with that in turn. 6943781 pretty neatly summarized the reasoning involved.
As for the use of 'months and years' as opposed to 'decades and centuries'... actually, I was going to attempt to explain my reasoning in one way, but another way occurred to me.
Imagine you are a pony. An Equestrian pony. Your friend, who is visiting, is a crystal pony. Let's name him 'Gypsum.' While a considerate and endearing fellow, Gypsum has the somewhat annoying habit of being easily startled. You know why he has this habit, of course, but after your patience wears thin after he yet again accidentally breaks something of yours, "Come on, it's been three years," you say, meaning to emphasize just how long a span of time that is, and that he should of course be well over such anxieties by this point.
And Gypsum, apologizing for his latest mishap - still trembling - says "It doesn't feel like three years," by which he of course means to infer that, while seeming like a long stretch of time to you, and indeed chronlogically having been three years, it certainly does not feel like a very long stretch of time to him with which to have gotten over the anxieties, all things considered.
As such, you both say 'three years', but both mean significantly different things by that. The choice of tweaking two words was, at a sneaky but conscious level, writ to imply the emotional context that takes a micro-story of two hundred words to explain.
After all this, I just wanted to say 'there is a reason'. I don't insist anyone agree with it, I just want to throw out there that there is one to acknowledge.
...also, days months years makes a more pleasingly sequence and internally-consistent sequence (1 x 30 x 12) than days decades centuries (1 x ~3600 x 100)
It's all a bit pretentious and silly, but I suppose it helps me improve, when I am challenged to defend a choice like this. Plus, I enjoy a spot of debate.
6944230
Ah, I know exactly what's snagged you, and likely a few others. My deployment of the [Unspoken Plan Gurantee trope has been less clear than I hoped.
Cadence proposed her plan vocally to Luna and the Burgomaster (I'm loving this word) but - to avoid narrative spoilers (as defined by the nature of the trope) her propsition was not actually given any dialogue. The spit-take is the reaction-shot to what she said, because she did speak, but the exact words were effectively censored from the narrative for that moment.
...for a relatively short chapter, I'm sure writing a lot about it tonight. But! As for that moment there, that scene does sound needing of some clarifying edits. Thanks for calling it out as confusing.
6944128
I suppose so, but honestly I think there's already enough raw zap force on the board to disintegrate the Mother of Mercy, but fighting one's way to Shining has never been the issue. The problem has always been finding him and Twilight has shown no special tracking powers that would be instantly resolve the problem, especially as there are clear magical countermeasures in place.
I suppose it's just easier for me to see Twilight being physically unable to track down Shining than for her to not be actively searching for her beloved brother ya know?
6944230
I linked Unspoken Plan, which took me to HowNOTtoWriteANovel which took me to Plot Based Voice Cancellation which is exactly the thing I did [poorly] and I didn't know there was a trope for it yet.
Obviously I dont' have a troping problem.
6944364 That's actually an even more immediate and and apt reason than what I gave. This chapter, man, I'm learning lots of things.
Guess they haven't gotten around to putting up good fences yet huh.
Something about this really made me enjoy the end of the chapter, and not because I didn't enjoy the rest of it. It's like, you're just chilling one day and then a bright flash, a city appears out of thin air with swirling snowstorms and menacing clouds of darkness. Just imagining their faces puts a smile on my lips.
ones, I believe.
6944607 I was very pleased with that part! I'm glad you liked it. There's certainly a downhill, uphill mood in this chapter. And nope! One is correct, as its one generation singular.
Though I suppose out of context, it would be multiple generations at the same time, unless Sombra had some weird kind of age bracket thing going on.
This chapter has certainly been an insightful one for me!
6943415
6944128
This would be Twilight "I am going to cast a mind control spell over my entire hometown because my journal to Celestia is late" Sparkle, yes? Do you really want her razing coastal cities to the ground and raising atolls and ships into the sky to search for her lost brother?
I would imagine Celestia has her hooves quite full restraining Twilight from casting some sort of forbidden time travelling Want It Need It sonic rainboom rainbow of harmony all over the entirety of the Coral Coast. ("pony is the housefire" and all that...)
6944674
Ah yes, reading it all together again with that thought in mind, I couldn't have been more wrong. Nice.
6944844
Oh my god there needs to be an incident where Twilight casts a time travelling Want It Need It sonic rainboom of harmony whilst blowing up a mountian. Seriously, I'm not letting go of the fact that she did that.
6946069
It's pretty clear Princess Twilight needs a guard of her own. Cadance can send Flash for that if she wants to.
No, not to protect her. Well, at least not mainly to protect her. They're there to whack her with a rolled-up newpaper and spritz her with cold water whenever she has one of her 'Snaplight Wackle' episodes.
"No, princess! We don't reverse-gravity seaports 'to see whether Shiny is locked in a cellar somewhere'! Bad princess! Bad!"
6947657 At first I thought "Snaplight Wackle" was the best thing about this comment, but that was instantly bested by the mental image of an entire population of ponies helplessly falling into the sky, but in a less Treasure Planet and more that-kid-in-Hancock sort of way. Hundreds of them!
6948055 As for the wood, I suppose it depends on what kind of wood it is. Some will float indefinitely, while others will absorb enough water to sink. It would be plausible for the wreckage to have been made of sinkable wood.
For the main point, I was thinking of the raft "capsizing" as in flipping over as a unit, but if it broke up and the pieces then variously sank or flipped or whatever, I can definitely see that.
So, um... quick question, not a proper review yet, Why did the Gryphon spit-take? and why was he acting so nervously, you do not make it very clear in the story, it's all well and good to say so in the Author's Note, but some more description in the story would be nice.
Keep it up.
Honora Imperator
6949826
yes i was wondering the same thing
it might have just been me but the whole chapter felt like it had a lot of important information but felt... hazy
like trying to decipher a dream and fruitlessly coming up with more pieces of the puzzle that create MORE pieces of the puzzle!
...or maybe i need more sleep
Woo, finally caught up. I don't know if this has been already asked, but are you aware that you're spelling the name the same as the word, "Cadence", instead of the show's spelling "Cadance"? (18 instances this chapter)
Nitpicks noticed:
Everypony did
had hidden
I'm afraid I don't understand exactly what you mean us to imagine by using "treaded", and wonder if you meant "threaded".
Sister to Mi Amore, no doubt.
“Sorry?"
His name's spelling is originally American, as here, but you seem to be using the British spelling "Armour" elsewhere. Unless ... Mia Amore's husband?
Till now, only thoughts have been italicized en masse; also, Cadance's reply, which was a whisper, is not italicized. Did Luna employ some extra-special means of communication here?
6961962 The interlude does seem to be where I dropped the ball a bit, both with storytelling quality and technical quality. Going to fix the typos, going to fix some things, going to get the next chapter up
Armour is how I always mean to type it because colour honour (and Canada!) and I think I learned that Cadance is correct once before, but forgot and reverted to a slightly dumber form.
Cutaway scenes are hard to do right and this one has been sloppy
6962224 No problem. (Although I do have to disagree with altering proper names, you're the author.)
On an unrelated note, I just now thought of the possibility that the spelling "Cadance", heretofore incomprehensible to me, may be related to the fact that it's an anagram of the name "Candace".
6962910 In Shining's case it was never intentional - I just defaulted to how I'd spell the words, and since then it's sort of been the going thing. As for CadEnce/CadAnce, I just get confused/forgetful as to which is proper. Writing this now, I'm not sure.
Anywho, we will be returning to a happy situation where Shining Armour/Armor is spelled as F L O T S A M, and Princess crystal heart butt will be spelled as "W H O ?"
for dodging naming conventions and gramatical speedbumps!
I'm sure she could figure it out if she tried, much to the pleasure of her many fans,
oh really, now?