Well, this Could Lead to some Future Awkwardness...
“May we have a few seconds to consider your most generous offer of surrender?” I asked, trying to sound as meek and humble as I could manage.
“By all means, take all the time you need to contemplate your doom.” The Princess offered as magnanimously as anyone could while still sounding so utterly certain of their own superiority
I turned back to the group, and dropped my voice to a harsh whisper. “If anyone has any brilliant ideas that’ll keep us from getting killed in the next few seconds, feel free to speak up.” We were kind of outnumbered ten to one, and that’s before taking into account that one of the baddies had the whole princess thing going for her. Sure, this Princess Mi Amore Cadenza looked like she was a couple ranks lower down on the totem pole than Celestia and Luna, but those two probably could’ve crushed me with a stray thought. A couple ranks lower down on the pole just took me from ‘crushed like a bug’ to ‘clubbed like a baby seal.’
“We could get out through the windows.” Rainbow Dash suggested.
“We ain’t exactly on the ground floor.” Applejack shot right back. “Kinda a long way down for those of us that don’t got wings, and I don’t reckon the three of ya that do can carry the four of us that don’t.”
“I could get everypony just fine if I had enough time to build up to Rainboom speed first.” A second later Rainbow frowned, and very reluctantly conceded. “I don’t think they’d let me fly off, build up speed for a couple seconds, and then come back though.”
“Not to mention that we’d still have plenty of bad news coming after us even if we did get into the air.” The guards seemed to be about evenly split between pegasi and unicorns; three heavily burdened fliers weren’t going to be able to get away from more than thirty unburdened fliers, not to mention that our biggest problem naturally had wings to go along with that horn of hers. “Anyone else?”
“I say we just try to bust straight through to the door.” Applejack offered her unsurprisingly direct solution. “They might have us plenty outnumbered, but there’s only about a dozen of ‘em near the doors. We get past them, and we’re home free.”
“Hardly the most sophisticated of approaches.” Rarity objected. “Honestly, I would suggest we surrender.” That got her shocked looks from Rainbow and Applejack until she explained. “There’s no way to win this fight, but only Celestia could actually exile us to the moon. They’ll have to put us in some manner of prison until she returns. I doubt we’ll have dozens of guards and a princess watching over our cell. It would give us time to plan; I might be able to charm our jailor, or one of you might come up with a brilliant solution in the time we’ve bought.”
“That’s … not a bad plan.” It says something about how much trouble we were in that surrendering was currently looking like our best option. Applejack’s plan might work, but the simple and straightforward approach had the downside of being very obvious. They’d have to be idiots to not anticipate an attempt to break out through the main doors. “Pinkie, don’t suppose you can just yank us into the Outside and get outta here?”
“Nopey dopey.” Pinkie declared, her voice devoid of its usual cheerfulness. “The castle’s got all kinds of defensive spells on it to keep stuff from going in and out of the Outside near it.” Well, that made a lot of sense; I certainly wouldn’t want an Outsider popping into my home.
“Also,” Pinkie continued, “When we saw the princess I got an eye flutter, then tail twitch, and then ear flops. That means that somepony’s showing up earlier than they’re supposed to. ” Pinkie frowned, and added. “Too bad I don’t have a combo for ‘a bunch of meanie-pantses are about to show up and be total party poopers.’ That would’ve made dealing with Gilda so much easier.” Ah, good old Pinkie Pie randomness.
In any case, Fluttershy didn‘t seem like she was likely to offer anything; combat tactics, hell, combat in general, just wasn‘t her thing. “Derpy, you got anything?”
Derpy dropped down onto her haunches with a thump. “Nope, I got nothin’”
Well, super. Surrendering had never been something I cared to do, but Rarity’s plan was our best shot at getting out of this thing. We’d get more time to work with, and a chance at changing the dynamics of our situation. I sighed, and felt my head slump down in defeat. With my eyes lingering on the ground, I spoke. “Princess, we sur-”
That’s when I noticed the pattern of cracks rapidly spreading across the floor. A second later I realized that network of expanding cracks seemed to be growing from underneath a rather familiar bubble-marked butt. How a single Pegasus managed to sit down hard enough to break an entire marble floor, I will never know. And she said she didn’t have any way of getting us out of here.
Well, this called for a change of plan. “On second thought, go to hell.”
A moment later the damaged floor dropped out from beneath us. The three pegasi grabbed those of us lacking in the wings department and gave a few quick flaps to keep us from crashing into the next floor down at an unhealthy velocity, and we hit the ground running. Above us, I heard an enraged cry of, “Get them!”
A few seconds later the guards were coming down after us, but by then we were already scrambling out of there. Being chased by dozens of bad buys was a big step up from being surrounded by them with no way out. We weren’t going to get away with a small army hot on our heels though; we needed a way to widen the gap. As an added bonus, I had to be real careful about what sort of combat spells I tossed out. If Rainbow Dash could get away with dropping an F-bomb, odds were the rules about no killing weren’t in that good of shape either. Nobody coming after us was one of the bad guys; I really didn’t want to kill good people who were only on the other side because they were being mind-controlled or lied to.
Lucky for us, I had a couple nice non-lethal tricks up my sleeve. Tossing spells behind me while running away at a full gallop wasn’t all that easy, so I focused on stuff that wouldn’t need a very precise touch. “Arctis! Vacuus!” An ice-slick behind us would slow down anyone chasing us on foot, and the vacuum zone would do the same for the fliers. I wouldn’t be able to keep the vacuum up for too long, but it bought us a bit more breathing room. “You guys see any way to slow them down, you take it!”
“Okay.” Derpy looked over her shoulder at the pursuing guard, and wound up slamming face-first into one of the decorative stone columns that lined the corridor we were running down. A second later the Pegasus was flying alongside the rest of us, looking slightly punch-drunk, while the column tipped over and fell across the path behind us. How does a single pony manage to keep smashing through solid stone?
I followed it up with another ice and vacuum zone, and then we rounded a corner and saw the exit up ahead. There were guards on the doors, but most of them still had their eyes on the mob outside, not the small group of ponies running for the exit. “Forzare!” I kept my force spell spread wide enough to avoid doing too much damage; I just wanted to smack them out of the way and stun them a bit, not do any serious harm. If we could get out into the city and blend in with the crowd, we might just get out of this in one piece.
Rarity got the doors with her telekinesis, and we rushed out into the city. Or at least, that was the plan. We got about half a step out the door when a pink curtain of energy sprang up between us and the rest of the city. I tossed a quick burst of magic at the barrier, but didn’t even come close to disrupting it. I recognized the spell well enough; it was the exact same type of barrier as the one that had been over all of Canterlot, just a lot more concentrated. If I had the time to sit down and work on it I might be able to open up a hole for us, but we didn’t have a couple minutes to spare.
The ponies looked to me for direction, and I hastily pointed down a side corridor. After another few minutes of scrambling we found another room that opened out into a large balcony, but the same field that blocked the door had kept us from just jumping off the balcony. “Stars and Stones. I bet the entire palace is covered.” I was briefly tempted to ask Derpy to take a crack at smashing into the barrier. She’d done well enough against stone floor and columns; she might be able to handle a magical field too.
I turned to the spy, just in time to see her drop to the ground with a startled yell as a dozen tiny vipers appeared from nowhere and swarmed over the Pegasus. A second later the princess appeared, sporting a narrowed set of glowing green eyes right above her normal ones and a sickly green glow emanated from her horn. Well that’s just super; not only were we up against another princess, but she’d been Denarianed up as well. Her guards filed into the room to surround us once more. “There is no escape from here. You are doomed Dresden.”
“You’d be surprised how often I hear that.” Rarity and Fluttershy worked together to quickly clear the snakes off of Derpy, while the rest of us kept our eyes on the bad guys. Derpy didn’t look too badly wounded, but she wasn’t getting back up. Those snakes Saluriel was fond of conjuring up probably packed some seriously nasty poisons, though I have no idea how cartoon pony anatomy interacts with demon-snake venom.
On the bright side, it looked like we’d at least reduced their numbers a bit from the chase; odds are there had been some guards who’d gotten turned around during the big chaotic chase, or were just out covering other potential getaway points. Anything that reduced the number of people we had to fight was a good thing.
I did a quick bit of mental arithmetic. Counting Miss Princess in front of us, we’d accounted for seven of the eight Denarii Nicodemus had tossed into the fray. Not that it counted for much; Nicky might not have put all his cards on the table, but at the very least we had one more coin out there to deal with. With Twilight booted to the moon, it was likely she didn’t have the last one; Nicky wouldn’t let an asset like one of his coins go to waste so far away from the action.
Celestia might be a possibility too, but I doubted it. Celestia was plenty dangerous on her own; giving her a Denarian’s power on top of that would be a drop in the bucket. Using a coin to turn a nobody into a juggernaut was a lot smarter than using it to turn a juggernaut into a slightly more dangerous juggernaut.
Odds were decent the last coin was somewhere in front of us. Well, I guess it was possible that Nicky might be hanging onto his daughter’s coin for sentimental value, but Nicodemus wasn’t the kind of guy who would put sentimentality above practicality. Guess I might as well start with the most obvious place, a unicorn in a fancier set of armor who was presumably the Captain of the Guard, Shining Armor. I put my sights firmly on the blue-maned unicorn and opened my Sight.
A quick check was all I needed to confirm that while Discord had worked a mind-whammy on him, the guard captain was coinless. That wasn’t the only interesting thing I learned about the guy though. The Sight can give you a pretty good sense of someone; it’s not nearly as much insight as you would get from a soul gaze, but looking at someone through The Sight will still give you a rough idea of what kind of person you’re dealing with. For example, whenever I’d caught a glimpse of Rainbow, Fluttershy, and the rest of them through the Sight while doing coin extraction, it was easy to see the bond of friendship they all shared.
Shining Armor had a bond that was every bit as strong as the one the friends shared, but different. It took me a second to put it all together. Huh. So the captain of the guard was in love with a princess. No, a glance over at her confirmed that, underneath the mind-whammy from Discord and the Denarian’s influence, the feeling was mutual. Well, that was interesting. And it might just give us a way out of here.
Love is a powerful thing. Emotion in general is, and there aren’t many emotions out there than can drive people to crazier extremes than love. Hell’s bells, I’d started a war with the Red Court over it. In the land of magical ponies where weaponized friendship was basically a magical evil-destroying nuke, odds were love was all kinds of potent.
Pinkie and Rarity had both shaken off their Discord and Denarian double whammy through the power of friendship. Seems like we might be able to snap this princess out of evil mode if we could find a way to bring the power of love to bear on her. That would turn things right around; she’d go from threat to asset. Not only would we not need to worry about getting captured, we could also get the Elements from wherever they’d been hidden, and she could bring the Canterlot garrison into the civil war on Luna’s side.
I turned back to my equine companions, and had a brief moment of shock before I had the presence of mind to close my Sight. “Alright everyone, here’s the plan. Looks like miss demon princess is sweet on the captain of the guard. So, if we can figure out a way to leverage that, we might be able to snap her out of evil mode. I’ll try to keep the princess –“
“Snakeyhooves!” Pinkie Pie yelled out, completely derailing my train of thought. “You should call her Snakeyhooves.” Pinkie explained a moment later. “’cause there’s no way you could make a funny nickname from a name like Mi Amore Cadenza.”
“Um. Right. Thanks for that Pinkie. Anyway, I’ll try to keep Snakeyhooves occupied, while the rest of you work on grabbing the captain. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, you’re the grabbers. Rarity, do what you can to keep him from getting any spells off.” Odds were the captain of the royal guards could out-magic a fashionista, especially in a combat scenario, but any help she could offer would be great. “Pinkie Pie, break out the partillery and use it to cover them. Fluttershy, keep an eye on Derpy.” The spy was still down from the princess’ snake attack, and telling Fluttershy to watch over the wounded mare sounded a lot better than saying, ‘Everyone knows you hate fighting, so sit back and let us handle it.’
While the other ponies squared off against Shining Armor, I stepped to the plate against the possessed pink pony princess. Well, I had to knock a couple guards out of the way first, but a single force spell took care of that. “Hey, Princess, there any way to cut down that name of yours?” I asked casually. “I mean, it’s a nice name and all, but it’s got to be a huge pain spitting out that big mouthful of a name all the time. Plus, Pinkie and I haven’t had much luck coming up with funny nicknames to mock you with. I mean, Luna and Celestia have nice simple names, so why do you have to have such a big one? Throw us a bone here.”
Instead of politely providing me with an easier to mock version of her name, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza broke out the demon powers and tried to get me with some of her nasty little snake buddies. A quick “Fuego!” dealt with the snakes, but a second later I had to half-freeze a pair of guard pegasi who had come flying straight at me. Before I could turn my attention back to the princess, I had to raise up a shield to block several unicorns tossing their own spells at me. Sheesh, these guards just didn’t respect the fact that I was trying to fight their leader in single combat. It’s like they were her bodyguards or something.
I stomped a hoof on the ground, and poured a huge chunk of energy into the next set of spells. “Fuego!” A twenty-foot circle of fire sprang up around the princess and I. Ice probably would have made for a better wall, but making that much ice would’ve been tricky to manage. After all, you need water to make ice. If it’s just a matter of slapping a coat of frost on someone or making the floor slippery you can generally pull enough water vapor from the air as long as you’re not in a desert, but making a thick wall long and tall enough to split the battlefield was too much unless you were running around in a swamp.
I followed up my wall of fire with a vacuum dome to cover the air. Between the fire and the vacuum I should be able to keep Princess Snakeyhooves from getting out and causing the rest of the ponies any trouble and I wouldn’t need to worry about getting hit from behind by half a dozen guards in the middle of dealing with their boss.
It wasn’t a perfect barrier; for starters I had to keep a bit of a gap between the vacuum zone and the fire to avoid snuffing out the flames. Odds were the guard unicorns were already working on taking down my spells, but countering magic is a tricky process. I’d put a lot of energy into those two spells, and trying to unravel that much energy without making it blow up in your face is a delicate process. Not to mention that the royal guards had probably never tried to unravel spells like mine before.
Just as I was about to start feeling confident, a couple of the guards chucked their spears through my handy-dandy wall of fire. The flames were more than hot enough to deter your average flesh-and-blood creature, but a steel spearhead was a bit tougher to hurt, and even the wooden shafts only got a bit charred in the process of passing through my flames. Knocking the spears aside with a force shield was easy, but it was a pointed reminder that my little wall of isolation wasn’t all that perfect.
So, now it was just down to me and princess pegacorn. Or was she a unipeg? Wingacorn? “Hey, demon-girl, what’s the term for a winged unicorn anyway?”
“Most ponies call them Alicorns.” Pinkie Pie chimed in helpfully.
“Seriously?” I frowned at the possessed princess. “I mean, that makes as much sense as calling a human a keratin.” For a brief moment the demon princess and quite possibly everyone else on the battlefield paused and eyed me in confusion. “You know, the stuff fingernails are made of? ‘Cause alicorn is just what a unicorn’s horn is made out of, so… you know what, never mind.” The middle of a life-or-death battle really wasn’t the time to get into a naming debate.
Then again, judging by the annoyed look on the princess’ face, the fact that I wasn’t taking her seriously seemed to be pissing her off. “So what am I supposed to call you anyway?” I resumed our prior banter. “I’ve gotta cut that name down for convenience. I guess I could drop the ‘Mi Amore’ part of your name out, ‘cause no offense princess, but even if the whole horse thing wasn’t a deal-breaker, as long as you’re tossing demon snakes at me and trying to kill my friends you sure as hell don’t qualify as my amore. So that’d give me … Snakenza? Cadenziel? Demonza?”
Princess Snakeyhooves responded by, surprise surprise, ignoring my battle banter and tossing more demon snakes at me. Her witty one-liners were seriously lacking. Maybe it was her Fallen’s fault; Saluriel was all about the snakes after all, and snakes don’t have much of a vocabulary beyond hissing. When your entire repertoire consists of ‘create snakes,’ ‘talk to snakes,’ and ‘turn into a snake’ you’re kind of limiting yourself to a single theme. Well, Saluriel might have a couple spells that didn’t involve snakes, but when it came to quick and dirty combat magic I hadn’t seen any breaks from the theme.
Although now that I thought about it, that did bring up an interesting point. Snakenza seemed to be relying almost entirely on the Snake part of their little partnership, and not so much on the Cadenza part. Most of the demon ponies had a fighting style that played to the strengths of their host: Rainbow Abomination and Flutterfiend had used their wings as a major part of their combat tactics, Demon Pie used Pinkie’s ability to casually disregard physics and break out weapons of mass celebration, Applegog had used Applejack’s personal knowledge to dupe Pinkie Pie and hit her with a sucker punch, and Raridemon took advantage of Rarity’s unicorn magic, at least until Fluttershy started complicating things.
So why was it that Princess Snakeyhooves hadn’t broken out any of her nasty pegacorn mojo? So far, the only tricks she’d brought to the fight were Saluriel’s old classics. If Celestia and Luna were anything to judge by, pegacorns were bad enough news that breaking out the pegacorn powers should be enough to make this an easy win for her. So why hadn’t she kicked my ass with some high-level juju?
Only a few real answers sprang to mind. The first possibility was that she had some sort of reason I didn’t know about for holding back. Wouldn’t be the first time some baddie came at me with almost-lethal force in the hopes of pushing me into doing what they wanted. If that was the case, I couldn’t really see what her game was though.
Possibility number two was that for whatever reason she couldn’t tap into her pegacorn power. Maybe Discord’s mind-whammy locked that part of her power out, or tapping into it would knock her free of his control. However, I was personally inclined to think that the third explanation was the right one:
She wasn’t breaking out any ridiculously powerful pegacorn mojo because she didn’t have it.
Assuming this new princess was cut from the same cloth as Celestia and Luna had been an error on my part. An understandable one, but an error nonetheless. Celestia and Luna were nigh-immortal beings of godlike power; I guess one could argue about what exactly ‘godlike’ means, but I figure that any creature that’s been alive for a thousand or more years, can crush ordinary mortals like a bug, and can single-handedly enact some flavor of apocalypse qualifies as godlike.
So far as I knew, this Princess Cadenza didn’t meet any of those criteria. She didn’t have the aura of power that surrounded Celestia and Luna, and given her obscurity she obviously wasn’t as old as the other two pegacorns. Heck, if she’d been in Celestia and Luna’s weight class, you would think someone might have mentioned her before now, what with there being a war on and all.
It all led to a single conclusion: Cadenza might be a pegacorn and a princess, but she had nothing on Celestia and Luna. She was just a normal pony, who happened to have both wings and a horn. I suppose it should’ve been obvious. Hell’s bells, I’d said as much a couple minutes ago. Why give a power-boosting coin to someone who’s already really powerful? Cadenza got a coin because she wasn’t a powerhouse. She was probably a classic princess who’d never gone within a hundred miles of a life-and-death battle before; she certainly didn’t seem to have much in the way muscle when compared to all the bulky royal guards she’d brought along.
Or maybe what magical muscle she had just didn’t lend itself to combat. In a straight-up spell brawl, it doesn’t matter how powerful your magic is if you don’t have the know-how to use that power to blast someone in the face.
That changed things quite a bit. I didn’t need to worry about containing Princess Snakeyhooves; I could beat her. I brought my Sight back up for a brief moment to confirm where the coin had been implanted in her body. Cadenza tried tossing some more snakes at me, and the guards chucked a couple more spears my way, but a simple force spell solved both problems.
A quick check on the rest of the battlefield outside my little safe zone showed that my miscalculation with Cadenza was costing us. The ponies were doing their best to hold out, but the guards still had them seriously outnumbered, and trying to capture Shining Armor hadn’t worked out well at all. I guess that figures; you don’t get to be captain of the royal guard by being a pushover.
Dozens of force fields split the battlefield, cutting the ponies off from each other and making it just about impossible for them to even launch a coordinated defense, let alone the attack I’d wanted from them. Rainbow Dash had managed to link back up with Fluttershy and Derpy, but all the others were cut off and isolated. More force fields had them all boxed in, and each pony was facing a squad of guards armed with long pikes. With Shining Armor’s force fields taking away their room to maneuver or retreat, none of the ponies had many options beyond charging into a wall of spears or surrendering. Pinkie Pie and her party cannon were managing to hold out just fine, but Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash were all in untenable positions.
Just to top things off, I had a dozen guard unicorns surrounding my wall of fire, chipping away at the spell. Once my protection went down, I was gonna have dozens on ponies on me, and the only way I could stand a chance in hell of dealing with that many opponents at once was to take the kid gloves off. The thought of breaking out lethal force against a bunch of innocent cartoon ponies sickened me, but there was too much at stake. I’d rather avoid going that far, but if Discord and Nicky won we’d be facing much worse than a couple dead guards.
Another set of demon snakes brought my attention back to the princess, and I found another way out. It was only slightly less nasty, but I’d take what I could get.
With all the spears that had been chucked my way by the guards, I had plenty of weapons available. My grasp of unicorn telekinesis was still pretty elementary, but I wasn’t trying to do anything that fancy. A single tug sent one of the spears lying on the ground into Princess Snakeyhooves’ flank, and a second later I spotted a silver coin falling out of the wound.
Blood accompanied the coin. Quite a bit of it actually. Like I’ve said, my grasp of unicorn telekinesis is a bit shaky, so it’s possible that I might have wound up stabbing her just a bit deeper than I’d intended. I only wanted to scratch deep enough to get the coin out, but it looks like I’d actually done some damage.
Too late to do anything about it now though. I quickly trotted forward and secured Saluriel’s coin in my saddlebags. Between losing the coin and the injury I’d accidently inflicted all the fight seemed to have gone out of Cadenza but I kept a close eye on her anyway; she might not be Denarianed up any more, but I didn’t have the time to undo Discord’s mind-whammy just yet.
When the guards finally broke through my flame wall a few seconds later, they found me holding a bloodied spearhead to their princess’ throat. “Back off! All of you!” I put the edge of the spear right up to Cadenza’s throat, forcing myself to ignore the voice in the back of my head screaming about how wrong this was. The obvious fear on Cadenza’s face and the terrified tears lingering in the corners of her eyes didn’t help my guilt one bit, but I hardened my heart and pressed on. I’d rather traumatize a princess than let her guards kill the ponies who were our only hope of stopping Discord and Nicodemus.
The guards hesitated, and I took a cautious step towards my friends, shoving Cadenza along so she would keep pace with me. “I said back off! Unless you want a dead princess on your hands, you back the hell off!” The guards hesitated, and slowly began backing away from me.
“Cadance!” Looks like Shining Armor had spotted what was up. I made sure I was right next to my hostage; I’m pretty sure if there was any space between us, he’d drop one of his barriers between us in a heartbeat. The guard captain turned to me, righteous fury in his eyes. “Let her go this instant!”
“Yeah, not gonna happen.” I wonder if ordering someone to release their hostage ever works? “Here’s how it’s going to go, captain. You let me and my friends go, and in exchange I won’t slit your girlfriend’s throat.”
I felt a terrified tremble pass through Cadance’s body at that, and it took every bit of willpower I had not to give into my chivalrous instincts and explain that I was bluffing. I couldn’t afford to show any weakness right now; I’ll admit I’m not an expert when it comes to taking hostages, but I’m pretty sure that the instant you make it clear that you’re not willing to kill your hostage, you lose all of your negotiating leverage. My survival, the survival of my pony friends, and the fate of everyone in Equestria and Earth depended on convincing everyone that I would kill this princess without a moment’s hesitation.
“What guarantee do I have that you will release her?” Shining Armor demanded.
“I can guarantee you that if you don’t drop those barriers of yours and get your guards the hell away from my friends, you’ll be short one princess.” I shot back with a snarl,
Shining Armor’s eyes narrowed. “If you hurt her, I swear I’ll –“
“You’ll what?” I cut him off. “Nothing you do will change that fact that your precious little Cadance will be deader than a doornail.” I pressed the point of my spear against her throat until it drew a single bead of blood.
Shining Armor met my eyes for a long moment, long enough for me start worrying about a Soul Gaze. I’m not sure if cartoon ponies have souls, but I didn’t want to soul gaze him; I’m not sure what my soul looks like, but I’d like to believe that anyone who saw my soul would know that I would never murder an innocent in cold blood. If he saw the truth of who and what I really was, Shining Armor would know he could call my bluff.
Or maybe what really scared me was the possibility that soul gazing me wouldn’t have that result. I’ve killed before. I told myself that there was always a good reason for it; that the people I’d killed were bad guys who deserved to die. Even with Susan, as much as her death haunted me, I could tell myself that it had been the least horrible alternative. The Red Court had been responsible for countless atrocities; on the very night I’d destroyed them they’d conducted thousands of human sacrifices to power a blood ritual. I don’t think I could ever really forgive myself for what I’d done, but on some level I still believed that it had been necessary. I’d killed a single innocent to save millions.
Maybe, just maybe, if Shining Armor saw my soul he’d see a man who would kill his princess if pushed into a corner. Maybe I was only telling myself that I was bluffing to rationalize what I was doing. Taking a hostage isn’t exactly the sort thing good guys do.
Even the ponies on my side were looking at me like I’d turned into some kind of monster. I didn’t blame them; I sure as hell felt like one. Stars and stones, here I was taking an innocent woman hostage, and threatening to kill her in front of her boyfriend’s eyes if he didn’t do exactly what I ordered him too. Sure, there was the fate of the multiverse at stake and all, but none of that changed the fact that I had taken a pretty big leap into bad guy territory in the name of the greater good.
I saw the moment when Shining Armor’s will broke, when his anger at me and the discipline of all that guard training collapsed, and all that was left was a man who didn’t want to see the love of his life get hurt. “Stand down.” He ordered his guards in a small, defeated voice. As his soldiers backed off, he undid the barriers surrounding the rest of my friends and blocking our escape from the palace. “You’re free to go; just – just don’t hurt her.”
“I won’t harm a single hair on her pretty little head, as long as you don’t make me.” I kept the spearhead up against Cadance’s neck as I slowly backed up to rest of my team. A quick head count spotted a problem. “Where’s Derpy?”
Fluttershy squeaked in fear as soon as I addressed her, while Rainbow Dash quickly looked around, spotting neither hide nor hair of the missing pegasus. “Dunno.”
Guess the spy had pulled a ninja vanishing act while everyone was distracted by the fact that I’d taken a princess hostage. Smart of her. Guess we didn’t have any choice but to hope she knew what she was doing, and would get away on her own and catch up with us later. Not like we could just drop everything and form a search party to go looking for her.
I turned back to the guards to lay out the final terms. “Here’s how it is. Me and my friends are gonna go now, while the rest of you stay right here. Once we’re far enough away, we’ll let your princess go. Any of you leave the palace and try to follow us, and you won’t like what happens next. All of you bunch up in a nice little group.” The guards followed my order, and I quickly arranged the various fallen weapons and other bits of debris into a crude circle around the guards, and pushed a bit of my will into it. “Anyone crosses that line, and I’ll know it.” There were several reasons that probably wouldn’t work, but the guards didn’t need to know inconvenient details like that.
“You won’t get away with this!” Shining Armor snarled in a classic picture of heroic indignation. I waited patiently to see if he had any more heroic stock phrases to offer, but apparently that was it for him.
“Oh yeah?” Rainbow Dash suddenly chimed in. “’Cause it looks to me like we just did! Don’t mess with us if you want your princess back in one piece!” All the other ponies were staring at Rainbow Dash like she’d suddenly sprouted a second head, but I’m pretty it was just that she’d figured out my game. That, or she had a previously undiscovered regicidal streak.
The lot of us slowly backed away, keeping a careful eye on the guards as we withdrew. Well, Rainbow and I watched the guards; the rest of the ponies seemed every bit as wary of me as they were of the bad guys. Well, brainwashed and/or lied to good guys. Then again, after we’d assaulted his girlfriend and taken her hostage, I’m pretty sure Shining Armor had totally legitimate reasons to hate us now.
As soon as we were out of sight and earshot of the guards, Applejack let me have it. “Just what in the hay do you think you’re doin’ Harry?” if we hadn’t still been in the middle of enemy territory, I suspect she’d be doing a lot worse than just chewing me out. “I appreciate you gettin’ us outta there and all, but foalnappin’ a princess is goin’ way too far!”
Fluttershy offered no words of her own, but the fact that she immediately moved over to the princess’ side and began trying to patch up the wound on her flank where I stabbed her while refusing to look at me or Rainbow Dash was condemnation enough.
“Are you kidding Applejack?” Rainbow Dash leapt up in the air and pulled a quick loop to burn off some of her enthusiasm. “That. Was. AWESOME!” Rainbow basked in her joy for a few more seconds, before turning to me in concern. “Uh, you were bluffing about the whole killing the princess thing, right? Because if you were serious about that, then it is not cool.”
“Of course I was bluffing!” I answered indignantly, dropping the spearhead I’d been holding to Cadance’s throat. I took a moment to undo Discord’s mind whammy on the pony princess before I apologized to her. “Sorry if I scared you back there, but I had to make them take me seriously. Soon as we’re out of the city, we’ll let you go.”
“Um, thanks, I guess.” The princess answered uncertainly. I can’t blame her for not quite being sure what to make of us. Taking away her coin and Discord’s mind spell might have unscrambled her brain, but it didn’t change the fact that so far all she knew about us was that we’d kidnapped her, threatened to kill her, and now revealed that we didn’t really mean it.
“I must say, it was a rather convincing act.” Rarity chimed in.
“Yeah!” Pinkie agreed energetically. “I totally believed you when you said you were gonna slit her throat if any of those guards tried anything!” Pinkie turned her attention to the pony who was still technically our hostage. ”Did you believe him too princess? I bet you did, ‘cause was really super-scary, wasn’t he?”
“Yes?” Cadance offered, sounding rather taken aback by the question.
“Right. So anyway.” Rainbow Dash turned her attention to me. “What’s the plan now? We still don’t have the Elements of Harmony, and that’s the whole reason we came to Canterlot in the first place! Plus Derpy ran off saying she had stuff to do and she’d catch up with us later, and I’ve got no idea where she is or if she’s alright!”
She had a point; even if we did manage to get out of the city, the whole reason we’d come here in the first place had turned out to be a complete bust. Luna had gambled everything on our ability to snag the Elements of Harmony, and we’d let her down. In all likelihood, we had hours at best until Celestia crushed her younger sister’s army and sent her back to the moon for another thousand years, and once Luna and her resistance movement were out of the picture, our chances of actually managing to steal the Elements out from under Celestia’s nose went down to just about zero, not to mention that if Luna and Twilight were both stuck on the moon we would have nobody who could use the Element of Magic anyway.
My gaze drifted over to our hostages, and I realized we might not be completely out of luck yet. She’d set up the trap and the fake Elements; it was possible she knew where the real ones were. “So Princess, don’t suppose you could tell us where to find the Elements of Harmony?”
“You’ve attacked me, threatened me, foalnapped me, and took me hostage to make my special – my captain of the guard let you go. Why should I tell you anything?” When she put it like that, I guess I couldn’t blame her for not being in a cooperative mood.
I briefly lamented the fact that I’d already given away the fact that we had no intention of killing her. Getting her to spill the beans would’ve been a lot easier if we could’ve plausibly threatened her to loosen her tongue.
If we’d had time for it, I’m sure we could’ve reasoned with her now that I’d undone Discord’s mind control. There were enough things that didn’t quite add up about Celestia’s official story to make plenty of the natives suspicious, and with enough time we probably could’ve convinced her that we were the good guys. Unfortunately, time was the one more thing we were short of.
“I did promise we would let you go, but I never said when or where.” I bluffed. “I could let you go right in the middle of a dragon’s den or the Everfree Forest, and still be keeping my word.”
“You wouldn’t.” Cadance didn’t sound the slightest bit frightened by my threat. I really should’ve reigned in those chivalrous impulses for a bit longer and kept playing the bad guy.
“You’re right, he wouldn’t.” Rarity conceded, before adding with a tight smile. “We could, however, turn you over to Nightmare Moon instead. We are working for her, after all.”
“But you promised you would let me go!” Cadance protested, a slight tremble of fear evident in her voice.
“Harry promised he would let you go.” Rarity answered smoothly. “I made no such guarantee. However, I would be prepared to honor his promise if you just tell us what we want to know. It’s entirely up to you darling; a meeting with Nightmare Moon, or telling us one insignificant little fact.”
“Okay.” Cadance conceded. “I’ll tell you.” How did a cartoon pony manage to be more intimidating than me? “Celestia has them.” A hint of defiance returned to Cadance’s eyes. “She’s going to use them to destroy your mistress.”
Hell’s bells, I’d completely missed that. We’d all been thinking that Celestia would want to keep the Elements of Harmony far away from us so we wouldn’t be able to use them against her. It made perfect sense … except that Celestia had no idea the Elements were a threat to her. Discord had her head twisted around to the point where she thought we were the bad guys and she was on the side of the angels. Of course she would keep the Elements on-hand in case she wound up needing to use them herself.
“Alright gals, let’s get moving.” We had to get back to Luna in time to let her know what was up, and then we could try to reclaim the Elements from Celestia and turn them against her. It was going to be tricky to pull off, but I’ve made worse plans work.
Lucky for us, the sudden onset of nighttime still had Canterlot in chaos, so we didn’t run into any trouble getting out to the city. I didn’t see any indications that we were being followed, so either my effort at bluffing the guards with that circle had worked and we’d gotten out free and clear, or the guards shadowing us were doing such a good job that we never saw any sign of them. It would be nice if for once the more optimistic of the two possibilities turned out to be the right one.
Eventually we got to the wilderness outside of the big city, so all we had left to do was deal with our royal hostage. It was a pretty safe bet that as soon as we let her go she’d run straight back to Canterlot and the guards, and as soon as their princess was safe Shining Armor was going to be coming after us with every single guardpony he could get his hooves on. Boosting up our lead time as much as possible seemed like a really good idea. “Applejack, tie Cadance up.”
“You promised to release me!” Cadance protested.
“And we’re going to let you go.” I assured our temporary hostage. “But we all know that as soon as you get back to your guards you’re going to point them in our direction, so we’re going to slow you down a bit.” Unless Cadance was a lot dumber than she’d seemed, she would know that we were going after Celestia thanks to our question about the Elements.
I was almost tempted to forget my promise and just bring her along with us, but I’m pretty sure that the main reason she’d been a relatively cooperative prisoner so far was because I’d promise to release her later. If she started kicking and screaming, we’d have a lot more trouble with her, and with the timetable we were dealing with we couldn’t afford to have a rebellious princess slowing us down.
“Applejack, get her wings and her legs. I don’t want her flying or running, and try to get the ropes tight enough on her that she can’t just magic them loose.” Odds were she would slip the ropes eventually no matter how good Applejack was, but I didn’t want to make it too easy on the princess.
Applejack took to my instructions with gusto, trussing up Cadance so thoroughly that you could barely see the princess at all on account of all the rope covering her. “I’m awful sorry about this your highness.” Applejack apologized even as she added another set of ropes around the princess’ hooves. “But like Harry said, we can’t have you runnin’ off to your guards five minutes after we let ya go.” The farmpony let out a nervous chuckle as she added. “Hope ya don’t take all this personal or anythin’, it’s just that the future of Equestria is at stake and all…”
“Yeah, we’re super-sorry about all this.” Pinkie added.
“Please don’t hate us.” Fluttershy squeaked.
Cadance glared at Applejack and the others as best she could when pretty much every single part of her was covered in a couple layers of rope. “You won’t be able to escape from Shining Armor, and I won’t forget this. You will face justice for your crimes.”
With a slight frown and a rather uncomfortable expression, Rarity pulled a silk handkerchief out of her saddlebag. “I think perhaps a gag would be prudent as well.” The unicorn gave an apologetic flinch. “We really are terribly sorry about all of this, Your Highness.”
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The MLD-verse version of the Royal Wedding, is going to be hilariously awkward now:
Twilight: I think something’s wrong! Haven’t you all noticed how rude Cadance is acting?
Rarity: Well, she was a bit terse with us, but I assumed she was still upset about what happened last time we met.
Twilight: I never knew you’d met Cadance before. (pause, frown) What happened that would make her upset with you?
Rarity: (nervous chuckle) We might have foalnapped her.
Applejack: And tied her up.
Fluttershy: And held her hostage
Pinkie: Oh! Oh! Don’t forget the part where she got stabbed! There was so much blood! Or when we threatened to throw her into the Everfree Forest or turn her over to Nightmare Moon! Or especially the part where we held a spear to her throat and threatened to kill her!
…
…
…
Twilight: Are you all INSANE?
Also, check out my other story, which I wrote to have a bit of a fun diversion from all the dark and serious of this fic: The Incredibly Dense Mind of Rainbow Dash
....First I check out Turn Coat, now this?
BEST. DAY. EVER.
Bwah. Mind = blown.
584589
Her name is spelled Cadance.
No I'm not kidding.
Yes it's stupid.
584942
Back when I wrote the rough draft of the chapter, there was still arguing going on over which spelling was the "official" one. Oh well, not a big deal to change.
584968
If you wanted to recycle a fun trope, you could have Shining spell it Cadance and Harry spell it Cadence. Pinkie could then try to correct him, being the only one who can tell the difference between the spelling due to identical pronunciation.
Also thank you for paying glorious tribute to Derpy's weapon of mass destruction. The only other place I've seen it so finely utilized is in Posh's For I am a Jelly God.
dont worry people she will forgive them after this is all cleared up...
maybe...
Nice chapter...
One Question though: You mention Saluriel throwing an entropy curse... I assume this refers to the one that forced Harry and Susan to lack themselves up in his appartments wards in chapter twenty-four of Death Masks. However, if i recall correctly, while harry thought that it was Saluriel at the time, it was later explained that that was the Barrabus curse from nicodemus (or rather from his noose of judas). Or are you referring to something else?
No offense, i really love this story, I just thought i pointed out something i noticed.
Just a quick question, are you writing another when this is over because that would be awesome, and is it going to be set after Cold Days?
Derpy broke a marble floor by sitting on it? Forget Discord, Derpy Hooves is the one true Goddess of Chaos and Destruction in Equestria.
And poor Cadence! She had such a hard time of it in this chapter. She could at least have been grateful that she got freed from demonic possession. And hmm, she was left tied up out in the woods... maybe that's how Queen Chrysalis was able to grab her? "Why, look! Just the alicorn I was looking for! And she's even gift-wrapped!"
Uh-oh, what if Chrysalis shows up? She seems the type to happily work with the Denarians.
Princess-napping? Man, and I thought Cadance was having it rough before the wedding.
585259
Just re-checked my copy of Death Masks, and you're right.
Fixing it now.
Before, her butt could only break through wood, and now marble floors? Sounds like somepony got a power increase.
static.fjcdn.com/gifs/Derpy+Hooves+we+love+you.+i+found+this+picture+on_d5a933_3577828.gif
584979
Doctor and Assistant Episode 5. Ditsy/Derpy has a very destructive posterior.
Looks like Derpy was important for the plot in a very significant way. Where did she get to I wonder.
Hur...hur hur...
Dresden stabbed Cadence with his "spear" and it was a magical moment. And then he and the ponies proceeded with some S&M play.
Hur hur.
*Snerk*
Oh good god...I don't even want to imagine how Celestia, Luna and Twilight would react if they were told like that.
Anyway, just started reading this and I must admit, it is freaking hilarious, and definitely deserving of the Dark tag too.
I am so going to be tracking this. I loved the teasing of Rainbow Dash, pure genius.
Derpy has an ass that trumps Pinkie's reality-breaking power.
Keep it up!
GM
584979 "Also thank you for paying glorious tribute to Derpy's weapon of mass destruction."
Shouldn't that be weapon of ass destruction?
derpy is the spy. she said that the E.O.H. were in the throne room, they were an illusion, and then she disappeared. she also mentioned that somepony sold the resistance out, and the fact that she can go anywhere in equestria and not get arrested by Tia probably means that she secretly works for Tia
592568 for the plot? ohoho, you naughty person!
At last, I can beat the Pink One at her own game! Mi Amore Cadenza...translated: my heart's beat. Princess Heartthrob it is!
"oops! my bad!"