Chest Ablaze

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Why is it so dark? Am I dead? No. No. It's not that. I would be freezing if that were the case. I just feel warm and...and like I'm floating in some strange slime...Moving around doesn't seem to help. Actually, I can't seem to move at all, let alone breathe. I would most definitely be hyperventilating right now if it wasn't for that, but that doesn't mean I can't feel my heart throbbing like drums. What's the last thing I remember? What's the last thing...

My name is Gregary Oltondie. Good. I remember my name. I'm just an Average Joe. A Simple Sam. A Common Carter. An Everyday Nathaniel. That's a good sign although that doesn't put my uniqueness into aspect and doesn't bode well for my personality, or possible lack thereof. I...I'm married and...I have two kids...I think. Why can't I remember THEM? Isn't that something important? Maybe I didn't have a very good marriage relationship...or maybe I just can't remember them for some other, horrible reason. They might come back to me later when I encounter scenarios pertaining to them. Where was I before all this? I...I was at the store. The...The Kilimanshoppo. Nothing out of the ordinary aside from the stupid name...or was it clever? A huge store with several dedicated aisles, large white tiles on the floor with advertisements stuck to them. The roof was covered in long lights and the crappy, removable tiles made of white and black specks, and I was in the aisle checking for ketchup. So overpriced. Fifteen quid for five small bottles? Bloody rip offs.

Then...my chest started to hurt, and I blacked out. The last immediate thing I remember after that is waking up in a hospital room with a doctor in a white coat and sporting gray hair standing next to a nurse in a white dress. My vision was still blurry and the edges were still black, but I'm certain of what I saw. I think they mentioned something about putting me into a coma, but I don't remember it all in detail. Aside from those details, I can't feel anything. I must be in purgatory. I thought they said that this place would be full of fire or something which makes me question its separation to Hell. Less gay demons? Whatever. I never read the bible. I don't believe in all that 'gods and deities' stuff. Wait...I can feel movement...and now there's a light appearing near the end. That was fast. I'm so pure I can be the next messiah! (Blasphemy!)

"Push, my snowflake! The child will exit soon and enter our domain!" a male voice cheered on.

A female voice could be heard panting and gasping for air while other strange sounds chimed in the air. They sounded like bells and gentle gusts of wind. Just a few minutes later a young fawn was born into the world. A very small bundle of brown fur. Nothing more, nothing less. It was so...cute...but it wasn't breathing.

"Doctor?" the first male voice asked.

"Give it time. It IS of your blood and velvet. It must take in the energies of the snow and ice to take proper life."

Nervousness left way to comfort and relief when the fawn started to cry.

"I...will repress this memory for millennia to come. Why am I crying? I feel so...weird."

"..."

"What was that?"

"...betrothal to a pony..."

"Haha! Betrothal. What a stupid thing to say."

Little by little, Gregary's eyes began to open and the blur blinding his vision started to fade, clearing his view of what was around him. The floor was made in some sort of white substance that might've been marble but did not have its specks or any sort of distinguishing features of stone. No. These things were extremely smooth and almost a pearlescent white, if anything. The walls were another thing, however. Rounded, half-cylinders bulged out of the white walls and were painted a distinct shade of red. Furthermore, all the walls were covered by golden vines that stretched and twirled everywhere. The stained, glass windows depicting various different kinds of scenes rather than just a single individual were akin to those seen in ancient, gothic architecture. One of them showed some sort of deer standing on its hind legs and emitting what appeared to be white light from its horns at an amorphous, black mass that had arms and several red eyes placed randomly on it. The roof was in arcs and rounded domes, like many Gothic architectural buildings. Strangely enough, it was only as tall as buildings made with Roman architecture,conflicting with the gothic masonry. It was a strange compromise to say the least.

"Must be some sort of weird cult. They better not sacrifice me to their curry god or something!"

Gregary felt himself being lifted by two long sticks and found himself face-to-face with the most terrifying looking reindeer he had ever seen. Its antlers were like bones and frost gently descended from them while various different ice crystals formed then dissipated to leave place for new ones. The main fur of this abomination was a vanilla-tinted white while the face had pure, white frost extending from the horns to the eyes, then down the entire white muzzle, and stopping at his mouth. His eyes were black and had white iris, making him look extremely weird.

"So this is the newest addition to my family and the one that will help us all."

"It talks?! And what does it mean by 'newest addition to my family'?"

"What shall we name it?"

"I don't know. By the way, I think he's enamored by your looks, or at least terrified by it."

"Huh?"

The stag looked back to see his child staring at him with enormous eyes. It seemed like he would cry were the stag to move in the wrong way.

"Ha! His sister did the same thing, but she cried loudly."

"Damnit. Siblings?"

"He just stares. He will be promising for sure."

"Then should we name after our ancient tongue?" the female voice suggested.

"Hmm...That's a great idea. How about...Stelimus Anglacite, son of the God-King of reindeer?"

"I would like that, but get rid of the 'god-king' part. We don't need you getting a big head."

"But I am a god!" Anglacite complained in a childish manner.

"Deities certainly don't exist, but what about this guy thinking he's king?"

Another voice poked out from behind this weirdo who claimed himself as a 'deity' and a 'king'. "Your highness, if you can consider yourself as a god, then certainly you can accept Princesses Celestia and Luna as deities of pony-kind."

It was an equine creature with a yellow coat and orange-lime mane and tail. He was wearing a brown coat, boots, and hat, seemingly to protect himself from the cold.

"NEVER! They will NEVER be deities! I am the only true deity in this world!" The stag's voice boomed through the temple, forcing everyone to cover their ears and startling the equine.

'King' Anglacite cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Stelimus, that you had to witness that mere minutes after your birth." He turned to face his wife as well as rotating the fawn to see her. "I will show him to the deer. I want them to see him first and be assured of our future and his strength."

The doe in question was brown all over, but she also had the same frost decoration on her face, and her eyes were orange. She looked completely exhausted and was lying down on a pile of straw with a white blanket covering her. Another deer with antlers and a blue coat and surgery mask stood in front of her and just looked at me with ambivalence.

"Alright, but give him back to me afterwards. I wish...let him feed."

I felt myself being moved towards a pair of two doors that were opened by a gust of wind and frost that, surprisingly, did not chill me. I was blinded by the sun's pure light, but it didn't prevent me from hearing the loud roaring and cheering from an unknown source. I was lifted up, and when my eyes cleared, I could see nearly hundreds, if not several thousand deer below, and they were VERY far below. The light was still too bright for me to distinguish the buildings, but I could definitely see that the deer were all in some sort of town square.

"Fellow reindeer of the north, the new son is born!" A cheer resonated throughout the air. "With his birth, our futures are assured! I know that we shouldn't be forced to resort to such...actions, and it pains me as well, but if we are to survive, we need this newborn. The ice flows strong in his spirit even just after his birth, so he will most certainly become even greater in the future and represent our people perfectly, ensuring our superiority to pony kind!"

"Superiority? What is this, the nazi regime? Uh oh. Godwin's law just took effect."

King Anglacite waved to his people then somehow closed the doors again and face the few occupants of this room, and looked at his wife with a honeyed smile. She returned the same, but hers had a motherly additive to it.

"I return the little one to you to feed. I must return to speaking with my advisers."

"Alright," she answered.

The stag nodded then walked towards a door on the right of the wall right in front of the bed of straw and left. Meanwhile, I started to sweat and panic. I think the doctor noticed. His eyebrow went up, meaning that he's either questioning my mental capacity or that his eyebrow is alive. I'm going with the latter.

"Alright, Stelimus. It's time to nurse you. I'm certain you are already hungry, and I intend to make you a strong and healthy stag for the future."

"Oh dear God no. Doe. What are you doing? No! STOP!"

Please be reasonable, highness

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"I think I hurt her feelings by not wanting to suckle on her...mammaries." Stelimus shivered in horror."I don't ever want to have to go through that sort of thing ever again. At least the doctor was smart enough to have a bottle of milk ready just in-case something like this happened, and thank goodness for me. I'm having enough to cope with right now. First I'm put into a coma and now I'm a baby deer who has a crazy abomination from some weird fantasy tale as a father and a doe as a mother. Well, if I know enough about these kinds of stupid tales, it's that mine shouldn't be too cliché. At least I wasn't some guy at a convention who wore a 'spuky mehsk' by the salesman from that video game those kids talked about all the time. The 'stranger' guy from some game about an aryan man saving the U.S. president or something. Ah. There's Godwin's law again. What's wrong with me lately?

Wait, I can remember that better than I can remember my own family? Wow. Well, at least I know where my priorities are. Good grief. Now where am I?"

Stelimus looked around to see that he was, obviously, in a crib, although it seemed to be made with twisted, tan colored wood of some sort. It looked like the fawn was in a prison box made of caramel-coated twizzlers. Instead of a small mattress, he had a pile of golden hay laying underneath him. It was very useful for the delicate body of a newborn fawn. The room around him wasn't exactly 'baby-proof'. If anything, it was definitely made for a warrior, or at least a future one.

The walls were covered in weapon racks and wooden mannequins were ready to take armor fit for a fully grown reindeer. The room was still rather barren, most likely indicating that the child wasn't expected so early or that all the eventual 'toys' and other decorum fit for an infant were still being made. That wasn't the only thing noticeable. While this room followed the same architectural pattern as the room of birth, its size was almost four times that of the previous room. It looked like it was big enough to fit a two-story house. What was a child supposed to do with all that room? It could be useful for a hyper-active one as they do 'run on walls'. There were three enormous windows to the left of the room that illuminated the entire area and were covered by thin, silk drapes. You could see through them by looking on one side but you couldn't see through them on the other.

Two massive doors that were for the entrance were decorated with what could be considered frozen water filled with a deep blue dye. The doors had that usual, but very likeable, snowflake-spread all over them. The handle itself was twirled like the crib, and quarter circles carved into the corners. They slowly went downwards to flatten at their utmost edges when nearing the other circles, giving it a plus-sign void in its middle.

The only other presence in the room were ten guards watching the room stoically. Two stood besides the door while the remaining eight were spread evenly along the walls. They all had a similar physical shape but various different coat colors. Some were full tan colored while others had a darker, chestnut brown with splotches of black or white. The armor they wore was either pure white or jungle green with various different blotches and lines of a darker shade of green. Said armor ignored their antlers and wrapped around their faces like two massive, clawed hands. Two 'fingers' encircled their eyes and made them look white with blue iris. One would think they would try the red and black color scheme to be 'spooky scary skeletons'. The other four 'fingers' wrapped the top of their nose bridge, a few centimeters below their muzzle, on the start of their throat and cheeks. The chest armor covered the rest of their body as if it were skin stretched to its limit. The leg armor was similar in design and structure as their helmet, but with minor alterations. The small part of their leg that reached their body was covered by a javelin-head armor which extended and bent to almost hug the main armor, but this was only on the outside. The rest of the leg armor was comprised of four 'twizzlers' that wrapped around the leg and joined at the boot which was a single melding of plain metal. There wasn't much else to note other than their lack of weaponry.

Stelimus used his stubby little legs and hoisted himself over the bars of his crib with difficulty. When he decided to take a break and open his eyes again, he noticed that all the guards were staring at him, and they seemed none too pleased, although that might've been their usual visual appearance. The only sounds that the fawn could hear were his own breathing.

"..."

The fawn slowly backed up off the rails and dropped onto the haystack. A bit of pain shot through his butt on landing, but he kept his eyes locked onto the guards that continued to stare at him. Stelimus fumbled behind him, grabbed his blue blanket, and slowly hid underneath it while his heart started to pound faster and he could feel a lump forming in his throat.

"If I go to sleep, they'll kill me. If I go to sleep, they'll kill me. If I go to sleep, they'll kill me. If I go to sleep, they'll kill me."

"Please be reasonable your highness. You can't do this," an elderly voice pleaded.

"He is my progeny and I have the right to use it as I please!"

"But it is a living being! It is your own flesh, frost, and velvet! How could you just toss that away in such a manner?"

Anglacite was sitting in a small, circular room with windows at ground level and placed between the pillars on the walls. The day outside was slowly turning to night, so the room was becoming a dark shade of blue. Above the windows were shields of various shapes painted with crests that were equally variable in color-scheme and form. One of them, in the shape of a three-bladed glaive, simply had a red background with two red spears crossed. Another was a tower-shield but with eleven extensions along the sides. Four on both sides and three on the top. A hydra with twelve heads was painted on the shield, the twelfth head having been lowered to the middle of the body by the 'beast'. In the middle of the room was a round table with no actual features to it. However, it did have a black iron trim on its rim and the table itself was made from purple marble.

"So you wish to contaminate your family with pony-song?" the stag yelled.

The stag in question was elderly and had no antlers left. His coat was gray and he wore a fuchsia-colored tweed coat. His eyes were an amber which stood firmly in the face of the king's glare.

"My gene pool will not be contaminated by the pony-song. We will remain as reindeer. It is my son which shall improve upon theirs."

"Even if, it still throws a bastard onto your family tree. This, you cannot deny, Anglacite!" a hoof smashed onto the table.

This time it was an older doe with eyes of an azure color that aged better than she had. Like the stag before her, her coat had started turning gray, and she fashioned her fur into a bun behind her head.

"Then I shall disinherit the bastard from my tree if my son were to reproduce."

"It's not that simple! You can't just throw away your grandchild because you don't like its 'other side'. I may also not be one to warm up to the ponies, but I refuse to let our God-King throw away his own lineage because of his own hubris."

Anglacite turned to face the doe. Spirit fires ignited from his antlers and a blizzard started to form within the small chamber. The flickering blue flames eventually died out and the blizzard stopped as quickly as it came.

"I do not wish to continue conversing upon this matter...but we still have time before he becomes of age, and I wish to discuss this before you tell me of any local issues." The stag turned towards a chair that was facing outside. "Kimlarius, my old friend. Do you think we could survive without the aid of the ponies this time? You are the only one who still lives since that day thanks to the gift given to you by the ruler of the Crystal Kingdom, and you have seen how our people and lands have grown."

The chair turned around to reveal a stag in his mid-life. His eyes were weary and seemed wishful for an end. While his right eye was a simple chestnut color, his left was a ball of roughly cut, purple crystal with a single white light in its middle. Veins of white crystal grew out from his eyes crawled along his face but only stretched a few millimeters from the orbit. He only had a shoulder pad on his left foreleg, but it was obviously from an old uniform he once wore. The golden trim only had a few of the small strands of fabric still dangling off of it while the silvery-fabric comprising the main body of the decoration was faded and torn away, leaving the black body bare.

"While I do agree that our kind has grown tremendously over these past one-thousand years, we still do not have the power to stop the black snow. We need the ponies' magic," he said calmly and with a composed tone.

Anglacite lifted a hoof at him and shook it but kept the comment to himself and paced back and forth before replying:

"But our magic has grown tremendously since then! Even I am mightier than before. How is it possible that even I could not defeat it, Kimlarius? I am more than aware that other beings in the world will grow over time, but I am now a god!" Another blizzard formed in the room when King Anglacite threw his forelegs into the air.

"A god you may be, but all-powerful you are not. Power comes in variety, and our kin from other regions are too far to reach us, let alone wanting to. They could not brave our conditions long enough."

"Which means that we are stuck asking for the crystal ponies' aid..." The king walked towards one of the windows and looked outside, thinking. "Kindly give me a moment to take this all in and think it all over. Guards, please light the torches."

The two guards standing at the golden entrance put a foreleg to their chest and bowed. One of them walked towards a protruding stick on the wall to the entrance's left and flicked it. A chandelier came to everyone's attention as it ignited with crystal flames that sparkled and covered the room with various different white lights and transitioning shapes. It as almost like being in an ice cave with a single tunnel of water carrying its light into the bowels of that hollowed area.

"Ponies...I despise their kind so much...and what's with them always putting the word 'pony' at the end of every pronoun? Just use 'one'. It's more widespread. Always thinking they're the center of the universe...Hm? What's that?"

A blizzard roared outside and the sky was dark, but King Anglacite could have sworn he saw something akin to a sort of golden head in the far distance before it disappeared in a blue flash.

"My lord?" one of the advisers called out.

"Hm?"

"Is something the matter?"

"No. Just another beast on the outskirts of my kingdom. Now then, I hear there have been sewage troubles..."

The clichés! They burn!

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The day was out now, but Stelimus hadn't managed to fall asleep at all. The guards remained in place, unflinching, and observed his every movement. It was like he was having night terrors again. That would be a possibility considering his newly formed brain, although, if he were still capable of such complex thoughts then his brain was certainly more developed than he gave it credit for. The doors to Stelimus' room swung open strong enough to smash the guards' into the walls, but they both caught the doors without much effort and created a thundering echo through the wide emptiness.

"Guards! I wish to see my sibling on my own. Leave!" a female voice bellowed.

The deer pounded their chests once with each foreleg and walked in double-file out of the room.

"Who the hell is that, Amanda Waller?" Stelimus thought.

The sounds of hooves clonking on the ground became louder and louder. A figure stepped in front of the fawn and looked down at him. He didn't know how he could tell, but this reindeer was clearly a female. Her features seemed more...accentuated and slim in comparison to the guards Stelimus had witnessed earlier. Her eyes were a burning and very sharp shade of electric purple. The fur on her head had been combed over to look like a flower petal dangling over her face, which seemed quite angry. Her fur was mainly white and she had the same frost shape on her face as her mother and father, but, for some reason, there were several spots on her fur that looked like they had been dragged through mud. Her nose bridge was quite narrow when reaching the muzzle, and, while thinner than the guards,she was still quite muscular and in shape. If anything, she looked like a barbarian from the Roman times.

"So you're the new addition to this family, huh? Do you even KNOW whose family you have been born into?"

"Oh great. Another self-righteous prick. Must be a Tudor. 'Oy'm Princess Harriot Goluck of Edinborough, ruler of the counties of etcetera etcetera and so forth, the two hundredth and twenty-second. If my sibling Wigwam died now I would be the ninety-eighth to inherit the throne'!"

"You're the son of the God-King of all Reindeer! You're the one who is supposed to save us all..." Her angry voice became muffled when she turned away and started to tremble.

Stelimus just looked at her with a face of ambivalence. "Oh boy! Character development! I've read enough books to know that you have none. Wait...Do I remember the books I've read? It's starting to come back to me." The doe's tearing started to slow down and Stelimus got an idea followed by a grin. "Wait...Let's get ready."

"I am his first, but he casts me aside for..."

"Here it comes." Stelimus hid under the blankets with eagerness and shook his stubby tail in response to his readiness. He had only one chance at this.

"Mother Dearest--"

"Granny Smith over here."

"Told me to bring you to her so that she might nurture you and teach you the basics of our language." The doe walked away and checked the toes of her left foreleg.

"Considering you're already speaking english that's gonna be difficult."

"But...she won't have to if you meet with some...complications," she turned and faced her sibling with an evil glare.

"Complications. Why yes. My health insurance doesn't want to reimburse my body changing surgery, but I don't see why you would bring that up."

The doe's eyes lit up with blue spirit flames and her hooves started to expel vast amounts of frost into the air. Stelimus reared his hind legs carefully and readied them like a spring being forced down and held in place. His 'springs' were ready to burst out and into the eye of the one holding them down. His 'sister' threw her body forward and smashed down onto the crib with her hooves. The frost that she built into them almost immediately grew over the wood of the shattered crib and froze it into place. Unfortunately for the doe, the tiny fawn jumped out mere microseconds before she crushed his bed and hopped on her muzzle. He didn't land gracefully like a beautiful swan, however. Stelimus plopped painfully onto the ground then stumbled to get back up and gallop away as fast as his stubby little legs could.

"He can already run?" she thought aloud.

"From newborn to fugitive in just a day. Don't fail me now, lincoln log legs!"

The tiny thing went through the open doors and into the hallways. Never had Gregary been so enamored by a home before. He hadn't seen this because his newborn instincts made him suckle on the bottle he was given several hours prior to his arrival in his room. It was quite convenient for him, to say the least. The entirety of the floors were covered in a fluffy carpet of red velvet. The walls were all covered in wallpaper with a pale-vanilla background and grape vines, and chandeliers or sconce could be seen every few feet. They were usually made from malachite and draped in a strange, white cloth that could only be considered akin to tiny ring armor. As with any royal home, armor from ages past were placed on mannequins that hugged the walls and were accompanied by paintings of various subjects. Several trophies could also be seen, such as the skull of some strange, one-eyed beast impaled upon a pike. The smell of cinnamon and ginger wafted through the air and punched Stelimus' nostrils with the force of a truck.

He could not enjoy the smell as his big sister came galloping after him. One thing, however, was painfully obvious: She was much faster than him. He was more agile due to his tiny body and managed to cut a curve to the right of a hallways corner and dive under a tall table he had spotted right after. His sister tried to grab him but ended up sliding and hitting the wall thanks to physics. She wouldn't give up, however, and pursued with even more determination than she had before. Stelimus arrived at a crossroads in the hall and, judging by his sister's speed, he was going to be caught once he reached the middle. Time appeared to slow down to the fawn when he started to reach the crossroad. Slowly he turned his head and closer did the hoof engulfed in blue flame approach. There was barely a microsecond of time that passed before Stelimus' sister went flying off to the side after a black blur impacted her. The fawn stopped in place and watched her simply fly off into the hallway like a jet and impact against some giant vases and frighten the few servants that were cleaning up.

Looking at the entrance to the hall he was in, Stelimus noticed that he was saved by an abnormally large reindeer with black fur and wearing similar armor to the guards in his room, except this one's armor had neon-blue icicles encrusted into the armor. This reindeer also did not wear a helmet and had placed round pieces of metal at the end of his antlers for some reason.

"How...how dare you?!" the doe roared after getting up. She was wobbling around like a drunkard.

"Not only did you leave your post, Yolumay, but you did so to try and assassinate your sibling?"

"What's with these stupid names they have?" Gregary thought.

"This does not concern you, pleb!"

The reindeer's angry posture became one of calm and serenity. "Pleb?" he said. His antlers shone for just a second, tossing the doe at his hooves which he used to stand on her. "You will speak to your commanding officer with respect and dignity. Your father put you under my charge, which means-" he leaned down near her ear. "-that I own you. This also means that you must do everything that I tell you to do, like cleaning the entire barracks with your TONGUE or PEELING the turnips and carrots BY THE THOUSANDS!"

His voice was so loud that it quite literally caused the frost covered windows to vibrate and break free of their icy casing. Yolumay struggled as best she could from beneath the stag's massive hooves, but she was incapable of freeing herself. The worst part is that he wasn't even trying to keep her down and just looked across the distance with a disconcerted gaze and a mouth puckered to the side.

"You can't...do this...to me..."

"But I am, and there's no way for you to stop me."

"I--"

"It is your father who sent you into his own army and your mother approved. You have no one to turn to." He got off of her and lifted her up with a single hoof. "NOW GO TO THE BARRACKS AND START PEELING WHILE YOU CLEAN IT WITH YOUR TONGUE!" he bellowed.

Stelimus' sister glared at the reindeer but galloped off at the speed of light anyways.

Nodding, the stag turned his attention towards the little prince he had just saved. His eyes were hazelnut brown and his pupils were lavender shaded and changed in shading based on the angle this reindeer's eyes.

"Oh great. First I get a sister who wants to kill me for some obscure reason, like much things in royalty, and then I notice that all of these deer have weird eyes."

"So you are the new prince?" the reindeer wondered. "Do not worry about my eyes. These are just contact lenses. Many soldiers in my rank wear them as a sign of distinction. I am Command Sergeant Major Manimin Orimus. Your mother wanted to bring you to her and asked your sister at first but soon regretted her decision considering how blood thirsty she can be at times...Why am I saying all of this to a young fawn. You don't even understand what I'm saying."

"Keep telling yourself that. Share with me your darkest secrets."

Manimin analyzed Stelimus from every angle then picked him up by the tail.

"Bad touch! BAD TOUCH!" Gregary thought while trying to waddle free.

"I see. You'll prove to be a fierce warrior. Don't worry. When you become five years old, I shall teach you about frost magic and spirit fire. For now, your mother wishes to educate you in our history and language...which I still find strange as you don't understand whatever it is I'm saying."

"So where are you going to take me? A school? I'll beat them all out of the water in math. At least that's a positive aspect about going to back to school after being reborn...with most of your memories. I wonder what history these reindeer have. Might as well make the most of this until I wake up."

Manimin put Stelimus onto the ground and bid him to follow, which the tiny fawn did.

"How surprising that he's already capable of galloping. He's naught but a few days old. How curious," the sergeant thought.

They arrived back at the birthing room which had recently been cleaned and had a fresh patch of hayplaced next to the left wall of the entrance. Several colorful, stuffed animals were scattered about the room to make it a bit more likable while foam pads had been placed all around the patch of hay. They were similar to the jigsaw puzzle pads back in Gregary's real world. On the hay sat Gregary's 'mother' who held a book in her hooves. The sergeant bowed and backed out the room, closing the doors behind him.

"Come here, Stelimus," the queen coaxed and tapped the hay with a hoof.

Gregary shrugged internally and laid down next to her on the rather itchy hay. While trying to put his legs under him like a cat, he a felt a leg wrap around him and pull him closer to a large body of fur.

"You're so cute. I could just hug you all day," the doe cooed.

Gregary looked around in embarrassment, but his attention was drawn to a book placed right in front of him. He could actually read what was on it. Everything appeared to be in english for him, or maybe that was just the Reindeer language that was extremely similar to it. The title was 'History of the Northern Reindeer: For fawns'.

"I'm also going to teach you a little about the pony-song and their kind."

She looked to the side with no real emotion but a had a sheen of disgust in her eyes. As a normal fawn, Stelimus would not have been able to detect that sheen, but he had enough experience to be able to see that hidden aspect.

"Oh boy! Racial slandering! Please, mother. Teach me to be an uneducated tundra bumpkin who judges without reason! It's the only thing keeping alive my will to live!"

Pony-Song

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"Oh, before we start, I suppose you're confused as to why your sister didn't come see you after your birth. Well, she is in the army and her father does not want her to leave her posts for personal reasons. It is only recently that I told her. She's a bit...violent," Mother trailed off.

"Yeah that's for sure. If she were in a terrorist group that was only for killing people they'd tell her to calm down."

"Don't worry. We're all well aware of her problems which is why you have the Sergeant to thank for your protection earlier. I won't tell you about them for now."

"So you're trying to tell me that even though I was nearly killed by my own sibling, you don't care? Oh boy. Can't wait for those family reunions. They'll be killer. Badum-tss."

The mother opened the book to show a page with artwork on it displaying some sort of bizarre creatures coming out of the snow. They were only geometrical and had no other , more defined shapes given to them.

"This is how us reindeer came to be."

"I bet there's a god of some sort involved."

"We don't know how we were created or what did so, but we know that we have always had a spiritual link to all things frost and ice."

"Now I was WAY off. Where's my clichés? I want this all to be predictable and easily manipulated, dammit!"

"In the early days, we were directionless but still stayed together for survival and eventually managed to evolve to the point of creating our own society, but we wouldn't survive on our own. While we were linked to the snow around us, it was only spiritually. Physically, our bodies could not stand the cold and we were slowly dying off, then the five deities came to us."

"There it is."

"Your father was one of them."

"GodDAMMIT!"

"The other three are you aunts and uncles that you might even see one day. All five were born with ice and frost as part of their souls and bodies. They used their powers to fuse our kind with it as well, changing our bodies and helping us live in this world too rough for ponies. Hmmm..." Mother tapped her chin. "I would say our only other possible equivalents would be the yaks, but they are far too block headed and simple minded to be truly considered."

"Yaks?" He chuckled quietly. "If yaks have some kind of society, what's next? Birds? Cats? ...Griffins?"

"Anyways, thanks to them, we've been able to continue living here in the far north, and while I am rather spited to admit, your father has had many a lover in the past due to his lengthy lifespan. In fact, I believe he has a memorial hidden somewhere."

"Creepy much?"

"This is also most likely the case with your remaining aunt and uncle."

"I...That's not really something I can mock. Remaining? Oh geez."

"Anyways, our people grew under the rule of the five God-Rulers, but they eventually had to part ways and took several reindeer with them and made colonies all over the tundra. The moment they separated, the black snow came."

The page was turned and showed some sort of black smog in the air with black snow falling on the ground where the deer were cowering. Lots 'o black.

"At first, we thought it was just a natural phenomenon as this place is strange enough as it is thanks to all the spirits and beasts that dwell within the snow and glaciers. Then we started thinking that it was the local chaos god that lived further down south in the grass lands. It soon became apparent that this was not the chaos god, who wasn't even on the same continent as us."

"This is a children's version? What's the adult version? A Lord of the Rings battle complete with gritty details of the bubonic plague?"

"Deer were struck down by the snow and...changed by it. The landscape twisted and churned and the spirits cried out in helplessness, and the snow lost its diamond glean and became an oily ash. Your oldest uncle, at the time, was caught off guard by it and lost everything, including his life."

"Wow. That's...very sad. Now I'm kind of interested in this story."

"When they learned about it, your aunts, uncle, and father left to the north where they...well...no one knows, really. We do know that your aunt lost her life against whatever the phenomenon was and wasn't seen again...for a time. Your aunt and uncle both left for the south for unknown reasons and disappeared, leaving many to wonder what happened to them. Our scouts met with forest deer and elk, but there’s not much else concerning our god-rulers."

"But you just said I could meet them."

"Several years had passed, then the ponies came to the north. These ones were much different than those from the south, but they were still the same. They used their magic to change the snow and brought about the crystals, contaminating our frost and creating both a new element and spirits. They didn't even ask us and this is our own land! There are other things, but I prefer not to mention them. One thing, however. The older reindeer tend to refer to them as 'Pony-Song' due to their tendency to break out in song for every little thing. It's...amusing, actually, but there's another reason due to their genetics, though, you'll learn about that when you're older."

"When the black snow came again, your father was forced to ally with their ruler at the time. His experience with ponies left him...sour to their demands which were surprisingly extreme at the time. Negotiations were made and they allied temporarily to stop the black snow. They both left with massive legions of their own kind with them and came back with sizeable amount of both."

"Wait...really? Huh. I thought for sure--"

"Unfortunately, many of the soldiers of both sides soon died due to an unknown disease. They were quickly quarantined so we don't know if they were contagious or not."

"Death by disease? That's...not expected at all. This is starting to get a bit too real."

Stelimus started to shake in fear but was hugged closer by his mother. "Ooo oo oo. Don't worry. Your father is protecting us and I'm protecting you especially," she cooed.

The fawn felt surprisingly warm and comfy in her embrace, so he nestled even more deeply into her fur.

"Anyways, a few of the reindeer at the time were given a 'gift' by the ruler of that Crystal Kingdom and have lived for an exceedingly long amount of time. Several of them have now perished, but a hoof full remain."

Stelimus tugged at his mother, pulled back some pages, then pointed at the four god-rulers going towards the blackened tundra. "Hmm? What is it? OH! You want to know about your uncle and aunt." Stelimus nodded. His mother took a moment to gather her thoughts. "Well, a few hundred years ago they resurfaced and came visiting your father. He was quite happy to see them, or so I'm told. He has told me they are going to visit again this season to see his new family." She frowned. "Probably going to talk about his...previous queens..." she growled.

The entrance to the room was opened, showing Stelimus' sister looking at the scene before her with spite and...sadness? That expression of melded rage, frustration, and hidden sadness triggered a memory in Gregary's memories. He was an adult again and looking over a tiny, little girl who was crying. He couldn't hear anything, but he did lean down to try and comfort her for some reason. It was brief and nondescript, but at least Gregary knew his past, more personal memories were coming back to him. He was distracted from his distraction when his sister opened the door.

"Lunch is ready...mmmmother," Yolumay spat.

Stelimus got up and flicked his forelegs down as if he had something on them. He even portrayed disgust.

"Awwww! That's disgusting! If you spit anymore we'll need to dig out a lake for you."

"Alright. Seeing as my little Stelimus can already walk--"

"Despite it taking others a week for his motor skills," Yolumay interjected.

"That just means he's even more special than I thought."

Yolumay growled under her breath. "I suppose you'll be nursing him right now. I'll leave."

"Oh, he refuses to nurse directly from me," the mother pouted.

Yolumay turned around, her eyes completely open and devoid of emotion. She looked at her mother than at the fawn who avoided her gaze and looked away, frowning.

"What kind of fawn doesn't nurse from its own mother?"

"That's not important. He still drinks it from a bottle."

"But...but he should suckle directly from the teat!" she complained.

"As long as he drinks the milk he'll grow big and strong."

"But what kind of fawn has the sort of mental capacity to--"

"You are dismissed."

"...Fine. Good day, queen."

Yolumay dropped the subject rather quickly and left the room without any hesitation. There was clearly bad blood between her and her mother and she was taking that frustration out on whatever living thing she could get her hooves on.

"Well then. Let's go eat. I'm starving," Stelimus' mother groaned while pushing herself up.

God-King's Festival

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A week had passed since I became a...reindeer. Quite frankly, I feel something gnawing at my mind and trying to change me, but my previous memories seem to be keeping it at bay. It's very disconcerting and I really wish it would stop. There are moments where I wished I hadn't kept my memories, but there are other times where Yolumay tries to kill me and my memories of movies and books have helped me survive. She's so predictable that I've actually started becoming fond of her and her stupi-predictability. Huh. Used the word twice. Mother Doe seems to have some rather personal undertones concerning the ponies that live 'next door' as do all the reindeer here. I haven't seen my 'father' much, but when I do see him he tends to stay around for hours on end. I wouldn't give him a last minute coffee mug for father's day, but at least he prefers to spend time with his children when he can. Maybe too much time.

While walking through the castle with my almost politically correct mother, I overheard guards talking about preparations for the Snow Spirit festival and preparing security and all the stuff a guard with a helmet grasping their skull would do. Come to think of it, I hadn't left this mansion or castle, whatever it was, and wasn't even allowed to walk around on my own. I was always accompanied by someone and Yolumay was always hiding around a corner somewhere anyways. She's so fun to annoy. So...incompetent at everything she does. It's like watching the three stooges. I can't get over her. Anyways, I've been brought by my mother and the guards to a warehouse full of reindeer I'd never seen and, surprisingly, a few ponies.. Why are they all so colorful? Looks like someone ate one too many skittles and starbursts and barfed them out through their nose.

"My queen and son! How are you today?" King Anglacite asked with a cheerful expression.

There were several floats behind him with one having a throne of ice sitting upon a mound of snow. Many giant, blue snowflakes jutted out partway through the snow and accompanied the thin streams of frozen blue liquids going down from the throne. Several reindeer wearing blue overalls and carrying a wide array of tools were looking it over one last time. The king kissed his wife then ducked down to have a better look at his son. The deep blue pits that were his eyes unnerved the young child.

"I see the savior of our people is already walking impeccably."

"He has been galloping around like crazy lately."

"I wish I was there to see that. That being said, the festival is about to start and I need to sit on my throne while the soldiers perform their march. If it isn't too much to ask," He said when he stood up. "I want to take my son with me on the Frozen Throne so that my...our people may witness him in his glory."

"I'm not sure I can permit it," mother teased. She turned and tapped her chin gently as though she were thinking it over.

King Anglacite walked next to her then whispered something in her ear. Some rather...uneasy memories were jostled at that point, making me queasy. How ironic that one who had already performed the deed several times over in a previous life could not stand to think about it in his new one. Sad, isn't it?

"I guess that, under these terms, I would be willing to let him go with you on the parade."

"Excellent! I'll see you later at the feast."

He swooped at Stelimus and tossed him towards the float in question, and he was surely nuts to perform such an action. His son was terrified with the aspect of flying to his death because of the overzealous 'deity' who decided to use him as a sports ball. Stelimus saw him jump and twist his body towards the side, then frost and sparkles blew around him and landed the prince in the throne where he was caught and placed.

"There you go. Right here on the seat with daddy."

Stelimus was placed right in front of the reindeer who had decided to sit on his rear rather than sit on his haunches. There were even armrests on the throne.

"Ready, your highness?" a blue pony asked while looking through his notes.

"That's GOD-King to YOU, pony," he 'corrected'.

The pony rolled his eyes and groaned. "Let's get this show on the cobblestone!" he shouted.

The massive metal doors made a resounding and painful screeching noise as they were pulled aside by a group of reindeer and a few ponies. Stelimus noticed, thanks to his 'excellent' observational skills, that the ponies were at least a foot-and-a-half shorter that the deer. It was something that didn't really surprise him considering the short stature of ponies, but without seeing a human nearby, he couldn't really make a proper comparison and, thus, his attention already waned.

The first thing that Anglacite noticed once out of the warehouse was the lack of cheering and celebrating. Reindeer had lined up along the white cobblestone roads and some confetti and balloons were still falling down, but they were looking in the direction opposite of the float and outside the walls. Following their gaze, the two reindeer saw something horrifying staring down at the entire city. Stelimus reared back instinctively and whimpered, but his father put a foreleg over him and held him in place, surprising the young fawn who looked up to see his new father looking on with only determination. There wasn't an ounce of fear in his gaze. The source of this disturbance came from some sort of gigantic beast far away from the city and standing in a blizzard-like fog of the dark tundra. The outline of its body could still be seen but not in detail. It was the presence of three, glowing yellow eyes all the way at the top of its mass that attracted everyone's gaze. Considering that Anglacite knew the city was about ten kilometers in diameter if rounded up, and uneven at the limits of the walls, this creature was more than capable of leaping over the whole city in two steps.

It looked around briefly, then the yellow lights locked onto Anglacite's eyes. The creature's loud groan resonated within everyone's ears before it turned its head then continued on its way. The king sighed and eased himself back into his chair.

"Pfooh. I never thought a colossus would come all the way near an inhabited zone. They aren't hard to deal with, but they can cause tremendous amounts of collateral damage." Anglacite looked down at his son to see him breathing heavily. "It's okay, son. While I might be a God-King, I have fought creatures like these several times before and you will also eventually fight them, but only when you have become strong like your daddy."

"The king has chased off the monster with his gaze alone! Resume march!" a soldier shouted.

The people were all cheering and ecstatic at the claims of that one reindeer and started throwing confetti back into the air. Many of them were hailing their king and others bowed at his mere presence.

"Bunch of brown noses."

The buildings in this city all had the same architectural design: Pillars half-built into the walls with frost growing over them. The pillars, however, all had different etchings and artistic designs to them, so each house had its own 'personality', if one were to put it mildly. The walls were all painted with a substance most certainly made to resist extreme temperatures but was still pale in comparison to those Gregary remembered in his home world. Very rarely were they anything more than various coats of red, green, blue, yellow, or white. They all had a very renaissance-like feel to them. The roofs were usually made into a spiral shape or a rounded cone and were covered with tan-colored tiles. Unlike the vast majority of buildings that humans had almost always made, almost none of these houses had corners, but was either rounded or replaced with a pillar. The walls themselves seemed to be made of pykrete or a similar substance. Considering the extremely low temperatures, their ability to remain intact was not really surprising. The windows, however, were different for almost every house. Some were stained glass while others were frosted glass.

Street lights, similar to those found in the streets of old England, stood at the corner of most streets. They twisted upwards and had many rounded strands of black metal that all coiled around the base like a chameleon's tongue while the lamp itself seemed to hold a gently moving blue ball in it that emitted a bit of light; a light most likely easily seen during the night.

The soldiers continued to toss their spears upwards and spin them around on their antlers while the float continued forward. Stelimus retreated back into the fur of his father. He was never good with exceptionally large crowds, but his dad just grabbed him with his hooves and put the fawn right in the eyes of everyone there, causing him freeze and become stiff like an icicle. This made his father to laugh. After about an hour, everyone arrived in the town center that was just simply gigantic. It comprised nearly one-eighth of the city's total size. There were tables and chairs everywhere as well as numerous cooks dotted all around. Plates and utensils were already prepared for everyone and the smells of various spices and dishes made Stelimus drool in envy, but then he remembered he had no teeth and cursed under his breath. His father took him towards the table closest to a very wide building standing atop several dozen steps. Said table was perpendicular to those taken by the population there and was readied to house Anglacite's family and many high-ranking individuals in the city. Stelimus was placed next to his mother and the king stood atop the table and said:

"My great reindeer of Pykritus, we have gathered here today to celebrate my siblings and I's actions that helped you all become how you are today, but I do this celebration not to embezzle my own ego--"

"Which is quite huge," Mother Doe innocently added.

"Yes. Right. No. I do this to celebrate my first and greatest creation: My people and our culture! Geniuses have all been born from your ancestors and I have seen them all! Many times did one come and invent exciting new technology and research that aided our growth as a species. This is why all of you are always invited to down with the royal family. You are all extremely important to the survival and development of your species. I am only here to protect it and set it in the right path!" He picked up a glass full of a purple liquid then raised it high in the air. "TO THE REINDEER!"

"TO THE REINDEER!" the population shouted.

"You aren't going to celebrate without us, are you?" a female voice spoke from an unknown location.

Everyone looked around in confusion until their gazes were attracted to an enormous black bubble that formed Anglacite and his family. Two forms came from it before the bubble closed. A loud amount of 'oooo'-ing erupted from most of the male populace when a doe revealed herself. She was as tall as Anglacite but she had a very delicate and effeminate frame. She still had antlers like the god-king but they were covered with flowers and green vines. In fact, her body was more akin to forest deer covered with flowers and various other plants than a reindeer. Her top fur was mostly green, likely from moss, and the undersides were a dirty white. Her shining, emerald-green eyes were adorned with very long and exaggerated eyelashes which she fluttered rather annoyingly. Both Anglacite and Stelimus groaned loudly in annoyance.

"Oh! This must be your son!" she cried out.

She approached him a moment then kissed him on the head. A few flowers started to grow on his head, but they were quickly turned to ice and shattered off his skull in an icey powder.

"I would appreciate you not to do that to my own blood, sister," Anglacite hissed.

"Oh, pfff. Why not? I just like to keep up this 'Oh so effeminate and delicate' gig to please the idiots in the crowd."

"Effervescence," another figured hissed.

"Brother Grimliss! How good to see you again!" Anglacite cheered.

The king stood up and hoof-bumped his brother. Grimliss was much taller than even his brother and was covered in a black cloak of fluttering shadows. His face was even covered by a cowl, hiding any facial features he could have possessed.

"Why not show yourself to my son?" Anglacite grinned evily.

"Sure."

The reindeer turned to face the tiny fawn who looked at him with saucer eyes, completely unaware of whatever was going to happen. He never dealt with this sort of thing before. Were they truly gods?

"HOW ARE YOU DOING?!" he shouted.

Dropping the cowl revealed a deer's skull with purple flames standing in the dark orbits of its skull. The antlers were twisted and melded together, creating quite a mess but still leaving a few branches to stretch out.

Stelimus was so shocked he accidentally urinated himself.

"Dammit, Grimliss! Look at what you did!" Mother Doe complained.

Black shadows started crawling all over the skull to reform into black fur, but the eyes and lower jaw did not change.

"Oh, Primula. You should get so--" Effervescence tried to calm the situation but failed.

"No! He might traumatize Stelimus for a lifetime. You're also responsible!" Primula pointed at Anglacite.

"What'd I do?"

"You know very well what you did! You're even laughing at your son's expense!"

"Ooooo boy. That was embarrassing and all but I wasn't going to blame anyone but my bladder control. Curse this young body! And now I learn that I have the Creepy Fairy and Grim Reaper as an uncle and aunt. If this is what happened to them when they left, I worry to know what would have happened to the other two were they to survive. I can feel that this life is going to be full of surprises. Too bad I'm about to wake up from all of this pretty soon...any minute now..."

Windigo's cry

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It has now been five years since I was reborn into this weird world and everyone started acting rather strange around me. The only one that treated me like a baby was Mother Doe aka Primula. I was certainly not expecting this whole little venture to last for as long as it has and would have preferred it to stop right at that festival thingy and let me awaken in the hospital, but now I'm growing bigger and learning more about these people. My sister was sent, recently, to Grimliss' zone of rule, wherever it may be, for some discipline or something. I don't know. My 'parents' refused to tell me no matter how much I asked them to explain it to me, having fun undoing all of her plans. I mean, sure, they were a threat to everyone else who went near them and quite a few ended up in intensive care, but that's because none of them know what a book was nor how to read them. My aunt and uncle would come to visit occasionally every year but never really came to talk to me or see how I was doing.

My mother has been homeschooling me as well as private teachers, but they've been noticing, with every 'test' they perform, that my intelligence far surpasses what they were expecting for a fawn my age. Like putting a square in a square hole is that difficult and putting buildings blocks together in a manner that allows them to serve as stairs or a make-shift bridge would be that difficult as well.

Today is special, however. Today, I'm being escorted by Maninim to my first day of 'magic' school where I'll learn about spirits and 'frost' as well as the other things. I can almost hear the Harry Potter theme in my head while I walk. The streets are as cold as always and the deer are as strange as ever, but my personal bodyguards make me feel special...disregard who I am and from where I hail.

"Here you are, Prince. Right in front of the school," the sergeant said.

Stelimus stepped forward and looked around. There was a very large and empty space between all of the enormous buildings. The only structure present was a wooden fence and its gate.

"...Where's the school?"

"What do you mean? This is the school."

"This empty hole is a school? What's the town hall, a hole?"

"No. My prince--"

"Stop calling me that."

"I'm sorry but that is your title. I must say it despite your protests."

Stelimus groaned loudly and dropped my head in defeat. "Fine."

"Schools for reindeer are performed outside in the snow. It is the best way for the young fawns to be better connected to the frost and spirits."

"But what about math? History?"

"It is done outside as well, but you are to be home schooled for any basic teachings, such as reading, writing, math, and history."

"Then what am I doing here? Why don't you teach me? I recall you saying you would teach me how to fight and how to use magic and spirit fires when I was older."

Maninim's eyes widened. "You remember that? How?"

"I have a very good memory."

"But you were barely a day old!"

"Time flies when you're having fun."

"That doesn't even make sense!" he complained.

The fawn looked away from the sergeant and straight forward, mentally sighing loudly when he witnessed what he was to learn in. "So why am I not learning everything at home?"

"Your mother and father stated that you must become closer to the people and make friends with the youngest generation and learn the most basic of frost manipulation and spirit magic as you can." He looked towards Stelimus who was already pouting. "It's your first day at school. There is no need to be upset. Plus, the teacher is rather...'new' and will certainly help you and the other students to get closer to the spirits that live within the tundra."

"...Fine. Am I on my own from here or do I go with one or two of these guards?" Stelimus wondered.

"I take the guards. We need to patrol the eastern walls. You will stay here on your own and get better acquainted with the populace."

Stelimus started tapping his chin in thought. "This is because my appearance has changed over the years and you want them to think that I'm just a random reindeer who has gone there to learn about school and all the other things fawns my age do. Plus, if I'm 'anonymous', there won't be any brown nosing by the teacher who would most certainly give me a 'perfect' score just so that he or she doesn't end up getting put into a dungeon or a brig or whatever prison complex we have."

Stelimus was right about his appearance having changed over the years. His body was mostly just white, like a living snow ball or fuzzy arctic rabbit. Now his body was becoming much leaner and his appearance changed drastically. His eyes were now a cyan blue and his body was still white but many strands and veins of light-electric-blue ice was growing over his coat. He was even fashioning the back of his head to try and get a hairstyle, but it was failing miserably. His nails were still pure white but the tips were becoming blue and contrasted with the white the higher the blue went. He didn't really like this change as it made him feel like a woman painting her nails.

The sergeant pulled a gate open. "The entrance is here," he said. The screeching was horrendously loud, but only Stelimus reacted.

"Mind putting some oil on there? I feel like I've just gone through a sugar rush."

"Yes, sir," the sergeant replied.

Stelimus rolled his eyes and walked away. He stopped for a minute and looked behind him to see Maninim overseeing his soldiers forming a line. When the reindeer turned around to see the prince, he waved a foreleg then started shouting at the guards to start moving forward.

"It's like watching a World War two movie," Stelimus thought out loud.

The fawn struggled to walk through the huge piles of snow, often nearly plunging into them like a German U-Boat. The further he went, the shinier the snow became. By now he had become used to the snow sparkling occasionally throughout the year, but this one had a different sheen than what he was used to. After falling again into a pile of yet more snow, Stelimus cursed loudly and struggled to get out of the piles, swiping away the snow stuck on his face and coat. A ghostly woo in the wind sent shivers down his spine, something he didn't think he'd ever get in this snowy apocalypse. At first, the fawn just took it as the blizzard's wind, but a steady stream of some sort of icy film started to pour all around and in front of him. There was something behind him and he was too scared to turn.

"Come on, man. You don't believe in ghosts and gods. This shouldn't be scaring you...even though one of your uncles is a 'zombie' of sorts… Turn around!"

The tiny fawn jumped a short distance in the air then twisted his body to face whatever was behind him. He was certain there was nothing, but he came face-to-face with some sort of horse-shaped creature staring him in the face. It looked exactly like a ghost and had no hind legs, but its eyes were a bright blue and staring directly into Stelimus' soul. He couldn't help himself to the point that he yelled in terror and started to gallop away. Unfortunately, the creature gave chase and caught him in mere moments, using its forelegs to grab the fawn and fly away with it.

"Let go of me!" Stelimus yelled.

He was soon face-planted into the snow where other fawns waited patiently. The fawn jumped back onto his forelegs and his head darted around to all the fawns around him.

"You kidnap fawns? Why? If you want to eat me you'll have to do better than that!" Stelimus shouted as he stood on his hind legs and put himself in a boxer's position.

"What's wrong with you? You've never seen a windigo?" a fawn asked.

"Huh?"

"Your parents never told you about my kind? But we're the first spirits your kind encountered in the tundra," a ghostly voice asked.

The windigo was right in front of Stelimus again and staring at him again. Its voice was female in tone and had a ghostly echo to it. It sounded like the cold winds of winter were speaking directly to Stelimus.

"I've never even seen you before! Why are you here?"

The windigo floated upwards and towards a rectangular mound of snow. It then landed and placed its forelegs onto the surface. It came to Stelimus' 'astute' observational skills that the mound of snow was supposed to be a desk of some sort.

"Since it seems your knowledge of spirits is severely lacking, I believe the best thing to do is review our kind to you all. I will also mix in a bit of frost magic to keep it enticing to those of you who already know about most of the spirits."

A dark-brown furred fawn lift its foreleg and started to bounce with eagerness. "I have a question."

"Yes?"

"Why is a windigo teaching us? I thought you were...you know," he trailed off."

The windigo just chuckled, creeping Stelimus out. "While it is true that most of my kind are no more than mere beasts, some of us have existed long enough and absorbed enough energy to acquire a better understanding of existence. As such, I have spoken with your king and have taken up the position of teacher for basic things such as spirits and frost magic as I'm the most adept and qualified for it. There are still some things I won't know or understand so it's also an opportunity for you to teach me as well."

"How do you already speak our language?" Stelimus wondered.

"I spent a year with your people when they summoned me. I learned how to speak your language in that time."

"I see..."

"Now then, how about I start with what the windigos feed on?" Her voice became more sinister and her eyes gleamed mischievously.

Stelimus could only gulp in horror.

Are gods real?

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"Then wh-what do you feed on?" Stelimus wondered aloud.

The windigo swirled around him and faced him directly. "Negativity formed from arguments, among other things." She flew away and flicked Stelimus on the muzzle then went back to her 'desk'. "This is why your leader doesn't like us very much."

"Huh? Why not?" a young doe wondered.

"Because we're the ones that united the pony tribes during their great conflict. To be honest, we couldn't care less, but your leader has an obsession with them." She moved a foreleg to the side. "It is ironic, really, that the one who wished to see them perish in conflict feeds us the most."

"Is that why windigos stay around Machlacite?" the same doe asked again.

"You have many questions." The fawn blushed in response and looked down in embarrassment, but the windigo was unmoved. "That wasn't a compliment."

"O-oh..."

"Apologies. Our nature compels us towards conflict. I agreed to prevent it between you during the class. That feels against my nature but I'm compelled to also teach you. One must compromise another, and there is always conflict around so I will not starve."

The windigo waved her forelegs around in strange, circular patterns and started creating a localized frost storm in front of her from which a sheet appeared and landed in her left foreleg.

"Hmmm. We'll start with spirits today."

Stelimus stood up and asked:

"Wait, aren't you going to going to ask our names?"

The windigo stared at him with widened eyes. "Names?" She tilted her head like a confused dog.

"Yeah. You know. My name is Ste..." He cut himself off and thought briefly. "Gotta be 'undercover'. Gregary, she's..." he rotated his foreleg awaiting a response.

"Oh! I'm Filiane," she cheerfully replied.

The doe in question's body was almost completely white, but there were already some splotches of gray randomly dabbed around her body. Like the dark brown stag before her, she also had antlers growing out of her head, but they were less pronounced. Around her Brunswick-colored eyes was a strange, black substance Gregary could only surmise as being some sort of 'mascara', which was disturbing considering her assumed age.

"I'm Aless," the dark brown stag answered.

A fawn with an apathetic expression and a strange coat lifted his foreleg. "Oporus," he said with a depressed tone.

He's coat was black on the inside, but it had a bizarre mutational coloration to it that made his coat shine white at the edges. He looked like he was cell-shaded, although no such effects affected his white eyes. This fawn, however, had no antlers growing on his head. In fact, it didn't look like anything was going to grow from his skull at all.

"I--"

"Yes yes. You all have 'names'. I will hear them later," the windigo waved off.

Considering there were around fifteen fawns, Stelimus was thankful. Why would his coma dream have so many names anyways?

"I did not come here to learn names. I came here for learning."

"Isn't that contradictory? You didn't come here to learn but to learn?" Stelimus lift an eyebrow.

The windigo stared at him for an extended period of time, a time which only had the wind making itself known to everyone there. Stelimus didn't back down from the stare fight even when the other fawns there just looked horrified and kept switching back and forth between the two like spectators at a tennis match.

"I suppose it is contradictory. Nevertheless, I will learn your names as time goes on. First, we learn more about the spirits that live in the world. And to do that." Her body wrapped around all the fawns there, scaring them. "We must go outside of your city's wall and into the tundra."

"WHAT?!" the whole class shouted.

Their outcry was ignored and they were taken into the air at such speeds that they all nearly blacked out. Once they came to, they already found themselves lying down in the snow of the outside tundra. Almost immediately did the majority of the class slam into each other and tremble in fear. Stelimus rolled his eyes and started walking forward, trying to see through the darkness and the strong, snowy winds. From afar, he could barely see a beer-brown illumination across the horizon that barely broke through the pitch blackness of this arctic desert. A few glaciers were around, but they weren't close enough to size properly.

"So, what are we supposed to do?"

A bright, blue glow illuminated the area behind Stelimus, attracting his attention. Before he could discern the source, a large wave of blue energy flowed outwards, pushing the snow storm away and creating a calm zone within it. The huddled fawns looked around at the bubble being created by this spirit and started to calm down as well, until a terrifying roar erupted in front of them. Turning around, Stelimus met with what looked like a fluffy t-rex from Earth.

It looked around to see the huddled fawns together then noticed that Stelimus as the only one alone, making him the easier target. Stelimus' bravery left him like an ex-wife and all that remained within him was fear wracking his little body. The gigantic beast started stomping towards him with a vicious romp, readying to eat him in one swoop, but it found itself being swatted away, interrupting its sprint, ruining its balance, and making it fall into the snow. Stelimus hurried over to the others for some unknown reason and turned to see the windigo facing off against the brute. It shook some snow from its head and roared at her. With no time to react, it chomped down on her...or at least it tried. The spirit's body was non-corporeal, and any attempts at physical damage was futile.

The windigo quickly became bored and wrapped its lower body around the beast's mouth, covering it in a pale fog. Its mouth completely froze over in a flash, leaving the spirit to fly back towards its 'class' while the monster tried swiping at its mouth with its tiny arms, but failed. It quickly scampered away in fear back into the storm where it was hoped it wouldn't be seen again.

"What was that?!" Aless shouted.

"A Sabre-Tyrant. Just gigantic carnivores that bite you and make you bleed to death. Do not worry. I did not freeze the nostrils. It will live...maybe..." she trailed off. "Now, let us pursue the study of us spirits," she said while lifting a foreleg.

Stelimus stepped forward violently. "Woah-woah-woah! Are we seriously just going to gleam over a giant dinosaur trying to eat me?"

The Windigo looked at him and simply answered 'Yes', making the fawn nearly drop from exhaustion and disbelief. His lack of energy was almost immediately reinvigorated when a faintly glowing blue ball flew through his chest. He made sure he wasn't hurt then checked to see where the ball had gone and realized that they were everywhere now and were rising from the ground as well. They looked like blue fireflies.

"Well then. I guess we're just going to glance over what just happened. What's next? I end up fusing with a spirit, giving me frost powers?"

A thin veil

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"These are the basic forms of spirits. They have yet to become something determined, like I am," the windigo flaunted.

Stelimus patted one away from his face, and, surprisingly enough, it abided and flew away. The others stared on and some started playing around with the orbs. The windigo flew towards them and rest her head on her forelegs.

"Spirits who receive positive energy, like the ones you are playing with, become 'good' spirits." She scoffed. "At least, 'good' by your own people's classification. Good spirits help everything they can, but don't try to irritate them or destroy what they like for they can become some of the most dangerous incorporeal creatures to exist." She looked around and noticed Stelimus swatting the balls away from him and attracting more, erratically sparking balls. "Giving any form of negativity to a spirit can change it to something...sinister."

One of the balls kept bopping Stelimus on the head, angering him to the point where he intercepted its flight path and smashed it under hoof and into the snow. He was quite proud of himself and stood in place as if getting his victory pose ready for cameras, but the snow beneath him started to rumble and crackle while a black light flashed through. Eventually, the stag was tossed away and a terrifying creature erupted out from beneath. It stepped towards Stelimus and chuckled while tilting its head left and right.

Its body was a chitinous black and its head was...disproportionate in several areas. The forehead was replaced by an upside-down maw filled with teeth and the normal area for a mouth still had one identical to the mouth above it. The middle area was bare but deformed with a crevice here and an outgrowth there. The main body was very mangled and was almost akin to fleshy string with some solid bits of chopped beef held in freezers. It had two right arms with three lanky, sharp fingers; and a single left arm identical to the other two. Its lower body was just a tail comprised of many different 'threads' of 'flesh', and it was whipping around in the snow. Its mouths would occasionally open up and let leak a blue, bile-like substance that melted in the snow.

"Congratulations, Gregary. You're the only deer I've met to create a Barmephant," the windigo said with no emotion. She was very apathetic to the whole event, although she did scratch the back of her head. "Granted, I haven't met many deer. Still."

The creature inched slowly towards Stelimus and eventually slashed its right arms at him, missing him narrowly. Now that he started to gallop away, it followed after, considering the chase to be a game.

"Barmephants are spirits distorted by the current activities they were performing in their pre-spiritness and interactions with the 'living'. They're actually quite malevolent. This one is a newborn so it only immediately imitates its previous existence."

A fawn stepped up and asked:

"Shouldn't we be helping him?"

"Why?...Oh. Right. They want me to bring them all back alive from the trips. Ummm, do any of you have the blood of a locust?" They all shook their heads. "Then you won't have the rest. Three of you just step right there and two of you join your hooves in an arc pattern. Now you stick your head underneath and cover your face."

"Why?"

"Do it," she replied coldly. "Your friend will arrive shortly."

The three fawns in question shrugged and did as told. Sure enough, Gregary came running back like a buffalo with the barmephant playfully chasing after him and slicing up the snow in front of it. The fawn had the mind to dodge the 'totem' in front of him, but the barmephant did not. The second it saw it it started being pushed away by some unknown force. It tried to struggle but eventually dissolved into some sort of water substance and flew away into the wind, leaving Stelimus to fall onto his haunches and let his jaw drop. He was in complete disbelief.

"What the hell is this? What's going on? I actually felt some sort of real pain when it tossed me, then it chased me? I'm definitely in a coma so I'm perceiving time wrong, but then, how did this happen? How? It couldn't be...I haven't been in denial for so long, have I?"

The windigo wrapped around Stelimus and exhaled some freezing cold air onto his face. "Snap out of it. You already broke half my class with your little routine so we'll skip directly to frost magic."

A young, white doe hopped in front of the spirit and asked:

"But teacher, why did what they do work?" Filiane asked.

"Because barmephants hate constricting environments. The rounded shape of the joined hooves represents anything above its head, like a roof or a cave wall, and the face being covered shows its complete lack of freedom, being both bound, blinded, and trapped."

Stelimus cracked his neck slowly towards the windigo and had a look of pure horror on his face. "How did I ruin it? I didn't know what would have happened! You could have told us sooner that any negative interactions would have consequences on those balls of light!"

"It is your fault that it was created."

"How is it MY fault?! I didn't even know what they were! You were supposed to teach us this!" He pointed accusingly to the spirit.

"Isn't it a given that any negative interactions will have negative consequences?"

"I...Um..." Stelimus' hoof slowly lowered in defeat.

The windigo continued to display no emotion and turned back to the class. "To use frost magic, you must use your essence, your being. For windigos, it's simply what we do when massive, interminable arguments occur. It comes naturally, and we freeze those responsible in eternal arguments so that we may feed from them." The deer shivered, but a few didn't react. "For frost magic, the best way I've learned for deer to use it is by finding a focal point to channel your thoughts or emotions through. I--" She slapped a deer that appeared to be trying to focus. "No focusing. That doesn't help."

"Then how are we supposed to find what to focus on?" a doe asked.

"I didn't say focus. I said focal point. You're supposed to bring the energy through your body and bring that energy from around you."

Oporus groaned and closed his eyes. A sudden flash of black frost erupted from his hooves and coated a small portion of the snow around him. "Like that," he said.

"If we sharpen that edge any more he might cut through the planet just by walking," Stelimus mused.

"Very good. He's channeling his whinyness and made it into black ice."

The stag was appalled. "Whinyness?!" he repeated.

The windigo ignored his personal horror and gently floated around the group. "You should be able to feel the cold flowing through you. Use that cold and let it flow to the tips of your limbs. That will be the first part of it the lesson. I won't go any further until you can do it like your friend."

Stelimus watched everyone, save Oporus, start to force their bodies to do who knew what. Naturally, it wasn't working and just made them look like they were trying to evacuate their innards. The fawn walked up to the windigo and paced himself at her speed.

"You're a bad teacher, you know that?"

"And you're a bad student."

"To be a student, one needs to have a teacher." He looked ironically and appeared puzzled. "If you notice, there are none around here."

"That's a nice quip, unfortunately, we already made that quip before you, so windigos basically made you, which means we can unmake you, which I just did."

Stelimus blinked. "You're really good at this 'argument' thing." The windigo didn't reply. "Right...So in this dream I can use ice magic? Sounds simple enough."

Gregary stopped following his 'teacher' and remained in place. An hour had passed and all the fawns were getting incredibly upset at their lack of progress. If Oporus wasn't such a non-conformist he could probably be mocking them as loudly as possible. Even the so-called god-king's own blood was incapable of mustering up the energy required. He only felt his blood vessels chill which grossed him out and frightened him briefly.

"Looks like you all fail. Well, we'll continue this tomorrow."

"But--" several of the fawns protested.

"You didn't explain anything correctly and just rushed over them all..." Stelimus growled under his breath.

Before they knew it, the barrier had collapsed, coating everyone in snow. As before, the windigo picked everyone up and tossed hem back into the snow. The lamps had already been lit and let the little flames flutter gently within their heads. Once fully recovered, several of the fawn left the 'class' and fled as far away from the windigo as possible. It truly terrified them.

"I bet that bitch is internally rubbing her hooves menacingly together and snickering at our expense," Stelimus glared at the windigo.

He was unexpectedly hoisted out from the snow by an unusually large doe flanked by a young stag of average proportions. "Uhhh, thanks for helping me out," Stelimus said with embarrassment.

"It's nothing," the doe replied.

The stag stepped forward and said:

"Hi! I'm Radivus. This is my half-sister, Tenyom." The giant lifted a hoof briefly then dropped it.

The giant was a shiny orange-brown color save for a few brown spots on her face, and the tiny one had a reversed color scheme compared to his half-sister.

"So, you want to do something in the city? Go to the candy shop, play around...watch my sister trick people into thinking she's weak and frail then con them out of their money with a foreleg wrestle?"

"I--" Stelimus caught sight of the sergeant in the corner of his eye before he could give a proper response. "I'm sorry, but not right now. I'm not sure if I'll ever be properly free for events with you. I mean, it's not like I don't want to socialize, but I have many pressing, familial matters."

"Oh. Okay then. See you tomorrow at 'actual' school, then," Radivus waved his foreleg to the leaving stag.

Finally reunited with the guard, Stelimus made a sigh of relief while walking down the streets with the single reindeer.

"I take it you had a rough day?" Maninim wondered.

"Yes. First I get terrified by a spirit, then we're thrown outside the walls, and then I get attacked by a sabre-tyrant."

"I hope the teacher chased the spirit away. You don't yet have the knowledge to fend them off."

Stelimus rubbed his leg. "Umm...That's the thing. The teacher is...a spirit."

Maninim stopped in his tracks and Gregary could see his right eye twitch. "What spirit is it?"

"A windigo."

"A WIN--No. I'll talk about this to your father. I don't want to make a scene."

"IIIIII think it's too late for that," Stelimus said while pointing around him.

The sergeant noticed that pretty much everyone was staring at him after his outburst.

"It's like we're Abbott and Costello."

"Who?"

"Yes. He's on first."

"What's on first?"

"No he's on second."

"Who's on second?"

"No, he's on first."

"Who's on first?"

"Yes."

Mananim face-hoofed.

"I bet I could do the whole routine with this sucker."

Finally in front of the entrance to his home, the first thing Stelimus did was laugh hysterically, tears of joy erupting from his eyes and blinding him to whatever was in front. Mananim was absolutely perplexed at whatever the young fawn was laughing at. The laughing stopped when Stelimus bumped into something large and fell on his haunches. Looking up, the fawn thought he came face-to-face with the Reaper itself, then a thought hit him.

"Uncle Grimliss?"

"Nephew Stelimus!"

The hood dropped to show the stag's creepy undead face surrounded by his dark energies. He picked up Stelimus with his weird dark energies and hugged him, crushing the young stag.

"What brings you here so early?" the fawn forced out.

"Well, I'm going to take you to the Crystal Kingdom, and we're going to be escorted by the ponies and my own guard...who don't appear to be here right now."

Grimliss looked around and narrowed his eyes, if he actually had any and started to look around. Stelimus was greeted by an overzealous unicorn just barely above his height. Her mane was a fiery orange and made to look like a soft flame flickering in powerful winds but refusing to extinguish. Her coat was less energetic and was a complimentary, firetruck red, just like her eyes.

The unicorn clicked her hooves together and saluted the two. "FLAME ARROW REPORTING FOR DUTY!" she bellowed.

Both Grimliss and Stelimus slowly bent away from her as if they were facing a new escapee from an insane asylum.

It hides in plain sight

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Grimliss had brought with him four of his own guards. These bulky behemoths were only so from their armor, for within resided something that only Grimliss knew, and it wasn't a pretty bit of information. For others, the deer just looked like the guards of Anglacite, but with armor that fully covered their bodies and rusted edges. The group was walking through the city towards one of the enormous gates guarding its interior, and something piqued the God-King's interest.

"Where are your companions?" Grimliss wondered.

"Oh, they're waiting outside. They preferred to put up camp while waiting for me," Flame Arrow answered.

"Camp? What for? They could have just entered the city."

"Well, the reindeer here aren't really..." she trailed off.

"Affectionate towards ponies?" Stelimus added.

The pony's ears perked and she looked at Stelimus with a wide grin. "Yes! Oh, I didn't think there was a deer here who understood...Who is he again?"

Grimliss just looked at her in disbelief. "He's my nephew: Stelimus, Son of Anglacite."

"...Oh..."

Flame shrunk down in fear and embarrassment and hurried forward towards the enormous gates ahead of the path.

"What's wrong with her?" Stelimus asked.

"Well, your father isn't exactly...well, you know."

"And is there anything new you want to share with me or are you just trying to remember what you ate last night?"

Grimliss gave a glare at his nephew. "Are you calling me old?"

The young stag just rolled his eyes. "You ARE old. You, Barfella, and my 'dad' all surpass this civilization's own age by quite a bit, and you look like a skeleton! Good grief, I bet you're even a lich."

Grimliss' eyes darted around nervously and he added to the peculiarity by laughing suspiciously. "Right. I'm a lich. Of course."

Stelimus narrowed his eyes, but they didn't remain so or long as his head smacked into Flame Arrow's rear.

"Ow!" the deer shouted.

Flame Arrow turned around to face Grimliss. "They won't open the DOORS!" she yelled.

Grimliss shook his head and smiled a little at her eccentricities. "Open the doors! Your God-King commands it!" he yelled at the deer standing atop the barbican.

"Hey wait, I've never been to the walls before. Dear God they're enormously tall."

The walls were so tall that there was no way to actually estimate their height. Worse still was how they looked like frozen, black iron. It was perhaps from the frost magic the deer used that kept it from shattering, but so far, for Gregary, it seemed that these were definitely not made from any kind of metal he had seen before.

"Say, uncle, what are these walls made of?"

"That's...Well, if you think they're made of metal, you're wrong."

"Then what are they made of?"

"I can't tell you in front of the ponies, but..." he leaned in close to the stag's ear and whispered. "They're made from the essence of dark spirits. Some of the toughest and most difficult materials to acquire and shape."

"They're so long and they're made of nothing but that?"

Grimliss nodded.

"Good grief."

Violently deafening screeches interrupted the thoughts of any around as the doors had started to open and were none too keen to be removed from their resting spot. Outside, there were two crystal guards waiting for the group. The blizzard from before was no longer raging and the tundra appeared to be calm for the moment, allowing Stelimus to see a faint, orange glow on the horizon. The two guards bowed.

"Your lordship, we have come to take you and your Nephew to the Crystal Kingdom. We hope that--"

Grimliss and his guards moved forward without hesitation while the stag just waved the ponies off. "Yeah yeah. 'We hope you appreciate all this effort' and blah blah blah. Enough with the formalities."

The two guards stuttered as they didn't know how to respond to such a thing.

"Come on you two, let's go,' Flame said.

The group moved through the twilight covered tundra without much problems aside from the height of the snow and quickly reached the campsite further away. It was just an assortment of tents and a fireplace. The whole thing jittered something in Stelimus' mind, bringing him back to when he was just a boy on a camping trip with his father. Everything about what they were doing was starting to come back.

"S'MORES!"

The thing is, there were weird, almost draconic little creatures wearing thin clothes dead all around the camp, and it looked like everyone was packing up.

"What are those things?" Flame Arrow wondered as she poked one face-planted into the snow.

"Kobolds," a purple crystal guard said. "Not that much of a threat, but I'm surprised they would be up here in the frozen wastes. They're usually satisfied in hot climates."

"Why are they so shiny and she isn't?" Stelimus asked his uncle.

"She's from Equestria, so she has a similar appearance to us. The crystal ponies are sitting on a heart of crystal which emits tremendous amounts of crystal energy, hence their appearance having changed over the generations. Of course, rather ironically, their ruler cut out the heart and carved it into a crystal heart."

"That seems...redundant."

"We need to go. The thing that has been lurking around the tundra was said to have been sighted around here," the purple pony said.

He was breathing fast and moving about as erratically as his comrades.

"Giant...thing?" Stelimus asked.

The guard wrapped up a tent and tossed it towards a unicorn who floated it into a box. This continued for some time until Grimliss grew tired and started walking away with his four guards and nephew. Flame Arrow jumped in front of him to halt his progress.

"You can't leave! We need to escort you! It's our duty!"

The God-King had a look of boredom covering his face. "I can assure you that I am more than capable of defending myself."

"I won't have it. I'm staying with you."

"Fine by me."

"No! I won't sta-Really?"

"Yes," Grimliss groaned in exasperation. "Are we going to keep doing this or are you going to let me pass."

"I...I guess I can."

Flame stepped aside, letting the deer go through. He snorted and continued.

"Say, how am I supposed to learn frost magic and anything about the spirits if I'm gone from the school after the first day?" Stelimus asked.

Grimliss huffed. "We've already taken care of that little issue."

"Hmmm. I'm curious as to why no one said anything to the 'teacher' about who I am. Was it to prevent favoritism?"

Grimliss chuckled. "Oh, I heard from your father that they did tell your teacher, but she really didn't care. When he chastised her for dishonoring his lineage, she looked out of a window and phased through it, ignoring him."

"Wow. That's...something...wait, did you say phased?" Flame interrupted.

"Yeah. She's a...spirit..." Stelimus shrugged.

The deer looked back and forth at the two then rolled her eyes and looked away. "You reindeer can be so weird sometimes."

"Oh, and I will teach you how to properly bring out your frost energies," Grimliss added.

"Really?!" The young stag was really excited, but a thought crossed his mind. "Wait, I thought you lost your affinity to ice."

"I did, but that doesn't mean that my magic functions on a different core nor that I forgot how frost magic works. It's just...different."

A few minutes had passed after that conversation, leaving only the cold wind to shout its presence and freezing Flame Arrow who was starting to shake and tremble. The sound of baggage shaking also came from behind and became louder and louder until the group of crystal guards came around the group and formed a protective circle. The purple stallion cast a heating spell on Flame who sighed in relief.

"I thought you learned that spell before coming here," he growled.

She twiddled with her hooves. "I did. I'm just not...good with magic."

"Ho. HO HOOOoo. A unicorn who is bad with magic. That's new," the stallion mocked with a large grin on his face.

"Hey, it's not my fault. Magic was never my thing!"

The stallion raised a brow. "Is that a way to talk to your superior officer?"

"N...No sir," she dropped her head in anger.

"Then I expect you to refrain from doing so again or you'll get to suffer through some rather...mmm...demanding duties."

She threw her head up in horror. "Not--"

"Oh yes." He leaned in closer and grinned. "Climbing Potato Mountain."

Grimliss and Stelimus both shook their heads in disappointment. A few hours had passed and the sound of Stelimus stomach was disturbing his uncle's peaceful thoughts.

"I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm thirsty, and I need to pee," the young stag complained.

"Just...pee in the snow!" the God-King growled.

"This is getting to you too, huh?" Grimliss asked.

"Yes. I don't remember the travels in the tundra being long and tedious."

A low, rumbling sound echoed throughout the tundra, prompting everyone to stop and look around in search of the source. They couldn't seem to find it, but something caught the sight of both Grimliss and the Purple stallion. There was a weird color transition off in the distance. A large line that seemed darker than everything around it, then the purple stallion gulped in fear.

"Oh no. Is it the thing that everypony has been talking about?!" he gasped quietly.

"Everypony?" Gregary thought to himself.

(ignore the link if you want a pure, literary piece. I couldn't resist even though I'm not supposed to put links like that in stories)
Three yellow dots appeared in the distance, opening like eyes. Stelimus followed everyone's converging gazes and looked on in horror. It was the giant from so long ago, and it was getting closer! Its steps somehow reverberated through the snow and violently shook the tundra as if it were a mighty god.

"Run. RUN!" Grimliss shouted.

Everyone started galloping away, but Stelimus was still too small to follow their speeds and was being left behind. Another memory ran through Gregary's mind, reminding him of the day after his father's funeral when he was so young. Barely even a child at that point, and he started to have nightmares of his father purposely abandoning him even though he knew that wasn't true deep down but didn't understand what had happened. The giant was getting taller and taller with every step, showing just how colossal it was, and each one started to scare and jostle Gregary's memories and emotions from the time.

"DADDY!" he unintentionally cried.

A low, reverberating noise filled everyone's ears when they saw the creature looking down at tiny Stelimus and approaching him dangerously. Each step started tossing everyone into the air. Grimliss was the only one to hear his nephew's cries in the snow, and he screamed as well.

"STELIMUS!"

The disguise of his body faded to show his true appearance, terrifying the guards around him even more. The God-King's body turned into a black wreath of fire and spirits while he moved with the group. A weird pressure pushed down upon everyone's hearts and reality seemed to snap into pieces for a brief moment. Stelimus was suddenly on his uncle's horns, crying.

"How did you..." Flame tried to form a sentence but failed.

"It's getting closer!" one of the crystal guards shouted.

A gigantic shape appeared in the darkness above the group. It was large enough to flatten at least ten other groups of their size.

"If we reach the Crystal Kingdom, the barriers erected by the prince and princess will fend it off!" the purple guard shouted. "We're almost there! Keep hope! To the left!"

The whole group sprinted to the left, narrowly escaping the enormous hand by the space between what appeared to be its thumb.

"By the Creator! What abomination is it? It's...It couldn't be...A hecatonchires class?!" one of the guards shouted in terror.

"Stow that talk, soldier. No hecatonchires class has been seen outside the Cotton Alpines and the Nyubet! To the right!"

They all dodged, but one guard wasn't so fortunate and was completely flattened.

"We're not gonna make it!" one of the stallions cried.

"Yes we are!" Flame shouted. "Look! The giant crystals on the outskirts of the kingdom are just up ahead. A few more steps and we're there!"

The sound of air being cast aside permeated into the air and started to pressurize the group. Two massive, black shapes were closing in on them from the sides, ready to meet each other in a great collision.

"We won't be able to get out of this one! Those limbs are too big!" the purple pony shouted.

Grimliss growled in response. "Fine. I'll transport us all above and in front of the hands when they meet so the shock wave will throw us into the barrier."

His reformed body started to crackle with purple sparks in anticipation of the strike. The guards were annoying him, asking if it was 'now' that they would be transported, but the deer would not respond. It was when the giant walls were about to meet that the group was teleported in front of the hands through a black mist. The clap was so loud and powerful that everyone but Grimliss were knocked out and thrown, along with several tons of snow, forward. They flew quite a distance and landed far into the grassy barrier of the Crystal Kingdom, their landing being softened by Grimliss' magic. He quickly looked around to make sure no one was hurt and checked for his nephew on his antlers and nodded to himself when he saw Stelimus sleeping, his coat soaked in tears. The situation wasn't over yet, however, and the stag quickly turned to face the giant who was smashing its fists onto the barrier, quite literally creating loud echos and making some of the smaller crystals dotted around the landscape shatter from the shock waves.

After a while, it gave up and casually walked away into the embrace of a hail storm, letting Grimliss exhale loudly in relief and drop onto his back, letting his dark magic dissipate from under everyone.

"If I still had a heart right now, I would be having a heart attack. What in the Abyss was that thing?"

Fluffy workers

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Stelimus groaned as he rose up from whatever pit he was in.

"Where am I?" he wondered aloud.

Looking around he could see that he was, once again, in a hospital. His reaction was an immediate loss of any emotion. In fact, he could almost feel the irony, and it was seeping deep into his--

"YOW! My butt!"

A massive white hoof landed gently on the young stag's stomach and pushed him back down onto the bed. "Don't be such a baby," a deep yet feminine voice complained.

The voice belonged to a massive white mare with a lime-yellow mane and tail bunched into what Stelimus could only surmise to be the roots of swamp trees. She wore a mint-green gown, implying she was a doctor, but she didn't seem to have any instruments with her aside from the syringe she had stabbed the young fawn's butt with.

"Why am I in a hospital?"

"You don't remember?" Stelimus shook his head, prompting the mare to sigh and straighten herself out. "Well, everypony heard the sirens telling us to get into the bunkers below the city."

"Sirens?"

"Yes." She started gesturing while she spoke to indicate height and other details. "At the top of the immense crystal spires that border the kingdom, the princess put sirens to alert us when the Black Giant approached."

"The giant!" Stelimus sat up. "Do you know what it is or where it comes from?"

"Not at all. It appeared seven years ago, more-or-less, and just wandered the tundra while leaving us alone. Without reason, it then entered the kingdom's land and started destroying everything and leaving weird black gunk where it passed. It took weeks to chase it off." She sat on her haunches and hugged herself tightly. "So many died and so much was destroyed. In the end it took the combined powers of the three alicorns and both the Royal Guard and Crystal Guard to fight it off. It was badly wounded, but in just a few weeks it was seen roaming the plains again. I was certain and hoping that it would have died right there..." Tears started to well up in her eyes, but she pushed them back down and took a deep breath while cleaning up the little that had still leaked into her fur.

"Then this isn't just some sort of cliché 'chosen one' thing like the Matrix. I was just 'born' at a bad time, but that begs the question: Why did it attack us? Too many variables around, and it wouldn't be stupid enough to attack a 'god-king'. So, what happened to the others?"

She took a deep breath to calm herself and spoke in between sniffles. "Well, as I mentioned earlier, a patrol found you in a pile near the border after the siren had stopped. You and guards were brought immediately to the hospital, and they found a smoldering deer skeleton nearby. One of the patrol ponies are currently in psychiatric rehabilitation."

"Huh. I'd imagine. Uncle Grimliss has a strange appearance that he hasn't bothered to explain to me."

"THAT'S YOUR UNCLE?! And what's with the four armored deer with him?"

"I know. You'd actually think gods exist," Stelimus chuckled.

The doctor narrowed her gaze. "They do exist."

"Pffff. No they don't." Before the mare could answer that angrily, Stelimus interrupted her. "I'm really not in the mood for a religious debate. First, what did you inject into my butt?"

"Vitamins, antibodies, and other nutritious things."

"Where is my uncle?"

The doctor's anger perspired through her tone despite trying to keep it as civil as possible. "The skeleton is outside, attending our 'Artist's Decorum'."

"What is that?"

"A place where mostly botanists go, but a few artists of varying schools have started attending them as well."

Stelimus rubbed his chin. "How do I get there?"

"Who says you're leaving?" the doctor said with a raised brow.

"I am. I need to find my uncle. NOW!" he roared.

Stelimus' shout attracted the attention of a few ponies down the hall, one of them being a gigantic blue stallion with a lime colored mane and tail and was wearing a feminine nurse gown.

"Is there a problem?" he asked with a false-woman voice. Stelimus stared at him in horror.

"Yes. We need to finish checking up on this little one but he wants to see his uncle as fast as possible."

The nurse turned towards the young stag and his serious face turned to a rather flirtatious one. "Oh. How cute this little thing is. If I were younger I would definitely try and cuddle up with you whenever I could." He flicked Stelimus' lower lip with a giant hoof. "Mmmm. I love taking care of weak patients, and I know just how to do ALL of those tests under an hour, then you can leave."

While Stelimus was being assa--examined by the doctor and nurse, Cadance and Shining stood upon the balcony from which they could see the entire kingdom and the tundra beyond. The pink princess looked on into the void and slouched on the railing.

"That...thing is still lurking in the tundra, and it attacked another passing group..." Shining huffed. He was as exhausted as his wife.

"I haven't had a good night's sleep in weeks. In between the siren blaring off every few hours and us getting those enchanted letters from Anglacite that yell at us, reminding us not to forget our agreement and to uphold to it, it’s nigh impossible to slumber in our comfortable beds," Cadance added.

"Then there's that foal we adopted after the rampage of the giant, although I'm not sure it was a good idea anymore. She ended up being swept into Anglacite’s little ‘plan’," Shining pondered.

Cadance couldn't believe what she was hearing and turned towards her husband, disgust and surprise plastered on her face like make-up fired from a shotgun. "How could you say something like that? And then what, leave her to suffer in the streets? She was barely even a filly then, and we owed her family for negotiating material exchange with the Nebwezar. They're--"

"The only ones to have ever reached the Cotton Mountains and returned. I know. That's also why we made them nobles," Shining frowned. "If anything, they owed us."

Cadance shook her head."This is very uncharacteristic of you. What's wrong?"

"Well, aside from the 'deal' we've been forced into, the two deer that are here, one of them BEING the 'deal'."

"And the other?"

"He's one of the three the deer call a 'god-king'."

Cadance put a hoof to her chin and started to think. "It isn't Anglacite, is it?"

"No. It's that creepy undead one walking around with its skeleton constructs." Shining visibly shivered at the thought.

"Are you sure they're skeletons? They could just be deer using the same magic he uses."

Shining answered only by pointing towards the festival. The confused mare walked towards the railing and pushed herself on to it to get a better look. Using a focusing spell, she got to look down towards the festivities to see the god-king, surrounded by his purple energies and the four guards, admiring a sculpture made of clouds. There was a distinct green energy surrounding the guards, and every so often, a distorted and screaming face would appear in said energy before dissolving. The alicorn threw her head back in disgust.

"Yech. I see what you mean."

"See?!"

'Gnaxing' noises and weird gittering sounds similar to rabbits vibrated into Cadence and Shining's ears, and a little creature rubbing up against Shining's leg brought the two's attention to a weird, gray, bunny-like creature scratching the stallion's leg protection and cleaning it by absorbing whatever weird dusty material had attached itself to it.

"Oh look, a dust bunny!" Cadance noted.

"Get off." Shining shook his foreleg, but the bunny wouldn't let go."Why won't it get off?"

"Awww. It likes you"

At this point, Shining was starting to stress, then a noise brought his attention to the throne room where several dozen dust bunnies were staring at him.

"Uh-oh," the couple cringed.

Grimliss did always enjoy the creative arts. When you're immortal you have a tendency to start noticing the little things in life because you the time to do so. Rare was a mortal who could do the same, but this artist was apparently one of them. The artist of the piece in question was a stallion from the lands south of the tundra. His body and hooves were a cerulean blue while his legs and muzzle are both covered in white fur with the parts reaching blue looking like they were splashed onto the stallion's coat. His cutie mark consisted of two paint buckets pouring downwards into crossing streams and making an entirely new color. They seemed to change colors every time Grimliss looked back at them.

"What is your name, pony?" Grimliss asked.

Everypony around reeled back in horror at the sight of the God-King and his armored and unmoving guards, but the stallion in front of him did not react in the slightest.

"Mix-Up," the stallion replied blandly.

The deer put a spectral hand to his chin and walked around the sculpture and raised his brows. "What sort of sculpture is this? I have only rarely partaken in Pony Philosophy."

"It's a cloud sculpture. It's a new form of art I'm trying to put forth."

"And what's with all the random shapes and colors?"

"I'm just experimenting and trying several new techniques, so I mashed them together to create a sculpture of the mind's experiments."

Grimliss 'blinked' slowly, or rather, the smog surrounding him covered the purple flames serving for eyes. "Well, new forms of art are never great when they are started." Grimliss turned around, ready to leave, then an idea came to his mind and spun around once again. "Tell me, would you be able to customize clouds for a very dark swamp? I feel it is so boggy and a bit of colors in the sky would do wonders for it."

Meeting most profound

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Stelimus came galloping back towards his uncle after having seen him through the windows and memorized the location. He was exhaling loudly and seemed completely out of breath, and not just because he was inhaling and exhaling so loudly.

"Uncle...Grimliss. I found you," he wheezed.

"Ah, Stelimus. I'm glad to see you. I found a possible artist for my home." He raised a hoof towards the blue stallion. "This is Mix-Up."

"Uhhh--"

"And we're leaving. Goodbye." Grimliss bowed then grabbed the young stag, placed him under arm, and walked off with his bodyguards.

Stelimus started squirming about, intent on being free. "Leggo of me!"

"What for? Where were you?"

"I was in the hospital, being treated by some sort of giant aberration of reality." Stelimus dropped his head and pure terror covered his face. "Even H.P. Lovecraft could never come up with such things."

Grimliss raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Who?"

"Oh. Right. 'coma creations'," Stelimus whispered under breath. "An author of a creepy book series with some...ehm...worrisome creatures in them, shall I say."

"Well," Grimliss started. He put his nephew back onto the floor so he could better enjoy the festival. "I doubt they're as bad as the things I've seen."

"You're right. They're worse", Stelimus answered with an aggressive undertone.

"Humph." The stag looked up at the sun floating in the sky, its rays not affecting his eyes or lack thereof. "We still have a few hours before we have to meet the rulers. I suggest we walk around first. This way you'll get to know the ponies and I'll get to know more about their culture and different techniques for a wide array of areas, be they art or other."

"Could be interesting, after all. I'm fairly curious about what my mind has conjured. Hopefully I won't be seeing any other horrors like that. Sure. Why not?"

"Fantastic!"

The two started walking about, viewing many different crafts and plants. One of the herbologists there had a falling out with a botanist and both were fighting on the best way to grow plants in the most efficient manner. One suggested magic, the other suggested natural ingredients. Stelimus found that they both had valid points but were rather aggressive with their words and ideas. Grimliss was the only one watching them who was quite amused at the whole ordeal, recounting something about arena battles back in the day. He missed them quite a lot, making Stelimus question the sanity of his uncle. Another 'artist' encountered made Grimliss back away slowly and cover his nephew's eyes. The person in question was detained by the guards and taken away.

There was one thing that baffled Grimliss. Several plants and trees were fully grown and they were completely out of season, let alone location. Broccoli, honeydew, pineapples, peas, butter lettuce, spinach; These were plants that grow in spring, and the tundra didn't exactly have a distinction from winter.

"What is this? How?"

"You know plants? Stelimus looked up to his uncle.

"Oh yes. Not completely, but I know the basics of plants, especially the edible ones." Grimliss narrowed his gaze. "I must know who is the source of this...this impossible feat."

Stelimus hurried alongside his uncle, moving as best as his tiny, tubby legs allowed him, then hit one of the legs of the guards and fell backwards, rubbing his muzzle."Ow. Why'd you stop so suddenly?"

"Sister!" Grimliss shouted.

"Oh. Hi, Grimliss. What are you doing here?"

"Aunt Effervescence?" Stelimus spoke with a very nasally voice.

"Oh, and my little nephew is there as well!" She galloped forward and scooped him up in her forelegs before falling onto her haunches and nuzzling him. "You're still as cute as the first time I saw you."

"Oh God. It's like when my grandmother would see me for the first time in three months. Aunt. Stop. Stop it!"

His aunt lowered him just so she could show him her question and humored gaze. "What's the matter, Stelimus? Are you...embarrassed?"

"Yes."

She jerked her head back in surprise at how direct he was. He was certainly something special when it came to young stags."

"So, how come you're here, Effervescence?" Grimliss asked.

The doe put her nephew back on the ground and stood up to face her sibling. "Well, I come here every year."

"You do?"

"Of course I do! Look at all these plants here. They're gorgeous and beautiful, but I'm also one of the judges for the competitions concerning botany."

"I didn't know that!"

"You never leave your home. Of course you wouldn't know that!"

Grimliss looked away in shame and lightly kicked a bit of dust into the air. "So... do you know how these plants are fully grown and healthy right now?"

"Oh aye. It's this little mare here who did it."

The mare yiped in fear when the creepy eye sockets of Grimliss lowered around the corner to look at her. She was alabaster in color with a vertically double-toned mane and tail of dark blue and light blue.

"And who might you be?"

"I-I-I-I-I'm W-W-Winter Fields."

"Ah. A pony who can make plants grow out of season." The stag tapped his chin. "Can you make fruit trees grow fruits out of season?"

"Yes. It's part of my special talent. I learned a while ago that I'm best at developing new growth techniques for the plants I take care of."

"A sort of a green thumb, then?" Stelimus added.

The mare was confused. "Thumb?"

"Never mind."

"I suggested she come to work for me in my gardens considering how skilled she is." The doe proudly proclaimed.

"I've already told you that I can't. I have to stay here and try to help out the reindeer in the tundra to grow their crops."

Effervescence was disappointed, but she wouldn't have it and wrapped a foreleg around the mare. "Come now. I'm a God-King of the deer. Wouldn't it be better to work for one who takes such interest in your work, especially one who has such a connection to plants?"

Winter pushed the leg off of her and huffed. "I understand what you're saying and I'm really grateful for such an offer, but I'm more concerned about the well-being of the many rather than the personal tastes of a single individual."

Winter reeled back slightly in fear of the repercussions that might arise, but they never came. Instead, Stelimus stepped forward and talked to his aunt directly.

"Look, auntie. I understand that you like her a lot, but, unlike Play-Doh back there--"

"Mix-Up," Grimliss corrected.

"Oh. Riiiiight. That was a mistake." Stelimus stuck his tongue out. "I think growing food out of season is a bit more important than your personal tastes for having a little yellow flower over there rather than over here." Stelimus gestured.

"Why--"

"And you appear to be so full of yourself that you would take your own designer fashions in the stead of those in need? Shame on you." Stelimus pointed to his uncle. "My fucking uncle is a zombie and he has more heart than you, someone who is intricately linked and woven into the fabric of plant life and nature! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!"

Effervescence's ears started to flicker and her lower lip hid into her mouth. Her rage was boiling, and Grimliss knew it, but he also knew his sister better than she knew herself.

"I love you, aunt, but your power can't be used for your own needs when others have need for it more. Isn't that why you rule over your own country and people?"

The doe's anger subsided into, well, nothing. She was insulted, certainly, but she had no love to share with her nephew, either. "I see your point. I think you'll make a better ruler than your obsessive father." She turned around and didn't look back, but continued to speak. "I must continue on to the others and see what they've been creating and growing."

"You do that. It should give you some time to cool off." Grimliss suggested.

Once she went out of sight within the crowd, Grimliss smacked his nephew upside the head and then went face-to-face with him. "What's wrong with you?! You think she won't kill you just because you're her nephew?"

"KILL ME?!" Stelimus exclaimed. "What do you mean?!"

"Stelimus, she's the most precarious of us three despite what your father may appear like. She's the reason that two of your past sisters died."

"Sisters?!" The young stag clutched his head. "And what did 'dad' do?"

"Nothing."

Stelimus' forelegs just drooped and his mouth remained wide open. He was speechless.

"You have to understand that we have lived for a very, VERY long time. We haven't even remained with the same appearance and powers we had when we came to be, so the matters of life and death become muddled in the waters."

"But you look like you care!"

"I do. I don't look like this because I felt like it. It did allow me to see the previous things in existence. That being said." Grimliss narrowed his gaze and poked Stelimus in his small, fluffy chest. "Your vernacular is quite articulate for someone who is only five."

The stag laughed nervously and smiled sheepishly. "Really? I guess my reading of books really helped me."

"If anything, I'd say you've been alive for quite a bit longer and have seen much more than you let on, which would explain your usage of a more complex vocabulary, simplistic as it might seem to many."

"Ah, shit. I think he's onto me...wait a minute, what am I afraid of?"

"Excuse me. I don't want to be of trouble, but I would like to thank you for intervening there. I didn't know what I was going to do if she kept demanding that from me."

"Oh, uhh. You're welcome."

"And who are you?"

Grimliss stepped forward and bowed. "I am Grimliss, a God-King like the doe you just met. And this tiny stag here," The deer rubbed his nephew's head roughly. "is Stelimus Anglacite, son of King Anglacite of these tundras."

"THE son of King Anglacite?"

"Uh, yes?" Stelimus hesitated.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about potentially getting a job there. I really want to help your people grow better food and crops."

"Uhhhhh--"

"I'm sorry, miss, but until his father decides to lighten up about ponies, I'm afraid you won't get to do much over there."

"Maybe you can convince him?"

"I've been trying for centuries. It's not happening. However," Grimliss tapped his chin. "if you were to create good enough food up here in the north that properly keeps the reindeer fed, Anglacite just might lighten up enough to let you in and work under him."

"That would be a dream come true!"

"Then keep up the hard work. It will certainly bear it's fruit in the future." There was a long pause. "Get it? Fruit?" Grimliss pointed at one of fruit trees with a stupid grin on his face.

Stelimus face-hoofed. "Oh, that was awful. So awful."

Grimliss frowned and grabbed the prince by the collar and dragged him along. "Come now, nephew. Let's get into the castle before you attract anymore unwanted attention."

"Thanks again!" Winter Fields shouted.

Meet the Queen

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The two deer were now within the walls of the Crystal Castle and waiting within the throne room. It was an extremely long room that was practically empty save for the throne mounted on a small pedestal and the tinted glass windows depicting what looked like a stubby, purple iguana-dwarf holding up a blue heart.

"They don't often come in here, do they?" Stelimus noted while he stared at the glass.

"No. They don't. They're quite different from your mother and father in many ways. Mainly that they don't exaggerate with their position or try to be as eccentric."

Stelimus looked at his uncle and chuckled. "You don't really see the king with a good eye, do you?"

"No," Grimliss answered flatly.

Stelimus looked down. "That was direct."

"I say you take that aspect from me as I'm also very direct with my thoughts and actions. If something displeases me I will tell the person in question directly into their face regardless of who they are or what position they might find themselves in." He flicked off a piece of the darkness curling along his skull. "You cannot threaten the dead."

Stelimus gulped and looked around for something to change the subject of the conversation. "Hey, what is this stuff made of, anyways?"

"The castle? It's all crystal."

"All crystal? That's not possible. Some of it MUST be glass."

"Nope, all crystal."

Stelimus gave pause. "Whwhdgddguh, but so much crystal is impossible, let alone forming it into some sort of gigantic, seventy-story building!"

"Yet here you stand within it."

The stag's eye twitched and simply gave up trying to reason with his uncle.

An hour passed and Stelimus' rage was starting to boil over."It's like waiting at the hospital for the doctor's appointment."

"What?"

"How long is this going to take? I can't stand it anymore! I'd rather go back outside with that weird giant stomping everywhere than stay here any longer!"

"Then it's a good thing we finally arrived," a feminine voice assured.

Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor had finally arrived and didn't seem discontent at the notion.

"Sorry for the delay. I had to show up for a few unveilings at the festival," Cadance apologized.

Grimliss bowed his head to the side in understanding. "Of course."

"So this is the son of King Anglacite?" She grabbed Stelimus by his cheeks and lifted him up. "He's so cute."

"Leh go o' muh!" Stelimus tried to say.

"I'm so happy to see you."

"I'm not," Shining spat.

"Shining!"

The stallion stepped in front of his wife and pointed towards the deer. "Cadance, they're deer! They're known to hate ponies, and that one is Anglacite!"

" 'King'," Cadance corrected.

"He'll NEVER be a king in my eyes!" He approached Stelimus and pushed his muzzle against the young stag's. "I bet that you even think that we are inferior to your kind."

"Acting like a spoiled brat who thinks he knows everything and how the world works.No," Stelimus answered blandly.

Shining became confused. "Wha..."

"Why would I? If anything, you're the one employing prejudice. That's a fallacy if ever I heard one." He smirked.

"I'm not being prejudicial."

"Yes you are." Stelimus passed by the captain and asked Cadance a direct question. "Say, you're a princess, I heard?"

"Yes." She smiled.

"Then I guess that big baby is your prince." Stelimus gestured behind him.

"Big baby?!"

Shining's jaw dropped and he became completely demoralized while Cadance chuckled.

"Yes, he is."

"So when are you marrying?"

Cadance frowned. "I...We're already married."

"So then you're a king and queen."

"No."

"Yes you are," Stelimus insisted.

"Just because we're married doesn't mean we've become king and queen." Cadance proudly put a hoof to her chest.

"Then you're not the true rulers of the Crystal Kingdom."

"We are the rulers of the kingdom," Shining interjected.

"But you can't be the rulers if you're only a prince and princess. That's not how the monarchical system works."

"What do you even know about monarchy? You're just five!"

Grimliss stood in the background, content to watch his nephew display unusual intelligence. "Geniuses, even at a young age, still act like children when speaking to adults who have seen more than them, but Stelimus...Stelimus talks like an adult that has seen more than these two. How curious. What will he be like when he grows up? Will he become even smarter, or is there something else involved?"

"I know that in Absolute Monarchies, like this one, the crown is passed down to the elected of the direct descendance if there are several children. The children in question are considered as princes and princesses. I won't go into details about their roles. I also know that if there are no heirs to the throne, the closest blood relative is chosen. If even they are not present, then a person can be chosen that the current sovereign deems most worth or a person may claim it for themselves."

Shining armor rubbed his chin blankly and looked like he was about to drool.

"You are a prince and a princess from separate families who have married and, as your predecessors have either stepped down from the throne or perished, then you are now the King and Queen of the Crystal Kingdom-" Cadance was about to interject but was spoken over by Stelimus."-REGARDLESS of what you may say or think."

"Well, I refuse those titles,." Cadance crossed her forelegs and turned away stubbornly.

"That is your choice, but you are still a queen and Zan the Wondertwin over there is your king."

"Wondertwin?" Cadance said.

"Form of: River of drool!"

"I think that's enough with that, Stelimus. You seem to be exceptionally rude with those that are part of any form of royalty. You could show them as much courtesy as you do the street folk. Both are still people with feelings," Grimliss explained.

"But what I said is the truth!"

"Perhaps, but saying it with such a tone and attitude won't lot you any friends."

Stelimus pouted. "And what if I'm not looking for any friends?"

"Then I can say with certainty that you're shaping up to be just like your father."

A shiver went down the stag's spine and apologized directly to the two ponies who were baffled at the sudden change of attitude from the mere mention of him possibly being like his dad.

"If you would be so kind as to show little Stelimus to his, um, 'friend', I would be grateful," Grimliss asked Cadance.

"Oh? OH! Right! Uh, GUARD!" A crystal guard galloped forward then came to attention. "Please escort the young 'prince'," She used the word with a sour note and some salty spittles. "to his 'friend', if you will."

"Right-o. Please come with me, sir," the guard insisted.

"What friend? It's not that wendigo again, is it? She weirds me out."

The guard started pushing the young stag along the floor and out of the throne room, leaving Shining and Cadance to sigh in relief.

"Good grief. He's a handful," Shining sighed.

"I know. That's why I think he's my favorite nephew to date," Grimliss teased.

"He seems bizarrely versed in the matters of royalty. Is it the same with political matters?" Cadance asked.

"Not that I know of. It is only since we came here that I've been noticing such words coming from his mouth."

"I guess he was just hiding it to show off, although I'm surprised he even knows what the words are." Shining chuckled.

Grimliss composure became darker and his smile faded away. "Now is the matter of the arrangements."

"R-right," Shining whined.

"I trust that everything has been prepared for the future?"

"Yes, but isn't there another way to do this?" Cadance asked. "I can't just have that done with a future young mare who probably won't even like him!"

"I understand your concerns, but you know how precarious and stubborn my brother is. I watch him closely so I will make sure that no 'advantages' slip through the proposal of your alliance with the reindeer of the tundra."

"What kind of 'advantages'?" Shining asked.

Grimliss' facial aura flickered a little, revealing a bit more of his skull than the two ponies wanted to see, not that anyone wants to see the skull of a living being. "He has lived for several millennia and has become quite savvy in the ways of contracts and accords. If he can find a way to subdue pony kind and convert them to his way of life, he will, and he has subverted the minds of his own ilk to the same way of thought."

"Propaganda can be a powerful thing," Shining said.

"We can talk of this later after you tell me what the Abyss that giant creature is that roams the tundra!" Cadance stomped the ground viciously.

"I do not know, but I trust you have already gathered the details of its coming?"

"Yes. We have."

"Good. All I can say for certain is that it has characteristics similar to the first appearance of 'Black Snow', but multiplied several times to an alarming extreme."

"What does it mean?"

"Perhaps it is waiting for something?"

"Waiting for what?" Shining asked.

The stag pondered the question for a moment then shared his thoughts. "It came around ten to fifteen years ago, correct?"

"Yes," the couple answered in unison.

"Well, it's come to my attention that it is only recently that the giant has become active, and the more years that pass the more aggressive it has become. The strangest part about all of this is that past arrivals had the snow spreading itself slowly across the tundra with the help of many beasts, similar to minions in comic books read by the young ones."

"Then why would it waste all of its resources in a single, gigantic abomination? Sure, it's powerful, but if it's destroyed, then the snow is finished."

Grimliss looked towards the exit of the throne room of hummed. "Well, what if it was waiting for something to appear? Waiting for something to be made? It would know the god-kings that have faced it countless times so it already know it can't kill us so easily."

Cadance's head started to chime with bells of ideas. "It wasn't waiting for something to be made, but to be born. Something it knows could be a threat to it."

"And the one who poses the gravest threat is Stelimus, the one who would ally both the magics of ponies and the essence of ice and spirits together," Shining added.

"Individually, unlike his father, aunt, and uncle, he has no power and mot likely never will come to even a fraction of our power, but the threat of allying both ponies and deer, even if temporarily, is enough to stymie its power again."

"Then we must watch the prince when he leaves into the tundra again."

"No need to worry about that. I will be accompanying him again during our travel back towards his home, and this time, I'll be ready."

"Good. I'll see to it that no problems occur on our end either and will protect my...adopted daughter."

"I'm still against this whole arrangement. It goes against what I stand for." Cadance pushed back a few tears and was quickly comforted by her husband.

"I know, Princess of Love, but it is not my choice. I rule a kingdom far to the south where the swamps stretch far. I don't control every individual aspect of my siblings."

"But you are the most level-headed of the two. Even if you aren't a pony, if the marriage ends correctly, I would be proud to call you my sibling." Shining tapped the shoulder of Grimliss roughly in sign of friendship.

"Oh?" Grimliss readjusted his shoulder after the strike. "And this after you just recently slandered deer right in front of me?"

Shining shrugged.

"I should leave my swamp more often. I don't meet many colorful individuals like you."

"Then, while the two become more acquainted, perhaps we should have a meal together and share how our two 'worlds' are like," Cadance suggested.

"I have yet to taste the meal of ponies, so I would be delighted to come with you."

"Then follow us," Shining gestured.

"With pleasure."

While Grimliss might have seemed level headed, the discussion just raised a tremendous question that gnawed at his very soul.

How did it know about Stelimus before he was even conceived?!

What...is your favorite color?!

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Stelimus was limply tossed into a large room by his 'escort' and locked in it. He felt like a bird in a glass cage despite the guard having enclosed himself with the young stag.

"You're here to meet he daughter of Prince Shining Armor and Princess Cadenza. Please do not be too rough and do not exaggerate your position. You might be a royal guest, but if you hurt her highness...!" The stallion shook his hoof aggressively at the young stag.

"What? What is that? You're going to get arthritis?" he taunted.

The guard ignored the remark and remained silently and stoically standing next to the door. Stelimus turned around to see that he was in a rather big play room full of several hundred stuffed plushies of various size, one looking like a giant, white, winged unicorn with a severe case of anorexia. It nearly reached the ceiling that was, mind you, high enough to still be impossible to hit with a soccer ball no matter how hard a young foal would kick it. A literal playground with slides and the set was actually built into the room for some reason. One would think that a young child would be forced outside so they would develop a more social life or at least get the necessary in terms of immune system development and body durability from falling down and scraping their knees and elbows. The entire ground was covered in a carpet with various colors and figures sown into it. The most prominent were happy looking ponies all hold ha-hooves. Others were on the hills playing ball, others flying kite. Basically, something you would find in a preschool. Stelimus leaned in closer to get a better look of the carpet and narrowed his analyzing eyes.

"Who drew these things? A one year old. They look terrible by even stick men figures!"

"Stick...men?" a young girl's voice spoke out.

"Who's there?" Stelimus wondered.

"I'm..here, but I'm hiding."

"She's very young. That voice is enough to indicate it, but...I can remember my daughter doing the same when she was in trouble or something 'horrible' by her standards would occur. Judging by this girl's almost suicidal tone, I would say that something rather huge happened."

"Did something happen that you're hiding, or are you just playing hide 'n seek?" Stelimus asked with a gentler voice.

He started pushing the stuffed plushies around while looking for the source of the voice.

"No. I just want to be...left alone."

"Hmm. I am a young child right now...I could take advantage of that and act like a kid who just wants to play. That should help coax her out of the demon portal she's hiding in. Why don't you want to play? I'm betting you'd love it. It's fun. Maybe play hide 'n 'seek? Monkey-in-the-middle with the guard's helmet?"

The guard in question held his helmet in fear at the words.

"What's...monkey-in-the-middle?"

"It's when you grab something, like a ball, and toss it over a person's head to another player while the one in the middle tries to catch the ball. When they catch it, the person who threw it must go in the middle. It's sometimes fun to play. I would suggest dodge ball, but there's not enough people around."

"Don't you mean 'ponies'?"

"No. I'm not a pony."

"Huh?"

"I'm a reindeer from the north. Haven't you ever seen one?"

Stelimus stopped searching through the stuffed animals when he heard ruffling in one of the plastic toy houses. A stuffed animal was slightly pushed aside and a small filly came out just enough for the young stag to see her face and mane. Her coat was a bright, dandelion yellow with amber colored freckles on the bridge of her muzzle. Her eyes were turquoise and her mane was colored like her freckles, although it was in shambles.

"You're a reindeer?" She's asked curiously with still an undertone of depression.

To Stelimus, she was just a pony, a filly in fact, but to Gregary, she looked so cute and tiny that he just wanted to grab her and hug her tight. If only he were still human. She looked very fluffy for a pony, too. Perhaps they all needed proper grooming or they would turn into llamas?

"Yes."

"Why is your fur only white? You don't have any colors?"

"No. Most of us are shades of brown, white, and black. We wouldn't be the best subject for artists." The filly tilted her head in confusion. "So, how come you were hiding?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Because I want to."

"But if you don't tell anyone, wouldn't it make you feel worse? If you tell someone, they could help you out."

"I don't want to be helped out!"

The prince tapped his chin pensively and started to run through a list of possibilities of her being sad. "Did you lose a pet?" The filly shook her head. "Did you lose a toy?" Again, she shook her head. "Were you grounded? Didn't get to go where you wanted to? Can't see a family member you like?" She shook her head until the end where she started to tear up."Looks like I found the problem. Come to think of it, she doesn't look anything like her parents, although I don't exactly think that's how it works here considering the ponies came from ze curly locks of a rainbow." He went closer to her to try and apologize. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Do you want a big hug?"

The filly nodded and slowly approached Stelimus for a hug. The immediate reply surprised the young stag. Ponies sure were trusting, although it might be because he was tiny like her that she trusted him. At least he hoped so. If her parents didn't tell her not to talk to strangers, then they'd certainly warrant the 'Parents of the Year' moniker.

"Have you even left the castle since you've been here?"

The young filly shook her head.

"Then we should go outside so you can see the festival, even if some of them are weirdos." Stelimus looked to the side in horror.

The filly hesitated a bit then agreed to grab Stelimus' outstretched hoof and tried her best to follow his quick steps, although she ended up tumbling quite a bit due to said speed. The trip was short lived as the guard stepped in front of the doors and blocked it with his body and spear held aloft by magic.

"You're not getting out of here with her majesty, reindeer."

Stelimus jerked his head slightly to the side and taunted the guard. "Yeesh. I didn't know she was a prisoner. You should've told me so I could come to see her during visiting hours."

The guard in question wasn't fazed in the slightest by the taunt and continued to speak in a calm manner. "I protect her majesty from potential threats. She's very easily influenced at this age."

"Except a child who lives in captivity their whole lives never knows of the disease and strength acquired from the outside world."

"Wh-That's precisely the reason! Disease!"

"And what about strength?"

"Uhhbauhhh..." The guard was stuck in a rut.

"Either you accompany us to the festival or I find a way to knock you out without you noticing."

"...That's a terrible threat coming from a foal one-eigth my size, but I will accompany you as will another comrade-in-arms."

"Great! Let's go!" Stelimus tugged the filly's foreleg.

"W-wait! Should we do this? What if the prince and princess worry?"

Stelimus stopped tugging and looked at the filly with a nonplussed expression. "Pffff. We're with one of their guards, soon to be two, so we don't need to worry. They're guards for a reason and I'm certain they're trustworthy." Stelimus looked at the guard from the corner of his eye. The gaze had something unnerving about it.

"I...never asked you your name," the filly whispered under her breath.

"Stelimus. Yours?"

"Copper Blossom."

"Sounds like a second form of tetanos. That's a lovely name," Stelimus lied.

Meanwhile, the 'Crystal Couple' and Grimliss were in a small dining room talking about events in their life in drinking some tea and coffee. The deer looked out of the window briefly to see Stelimus, a yellow pony, and two guards walking out from the base and into the festival. A little smile formed at the corner of the deer's mouth before returning to his prior activities.

A few hours later, when the sky was getting dark, the Stelimus and Blossom returned into the castle and went directly to the throne room where Cadance and Shining were vibrated like crazy from fear and anger. Grimliss was just standing to the side with a look that simply said 'I'm not with these people'.

"Copper Blossom! There you are!" Shining shouted.

He barreled towards the four that had returned and rammed into the two guards escorting the two, quite literally ejecting them through the throne entrance doors. The stallion hugged his daughter then pulled her out, his hooves still on her shoulder.

"We were worried sick! Where were you?!"

"I was just looking at the arts in the festival with Stelimus."

Shining looked at the young stag with a rage-filled glare and let go of his daughter too slowly and menacingly approach the prince. He grabbed Stelimus' shoulders roughly and the stag remained stoic and uninterested in the whole event and let himself be shaken a bit.

"How did you convince her to leave her room? We've tried for years and she never did. How?"

"Oh. How original. The shaking-when-angry-but-turns-out-to-be-joy thing. If this was a story written by an author, he or she must be terrible at writing. I just talked with her." A thought just passed through Stelimus' mind that he was more than willing to share. "You're not that good with children are you?"

Shining opened his mouth but immediately closed his mouth, clenched his teeth, looked away, and let his ears fall to his head. "I would speak about it with you, but you're too young."

"Riiiight." Stelimus nodded with a bit too much excessive force, but it was enough to let Shining think that the prince was sincere.

"Well, thanks a lot for helping her." Shining pushed Blossom with a gentle hoof nudge and moved forward with her towards Cadance.

"You went outside? Great for you, sweetie!" Cadance cheered. "How was your day?"

"A little better, thank you."

Grimilss sneaked up next to Stelimus and said: "So, used your fine diplomatic skills, I see?"

The prince yiped and bounced away in surprise. "Y-yes. Don't sneak up on me like that."

"Too late."

Stelimus pouted at his uncle's teasing attitude but quickly calmed himself down.

"So...what now?"

"Well, it seems we're going to be staying here a bit longer because of the giant, then we'll return to the capital when the tundras have been considered to be 'safe'."

"Alrighty then..."

Daddy's faja

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Stelimus and Grimliss had returned to the capital after a long trek through the snowy wastelands. The undead deer suggested only going through the tundra with a small party comprised of only him, his nephew, and his four guards, in an attempt to look like a small and insignificant target to the giant in the snowy lands. It worked. They all returned behind the safety of the massive walls of reindeer architecture.

Stelimus was expecting everyone to welcome him, perhaps not with open...forelegs, but at least with a simulacrum of joy at seeing him again. Instead, he was met with alienating gazes from the civilians in the streets and the soldiers during their patrols. They all seemed none too happy to see their prince again when they didn't seem to have much of an issue with him before his departure.

"What's wrong with them?" Stelimus whispered to his uncle.

"They most likely think that your elongated stay meant you were preferring the ponies or some other, nonsensical thing such as that. Your father isn't exactly that well versed in diversity, as you well know."

"Wow. So he really has brainwashed them. That's pretty sad and, quite frankly, a little pathetic."

The two arrived in front of the palace where King Anglacite and his Queen, accompanied by a cohort of guards, awaited Grimliss and Stelimus' return. When Anglacite saw his son, he calmly trotted over to the stag, an air of certainty muddling his view.

"So," he said as he approached his son. "did you see the pony song?"

"Yes."

"Horrid, aren't they? They consider themselves superior to others because of how vast their empire is." Anglacite wrapped a foreleg around his son.

"That's...not what I observed upon further analysis."

The God-King slowly moved away and narrowed his gaze. "What are you talking about?"

"As any creature, many of them have their faults, namely the 'artists', but I did not see anything pertaining to what you have mentioned thus far over the years."

"What are you..."

Anglacite looked down and Stelimus could see his eyes darting left and right as if trying to comprehend what he just heard. His own son? Every child he had up to this point believed in his truth. After all, he shared it with them since their birth, and he did the same with this one. So what could be the cause of his thoughts?

"Wait...The others never had much contact with my siblings, which means..." Anglacite looked up and his gaze almost immediately darted towards Grimliss who seemed dispassionate about the reunion. "You! It's YOUR fault he's adhering to the wrong methods of thinking!"

"Hm?" Grimliss hummed.

The undead stag found himself being punched hard in the chest and sliding back several feet from the resulting shockwave. Unfortunately, the strike did not do much to Grimliss save for creating a thin sheet of frost on his chest.

"What's wrong with you, fool?" Grimliss chastised.

"You're the cause of my son's wrong upbringing!" Anglacite accusingly pointed towards his brother.

"I've barely had any contact with him! And you're the one who asked me to escort him personally!"

"No!" Strong winds started to flail around, creating a blizzard with the particles of frozen air within the city. "I've done my best to raise the children I have had over the years, and all was fine, yet YOU always had a preference for the pony song rather than your own kin! You're a traitor of your own species!"

While Grimliss was usually always of a calm nature, his brother always knew what got under his nonexistent flesh. While he did not express his emotions facially, his essence started to seep out of every part of his body, causing the few living plants to rot immediately and the stones around to crumble and decay.

"So you want to fight just to feel better about yourself? You wanted an excuse to tussle with me, brother? Then so be it. We'll do it right here in front of everyone and maybe even wipe this entire city off of the map due to your inflated and corrupted ego."

Anglacite was loathe to do so, but he agreed and calmed down. "Apologies, brother. I did not think well. I have...been on edge, lately. I know that you would never betray me, let alone your own kind. The thought that it even crossed my mind sickens me."

Grimliss calmed down and let his energy seep back into his decayed body. "Right, but don't do that again."

Anglacite turned to face his son. "As for you, I want to know everything you saw at the pony-song's city. I am...Curious," he trailed off.

Stelimus' mother brought him with her into the castle, where many guards followed them. Stelimus was used to his father's capricious attitude by now but he did not approve of his attitude, hence why they never really got along.

"Say, where is my 'sister'?" Stelimus wondered.

"Out. She's at your aunt's home."

"What's she doing there?"

"Learning to control her anger issues, among other things."

"Or learning how to kill me from her aunt considering how I treated Effervescence at the Crystal Kingdom."

When everyone was out of sight and Anglacite was walking back to his palace, Grimliss walked next to him and spoke rather eerily:

"You know, brother, in the past, I wasn't as strong as you."

"This is true. You were far from being the weakest, but you could not reach my power."

Grimliss walked in front of Anglacite, cutting off his path. "However, your sister and I both have our own essence now and can no longer be compared to you."

Anglacite cocked an eyebrow, inciting a devilish curiosity within his mind. His slightly evil grin attested to this. "So, you're saying you're stronger than me?" Grimliss did not respond and remained stoic. "Fine then. Your silence speaks tomes. Would you be willing to have a little...sparring match with me in the tundra?"

Grimliss grinned just like his brother, and both decided to take their leave, the people bowing to them and their presence while others cowered at the sight of Anglacite's sibling. It took them a while to finally enter the tundra and get to a safe distance away from the metropolis.

"Ready?" Anglacite poised himself.

Stelimus sat in his room, as wide as it once was but filled with many an empty shelf rather than toys, playgrounds, and, maybe, a nacho fountain complete with cheese and salsa. He was sitting at his deck, reading through some notes left by the creepy spirit that served as his teacher. He even got a few pieces of mail from the two ponies he met before leaving with his 'uncle'. Gregary was really starting to hate his brain for conjuring up such a weird reality.

"Ugh. Homework? I didn't think I would have to suffer through it again. Nearly thirty years of torture just to get a worthless degree, then I have to study again..." The room started to vibrate gently, making Stelimus' pencil holders topple over after a brief clogging session. "Woah. Feels like there's an earthquake happening." After the shaking stopped, at vicious wave of discolored energy flew over the capital, knocking the young stag over briefly and nearly causing him to enter yet another form of unconsciousness. He put a hoof to his head and shook it. "No way am I going to pass out yet again. This isn't inception, and I sure as hell won't let it become like it."

Another wave blasted over the entire capital, but this wave was even more vicious than the last. The walls were crumbling and the windows were starting to crack underneath the massive pressure being created. Another wave tore the doors to Stelimus' room off its hinges and threw one side through a window and into the courtyard in one clean movement. A dark flash coming from the hallway caught the young stag's attention, flash which immediately captivated Stelimus' attention and made him try and determine the source. Throughout the castle, guards were collapsed onto the floor, furniture had toppled over, some bricks in the floor had cracked into a small, uneven hole, and paintings had fallen from the walls.

Trekking further through the waves increasing in intensity, Stelimus pushed the castle doors open as best he could and immediately regretted the decision, what with him flying backwards and slamming against yet more wall.

"Too many damn walls in this place. Couldn't have an opening with support pillars or something? Gothic architecture is a thing, you plebeians," Stelimus mumbled under his breath.

The stag adjusted his shoulders and massaged his neck while looking outside. The sight...He immediately realized what was going on. Grimliss and Anglacite were fighting outside of the city and were practically destroying everything around them in the tundra. Several of the young 'mountains' were razed and no traces were left. The stag gulped loudly and started to shake for a reason he did not understand.

"Wh-what's wrong with m-me? Am I scared? Why would I b-b-be scared? Th-this is just a coma dream...but the more I go through it, the more everything starts to feel actually real. I can feel the pressure of their powers crushing me. Is this what it is like to...Are they truly gods?"

Further away, the two god-kings were acting quite casual about the whole affair and were oblivious to the damages they were causing around them.

"I have not had the pleasure of releasing my full potential in so long!" Anglacite shouted.

The king jumped around his brother and flicked his head towards Grimliss, causing two icy vortexes of tremendous size to smash into each other like drills, but they met with a deathly mist that decayed them in seconds.

"Quite. I have not been able to test the extent of my new essence since changing like this. Perhaps your childish outburst was a boon rather than a bane?"

"WHAT?!" Anglacite was outraged.

The deathly stag planted his hooves into the ground, creating two bizarre black vortexes that bubbled like sludge and emitted semi-transparent rings around them. Pulling outwards, Grimliss extracted two demonic, black spirits and unleashed them onto his brother. Anglacite reared his head in surprise, and maybe some hidden terror, and kicked the ground below him. He started sliding backwards at high speeds on a path of ice that formed behind the reindeer the further he went. Standing on his two hind legs, the stag put his two fore hooves together and started to mumble an incantation. When he released his hooves, the world seemed to warp briefly and both Anglacite and Grimliss found themselves floating on a block of ice within a starry abyss that was illuminated by a purple nebula. The black spirits had turned into ice, and the encroaching frost was being kept away from Grimliss by his deathly miasma.

"Quite impressive. You've learned some new tricks, but dimensional shifting isn't as easy as you think," Grimliss said.

Grimliss narrowed his gaze and smiled at his brother's apparent, increasing exhaustion.

"I thought so."

Time for hunting

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Times had been surprisingly rough for Stelimus since he became six. The wendigo teacher started to force new techniques and spells onto him more so than on the rest of the students. However, two of the students that had presented themselves to Stelimus, specifically Radivus and Tenyom, were unusually close to Stelimus and even selected by one of the captains to become special 'bodyguards' for Stelimus, something that disturbed him. Needless to say, Tenyom had a tendency to terrify with her immense size and unexpected strength. She even accidentally ripped one the palace entry doors off its hinges by tugging 'lightly'.

Stelimus ended up visiting Copper Blossom more often than he would have liked, and the usual problems still arose between ponies and deer during the encounters. Grimliss had only accompanied his nephew once to the Crystal Kingdom since their first trek, but it was unnecessary as the giant never did reappear since the day it attacked the young stag on their first trip through the tundra. Copper Blossom's mood had been improving after each subsequent visit, and Stelimus thanked his years as a father for his success in helping her get over her trauma.

Anglacite wasn't very nice when it came to personally teach his son, which he actually did. They ranged from basic melee combat to physical techniques to using frost magic and spiritual essence. The king wasn't very good when it came to holding back, even against his own son. One thing did bother Stelimus, though: What exactly happened to his sister? He hadn't seen her for over nine years since she went to Effervescence. Did that 'god' kill her too? Granted, Stelimus only knew his 'sister' for the few, overly predictable and obvious actions she performed straight out of a comic book, but still. She was his sister and she didn't deserve to die.

But, these thoughts weren't important today, for today, on his fifteenth birthday, he was on a hunting trip in the tundra with Manimin Orimus, the ONE guard who had a nasty tendency to appear wherever Stelimus was. The coincidences were nearly akin to a level of stalking. The hunting trip was to happen in the tundra, where Stelimus would learn how to blend into his environment and avoid any potential threats that were to occur. The rise in kobold populations would also put his learned melee talents to the test were they ever encountered.

"I'm already hating this," Stelimus complained.

The other guards were slathering each other in white paint for better camoflauging, and getting to become one with the pavement. It wasn't easy to remove from the fur once it dried, which was one of the reasons for the complaints. The others were the smell and gross, gooey consistency of the paint.

"What are you complaining about?" One of them said. "You aren't even being covered in paint. You're already white!"

Stelimus chuckled in his head. "Heheheh. Unintentional implied racism by Earth standards. So what exactly are we supposed to do here?"

Manimin stepped up from over the snowy wall the group was using to hide in the tundra and spoke up. "We're going to hunt a few Broken Wanderers sighted around here and chase them off. The damned things disturb the spirits of the tundra with their incessant, spiritual torture, and I am loathe to leave a creature like that to roam indefinitely across the plains in such a condition.

"Broken...Wanderer?"

"Yes. Horrifying beasts, if only because they look like they were just brought forth from the Abyss and are still suffering eternal torment on the physical plain. They have a variety of appearances but generally just look like grayed stones with sanding coming out every facial orifice they have."

"Legends tell that they came from the lost city of Atlantis after angering the inhabitants. Thee prisoners and criminals were forever cursed and forced to roam the world for all eternity as those things or until they are killed...which is nigh impossible," a guard added.

"I see. And it's a liberty to set them free?" Stelimus wondered.

"It's a wonder if you even manage to. They're practically indestructible," the same guard mocked.

After a few minutes of kindergarten finger painting, the group was ready to go out into the wild. Manimin stepped atop the snow dune, his body and armor slathered in white and his crossbow hoisted onto his right shoulder. Now, an equine-shaped creature would be incapable of using weapons normally used for hands, such as crossbows, which is why their weapons are adapted to their physiology. While still retaining the general shape of a crossbow, the weapon's bolt holster was contained in a cylinder put 'atop' the weapon and underneath its right arm. The firing mechanism was triggered by a pulley hooked onto the armor which the soldier would disconnect and then pull down to activate the firing mechanism and let a new bolt just plop down into the semi-enclosed chamber. It still bothered Gregary who was obviously used to the human version, but the weapon still acted like it was supposed to.

"Alrighty then. Let's go out. Don't make a noise, or if you do, make sure the blizzard is screaming louder than you when you do," the commander joked.

The stags all rolled their eyes and groaned. Aside from the now familiar landscape, nothing out of the ordinary could be noticed. Half-an-hour had passed and not a single weird creature had appeared, then one of the guards called everyone's attention.

"What is it?" Manimin asked.

The guard passed his hoof through the material on the snow. "It's a pile of dust and what appears to be sand."

"Then we must be getting closer. Over this ledge here. There should be a large amount of flat surface afterwards. Let's go."

Stelimus was already exhausted. He might have gone through training to improve his endurance, but he never had much as a human. He never expected it to translate into his 'reborn' body.

"Having trouble, 'prince'," one of the guards teased. "I thought the God-King's lineage had higher-than-average endurance."

"I guess I must've been the discount purchase," Stelimus joked.

"There's more dust and sand here, and it's all over the place," one of the guards noted on the other side of the snow ledge.

All over the tundra one could see several piles of sand covering the snow. It was almost like a beach, really.

"Wait, I can hear something," Stelimus noted.

"Where?" Manimin asked.

"...Over there," Stelimus pointed forward.

When the group reached the source of the noise, they got to see a fight between an unknown pony and what looked like a dried, stone minotaur. As mentioned before, it had sand pouring out of its nose, ears, eyes, and mouth, and was haphazardly flailing its arms towards the pony in front of it. Upon closer inspection, the pony was very large and about the same height as Tenyom. His fur was brown and e had a mark on his flank that represented a spear with a blue shaft over a shield with blue outlines. He wore gray armor lined with blue on its outer edges. These covered most of his body but left his legs, flanks, and most of his lower stomach bare. His gray helmet covered his neck and extended down it to the point of appearing connected to the armor. His helmet covered his eyes ad the bridge of his muzzle and had two horns, akin to the flawed imaginings of what viking helmets looked like. His mane, ice-blue in appearance, when through a long, vertical slit in his helmet, giving it the appearance of a mohawk. His tail was tied up at its base and at the end, where it ended in a small, metal ball.

The stallion dodge around a strike of the minotaur and used the moment of exposure to smack the wander in its face with his tail, creating an audible crack and causing the creature to fall down. The stallion stepped over it and huffed.

"A creature like you has suffered long enough. Be gone from this place!"

The stallion raised a spear in the air then impaled the wandered. A blue light started emitting from the facial orifices and quickly through cracks forming along its body until it eventually collapsed into dust. Manimin gestured everyone to follow him and confront the stallion. The pony noticed their approach but did not raise his spear towards them.

"Who are you?" the commander asked.

"I am Clyde of Dale, a warrior pony who wanders the lands in hopes of performing great deeds."

"You're capable of actually killing Broken Wanderers?"

"Yes." Clyde raised his spear and showed its shaft to the group. It was completely covered in blue, glowing, intricate runes of an unknown langage. "With this magic spear, I can kill even a ghost and send them back to the after life. It is a boon to have found it during my travels here as I had a bit of a run-in with a being who had a skull for a face some time ago and was asked by a village of ponies to remove the threat. Unfortunately...I was unable to do it and went out in search for a weapon suitable for banishing and releasing spirits trapped on the physical plane."

Stelimus put his hoof to his chin and started to think."This guy could be a threat to the good spirits in the tundra we'll have to maintain a watchful eye on him."

"But, I shan't trouble you much longer. I will continue on my journey."

"Wait!" Stelimus shouted. "We need your help in 'liberating' these statue things. They're...disturbing the magic in the tundra."

"Then I will help you on the condition that I receive nourishment, beverage, and shelter in exchange before I continue on my way."

Stelimus nodded. "Sure. I can provide that."

"But, my prince--!" Manimin tried to protest.

"KOBOLDS!" one of the guards shouted.

One vs all

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A whole tribe of tiny, draconic looking creatures burst out from the tundra behind the guards and assaulted the party with arrows and spear charges. Manimin reared briefly and plunged his forelegs powerfully on two spears, breaking the wooden shafts in one movement. The kobolds were then headbutted far away by the soldier's antlers and back into the snow.

"Alright, Gregary. You were forced to train in combat techniques using spears and swords in this inefficient body." Stelimus pulled a sword out of the sheath on his left shoulder and held it within his magic. If he couldn't use his hands, he would use the frost essence to do so.

Manimin shot three kobolds in the head with his crossbow, then turned towards Stelimus. "Come, Prince. Show us what you have learned so far in terms of spirit magic from that wendigo," Manimin shouted.

"Right..."

Stelimus breathed in and focused spirit energy through his body, making his blue hooves glow faintly with every inhale. Unbeknownst to him, four kobolds were sneaking up onto him from behind while the rest battled. They were eager for reindeer meat, but the tundra had other plans and channeled its will through Clyde. The stallion galloped through the deer soldiers and ran along the wall of an elevation of snow, using it to propel himself into the air and toss his spear through two of the sneaking kobolds. He landed heavily behind Stelimus, grabbing his spear in one foreleg and using his strength to lift the spear up with the kobolds and whacking the remaining two away from the prince, performing a final movement to thrust the spear into the snow and rid it of its extra weights.

"If you take too long to breathe in, you won't get the chance to breathe out," Clyde said. "I don't know how deer magic works, but I'm fairly certain it's something that should be going your body while you move, like a dance, rather than breathing." He bashed the head of one of the recovering kobolds then returned to assist the other soldiers fighting off the swarm.

"Dance? But I hate dancing." Stelimus frowned.

At least he had finished the basic channeling the wendigo taught him. Perhaps it would be necessary to mention that Stelimus, although smarter than the average deer, was lagging behind in terms of spirit essence and frost magic levels in comparison to the rest of his 'class', hence why he was only breathing in and out to prepare himself. He had to compensate, as normal humans don't know how to channel spiritual energy, let alone summon spirits.

The stag stretched his front legs, closed his eyes, then extended his 'essence' through his hooves and into the snow, creating blue veins across the surface of the battle zone. Two of the deer noticed the veins in the ground and their pupils shrunk in response. Some sort of downward draft pressured on everyone around, including Stelimus. It was like gravity had tripled and started pressurizing everyone and crushing them, that is, until several ghostly arms faded into existence. They had risen from the veins and were clutched onto something within everyone's body. The kobolds could not resist it, and whatever the spirit summoning was doing, the arms pulled a white form of the kobolds out of their bodies and into the veins. The bodies collapsed shortly thereafter. The deer, however, were stressing their bodies into not collapsing under the pressure of the spirit essence but were holding firm. A roar caught the attention of the deer and Clyde.

"Oh great. Now there's a saber tyrant!" One of the deer complained.

A few of the surviving kobolds, fleeing, perhaps, towards a tunnel to return to its home, was snatched up by a saber tyrant and scarfed down in one, smooth movement. Its attention wasn't scattered so it looked immediately to the next meal.

"Stand back. I'll deal with this," Clyde proclaimed.

"You can't fight that thing on your own," Manimin said.

The stallion did not listen and dashed towards the beast. He used his shield to block the mouth of the Saber Tyrant and pushed himself out of the way to use his spear arm and stab the beast in the neck. Rearing back from the searing pain, the spear remained locked into the beast's neck and Clyde accidentally let go of his weapon, rendering him 'naked' for his personal fight.

"We need to help him!" Stelimus shouted.

"Nah. Let 'im. The pony-song wants to fight on his own. Let him," one of the soldiers huffed.

The pony rolled around every stomp and snap the tyrant aimed at him, although Clyde forgot about its tail and only had a brief moment to pull up his shield that he was struck hard and into a pile of snow.

"By the way, I'm impressed you can call upon spirit essence of that caliber, but NEVER do that again!" Manimin scolded Stelimus.

The stag was caught off-guard. "Why not?"

"It pulls out the souls of EVERYONE who cannot resist its power, including the user, and I saw you struggle." The sergeant-major bopped the stag on the head. "You're not yet ready for that level yet. Until you can properly anchor your soul, don't do that."

Stelimus rubbed his head. "But the teacher told me it was great to use against groups of en--WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THIS WHEN HE'S FIGHTING ON HIS OWN?!"

The tyrant turned its gaze back on the soldiers and ran towards them, stomping through the snow like a boulder rolling down a mountain side. Manimin and Stelimus channeled frost essence through their antlers -Stelimus mostly channeled through his hooves- and waved their forehooves through the air, encapsulating the neck of the beast in a giant lock of ice.

Clyde climbed out his new hole and ran towards the tyrant. He clung onto his spear and used it to swing himself on the back of the tyrant's neck where he pulled his spear out and rammed through its head. The stallion wiped his forehead after the deed was finished and the creature's body flopped down, its head still locked in place.

"I would have preferred not to have killed this creature. It was only hunting for food, but in nature, it is often said that the rule is 'Killed or be killed'," Clyde sighed. He used the snow to clean his spear and shield of the blood that had covered them.

Stelimus hurried up towards him with many intentions in mind. "Thank you so much for your help. I will see that you're well accommodated for your efforts." The stag put a hoof to his chin and thought. "Unfortunately, you can't come to the palace because of the king, maybe--"

"I do not wish for eccentricities. A simple domicile within a farmland would be good enough. If the occupants are bothered, then tell them that I am more than willing to help them around their farm."

"Well, we don't exactly have many farm lands."

"In fact, most of those we have are underground so that they stay heated," Manimin interjected.

"I know a place where you can go that shouldn't be much of a bother. She came in some time ago and I gave her a plot of free land in the capital. Ever since then she's been supplying it with food they've never had up here," Stelimus added.

"Then bring me to this farmer. If she is capable of such feats, then her talent and workponyship will be both a sight to behold and a talent that would serve me much in the future!"

Stelimus cringed internally and crunched his eyes after hearing 'pony' in 'workmanship'.

"I can see why 'father' cringes so hard, but he doesn't have to exaggerate."

Back at the castle, Manimin and his guards dispersed into the city to verify everything was going well with the people. The sergeant was confident enough in Stelimus and wasn't as crazy as his god-king when it came to trusting ponies. Walking through the streets, Clyde noticed the adults were looking at the prince with a bad eye, and many started speaking ill behind his back.

"For what reason do these reindeer slander you so?" Clyde asked.

"They think all ponies are bad news. Call you the 'pony-song'."

"Because many of my kind have a tendency to erupt in random musicals?"

"They do?"

Clyde looked sickened and his posture slouched slightly. "Yes. It's rather unfortunate for me that they do such things. Still, this does explain why these ponies seem to slander you more than others." Something popped up in Clyde's mind. "Come to think of it, you mentioned the palace earlier. Are you a noble of some sort?"

"Of a sort..." Stelimus trailed off. "I'm the prince of the folk here. Didn't I already tell you this?"

"If you did, I'm afraid I have forgotten. Still, one would think the general populace to be a LITTLE more lenient to their prince, a po-deer who can have them executed at once for wronging him."

Stelimus chuckled. "Yeah. Execution. I'm old enough to know that such things are pointless acts that tend to enrage the populace when done too much and incorrectly. Plus, they're just being whiny and spouting words. Insults are but sublimation."

Clyde cocked an eyebrow. "Sublimation?"

"When a solid turns immediately into a gas."

"I see. You're quite intelligent for a stag your age."

Stelimus whispered under his breath. "If only you knew." He looked up to see a clear ice dome further away from the two in an open field. "By the way, we're here."

The farm in question, despite being covered by the dome of ice, was not empty. There was a typical, country farmhouse sitting in the middle of the dome, but it and the barn were barely visible. Trees of many different species were covering the whole place. Once inside, it became apparent that the dome was lukewarm when it should be very warm or at least as hot as a normal summer day. Walking through the trees was like walking through a rain forest.

"Hold on. I can't see her yet," Stelimus said.

Once he finally got sight of an alabaster coat, Stelimus brought Clyde with him.

"Hey. Winter Fields."

"GAH!"

The mare fell from the plum tree and onto her back. "I hate it when you do that!" She got up and wiped herself off. "As good as it always is to meet you, though, Prince Anglacite."

"I thought I told you to just call me Stelimus. I hate that title."

"You do not like your birth?" Clyde wondered.

"If you knew how my family was, you would be the same."

"I believe that families are a treasure to be cherished."

"Then I'm afraid mine was buried and long forgotten. I got the plastic substitute."

Winter took notice of the armored stallion and analyzed him. "Who is this?"

"Clyde of Dale." The stallion bowed. "I have aided the prince and his guard in battling a threat in the tundra. He promised me that I would receive shelter and nourishment before continuing my way." Winter Fields frowned and pulled on her mane a bit. "I realize that it would be an inconvenience, so I am more than prepared to aid you during every day work until I feel I am fit enough to leave. "

"Well, if you helped Stelimus and he agrees, then I guess I can't say no. He did manage to convince his father to lend me this land for my botanical experiments."

"Thank you." Clyde put a hoof to his breast and bowed. "Unfortunately, I cannot aid you at this moment. I need to rest, but I would be intrigued to know about how you manage to grow plums in a frozen land like this."

While Clyde and Winter discussed how the growing procedures went, Stelimus sneaked out of the dome and went back onto the streets. He really wanted to go to bed. He was simply exhausted, but it seems fate had other plans in store for him. A messenger found Stelimus and handed him a letter held in his mouth. The prince reluctantly grabbed it with frost essence.

"Fucking gross."

"It is from the God-King. He wants to talk to you." The messenger looked upwards pensively and started to recite what she could remember. "He told me to...tell you that he wants you toooooo...meet him in front of the carriage hold." The young doe's eyes sparkled. She was proud of having successfully transmitted her message.

"How old is she? Six? Thank you a lot. You can tell my dad that you did a great job."

The messenger 'squeed' and galloped away as fast as she could. In the mean time, Stelimus could open his letter and purview its contents.

"What does he want NOW?!"

Visits

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Stelimus arrived in front of the large, rounded, wooden gates leading to the caravans. His 'father' was waiting for him along with an assortment of armored bodyguards and what looked like one of Grimliss' undead servants. The carriage storage had no roof, similar to a stable, save for the area where the carriages were kept. When one of the guards caught sight of him, they alerted Anglacite who seemed to be preoccupied with his own thoughts.

"Ah! Stelimus. I am glad you have come." The king approached his son and patted him on the head. "Your antlers are growing nicely."

Stelimus wiped his father's foreleg off of him. "Is it about my hunting trip in the tundra?"

"Hm? Oh. No. It's about what I want you to do next week."

"Hm. I was fairly certain he would at least have SOME concern for the well-being of his son or to at least know if I killed something. Talk about hard to please. Oh?"

"Yes. Your uncle has informed me that he thinks it would be wise to send you to your aunt's and his territories to learn about new sources of essence and to become a better ruler for your people."

Stelimus cocked an eyebrow. "Why the hell is so insistent on that? I thought he was immortal. That's cool...I guess. Not really certain about going to my aunt's, though. Isn't my sister still there?"

"Yes." Anglacite's expression became stoic and sharp.

"Looks like I hit a nerve. So damn sensitive. What is he, a soap opera fan? Why has she been there for several years? I thought she would be back by now."

"That's not you to decide."

"But--"

The god-king replied very calmly. "I decide what to do with my own ilk. I don't want to enter another verbal fight with you. Just..." Anglacite clutched his head with a hoof and waved his son off. "Prepare for your trip to the swamp lands of the south."

Stelimus shrugged. "Okay...What do I want?"

Anglacite shook his head. "I don't know. I have never left the tundra. I loathe leaving my people and going into pony-song lands. You know this!" He said matter-of-factly.

"Fine. I'll go see Manimin afterwards. I'm going to go see mom, now." Stelimus whispered under his breath. "She doesn't seem to do much."

His departure was not met with any sort of dismissal or even communications of even kind, but, by now, that sort of behavior from Anglacite was to be expected. Only an idiot would continue to dwell on an unreachable aspect when they know full well that it will never happen. So, Stelimus entered the palace to find his mother, but the first thing he was met with was a heart attack by Radivus.

"Hey, Prince Stelimus. Glad you came back!"

"...Hi." Tenyom was as apathetic as ever.

"Why did you do that?!"

Radivus was about to answer but stopped himself and pondered the question. "I don't know."

Radivus was still smaller than the average stag despite being as old as Stelimus, and Tenyom was still a behemoth of a doe. In fact, she could barely fit through a door. She looked like she was the average height and girth of a moose back on Earth, and, luckily, she was Stelimus' friend.

"Aside from that trauma, do you know where my mother is?"

"Yes. She's with the...you know, you know where."

Stelimus rolled his eyes. "It's just science. It shouldn't be hidden like this. Alright. I'll go see her."

Stelimus hadn't moved yet that a deer dropped from the ceiling with a knife in its mouth and planning to stab Stelimus. "You tarnish the name of our god-king! Di-Oomf!"

Tenyom caught the deer with her hoof and held him there for two seconds until she decided to smash him into the tiled floors of the palace, breaking the ground in the process.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" Stelimus shouted.

"Assassins. Been annoying us around the palace," Tenyom blandly answered.

"Yeah. They're really all over the place. Just the other day I ended up having to shoot two through the head with my crossbow," Radivus proudly stated.

Stelimus narrowed his eyes. "Riiiiight. Could you escort me to...'I know where'?"

"Sure thing. Come, sister. We escort the prince of the deer to his desired destination." Radivus extended a foreleg forward and started to march. It was very reminiscent of another marching style Gregary knew from documentaries.

Of course, the trip wasn't met without its inconveniences. Every now and then a would-be assassin would come out of somewhere, rambling about their thoughts -nobody cared- and be promptly squashed by Tenyom. The worst part is that she seemed to do it like she was walking. It didn't inhibit her daily routine at all.

"So...You guys never did tell me why you wanted to become my bodyguards," Stelimus said.

"Oh. It was ALWAYS my dream to become a royal guard," Radivus cheered.

"But he was too small for that and they kicked him out," Tenyom interjected.

Radivus' ears drooped and his happy gait became a regular one. "You don't have to be direct about it," he whined.

Stelimus turned to Tenyom. "And you?"

"I wouldn't do what the trainers told me to do."

"Why not? So far you've listened to what I've asked of you."

Radivus chuckled loudly. "Nononononononononononono. You don't understand. The thing is, they wanted her to use weapons, wear armor, and learn special fighting techniques."

"And why didn't she do any of that?"

"I wore armor," Tenyom defended.

"Yeah, and that's all you did." Radivus chuckled. "She actually never bothered with any of the techniques. In fact, every time one of the instructors tried to scold her, she would grab the stick and use it as a way to slam them against the walls. When they would use spears, she would grab the wooden pole before the metal reached her and break the weapon."

"Then slam her opponent into the wall?"

"She was always a good sculptor."

"So, you managed to slip through the cracks of the system by having them accept you into the royal guard as you were my 'friends' at the school with the ghost horse?"

"Yes. Tenyom and I had to improve the areas we excelled in to get through the bodyguard judgement."

"So that's what I signed so long ago." Stelimus placed a hoof on his chin pensively. "I did always wonder how you two suddenly popped up as bodyguards for me out of the blue."

The three ended up in a newly built garden hidden between the walls of the palace. It was very small, surrounded by four white walls, only had one bench, but was filled to the brim with flowers from other countries and climates. Winter Fields was to thank for this little marvel. Her work on botany pleased the queen in particular. Stelimus' mother had an obsession with colors, as the young stag noticed over the years. She was, ironically, akin to his original mother, but more deer-y.

The two bodyguards blocked the only entrance to the garden while Stelimus looked around the floor for the trigger. He found it in a disguised as a group of snowdrop flowers. Thus, the flowers were kicked gently, and a passageway slid open to the flower's right, allowing Stelimus to sneak in unabated and press the switch in the spiral staircase to hide its entrance. The staircase, as with many 'hidden' things, was gray and had a polished appearance of cement and rounded a central pillar. They were illuminated by round containers, built into the wall, filled with a moving blue ball. It was most likely a spirit. The air was stale and rather nauseating the further down Stelimus went. He was starting to wonder of it smelled this bad the last few times he went in the secret passageway, but a loud noise coupled with the stairs shaking pulled him out of his thoughts.

The stag rushed down the stairs to the entrance which was characterized by two doors with small, glass windows at their top. He didn't bother waiting for the magic seals to be undone by the security hidden on the other side and faded through the door using essence, becoming a spirit himself for a temporary moment.

"Anybody here?" Stelimus shouted.

He was blinded by the smoke and had a hard time breathing, but he was freed of that when the smoke suddenly lifted towards the ceiling and was funneled out of the chamber, revealing the soot-covered furniture and science deer. Stelimus' mother was the first to appear.

"What are you doing here, Stelimus? It's dangerous!"

Stelimus shrugged off the worry. "Oh please. This is rudimentary science you're experimenting with. I can help you, even."

"I don't need your help, and you certainly don't know what we're working on."

The clearing smoke revealed a bit more of Stelimus' mother. She, like many other deer around, was wearing a white coat that covered her whole body like a large rain coat used for horses. The entrance of the lab wasn't as sophisticated and 'sterilized' as one would expect. The laboratory was just one big room with cabinets built into the walls to contain samples and ingredients while the center housed tables to hold and contain various scientific equipment for measuring, diluting, and so forth. Behind Stelimus' mother sat what looked like an archaic battery complete with aluminum body and wires sticking out the top.

"Congrats. You discovered electricity." Stelimus slow clapped. "Mmmm. That's right. Nice and condescending."

The doe facehoofed. "Why did you come down here?"

"I was just curious, is all. Why are you always down here, anyways? You're the queen! Shouldn't you be doing, like, other things? Concerning the country?"

"No. A queen of this country rarely has the opportunity to do anything worthwhile, so many of my predecessors went into things that helped the agriculture. I chose a more scientific route."

"So they all felt useless in the presence of 'dad'. So, your excuse in doing this is to justify your existence to...'dad'?" Stelimus almost vomited.

"N-no, I--"

"You don't need to justify anything. Just do this if you like it. NEVER force yourself in performing actions that you despize or you'll grow bitter and angry."

Stelimus walked up and hugged his mother. She was getting angrier as he continued to talk, but her anger immediately gave way to confusion and thoughts when he hugged her. She hesitantly placed her right foreleg over him, unsure of what to do. Stelimus was always rambunctious and abnormally knowledgeable about things that they had just recently discovered or were trying to research, among other things, but he was right on many points.

"I'm going to go, now. I just wanted to see how you were doing." As Stelimus passed by one of the deer getting up after falling down from the explosion, Stelimus spoke to them. "Silver is the most conductive of metals and tarnishes quickly, but try covering the wires with something non-conductive and not letting it touch the water."

To the swamps

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It took some time, but Stelimus finally had his things prepared and placed in an inconspicuous carriage of plain wood and pulled by regular looking deer. So, now Stelimus just had to sit on his red couch and wait for the trip. It would be really boring, so, to pass the time, he started to think, and Copper Blossom came to mind. He started to scavenge at his memories. The older they got, the more open she became and the better he could help her.

"Just because they're dead doesn't mean you'll never see them again."

"Why? Because they're 'here' in my heart?" Copper struck her chest angrily. "Everypony says that. I'm tired of it!"

"Maybe, but, if you believe in things like souls, it just means that they lost their corporeal forms."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that they've become spirits and they're certainly watching you and protecting you to the best of their power."

"How would you know?"

"Because deer communicate and work with spirits all the time." Stelimus grinned. "I bet that I could find them in the future when I get better at using spirit essence and ask the spirits where they are. You might get to see them again."

"Really?"

Definitely."

She did seem to calm down since that day, and Stelimus reassured her doubts by performing feats only possible by using spirit essence. Shining did notice that she was unusually clamoring for Stelimus' attention since that day, often wearing dresses, changing her appearance, or crafting statues out of various materials to try and improve herself, and Stelimus somehow noticed EVERY. SINGLE. CHANGE. Shining was used to his wife doing those things and he'd been with her long enough to know, but Stelimus noticed all the subtle changes even with Cadance.

Shining went to check on his daughter in her enormous room. It had changed quite a bit since Stelimus first visited some time ago. It was now filled to the brim with sculptures detailing various characters and environments. Her cutie mark had become associated to sculpting and had the form of a genderless pony made from orange clay. The stallion trekked his way carefully through the valley of clay, his nose scrunching up from the odor of said material mixed with water. He approached his daughter with some concern.

"Hi, Blossom. How are you today?"

"I'm great, dad? Why?"

"Oh, I was just wondering. You just seem to stay cooped up in here for lengthy periods of time."

Blossom turned away from her sculpture briefly and looked at her father. "Well, duh? I like to sculpt. It's not really easy when this mud is being dried constantly by the sun."

"Hm. True. Still, I just wanted to know how you were."

"I'm fine."

There was a long moment of awkwards silence between the two, an occasional scraping of clay being the only sort of ambiance available.

"So..." Shining rubbed his foreleg. "What do you think about Stelimus?"

"I like him."

Shining's eye twitched a bit. "Like him...how?"

Copper giggled. "I like-like him?"

The stallion slowly slid out of the room using his magic and closed the door.

"Shining?"

"GAH!" The captain jumped back several...'hooves'. "You startled me, Cadance."

"I noticed. What's wrong?"

"I think she fell in love with Stelimus."

"That's great news!" Cadance cheered quietly.

"No it's not! What if he tries to hurt her? And I don't want the satisfaction of our daughter having fallen for the son of that douche across the tundra."

"Douche?"

"I dunno. I heard somepony say it after coming back from Prance."

Cadance shook her head and kissed Shining on his cheek. "You don't need to worry about a thing. We're both here and we'll help her out if anything bad happens, mkay?"

Shining took a deep swallow and nodded. "Okay. If you say so. You know about love better than I do."

The two started to walk away from Copper's door, but a thought went through Cadance's mind, a thought she needed to share. "She wasn't making sculptures of Stelimus, was she? You know, obsessively?"

Stelimus was dropped off in the swamps and onto one muddy pile. The driver told him that Grimliss had sent a guide and that he could be found further along the path through the swamp, provided he went towards the closest high tree. Stelimus was...quite leery and very hesitant on the whole thing.

"Welp, this is definitely swamp-like. Very dark, full of bugs, gross ground. Hell, there's even the creepy trees with their vein-roots and large amounts of weird, twisted plants I've never seen before." Some sort of weird screech that seemed to be a mix between an owl hoot and crow caw played behind the stag. "What is this, Scooby-Doo?" The stag looked up at the sky to see the clouds were shaped like vertically placed, rolling tubes of processed magenta and tyrian purple. "What's really concerning is that weird color and those clouds."

It was difficult walking through the mud as each step had Stelimus sink through a bit, similar in fashion to quick sand. He walked around bushes and thorny plants and even swore that he saw a pony-sized spider lurking around, but, strangely enough, nothing attacked him, not even the bugs.

"Finally. I'm at the tree."

"Stelimus?" a creepy voiced asked.

"Y-yes?"

A deer rose from the mud and stood up before him. She was similar to Grimliss in that she was just a skeleton, although a red, heart-shaped object could be seen beating in her chest, and her eyes were magenta-illuminated. Her body was surrounded by the black mist, though this mist had no proper form and simply coated the deer like a dress.

"Follow me."

Stelimus was far too creeped out to say anything, and the occasional rays of color that would shine down onto the swamp didn't help his problems at all. He was being escorted by an undead. When the deer finally stopped, Stelimus was standing in front of what looked like a large hut made from bones and held together by a plant growing below it and hugging it into a pentagonal form. The small patch of land in front of the hut was surrounded by many dead trees and and plants, giving it an abandoned appearance.

The guide turned around to face Stelimus. "Please be kind to our master," the deer said. "He has been very kind to us."

Her eyes faded briefly and an spirit ball with the identical color to her eyes flew out of the skeleton. The mist faded and the decayed body was slowly engulfed by the swamp. Stelimus started to shake despite himself and couldn't find the courage to move forward, but he didn't have to. A few more balls of light plunged into the ground below him and the swamp started to push Stelimus forward like a surfer on a wave. It was then that the young stag noticed that the area around the hut was densely filled with floating balls of light that varied between the color spectrums of blue, purple, and green. The wave slid Stelimus through the entrance right in front of an awaiting Grimliss.

"Stelimus! So glad you could join me!"

"Uuuhhhhh..."

"I see you met my subjects." Grimliss stepped besides his nephew and put a hoof on the entrance to better lean outside. "They often forget that they're now undead so they aren't very accommodating to the living when they meet them."

"Um...Why is there nothing here?"

"There's plenty of stuff in this hut. The problem is that you can't see them. They're phased into the spirit world."

Stelimus snapped out of his confusion."What?!"

Grimliss tapped his muzzle. "Hmmm. I knew he wasn't teaching any of you right."

"What are you talking about?"

"In the tundra, they teach you how to CONTROL spirits. That's not how it works."

"I'm getting real tired of saying 'what'." Stelimus glared at his uncle with a narrow gaze.

"Let me reiterate: My furniture is within the spirit world and, thusly, you cannot see or interact with them. As such, I've learned that the spirit teachings you've been receiving in the tundra are wrong. You should be capable of seeing them and my subjects, but you can't."

"But I learned directly from a wendigo."

Grimliss lift his shoulders and expressed extreme disbelief. "What?! Wendigo aren't good teachers! No wonder you don't know anything! Looks like I'll be teaching you about PROPER spirit essence and how to USE it, rather than control it."

"But...I didn't say anything about controlling it..."

Grimliss adotped a pseudo-snobby expression. "I figured it out on my own." He tapped Stelimus on his nubby antlers. "By the way, my subjects aren't just deer."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Stelimus asked.

A low-rumbling, deafening growl that shook the hut silenced Stelimus right away.

"What the hell was that?!"

Wrong Bone

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"So," Grimliss clapped his forelegs together. "I'm not going to be teaching you first. I have a few subjects that know quite a bit about the spirit world and would be best at teaching you the proper basics."

"But I already know the basics."

Grimliss frowned and mumbled. "Yes. The crappy basics. AAAAAAANNNyways, follow me."

The god-king swung around and went behind his hut, leaving Stelimus as confused and terrified as before. If he woke up now, he was certain the hospital room would have been transformed into a koi pond from all his sweat. The young stag took a deep breath and gulped loudly, mustering his courage to move forward, which he did. The 'backyard' had no difference in appearance to the rest of the swamp, but Stelimus caught his uncle talking to...nothing.

"Yes. I want you to teach him...No, he can't see or hear you so you'll have to find a solid form. Hm? He knows the 'basics', but they're the ones from my uncle." Grimliss rolled the lights in his skull. "So that basically means that he knows nothing." The stag bobbed his head from side to side. "Well, he did learn about spirit essence from a wendigo but, eehhh. Yeah. I thought the same. He's here?" Grimliss turned around to see Stelimus looking at him as though he were locked in an insane asylum. "Stelimus, this will be your teacher." He casually presented...nothing.

Stelimus scrunched his mouth briefly then looked left to right. "Um..."

Before he could say anything, Grimliss walked away towards his hut for some unknown reason, leaving the stag to stay amidst a vast horde of undead and spirits. "Well...When do we...start?" He nervously chuckled.

The swamp started to shake again, and, this time, it looked like a large amount of mud and dead trees were rising upwards like a bubble right in front of the stag who was simply too terrified to move and looked at the scene with a face paler than his white fur. Bones bubbled through the piling waves of mud to the point where a wide assortment of skulls and bones poked through the muddy and mossy moss like a body that was just impacted by a train. Two slits near the top of the mound opened up and carried the appearance of jail bars with a yellow light on the mound's right hole and red light on the right glowing behind them. A very large mouth, stretching to both sides of the mound, opened up and reminded Stelimus of melted cheese in a garbage dump.

It exhaled for a lengthy period of time then began to speak after spitting out a few ribs from its mouth. "Stelimus." It's voice was akin to a loud whisper with lengthened ends. "Your uncle wants us to teach you about seeing spirits as you should."

"What the hell is this?!"

"You can't see us, so we have to take a form that you can see. We'll each take different turns into teaching you."

"And how are you going to teach me?"

"Right now."

Stelimus frowned. "I said 'how', not 'when'."

The mound started to narrow, grow, and reform. Legs made of intertwined bones, mud, and rotted wood sprouted from its underside. A neck pushed out from the torso and a deer's face grew outwards. The head dropped down and stared Stelimus directly into his face while the face's details started to become more apparent and detailed. The right antler of this creature grew upwards and was made of rotted wood and vines while the left one was, as expected, made from bones that...grew out of one another. The muddy mouth did not change at all and retained its large, dripping appearance. In fact, it was formed into quite a large smile. Stelimus gulped and his pupils shrunk three sizes that day. The muzzle of this creature just kept getting closer to him the more Stelimus leaned away until he could lean away no further and fall on his back.

"LET'S GET STARTED, THEN!" The creature bellowed.

Stelimus was lifted up by the giant and placed back onto his hooves.

"This world is one that your uncle has created for us lost souls and those who wanted to redeem themselves before meeting whatever entity is responsible for their judgement in the after-death."

"D-d-don't you mean...after-life?"

The giant stared at Stelimus with disappointment. "I am in the after-life. Those who confuse after-life and after-death are probably the ones who taught you about the spirit essence you control." The giant stomped ground and pulled out a rounded, polished stone from the swamp. It was in remarkably good shape despite its location. "This mirror will show you the spirits standing all around you so desire, but I would wait. Not many of these are affiliated with your uncle and WILL try to pull you through to steal your body."

"Then why would you even pull it out, you freakin' idiot?" Stelimus thought to himself.

"Haha!" The creature laughed with an insane undertone then returned to being serious. "The 'after-life' is the soul leaving the body which can no longer house it. The body decays and, regardless of what you believe, the soul is released into the world with no way of communicating with the living."

"Hu. Then, I suppose, their 'god'," Stelimus waved his hooves in mockery. ",comes to take them to heaven or nirvana or something." HE smiled smugly.

The creature did not seem to appreciate his humor and its eyes turned a dark, swamp green. It stomped near Stelimus then its head lowered towards him. The muck started to slide off what was a gigantic deer's skull made of fused, individual skulls.

"Regardless of what you believe, there are higher entities in life. Whether they show themselves and intervene is up to them. I believe you would know this, 'ape'." The creature poked Stelimus' chest.

"Ape?"

The eyes returned to their two colors and stood up, its calm expression returned. "That is the after-life. The after-death is when the soul reaches the next plane of existence, but many are so entrenched into their world that they prefer to remain within it. As such, many try to steal the bodies of the living or choose a new host to be reborn from." The creature flicked some mud off its right hoof to show reptilian claws. "There are many points to make, but the first thing you must do to come into contact with the spirit world is to either be born with a connection and train to awaken its full potential, or be put in a near-death experience."

"You're not going to kill me, are you?"

The creature's eyes looked upwards briefly, then shocked Stelimus' with its claws. The stag felt like he had just been electrocuted and his heart held in a stone-like grip. Before he knew it, he had collapsed onto the floor and felt his life fading.

"I'm waking up. Finally!"

Instead, the stag found himself awake in the swamp, but his deer body looked like it was made of white ink and being dissolved in water. He raised his hooves to get a better look at them then looked up to see an enormous amount of deer, ponies, and creatures he had never seen before. Ever. Some looked like dogs, others like the minotaur from the Crete Island. Then there were the enormous creatures, the flying creatures, and things that outright terrified him, and they were all looking at the prince, but they were...smiling?

"That's enough time there, eh?"

Another pulse brought Stelimus 'back to life' and gasping for air. "What the hell just happened?"

"We put you in a near-death state. Now you have a link to the world of spirits, and quite a few of them seem to naturally like you. Curious," the creature rubbed its chin with its dragon claw. "Hmmm. By the way, you should return to see your uncle. He wanted to see you as soon as we put you through that experience."

The prince didn't not hesitate and scurried back into the hut as fast as he could.

"Ah, Stelimus! Glad you're here. I believe you know my new decorator?"

"Decorator?" Stelimus was confused.

"Hello, Stelimus."

It was Mix-Up. The stallion that Stelimus had met some years past.

"I'm going to ffffffucking kill myself if I stay with him any longer..." Stelimus started thinking a bit more on what he just thought. "Wait, no. That would be a bad idea, especially around here."

"You're not very good with social interactions, are you, uncle."

The god-king stood on his hind legs and proudly placed his hooves on what would constitute for hips. "No, I'm not!"

Stelimus threw his forelegs forward in rage. "WHY ARE YOU PROUD OF THAT?!"

"Hmmm. Because," he calmly replied.

"I'm the one who colored the sky and modeled the sky," Mix-Up casually added in.

"Yes, Mix, that's nice," Stelimus rubbed his eyes.

"Oh, he's done all SORTS of things to my swamp, and each one has been better than the last. Even my residents have loved the changes in light and scenery," Grimliss said.

"It was always so...repetitive, so I though that, with something on this scale, a bit of repetition but with enough uniqueness would give the swamps a nice flair."

"One that didn't smell of rotting corpse." Grimliss chuckled. "Stelimus, are you okay?"

The stag was curled into the fetal position on the ground and shaking. "There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home," he was thinking to himself.

Grimliss walked up towards him and started to think. He calmly leaned over his nephew, most likely in a bid to calm him down.

"Err, you forgot the ruby slippers," he pointed out.

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"Ow, my head." Stelimus strained himself onto his haunches. His head pounded something fierce. Looking around, he noticed that he was still in the hut. Without the sunlight coming through the clouds, he was incapable of knowing how long he had been out.

"I knocked you out," Grimliss said.

"Huh?" The young prince turned around to see his uncle.

"I knocked you out. You were going crazy so this was the best way to let your brain and soul assimilate everything." The god-king lied down in front of his nephew and huffed. He didn't seem to be as jolly as he was earlier. "Speaking of souls, yours is rather...peculiar."

Stelimus started to sweat and his eyes were darting in all directions. "What? What are you talking about?"

"I suppose your 'teachers', Grimliss gestured quotation fingers. "told you about reincarnation or rebirth."

"Something. I was too confused and scared to understand and am, quite frankly, still confused."

"Well, when a soul is reborn, it takes the shape of its new body during the first few months that the baby is alive. You see, souls have no form. They take whatever form the body has."

"Like putty or memory foam?"

"Uhhh...maybe like clay? I don't know what memory foam is."

"Dear God. The horror. In what hellscape have I fallen into to not have mattresses with memory foam."

"Anyways, that comes to my previous point. A diamond dog that chooses to be reborn as a pony still has a diamond dog soul and vice versa, but you...your soul is still the same as that of some type of ape."

"..."

"A soul cannot lie, Stelimus." Grimliss started to glare at his nephew and the air around them started to feel stuffy and heavy.

"I...Are you going to kill me?"

"What? Why would I do that?"

"Be...Because I'm not from this world?"

"So you ARE someone who retained memories of their past life! That's amazing. No one has that happen to them."

"Well, this feels very...anticlimactic. So?"

"Or...your original body is not dead yet your soul somehow left it and inherited a new body."

"What?"

"What I just mentioned is not uncommon. You see, some people, when they dream, actually end up in other realities. Whether you acknowledge this or not is not important. However--"

"Most people who dream don't realize it and have 'memories' of that world?"

"Exactly. Sometimes, the beings of that world will remind the dreamer that they had met in the past and what had happened, and that person will suddenly not only remember that but also remember their real life."

"So, it's like lucid dreaming?"

"Yes!" Grimliss cheered. "The problem with this is the soul itself. It will not remember without proper spiritual and mental training...or simply being dead, like me. If you're dead, you're always your soul, buuuuuut you don't really sleep, making that fact moot."

"So what does any of that mean to me?"

Grimliss looked at his nephew and poked him in the chest with a hoof then smiled. "It means that you're a case even rarer than a reborn soul with retained memories. You're a creature who transcended realities and entered our own, but your soul was pulled in by a new body, hence, you became Stelimus Anglacite."

"Wait, so I lost my old body?"

"No no no!" Grimliss assured. "This is your chance to live a new life and bring these experiences back to your body when you awake. Why, this even explains your bizarre amounts knowledge and ability to manipulate those around you as well as how you survived and tricked your sister when you were just born. Heck, that even explains why your body developed even faster than normal."

"My aged soul manipulated the growth of my body?"

"Yes! Your past experiences imposed themselves on your new body, making it think it could already do all those things, but your brain probably thought your body was 'atrophied', so all the magic that was in your body at your birth was directed towards accelerating muscle growth and bone density."

Stelimus' eyes widened briefly. "Wow. That's...something."

"This doesn't mean you're not still my nephew!" Grimliss hugged the young stag and horrified him.

"Don't put me so close to your bones!" Stelimus pushed himself away.

"Ugh. The living. So whiny. 'Oh, a skeleton'. 'Oh, a rotting corpse!', 'Oh! The body of my grandmother dead for two weeks on the couch'."

"Uhhhh...that last one,"

"Stop whining."

Stelimus obliged, allowing his mind to settle and his memory to return. "Speaking of my sister, she wasn't too hard to escape. She was quite predictable, really. 'Cliché', as one would put it."

"...I take it 'cliché' is a bad thing?"

"Quite often, actually."

"Say, if my soul was 'reborn' here and this experience is similar to a dream, would that mean that someone called me here or something like that?"

Grimliss laughed. "What, you think you're 'The Chosen One' or something?" Stelimus said nothing. "Of course not! It's simply an extremely rare occurrence, but other creatures have had this happen to them. You're not the unique case. The only difference, as I've mentioned several times before, is that you retained all your memories."

"Huh."

"Now, why don't you eat? There are several cooks in my realm that haven't been able to cook for a pony in many, many centuries. You'll get meals from several centuries ago using recipes that no one knows anymore."

"Many centuries? What about Mix-Up?"

"Hm? he doesn't live here. He lives in one of very few towns that I've let settle near the swamps. He's probably deciding for a new shape and color for my sky."

Stelimus gulped."Oh no. I bet it's going to be worms or some horror like that." A brief thud knocked Stelimus out of his thoughts. There were quite a huge amount of dishes finely decorated with many plants, some edible. There were even meat dishes. "I thought deer didn't eat meat."

"Not normally, but all herbivores are opportunistic predators...well, maybe not all."

"What's an opportunistic predator?"

"Basically, when a herbivore sees the opportunity to eat an animal, it eats an animal."

"..."

"Yes. I still find that gross and many of my subjects waltz around in rotting corpses."

The young prince hesitated to eat, as something else gnawed at him. "How long did you know?"

"About your soul? When you first escaped your sister."

"That quickly?!"

"You thought I figured it out later when you got older, didn't you?"

Stelimus tapped the ground. "Well..."

"Ha. Like I said, I've encountered your kind before, and I SEE souls." Grimliss readjusted himself on his spot. "This is how I'm where I am."

"That's true. How did you become like that."

"The god-king looked down briefly and his smile faded...literally. "That's a tale I'll tell you when you leave here to meet your aunt and learn from her."

"But I hate her."

"Trust me, we all hate here. I'm not into narcissistic brats."

"I just didn't want to tell anyone because I thought they would kill me if I broke my dream."

"Hm. You don't need to worry about that. You have many friends and family members who love you and I certainly won't let you die before you're supposed to." Grimliss smiled widely at his nephew.

"Even with good intentions he looks terrifying."

The next day, Stelimus was back to facing the giant deer creature and learning from it. It hadn't taught him anything new, but he learned how to focus and take strength from his own soul and mind. These teachings continued throughout the weeks Stelimus stayed in the swamps, and he was getting pretty used to it.

"You see, the mind and soul are essential to functioning together. The body cannot call upon the soul. Only the mind can. With a strong mind, you can become the most powerful when it comes to channeling spiritual essence," the giant said.

"Does that mean I can phase into the spirit world with my thoughts?"

"Yes. You can do that and see the spirits around you. Go ahead, try it out. Use what we've taught you."

Stelimus stomped the ground with is hooves and started to concentrate. He heard a loud vibration, signaling him to open his eyes. Everyone was there, like he had seen before. Many creatures and many different people all walking around or floating. It was amazing, really."

"Remember, Stelimus, some of the creatures are from long crumbled civilizations. Be careful around them."

That was something Grimliss told his nephew, and it was something he was going to retain in memory or his time there. He just hoped nothing 'special', like discovering a cursed soul would happen. He really wasn't in the mood to encounter something like that and hoped his uncle had proper control over the swamps he governed.

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Stelimus sat in the swamps and slid his eyes slowly to the borders of his orbits. The sky now had a sickly, yellow palor to it with some bright yello-green added into the mix. The clouds still had a spiral shape, but Mix-Up's 'art' ended up painting the landscape just as much as the clouds. Stelimus really didn't like the colors, but his uncle adored the new surroundings that Mix-Up gave him. They both had...'unique' personalities to say the least. Patient was the deer, to expect something to appear for no reason. Spirit balls would fly around and some of the dead would walk around in their full forms, but not much else was to report. He was at the end of his stay with his uncle, and Stelimus didn't even discover a 'hidden city' in the swamps nor did he have an adventure fighting off some sort of evil ninja-pirate trying to steal his body. He could feel his inner child dying.

"This is no fair. I wanted to see a hidden city or something hidden."

"That's because there were never any cities here...as far as I know. Those that once lived here must've packed their things away," Grimliss said.

Stelimus jumped away in shock. "Stop doing that!"

Grimliss focused the mist around his body into puckered lips in front of his mouth. "Oh, poor wittle Stewimus. He's getting swawed in a pwace with the undead fwoating awound every where."

Stelimus recovered and wiped some mud off his fur. "Oh no! He turned into Elmer Fudd! What are you doing out here, anyways?"

"Well, I'm going to bid you farewell while you go to your...aunt's place." Grimliss looked disgusted.

'What about my stuff?"

"It's all ready and packed onto your 'carriage'."

Stelimus cocked an eyebrow. "Why did you say 'carriage' like you were alluding to something else?"

"For nothing." Grimliss looked away and Stelimus narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

"By the way, you told me you were going to tell me how exactly you became...as you are now."

Grimliss sighed. "You know everything now? Even how to free a soul trapped in hatred and fear? One that refuses to pass on?"

"Yes. Stop stalling."

"...Fine." Grimliss sat down next to his nephew and stretched his neck. "I suppose your mother told you about the 'god-kings' and how we were five?"

"Yeah. She wouldn't stop. She was stupid enough to think that a newborn would understand what she was saying, but she kept repeating that story to me like some kind of stalker chanting about how they'll 'get with their beloved' or something."

Grimliss looked down at his nephew with widened eyes. He was freaked out and worried. "Riiiight..."

"And I know that an uncle and aunt died before I was...born? Reborn? How would you say it?"

"Eh. Incarnated. No real term is befitting. Besides that...yes. My brother and sister both perished some time ago, and they're the reason why I am as I am."

"...Their deaths turned you into a lich?"

"What? No! When you lose someone dear to you and you have no one else, don't you wish you could bring them back to life?" Grimliss' expression was that of sadness and desperation.

"I guess, but I learned early on that it's best to leave the dead where they lie."

"Then you were wiser than I. I had thought of that but I ignored it, so I left my brother and sister in the tundra in hopes to find a solution. And so I traveled throughout the world, learning about so many cultures and magics, things I never knew about stuck in the tundra."

"So that's why he likes new things so much and has so many 'subjects' of different species," Stelimus thought.

"Finally, I returned to my home...erm..." Grimilss tapped his head several times but gave up. "A place I can't remember. I used a wide variety of tools and instruments, casting circle and symbols, ingredients and matter. They were used in each individual culture's method of communicating with the dead."

Stelimus looked at his uncle with abrasive look. He might not have believed in the afterlife, but he knew that was something you shouldn't have done. Even if, his beliefs had wavered quite considerably. He was always a man that changed his views when given concrete evidence, and what was more concrete than experiencing everything yourself. But, as he listened on, the young prince noticed his uncle's voice starting to crack and his eyes dimming.

"I thought...if I combined several of the different rituals into one that used all their strengths, I could bring them both back to life. Give them a new breath of fresh air into their lungs and souls, and so I toiled. Toiled day and night to the point of exhaustion. Every day I would hear voices. Inaudible voices, but they were quiet at first. Then, as my experiments were showing fruition, the voices started becoming louder and louder but my grief had me ignore them." Grimliss bent his forwards in imitation of someone grasping their fists tightly.
"I was so close!...Then I started having terrifying nightmares. These things...they were telling me to stop, but like any fantasy book will tell you, I didn't listen. The heroes of fantasy stories always hesitate and start to mull over what they're being told, but I cut clean through and executed the ritual, and I saw them." Grimliss stretched his arm out towards nothing. "They were right there, coming back down from a tunnel of pure, silvery light...Then the ritual backfired. I don't know why. Perhaps I didn't have enough catalysts? Maybe I hadn't allowed the energy to flow naturally well enough and it blocked? Whatever the case, my body became overwhelmed by death energies. They flew from the land and into my body, casting the work of death itself across time and space into me. I would have died if your aunt and uncle hadn't intervened before returning to the afterdeath."

Stelimus saw his uncle nearly collapse into the swamp. He looked like he was losing his grip on his body.

"They were right there. Even when they were dead they saved me, but, as a consequence, I became undead. My body hadn't changed at first, but I it started to rot. It was terrifying. Horrible. It took a year for it all to fall off my body and, during that time, I started uncovering latent abilities linked to spirit essence and started to see the spirits of those that had not moved on."

"So I take it you learned from them and, because you were still a god-king, your frost essence was replaced by--"

"Spirit essence, yes. I became the god-king of the dead. I moved to this swamp where a great deal of the dead reside and where I rule over those that are still trapped on this plane. Granted, many of them simply stay here because they want to, but that's kind of a small number."

"I didn't know you would actually do something like that."

"The ending isn't as bad as you think. I had done all of that through grief. I never got over their deaths, but I saw them both one last time and learned about the greatness of life." Grimliss chuckled. "Funny, isn't it? To appreciate life you must die, but when you die, there's no going back, but I don't regret what I did."

Stelimus reared his head back. "You don't?!"

"Of course not! I loved my siblings and got to see them one more time. Plus, without doing what I did, I would never have learned about the worlds outside of your father's comfort zone. I help those trapped on this side to move on when they need to and have great power associated to it." Grimliss cautiously looked around for any eavesdroppers and even looked under a tiny stone next to the two. He leaned close to Stelimus' ear and started to whisper. "Between you and me, I can also keep people from dying with this magic, but I don't do that unless there's a doctor around that will immediately take care of that."

"Why not?"

"Can't mess with nature. You see what happened last time." Grimliss passed a rock through an orbit and let it fall onto the swamp. "See?"

"Right. That's true. Hmm. If you don't regret what happened, why were you crying?"

"Oh, you saw through that? Well, let's just say it's residual emotions that cause that when I think about that event."

"I see."

The two said nothing for a long time, basking in the silence and sounds of the swamp, then Grimliss broke the silence.

"Before you, leave, I'm quite curious; How old are you, exactly?"

"Forty-Seven."

"Oh." The god-king looked away. "So you were about to die anyway."

"Dear God. I hope not. I'm only middle-aged?"

"Wait, what?"

"What, you thought my species had the equine lifespan? Pfff. Humans live way longer than that. Our average lifespan goes well into the nineties, nowadays, and it keeps raising every year."

"Quite impressive. I know many who would wish for that."

"Many of us wish for that, but it's the decay that goes with it that's the problem with such age."

"Ah. The body giving out again." Grimliss nodded to himself. "Well!" He clapped his hooves loudly together. "I think its time for you to leave and see your aunt."

"Okay, so where's my carriage?" Stelimus looked around.

Grimliss blankly stared at his nephew. "Carriage?"

The roar that Stelimus heard when he first arrived in the swamp resonated again, but much louder. A lengthy form started rising out of the swamp lands and two sets of wings erupted forth from even that body.The body was, at least in length, if comparing with height, was equal to a twenty-story building. Its height was merely that of a two story building. In essence, it was akin to a Chinese dragon, what with so many limbs along the body, but a sixth of it, starting from the head, was horrifying to look at. It had seven, randomly placed eyes on its face. They most likely couldn't hold in place due to all the rot this thing was suffering. It was completely blackened and the eyes were just white orbs. The throat of the creature was slightly paler than the rest of its body and there were pieces of flesh rotted off to show the muscle hidden behind.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"

"A Yemrin. A far-flung ancestor of sea-monsters like the kraken and mer-auder."

"Mer-auder?"

"It will take you to my sister's kingdom."

"So I ride on its back or something?"

Grimliss stared blankly at his nephew again. "No."

The creature barreled towards Stelimus who barely had any time to react before being eaten.

"It'll store you in its neck pouch and fly you there. See you later, Stelimus!" Grimliss waved goodbye.

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Gregary was disgusted and refused to move. He could see through the rotted holes of the yemrin that his uncle has even provided him with two dracolich escorts. They weren't better off in the rotting department, although one of them was almost entirely a skeleton.

"At least the view below is nice..."

It was true, however. Vast swaths of plains and little trees dotted the landscape below. A few strings of clouds would hover in front of is sight every now and then, but they gave the painting before him a softer look, silvery-golden light, and created shading on the ground. A cool breeze accompanied by the warm light of the sun struck Stelimus occasionally through the...holes, and they were the only thing he was capable of physically liking in this situation. Some enormous cities could be seen far away, although one of them had an assortment of towers that converged to a centralized platform with a dome on it. Further sometimes one could see a lake here and there as well as flying creatures that would steer clear the second they saw the three undead beasts. There were even a few mountains, but no mountain ridges. It was strange, but not as strange as what Stelimus spotted nestled into the sides of one of the geological towers.

"That's stupid. What kind of idiot builds a castle INTO the wall of a mountain? I'm no architect, but I fathom that it would take an insane amount of maintenance to keep that thing from sliding off, let alone the mountain wall not crumbling down," Stelimus thought aloud.

His thoughts and admiration of the landscape were broken when one of the dracoliches roared at something for no apparent reason, then it was swatted clear out of the sky by some sort of gigantic, green tendril.

"Oh God, what now?! And we're so high in the sky! What the hell could've swiped that...dragon thing clear awa-woah!"

The yemrin rolled to the right, making Stelimus bounce around in its throat sac. Whatever was going on, he could hear roaring and the sounds of flames burning something. Outside, the escort and transport were being attacked by a gigantic forest down below. This forest stretched as far as the eye could see...meaning it was very big. Some trees were reaching the height that even the yemrin was at, and that was several thousand feet in the air! The green tentacle Stelimus had spotted was, in fact, a vine coming from said forest, but that wasn't the only thing occurring. Thorns and yellow flowers in the shape of balls were launching from the forest as well. The flowers themselves were exploding in the air, releasing a nasty, explosive. The other dracolich didn't take kindly to this aggressiveness and swooped down towards the forest, belching a toxic, purple miasma that burned away at a long strip of plant life. Another vine swung out from one of the tall trees and struck at the yemrin who was barely fazed. It was here that several more attacks occurred, but Stelimus was too busy bouncing up and down and rolling all around.

There was more turbulence until a final, super thump tossed Stelimus out of the yemrin and...onto extremely grassy grounds. Looking around, he realized he was in a forest and the yemrin was immobile on the ground...at least, its head was. The rest was elsewhere, which was quite disgusting. The forest was in a sorry state, too. Purple flames were burning away at a few stripes here and there and other places look completely charred. With one more turn of his head, Stelimus came face-to-face with Effervescence who was standing between two tall bushes.

"Hello, nephew." She waved cheerfully.

Stelimus looked at her, then looked ahead, then turned around. "I prefer the corpse."

A root erupted from the ground, pushing up the part Stelimus was standing on and carrying him back to his aunt, who kept smiling as if attempting to enamor him with her 'beauty'.

"You're going to kill me because of those things, aren't you?"

"Of course not! Besides, it will all grow back to be beautiful!" She twirled around at that last sentence."And I'd rather avoid having a Life-Death war with Grimliss. Weirdo."She pulled on Stelimus' foreleg and walked into the forest. "Let's reach the humble little village I live in, shall we?"

Effervescence looked behind herself and gave a dazzling smile while Fireflies literally sprung out of the nearby trees to illuminate her face. Stelimus grimaced, causing her to show a rather...angry expression.

"You're not enamored?"

"I'm not sure I can be enamored by someone who wears so much make-up she could supply the city of Toronto for a year by not decorating herself for a day."

"What? Are you a...'late bloomer'?" she teased.

"I sure hope so. The day I'm 'enamored' by you would be the day I'd kill myself. Plus, we're related. That would be weird."

"...True, but do you really want to raise my ire in my own domain?"

"Pretty sure you formulated that sentence incorrectly."

Effervescence vocally groaned in anger. "Why are you always so rude to me? You always give the cold shoulder to your father and you're buddy-buddy with your uncle. Why can't we have that relationship?"

The two broke into some sort of tribal village with blooming vines entangling the trees, wooden huts built into said trees, and several normal looking deer and ponies looking at Effervescence and immediately abandoning their duties to rush to her and praise her with gifts, which she ignored. She instead preferred walking towards a giant throne with a tall and wide back made from twisted branches whose edges were encompassed in golden petals. Its arm-rests were made from white flowers, the like of which Stelimus had never seen. The whole thing was at least twice Effervescence's size and was resting on a pile of green leaves and ivy, but there were no steps. Instead, there was an angled mount of dirt leading up to the seat, which was quite suspicious.

"Hmmm. She's trying to act all 'delicate' and 'innocent', her subjects fawn over her, and there's no steps leading to her throne, which means--"

Stelimus' thoughts were right. Quite a few ponies and deer dashed forward so Effervescence go step on them to reach her throne.

"Of course. The cliché 'stepping stone' trope. You want to know why I don't want to be 'nice' to you?" Stelimus ripped his foreleg out of his aunt's before she stepped on the first deer and stared her directly into her smiling eyes. "Because you're a manipulative demon that amuses itself in its appearance and uses that in said manipulative throes. Until you learn that you aren't that greatest thing since corned cheese, then shall I consent to according you some kindness."

She didn't actually seem to care and simply wooshed her mane to the side of her head and elegantly trotted to her throne where he laid down.

"Heh. Your sister is through those weeping willows if you want to see her," she said. "Then we can talk about what to do with you here." She passed a hoof through her mane dramatically, and many of the males there seemed to drool in adoration.

It was clear she was openly accepting Stelimus' aggressions and trying to turn them against him. She thought she was safe because she was batting on home base, but there are several ways to hurt a batter when you're the one pitching without letting them get one hit, but now wasn't the time. The young prince left through the annoying, droopy branches and walked along the darkening path. It was one of the places that had been charred by a dracolich, and Stelimus knew that his uncle wasn't going to like the loss of three of his residents.

Much to the prince's astonishment, while he walked along the charred pathway, bio-luminescent mushrooms were plopping up out of the ground and the burnt trees. Most of them were blue in color, but an occasional red or green would sprout up as well. The atmosphere felt like it was tightening up around Gregary's soul, but he pushed forward. The further he went, the tighter the atmosphere became and the more he wanted to turn back. At the end of the pathway was a burnt tree still burning with bright purple flames. It and many other trees had toppled over, completely blocking the pathway to Stelimus' sister. Mustering his spirit essence, Stelimus fazed himself into the world of spirits, allowing him to happily trot through the bark, although he noticed a rather distinguished lack of spirits around. It reminded Stelimus of something the giant, undead deer told him.

"Some might think that having no spirits around is a good thing; that they've all passed on. This isn't a good thing, however. Not all spirits come from the living. There's always a beginning, and without a beginning, there is no end. No change. No evolution. No regulating."

The stag took a deep breath of death energies and exhaled them all out, allowing him to shift back into the living world. The bleak whiteness of the spirits wasn't very enjoyable and didn't really let him see anything but the souls of the living, but he did see one. That of his sister. She was lying down in a patch of rich moss under a few rocks piled into some sort of uneven hut. The place was, frankly, calm and tranquil. There was even a tiny pond in front of her stone hut from which a few cat tails grew and luminescent bugs fluttered around. One of the cat tails' 'fur' was spread outwards like a pine cone and emitting a varying dose of white and orange lights. Stelimus slowly approached his sister in an attempt to wake her up, although using a cat tail might be the more logical of solutions, given her predictable by-the-book attempts at killing him in the past. She most likely had a knife and knew he was coming and just WAITING for that opportune moment. And so, the stag reached out to grab one of the tails when he noticed it was thinner then it should have been. He reluctantly looked away from his sister to realize, in abject horror, that he was holding the antenna of a giant, flat beetle.

"OHGEEZWHATTHEFUCK!" he screamed.

His sister awoke in a start and the beetle, terrified, flew away as fast as it could.

"Stelimus?" Yolumay asked.

Her voice was extremely loud but still had its tropical tang of angry.

"Yes. Are you going to try to kill me now or should I schedule an appointment for two-thirty p.m. on the seventh?"

The doe stepped out, very slowly, into the light of the cat tails, showing that she was in terrible condition. Her fur was starting to turn a pale green and spreading from her body to her appendages, her antlers had grown quite a bit and a vine could be seen here and there. To make matters worse, she looked absolutely exhausted and had black bags under her eyes, but she was still angry.

"Oh. 'Thank God' she's still angry as before. I don't know what I would do if even her personality changed just a smidge,"Stelimus internally mocked.

Yolumay somehow nearly fall over but righted herself back up with what was evidently an extreme amount of effort."I need...help, brother..." she begged.

"Ohhhh boyyyy. That's not a good sign."

"As much as people hate it, death regulates life, and without it, life can't continue or evolve. Death can't regulate itself and will forever be an end to life, but if life has no end, and death cannot regulate it and help it progress and evolve, well, there are things that even we do not want to share despite our age."

The source of it all

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"Need...food..." Yolumay strained herself.

"Where can I even find food?"

Yolumay collapsed onto the floor yet still managed to stretch her foreleg to the right to show an apple tree behind a few lines of its distantly related brethren. Stelimus hurried to it and plucked off a few apples, planting them on his growing antlers. He rushed back to his sister and placed a side of the apple in her mouth, allowing her to bite into it. A few hours passed that Stelimus help Yolumay by bringing her small amounts of food and water from the pond. He didn't want to overload her body, and she clearly looked like she hadn't eaten in a day. Stelimus sat down next to her and looked at his exhausted sister for a long period of time.

"So," he started. "what are you doing here? What happened to you?"

"I...don't want to talk about it." Yolumay rolled over to keep her face from her brother.

"Look, I'm your brother. I'm here to help you."

Memories of Gregary's late human siblings came back to his mind. He loved them so, but one of them had died and the other was still being treated after a devastating accident. Yet, they still taught him many things in sibling relationships and he knew that, regardless of how they acted in the past, there was always a chance for them to be the closest they could ever be.

"What..." Yolumay strenuously rolled over to look her brother in the eye. "Even after all I did to you?"

Stelimus raised a hoof and raised the volume of his voice. "ATTEMPTED to do," he corrected.

Yolumay only narrowed her glare.

"What?" The prince shrugged. "It's true."

"I still don't know how you managed to survive me. You were barely a few days old."

"Let's not dwell on that past. Let's talk about your current predicament. Why did Effervescence leave you like this?"

"She...didn't. I left and fled into the forest, hoping to find my way back into the tundra."

Stelimus put a hoof to his cheek. "That doesn't match. How would Effervescence even know where she was, then? Then how did she know you were here?"

The princess blinked a few times. "She did?! HOW?!"

Stelimus shrugged and his sister groaned loudly in response. "She really does see everything in this damnable forest." The doe put a foreleg over her eyes and started to cry. "I want to get out of here. I want to go home, even if I have to see that detestable figure that replaced me with you," she spat.

"Replaced?"

"Yes!"

"Huh. Well, before we develop on this further and splay your emotional tapestry of thoughts and beliefs before me, why didn't you go and get those apples yourself? Or even eat the grass here?"

"That apple tree just grew a few hours ago, and I couldn't reach it." Yolumay clenched her hooves. "I'm certain it was Effervescence that did that on purpose, just to taunt me."

Stelimus exhaled loudly through his nose. "I see. So...that also doesn't explain why you're starting to look like her."

The princess gradually sat up, taking a few minutes and refusals of Stelimus' help to find a comfortable position. "I...think I'm being affected by this forest."

"But the others who live here aren't looking like that!"

"I...really don't know what the cause is, but I know that you need to have a long life to start turning...or it's my aunt that started doing this to me."

"Why would you even leave her side, anyways?"

"Because I was tired with the way she was treating me! Everyone in my family has always treated me like garbage, and she was no different! She was trying to make me like her! She was teaching me about plant magic, something even dad didn't know, but..."

"But?"

"She kept trying to make me into someone like her. 'Delicate' and extremely feminine." She spit out the last words like venom freshly sucked out a wound. Stelimus unintentionally chuckled out loud when he thought about Yolumay as extremely feminine. "What's so funny?!" She roared.

"Oh, nothing. Nothing. Please continue."

"...She was starting to try and give me beauty products, even tricking me several times into going to a spa here so they could change my appearance. She even...put me in front of her crowd of brain-washed hippies and many of them actually tried to...woo me!"

"Oh no. That's awful add so forth."

Yolumay bonked her brother on the head. "You think that's funny? These weren't just some 'pranks' she was doing. She was actively trying to change me. Day and night. I couldn't sleep as she was always awake. She even tried to slip some weird plants into my food. When I confronted her about them, all she said was 'You can't go back, so why not take after me? Think of it as a sermon to join a group worshiping a deity, which I obviously am'."

"Then why did you stay for so long?"

"Because I wanted to learn as much of that plant magic as I could. It's linked to the life magic she doesn't want to share, so I knew I had to learn as much about it as I could."

Stelimus started taking pity on this doe. It was clear that her issues with him stemmed a bit further than wanting to take a throne. And she was pretty tough to endure all of that in this place for years. Still...

"Why did you try to kill me so long ago? Why do you hate me?"

"Because..." Yolumay averted her eyes. She couldn't look at her brother anymore. He was actually hearing her out and even helped her.

"That's not what I asked you. I said 'why'."

"..."

"Answer me!"

"Because you replaced me!"

"What does that even mean?!"

Yolumay stood up and, although wobbling a bit, managed to stand in front of Stelimus. "Because you're the only stag father has had in so long! I have a longer lifespan because of his damned bloodline. I'm thrice your age yet still look like a young doe in her twenties! Most of us don't survive for long with him because of the spirits or dad's siblings!"

"Wait, so Grimliss HAS killed 'my' past siblings before? He seemed obsessed with avoiding such a thing, so mayhaps these siblings did something extraordinary to him."

The princess tapped her chest several times. "I was the one who was supposed to inherit the throne! I was supposed to be loved by my own parents! I was supposed to get all the attention." Her tears started pouring from her eyes and she was having trouble breathing because of it. "Instead, they were all disappointed in my existence. They...mother weaned me for a while then let the others take care of me, but even they didn't care much. They wanted a stag, not a doe, not for inheriting the throne, mind you. That stubborn fool will never die anyways."

"Does it have to do with the alliance with the ponies?"

"Yes. When I would walk in the streets, I could hear them all whispering behind my back. Many wouldn't even hide it either. I was a doe, and they didn't want that."

"Hmmm. Knowing the idiot that passes itself for a father, this means that if you were the one to become pregnant from a stallion, you would have dishonored their 'god-king', sullied his lineage, and ruined yourself in the process."

Yolumay sniffed and wiped some tears from her eyes. She actually looked mildly pretty when she wasn't scowling. There were still rough edges of a warrior, but not that of a heartless ones. And her eyes were bizarrely glistening.

"Oh God. It's like watching an anime from the seventies and eighties!"

"I tried to train myself in warrior combat to please our dad after he told me to do so. I even became one of the best fighters. Not THE best, but one of. I even studied books on warfare and the like, but it wasn't enough for him. I wasn't the child with the gender that he wanted."

"But wouldn't my impregnating of a pony still be a 'disgrace'?"

"It would, but with a lesser impact. It would just mean that you were talented and tricky enough to disgrace them and 'improve' upon their lineage."

"Hmmm. Weird ass nobility thought patterns here, yet the does have still been performing tasks many males have. I don't get this society. Makes no sense. So your reaction to me was jealousy?"

"The second you were born they cheered and I heard it. You were getting everything I wanted. It's not fair!"

"OY!" Stelimus bonked his sister on her head as vengeance. "If I could've chosen who to be born under, it sure as hell wouldn't have been to those things that are supposed to be our parents. I mean, mom is alright, but she isn't ideal. That's all there is. I've been actively going against dad's wants because he isn't humble nor willing to be a good father. He uses us for his schemes."

"And he tossed me onto my aunt when he had no use for me."

"Exactly. We need to get out of here and return to the Crystal Kingdom for now."

"What?! Why not--"

"Really? really? After what you just told me, you really want to go back there?"

Yolumay opened her mouth to say something but closed it back up.

"That's what I thought, now wait right there. I need to talk to someone. And we can forget me learning anything from my aunt here. Plant and life magic and essences can wait."

Stelimus adjusted himself and started to focus. The lights around Yolumay and himself flickered and started to dim, then the prince opened his eyes, revealing them to be pure white. White cones filled with spirits quietly wailed as Stelimus' sight and mind faded into the spirit world and towards his uncle.

"Grimliss?" He asked.

The stag looked away from his short table briefly to see his nephew standing behind him.

"Stelimus! Glad to see you...You didn't already get killed by your aunt, did you?"

"No."

"Good. So what's the pleasure of this immediate visit. Already missing us?"

Stelimus shivered in horror. "No. I need to get Yolumay to the Crystal Kingdom and I need your help doing so."

"Your sister? I thought she was trying to kill you!"

"She was, but I can't leave her here to die! She's even starting to look like Effervescence."

Grimliss nodded. "I see. She's being corrupted. Okay, listen closely, Stelimus. The two dracoliches she killed have returned to my swamp on account of my magic. I can send you another undead creature that will burrow in that exact spot you are in then take you to the kingdom. It will take a week at most, three days at least. Not because of the distance, but because of that living forest's roots."

"Will it eat me again?"

Grimliss took on an innocent pose and placed one of his toes on what would constitute as a mouth. "Maybe."

"It's either that or you'll see your sister dying. She's being corrupted by your aunt's forest. It sees her in a bad view, most likely because your aunt doesn't like her. The ponies still know magic and will help, but keep her well fed and hydrated. She's very stubborn that one. So long as she still has her strength, she'll make it. Now go."

"Huh, so that's why he didn't react," Stelimus thought out loud.

"What? What was that?" Yolumay asked.

Stelimus turned towards his sister with an overly happy expression. "Good news, sister! It even means I'll get to amuse myself with our dear, sweet aunt." He evily wrung his two fore hooves together. Diabolical!

Great Family

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Stelimus returned to his aunt who was now only surrounded by her aides while those that lived under her rule went about their daily lives. She was currently discussing with an aid who seemed to be the one responsible for Effervescence's diet and appearance, judging by said deer aid's slim-but-voluptuous figure and glistening, bubble-gum pin fur that changed to cyan at certain angles. Her eyes were slanted, but only due to obvious snobbishness. She seemed to revel in her position and talents. The shininess of her fur was worrying, actually.

"Looks like she rolled around in a fryer's grease after the fries were cooked. So...what's with Lady Gaga?"

Effervescence and the diva looked at Stelimus in confusion, although it looked more like they were looking down on him, but he did not flinch.

"Who is this uncultured person?" the diva said.

"He is my nephew, Diva. The son of my brother, so please pay him your respects."

"Holy Nimoy. Her name is literally 'Diva'. Wow. Well. If you're going to burn a house, use the right liquid."

"Apologies, your majesty. It's just that...Your unrefined appearance just doesn't seem to befit our God-Queen's beauty. I would have expected her lineage to be a bit more...expectant of their appearance."

Stelimus scoffed at her comments. "Not all of us are so superficial about our appearances that we want our faces to look like a tapestry made by a toddler."

Effervescence twitched. "My dear, sweet nephew." She jumped off her throne and slammed into the ground, right in front of Stelimus. Judging by how deep her legs went, it looked like she weighed several hundred kilos or pounds. "I think we should go with Diva to a private salon, then to a weapons shop."

"Weapons shop? What for?"

"Because my specially designed equipment is the most essential to any warrior in my genealogy, and I'm the only one with a fashion designer that makes weapons and swords. He is quite exquisite at it as well," she bragged.

"She really has nothing to brag about. It's like throwing yarn at a falling climber and then getting surprised as to why the string didn't hold their weight." Stelimus shivered. "Woah. That was too dark for my tastes."

"You'll be more than happy with what you're given. Everyone will love you like this. Now, let us be away."

"Of course, my queen. Right this way," Diva invited.

"Queen? Shouldn't you be married to fit that title?" Stelimus asked his aunt.

"Our queen's beauty and ability transcend such social needs. She is a queen as she is and no one could befit her tastes and appearance," Diva 'assured'.

"I do not require a 'mate', Stelimus. I'm above such carnal needs."

"When you put on so much perfume you would kill all the mosquitoes in Africa? I doubt you're doing this just for your 'extravagance'. Someone is ronery."

The group stopped in front of a gate made from intertwined thorns of a black color. Through the few slits that Stelimus could see, there was a rather open area in the forest with a ray of light coming through the tree branches above. The grass was golden with this circle of druids and there were a few things moving about within it as well as what appeared to be several stone tables and holes everywhere.

Diva poked the wall with her hooves and the thorns retracted almost as quickly, leaving Stelimus to see that this was indeed a regular spa out in the open of nature, although 'open' wouldn't quite befit he situation as the trees surrounding this little haven were grown so closely together that not even light was capable of passing through them.

"Please, right this way."

The three walked up to a stallion and doe that welcomed their guests. The stallion had a black eye-patch over his right eye and fur missing from that side, and the doe looked unusually muscular despite her slender frame.

"Welcome to the Strengthening Spa, my queen." The stallion bowed with a hoof to his chest.

"We are most delighted to see you come to this place," the mare added. She had a Japanese accent, if Gregary wasn't being racist and recognized accents. Ah, the wonders of the modern world. EVERYTHING is racist!

"So, what can we do for you?" the stallion asked.

"My nephew here," Effervescence put a foreleg around Stelimus and pulled him right against her. "was in the swamps for several weeks and has certainly not bathed at the same time."

"I can quite honestly say that I can smell him," Diva said.

"I'm surprised you can smell anything anymore when staying next to the rafflesia flower." Stelimus pat his muzzle several times. "I can feel my nose killing itself as we speak."

The spa couple chuckled at the comment but, when they caught sight of their queen's glare, they immediately became quiet and looked down.

"Hohoho. That is quite drôle, but I believe a good bathing session would do you well, nnnnnnephew."

"R-r-right this way, your majesty," the stallion said.

Stelimus walked away with his head held high and imitating his aunt's method of watching with extreme exaggeration.

"Calm down, Effervescence. Your work here will serve its purpose. His sister will come running back to me and I'll make them love me, just like all the other fools here."

Stelimus was placed in front of what looked like a water slide built into the ground. There was a large opening right next to it where water was somehow flying up the tunnel and into a crevice just below the exit.

"Wait, how is that even possible?"

"In you go!" the stallion said.

He kicked Stelimus into the water slide tunnel through which the prince screamed the whole way until he managed to adjust himself so his face was facing forward. This was literally a water slide and he was getting plastered with water as every few feet stood a wall of water pouring from above. After about ten walls, the young stag started getting sprayed by soapy water and foam that didn't sting his eyes in the slightest. It was rather enjoyable to not have the horrid sensation. Nobody liked it, after all. After a while, he went through more walls, was blow-dried by what appeared to be gigantic, cone shaped flytraps, then shot out the exit like a rocket. The stallion intercepted him with a well placed towel and swung the stag around like a rock in a slingshot before landing him back onto the ground.

"That was...awesome! Let's do it again!" Stelimus shouted.

"Yes. Most of the young ones love the slide while the elders are too afraid and refuse to go back in it, but that's the point of this strengthening spa. It's to toughen you up, both physically and appearance-wise."

Stelimus stretched out, cracking his back in the process. "Yeah. I can tell," he strained. "So, what's my aunt doing?"

The stallion pointed to the doe on one of the stone tables. It appeared to be heating up due to...something. The doe taking care of Effervescence would occasionally kick the main pedestal of the table for reasons unknown, but she was busy massaging her queen whose face was covered in a purple paste. Her antlers were also wrapped up in some sort of blue leaf, but Stelimus had no idea what they were. She seemed extremely relaxed and practically asleep by this point. This gave the prince an optimal opportunity to devise a prank. He spotted a few slugs and snails nearby and wrapped them up in some spirit essence then approached the spa doe and pushed her away.

Stelimus used his best attempt at a Japanese accent "Now, we are going to use a special brew that will enrich your fur and make it softer, stronger, and more resplendent than ever." Stelimus starting posing the slugs and snails on his aunt. "We just received it recently and tested out the product to be CERTAIN it wouldn't have any nauseous effects on your beauty. I'm puking internally."

The stag threw some spirit essence at the doe, giving it the appearance of slug slime and galloping away. It was so she wouldn't get blamed for what the prince had done. Of course, that wasn't all he did. He also covered a large portion of the spa with slime as well to make the idea more convincing. When he was at the entrance, he pitched his voice as high as he could and screamed, then he fled towards the throne and waited patiently.

"I got a bath. I don't need anything else, Stelimus thought to himself.

Why you little!

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Copper Blossom sat next to the Crystal Heart, doodling in her journal while everyone passed her by. She would actually stay there when not being tutored or sculpting. She seemed to like daydreaming there in front of everyone, although it seemed to have become such a regular occurrence that the inhabitants of the Crystal Kingdom ignored her.

Today, she was giggling next to the pedestal and started to write into her journal. Her romantic fantasies were a wee bit unusual compared to the typical, foolish one who dreams of being whisked away by Prince Charming. Writing in her journal, she was imagining Stelimus was actually a mighty, powerful dragon lord who became infatuated by Copper and, to be with her, took the form of a deer. Why not a pony? Because that would've been too easy. The dragon lord was a fan of complicated things, after all.

Shining Armor was patrolling the streets with some new recruits when he spotted and witnessed his daughter doodling and giggling to herself and sighed. He was a bit more than 'slightly' embarrassed with how she acted, although no one in the kingdom ever said anything about it. Most likely because they don't care.

Yolumay was awoken from her recovery by an extremely loud, very girlish scream.

"Huh. Must be Effervescence. What did Stelimus do?"

Effervescence came out of the spa, quite literally making the vines and trees explode and cast pieces everywhere. She was completely covered in slime, and the products on her face, as well as her make-up, had drizzled down her fur, displaying what could best be described as a witch. Her subjects screamed in terror when they saw her and galloped away for fear of their safety. Meanwhile, Stelimus sat at the base of Effervescence's throne, relaxing and thinking to himself. His thoughts were put on hold when the god-queen saw him and barreled forth, slapping him across the face and sending him flying towards a tree. Luckily, with his newly acquired knowledge of spirit essence, he was able to summon a hand to swing him around the tree and back onto the ground.

Stelimus rubbed the side of his face and looked up at his aunt." Ow. What was that for?!"

"YOU DID THIS!" the god-queen bellowed.

Her voice resonated through the forest and the surrounding lands.

"Did what? Gah! What happened to your face?!"

The vines and flowers all around Effervescence's body start to vibrate and tense up while the white flowers in question were starting to turn orange as well. She was even going so far as to bare her teeth.

"What's wrong with you? After getting into that weird...shower slide...thing...I came here to stretch out a bit and relax. What better way is there to relax for a deer than to lie down in the forest?" Stelimus gestured to the plant life surrounding him.

The prince had no time to react that he was already clamped within several vines that erupted from the ground beneath him and put him eye-to-eye with his aunt. Even worse was a sickle blade protruding from Effervescence's hoof. She likely just grew it with the aid of her plants around.

"Did you already forGET that I have no qualms with killing the spawn of my brother?"

Stelimus remained silent for a moment then gulped. He had indeed forgotten.

"I don't like being mocked. It...degrades me."

She approached the scythe close to Stelimus' neck and her expression became quite vile and disturbing. Judging by what Grimliss had told him, Gregary would simply be sent back to his world the second he was killed but...but...

"I don't...want to...leave..."

The scythe stopped by the split-hairs-of-an-ant's-butt from Stelimus' neck and started trembling. After much teeth grating from Effervescence, the doe dropped her head and dissolved her weapon as well as releasing her nephew.

"Gah!" she shouted.

Stelimus tatted himself after falling on his rear and looked up at his aunt. "What gives? I thought you were going to kill me."

Effervescence turned towards her nephew, rage still seething through her every follicle. "I gave my word that I would not harm you to Grimliss."

"Huh?"

"If I go to war with you, he'll declare war on me and my domain and destroy everything I worked so hard to build!"

"Wow. He really likes me. That's...borderline creepy that he would declare war over my death. I feel like Archduke Franz Ferdinand. So--"

"Get out of my sight!"

The deer galloped away as fast as he could, taking a random route through the forest to reach his sister. Meanwhile, Effervescence was about to both cry and explode until Diva came to help her with basic cleaning. She used a warm towel and some clean, soapy water to remove the slime. The god-queen groaned in irritation.

"What am I going to do? Every sibling ends up hating me!"

"I don't know what to say, my goddess. To our eyes, you have no faults. We cannot aid you with such an abstract analogy," Diva calmly explained.

"Hmmm. Perhaps using the usual method won't work?"

"He's a stag, my queen. Would it not be unnatural for him to have an interest in this relating to fashion and style?"

Effervescence pondered deeply and tatted her chin a few times. "Yes. You're right. There's still the smith. Perhaps he will forgive my...misstep."

"I think you mean 'short temper'," Diva corrected.

Effervescence glared at her, but Diva stared right back, her face showing naught but the haughty expression many butlers and maids sported.

"Fine. Be that way," the god-queen huffed.

"What do you suppose we do about his sister? You do know where she is, don't you?"

"I know the general direction of her position. I don't know the precise location. Still, I suppose he must've killed her by now."

Diva paused her cleaning for a moment but quickly resumed when her shock had passed. "What do you mean? Why would he assassinate his sister?"

"Because all of Anglacite's children have always followed in his hoofsteps and, more likely than ever, had a tendency to kill siblings that wronged them. Considering what I learned about Yolumay, she wrong my nephew quite horrendously when he was just born."

Diva became confused. "When he was just born? Who saved him? And how would he even remember that he was wronged?!"

"Yolumay never said nor explained. Regardless, the next time I see Stelimus, I'm taking him to the smithy. Stags love all things war equipment."

"That does bring up an interesting question."

"What question, Diva?"

"You told me your brother, Grimliss, never bothered with his nephews and nieces. Even when Yolumay was struck down by her parents, he never reacted nor did he seem to care."

Effervescence opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. "Wait...You're right. Grimliss was even more distant than I was was concerning Anglacite. What changed, exactly?" The god-queen turned to face Diva, a look of concern and curiosity saturating her face. "There might be more to Stelimus than I gave him credit for."

While Effervescence planned, Stelimus was recovering from the terrible fright he had just endured.

"I take it our aunt was the one to have bellowed to such an extreme?"

"Yes."

"And she didn't kill you?"

"No. Apparently, if she hurts me, Grimliss will declare war on her and this place?"

Yolumay started to think, but she didn't seem particularly interested in the potential war. "So, he would actually go into a full blown, war just because you would be killed?"

Yolumay didn't think much about her conclusion at first, then the sudden realization hit her like a morbidly obese shopper running to the food aisle during Black Friday.

"That means I have free range to do to her whatever I please, although, there's always a time and place for everything, and judging by her outburst, she will certainly kill me if I don't time the moments where I annoy her and let her cool down."

Stelimus turned around to view his sister was just staring at him with wide eyes and turned-in lips.

"What?"

"N-n-n-n-nothing."

"Stelimus?! Where are you?" a voice shouted.

"Crap, that's her. I'll be back."

The young stag left his sister behind and galloped away from the voice. After all, he had to be sure that his sister wouldn't be discovered, or, at least, that Effervescence couldn't use the excuse of 'accidentally' finding her and torturing her some more. Back in the throne...zone, Stelimus witnessed his aunt smiling at him in a creepy fashion.

"Hello, nephew. I wish to apologize for my outburst earlier."

"Apologize? She must be drunk again. She certainly wouldn't be apologizing if there wasn't an ulterior motive. This is sounding like a cartoon. Okay?"

"How about we go to the smith I mentioned prior. It is time we give you your gifts!" She enthusiastically clapped her forehooves together. Diva rolled her eyes in response.

"Come, come!"

Stelimus shrugged and followed his aunt through the forest, passing by several of the god-queen's subjects and shops. Effervescence took a pathway where the plant life was starting to take on orange and yellow hues, then rusted hues. It was strange. If anything could be similar, Gregary thought that the pathway was like walking through the apocalypse's version of Autumn. At the end of the pathway was a bizarrely twisted tree. A large, gaping hole had formed in its trunk and someone had decided to use it as their home. There were a few rounded, uneven shelves...all over the inner wall of the tree. There was no sign of anything a blacksmith used, though.

Stelimus looked around then jumped away when he saw a tree's trunk explode outwards and a weird, gigantic mangling of twisting tree branches started moving forward while an enormous, wooly creature followed behind. The wooly beast's body was completely white with wool, but its black fingers still pushed through the substance on its arms.

"WHAT IS THAT?!" Stelimus shouted in terror.

The wooly creature turned to face the duo. Only its eyes and small portion of its facial skin could be seen through the wool. It barreled towards the deer while the twisting mass of tree branches stopped in place.

Effervescence smirked a little. "Those are the smithies I spoke about."

"'Those'?! As in plural?!"

"Aye, tineh dehr," the giant spoke.

Stelimus was terrified. While he just reached his aunt's neck, or, at least, was slightly higher than the base of her neck in terms of height, this giant towered over even her. If he had to guess, Stelimus was certain it was at least three, if not four meters high. As tall as two Effervescences put on each other, if he had to use a comparison.

"Oy'm theh assisant 'o theh blecksmith. E's ovah thehr." The giant pointed towards the shifting mass of branches.

The branches started rotating faster until they locked into a bipedal form with three-fingered hands. Large amounts of small, cyan-colored veins started pulsating around the branches until seven large ones, roughly diamond-shaped with rounded points, appeared over the body. Two appeared at the highest area, akin to a head, but they weren't evenly placed. One was slightly diagonally placed while the other was perfectly horizontal. One appeared on the right shoulder and was vertical, two appeared on the right arm, one slightly crooked on the bicep, and the other one on the palm of the hand. Another appeared on the inner, left thigh, and the last was on the right knee.

"What the hell is that thing?!"

"Ach, Oy'm a Yusimon 'n moy blacksmith teacha ovah thehr's a Trimb."

"R-really? 'Trimb'? That sounds like an unintentional pun..."

The ivory stone

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"What does he want, Effervescence?" the trimb asked.

The doe narrowed her gaze and frowned at the trimb's words. "I've already told you to call me QUEEN!"

The trimb shrugged. "Yes, and I've constantly mentioned that I'm not interested in satisfying your narcissistic pleasures."

Effervescence's antler tips started to glow with a sharp, white light and lowered her head and spread her forelegs wide; but the trimb simply rolled all the bright, widened lights on its body.

"Oh dear GOD they're eyeballs," Gregary shouted in his head.

"You have killed my form countless times in the past. I cannot die while I'm in contact with the land, and especially the forest."

Effervescence look down in thought then stood back up, extinguishing the lights on her antlers. "You have a point." she brushed her neck and looked at the trumb 'seductively' from the side of her gaze. "And I find that excessive effort with no end goal ruffles up a doe's fur and ruins the glamor and polish of her antlers."

Stelimus shuddered. "Why is she using that shitty, seductive voice? Sounds like something I'd hear from a bar singer in the 30s."

The trimb ignored her commentary, evidently unaffected by it. It would be surprising if a plant were affected by words. "What is it you need? Another mirror? A throne?"

Effervescence's cheeks puffed up. She was flustered that her 'technique' didn't work. "I'm here for the armor and weapon I ordered for my nephew."

The yusimon stepped forward and smashed its giant palms against each other. "Yes. That dinnae help us when yeh're net givin' us theh preper measures. It dinnae helps! Woy're yeh cohnstantly orderin' stohf frum us 'n nevehr give us preper values?!"

"I guess I figured you were capable of being proper blacksmiths," Effervescence taunted.

The wooly giant sighed and face-palmed, then Stelimus hopped forward to prevent his aunt's reign of fabulous terror.

"I'm the nephew. You can measure me."

Both blacksmiths leaned over Stelimus, making him feel absolutely puny. If the yusimon was already giant, the trimb was taller than even it. And it was large to boot! Although it did not tower over the yusimon. It was simply a bit taller.

"He is so tiny," the trimb noted nonchalantly.

"Then weh go tae the smithin'!"

The wooly giant picked up Stelimus in its giant hand, then stomped towards the weird tree and barreled through the tree branches surrounding it to get behind said giant plant, all while Stelimus screamed in shock and horror. Effervescence didn't much care for the state of her nephew, but she was curious about why the assistant blacksmith acted so...rough?

"What is the name of your assistant?" She asked.

"Veeyol."

"Bizarre name."

"He's from a village located in extremely high mountains to the north where everything looks like it's made from cotton."

"Cotton?" Effervescence started to mumble under her breath. "I could have so many beautifying dresses made just for me. More people would love me and fall under my whims."

"What?"

"I was asking if you knew why he appeared to ignore personal space."

"As much as I know, those of his race are all like that. Perhaps a cultural raising."

"Hmph. Their culture is...shameful. They should come to live under me. I would protect them and teach them how to admire true beauty and culture."

The trimb didn't respond, instead preferring to revert to its weird, massed mess of a first form and left to join its assistant.

Ignoring much of what happened in-between, Stelimus sat on the floor next to an enormous forge where Veeyol and the trimb worked on the weapons and the armor. Veeyol had just finished measuring Stelimus and was busy carving out the leather straps and nails for his armor as well as the rounded grip for the hilt of whatever it was they were making. Several hours had passed and Stelimus was starting to grow antsy. He was never impatient as a human, but staying in place for hours on end pressed against his limits like a support beam. Finally, the trimb slithered towards the deer and reformed itself.

"Tell me, which would you prefer to adorn the coloration and exterior substance of your armor and weapon?"

The trimb brought forth its two arms. In its right palm sat a blueish crystal with a deep, emerald-green hue showing when it was opposite the sunlight passing through the branches. It was rough to the touch and very sturdy, something fit for a true warrior or to at least impress the populace while being its ruler. It was something Stelimus felt ancient conquerors would hold with pride. The prince did not like it, but he felt his entire being, his soul, calm and find peace when it gazed at the other stone. This one was just a stone, unlike its counterpart. It was white? No, vanilla colored? Yes. A pale vanilla; Ivory. It was extremely smooth and rounded. No sharp edges were present. Before Stelimus continued analyzing it, he took a step back.

"What do you mean? You'll choose the color and stylizing?"

Veeyol leaned backwards from his crafting table and laughed. "Ech. It's gon' tae chang yehr stoof's appearance. Theh mehtul will beh lookin' layk yehr chosen stohn."

Stelimus blinked a few times then attempted to look at the trimb, but gave up when he couldn't find anything remotely resembling a face. "What?"

"He said the metal of the armor will take on the traits of the stone you choose."

"Oh...Then I'll take that ivory colored one."

The right hand clenched like a flytrap and the crystal disappeared when the trimb's arm returned to its disjointed state. "Good choice. Clamorrous, it's called. Comes from lands FAR to the east, where only sands and stones grow and the jackals weep."

That's all the trimb said before leaving, prompting Stelimus to rub his face in irritation. "Why are they BOTH 'mystery writers'?" he mumbled to himself.

Once again, nothing was happening, but just by craning your neck a little, one could see Effervescence through the tree lines. She was repairing some of the damages caused by the dracoliches, but not with a method one would expect from a creature that controls plant magic or life magic. The usual consensus was that the holder would make their magic dance around like a curtain of gentle light, sparkles and snowflakes of light following their path to beauty; Or like a ribbon dancer, artistically and expertly twirling their ribbons to garner all attention to the serpent swimming in the air. No. Effervescence wasn't doing that. Whether it be because she doesn't care about the current public, though no one could see her, or simply could not care less, she was not artistic in any sense.

The god-queen blasted the plants and ground that had been sapped by the dead flames with a giant beam of light. It was like watching a laser weapon from science fiction fire off. It completely engulfed everything and...cleaned it? There were no trees or any kind of plant life left in the blast zone, but what was once a black, cracked, dry ground had returned to the mushy brown color that made you question whether you stepped in poop or it was just the dirt. Effervescence was very weird, and the more Stelimus watched her, the less confident he became in thinking he knew her personality. She seemed extremely eccentric but rather loose the first time he met her, judging by the belch she had made, but she wasn't doing that anymore. She was obsessed with her beauty and keeping a calm and elegant stature in front of her subjects, but the precise second Stelimus simply goo'd her fur with slugs and snails, she exploded in a massive rage that should have demeaned her. What was her gimmick?

About seventeen minutes later, Veeyol came forth with a small pieces of ivory-colored armor under slung his left arm; and a tall, wide mirror held in his right. Stelimus couldn't distinguish any features until the yusimon grabbed him and started forcing the clamps and straps of the armor onto Stelimus, completely ignoring the stag's protests and struggles. Once his armor was on, Veeyol posed him in front of the mirror it was holding up, then it slammed the helmet on his head, tiny holes at the top made to let his antlers through.

"Yeh're armor is moyd ta adapt tae yehr herns when yeh're bigger. I''ll split 'n two noiceleh."

"What?"

"He said the helmet can adapt to your head once your antlers grow out. You can either just plop it on like this or split it apart from the back,' the trimb 'translated' as he approached.

"Why're yeh olways doin' that?" Veeyol threw an arm forward then spread it wide. "Why? They understand meh!"

"No. They don't, Veeyol. Your accent is too thick."

While the two argued, Stelimus observed and admire his armor. It was, of course, ivory colored, but almost his whole body was covered by the armor, and it felt very flexible. From the hole for his neck to the back of his body, the armor rose up gently like a wave, leaving another 'scale' to rise up beneath its highest point, and so forth until the tail was reached. The deer's neck wasn't unprotected, however. It was covered by a piece of layered leather, the meshes overlapping and intertwining together to make a thick-yet-flexible piece of armor. Next came his legs and hooves: They imitated the body armor perfectly, save for the ankle and knees. These pieces were also covered in just the leather, but folding pieces of metal were connected to the leg pieces between them for extra protection. It was something even human smiths from medieval ages could not create or come up with. These two were incredibly skilled. The hoof-boots were adorned with a single patch of blue metal in the middle-front of the armor, giving them a little bit of additional personality.

"And here's your weapon," the trimb said.

It casually tossed what looked like a lance at Stelimus. The young deer bumbled around with the weapon in an attempt to catch the weapon which he finally stabilized after his thirteenth attempt at grabbing the long hilt. The base of the spear was covered in a black colored tape, but it was unusually wide and the base of the spear's butt was hollowed out and uncovered. The blade, however, was shaped very strangely: Its back, being the smooth portion of the blade, was held firmly in place by a long, metal beam running along the metal's length. As for its sharper edge, the base almost immediately curved inward then rounded back out in a crescent shape before rounding back out to a larger, pushed out, inverted crescent shape and ending in a sharpened tip. This gave the blade a peculiar, wavy appearance.

The trimb crouched next to Stelimus and calmly stated: "That spear has more to it than you think."

Copper stood in a small dressing room within the tower. She stood atop a pedestal and was surrounded by many couturières and couturiers who were taking her measures while the young mare observed herself from the wall of mirrors surrounding her. Cadance stood next to the door and smiled gleefully.

"What kind of dress do you think would work best for me? And what color?" Copper asked her mother.

Cadance tapped her chin a bit. "Hmmm. Seeing your coat color, I would say a deep, rich red, or purple. Everything works with purple."

Copper looked back at herself in the mirror, pondered a bit, then nodded. "I think you're right. A nice red."

"With purple outlines,' one of the couturières added.

"Oh! YES YES YES!" Copper started hopping up and down, aggravating the ponies.

"STOP MOVING!"

The mare immediately froze. "Sorry."

"Do you think he'll like me in a dress?" Copper sat on her haunches and clutched her head, aggravating the ponies even further. "Do you think he'll like me?!"

"Blossom," Cadance began. She levitated her daughter back into place for the couturiers. "I'm certain he'll love you. I bet he'll find you even more beautiful if I spruce you up some more myself!"

The pink alicorn levitated some special 'beauty' kits from behind one of the mirrors, making her daughters eyes sparkle.

"I'll show you what I do to make Shining go crazy around me. I'm certain you'll have that silly deer kissing you passionately in no time."

One of the couturiers measuring Copper Blossom looked at his colleague with disgusted and fatigued eyes. "We better be paid extra. I'm sick of hearing this. She's always talking about that deer." He cringed briefly. "ALWAYS!"

Oh no, Tremor!

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The trimb jabbed at the base of the blade, making the hilt convulse and wrap around Stelimus' left foreleg while the blade bent backwards against his leg.

"So that's what that flat part behind the blade was for," Stelimus noted.

The trimb remained silent for just a second. "Yes. That's why," it replied awkwardly.

Stelimus narrowed his gaze, but the trimb ignored it, preferring to walk towards where Effervescence was...'delicately repairing' her forest. The trimb and Effervescence returned in front of the weird tree, with Effervescence trying to awe her nephew by posing and having a gentle golden light wash over her from above. It didn't work. Stelimus looked up briefly at her without moving his head, then turned his back to her so she would leave him alone. Naturally, she became flustered. In response, she grabbed him by his upper shoulders then spun him around so he could face her directly.

"So? What do you think of my gifts to you?" She fluttered her eyes slowly and delicately.

"They're nice, and I'm quite interested in how those two work so well, but won't I grow out of these?"

"S' flexible mahtehriel, that is. It'll stretch wit yer bodeh whoyle yeh grow oldah," Veeyol said.

"Ah...I almost understood you, that time."

The yusimon grinned...or smiled? Stelimus wasn't certain as he couldn't see through the thick wool of this giant creature. Effervescence stepped in front of him, cutting his view of the two smiths and putting herself on center stage.

"You don't want to learn what they do or how they do it," she spoke matter-of-factly.

Stelimus cocked an eyebrow. "And why not?"

She chuckled sarcastically. "Because you're royalty, obviously. You must keep your appearances out of their reach and stay away from them, now come along."

Stelimus turned around and looked at the two smiths with an apathetic gaze just to show that he really didn't care about what his aunt thought, and they were smart enough to understand his intentions right away. Every day was the same thing with his aunt. She would try to shower him with gifts and other things for some reason he didn't understand. Yet, she wouldn't even ask about Yolumay, let alone think about her. It became quite apparent that she had focused all her attention on her nephew now, which was a good thing...in a way. She was becoming more and more obsessed with her nephew every day, and it was starting to worry not only Stelimus, but his sister as well.

Still, he adored his weapon and armor and frequently trained with them, if only to get used to their weight. His lance was surprisingly easy to wield despite its size and its wielder's strength, although that as about all one could note from it. The stag would only ever take it off when he needed to clean it when grime and muck latched onto it, or simply for hygienic purposes. What? Can't go walking around in the same underwear for seven days, so why do that with armor?

Stelimus was currently busy trying to use his lance better in a bipedal stance. Strangely enough, the armor created a sort of counter-balance at the base of his tail, providing him much easier control on his hind legs despite his cervidae body not being made for such a posture. He wasn't perfectly upright, but he wasn't hunched over, either.

"You're getting better with that thing," Yolumay said.

She was doing much better under the care of her brother, something she couldn't come to term with.

"Yeah. It's actually quite fun to use."

There was a long moment of awkward silence the princess had to interrupt. "So, is she teaching you anything? That's the only reason you would have remained her for so long."

Stelimus jabbed the lance-head into the ground and leaned against it. "I was supposed to learn her side of magic or whatever it was." Stelimus scratched his chin. "Unfortunately, she has been trying to gain my favor with gifts. She thinks giving plenty of gifts is going to buy someone's love. It's worse when the target is family, because you know how the person is."

"Have you tried bringing it up?"

"Yes, and she constantly avoids the question and changes subject. It's like trying to talk with a politician."

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

"When is Grimliss going to get you out of here? It's been a week."

Stelimus conveniently ended up getting contacted by his uncle mere seconds after Yolumay mentioned him.

"Stelimus, it'll be there in a few minutes. Hang in there," Grimliss told him.

The young stag grabbed his lance and wrapped it back around his foreleg. "His transport is coming. Well," he clapped his hooves together. "looks like I'll be bidding our aunty goodbye."

The stag when towards the throne 'room' where his aunt was being courted by a group of males who had started to fight each other, much to her amusement. Stelimus carefully waded his way around them and climbed atop the pedestal to see his aunt eating a weirdly colored grape. It looked like a paintball.

"I hate to interrupt your gladiator battle, Caligula, but I have to tell you that I'm leaving."

The doe crushed a piece of her throne under one of her hooves but kept her 'delicate' and 'beauteous' expression. "What do you mean 'leave'? You have everything you need right here, and we've become best friends, haven't we?" she smiled.

Stelimus pushed her foreleg off his shoulder. "No. Showering someone with gifts won't make them like you more. I do appreciate the armor and lance, however, but you did not teach me what I needed to know, so I'm taking my leave with my sister."

Effervescence stood up on her throne and the atmosphere around the surrounding area started to became heavier and more poisonous.
"So...you're saying that, not only are you leaving me, but you're taking her away from me too?"

"Taking her away? You didn't even take care of her the first time!"

The 'courting' stallions and stags stopped their fighting and were galloping away. Effervescence's energy exploded outwards, nearly destroying the entirety of the forest area that constituted her throne room. Stelimus jumped back at the last second and pulled out his spear to slice away some life energy that bolted towards him in mid-air.

"YOU WON'T LEAVE! I WON'T ALLOW IT!" Effervescence bellowed.

Her voice was exceptionally loud and nearly deafened Stelimus, but he hung on. He used his spirit essence to conjure up bone smog; Basically just smoke made from powdered bones. It wasn't difficult for the stag, and he took the opportunity to flee towards his sister, but his aunt ignored the distraction and gave chase. Whatever her essence was doing, it was bringing life to the forest. Literally. Roots were bursting out of the ground to try and grab Stelimus' legs while trees swooped down in an attempt to immobilize him. He used more essence to bring some of the still-dead plant life out of the ground and meld them into a wall. Looking back, it seemed to work for just a moment, but the smile on the prince's face flipped upside-down when he saw his aunt burst through the wall, making the wood splinter in all directions.

"I've been killing myself to please you, Stelimus! Why would you betray me like this?!"

"I'm not your pet, you crazy cat-lady! Oooh. Cat-lady. Oh, that was very clever, Gregary. Way to go. Certainly deserve first place comedian award for that one. Oh God. I BECAME ADAM SANDLER?!"

The chase continued until Stelimus arrived in Yolumay's retreat, prompting him to jump in the air and spin around mid-air so he could face his aunt while he slid to a stop, weapon ready and magic prepared. Yolumay started firing crescent-shaped blades of life essence at her nephew who cut them in half with his lance, giving another point to its already amazing status.

"I took care of you and gave you love when your own family would not!" Effervescence cried. "Your father doesn't care about you, nor does your mother! And your uncle is only using you!"

"Yes. Logical, Mr. Data. Using me by only giving instead of receiving and protecting me."

"You say that now but wait until the future, when he kills you for some contrived reason! I'll keep you here, along with your sister." She caught sight of Yolumay and started yelling at her as well. "And YOU! They loved you even less! They pushed you away! What did I give you? A chance to belong! I taught you everything possible to be loved by everyone, but you rejected me. You're just like your father and all your siblings before you! Selfish, vain, violent."

Yolumay wouldn't stand for such talk and stepped forward next to her brother. "Selfish? Vain? You were only trying to turn me into you." She pointed accusingly. "I refused it, and ran away to keep my own identity. I chose my own path, one you tried to destroy, and my brother helped mend my wounds, something that no one else in the family ever tried to do. Ever."

Effervescence's eyes started to well up with tears, then she glared at her nephew. "It's YOUR fault! You're the one who did this! HOW DARE YOU!"

Several sharp vines burst out of the ground but were incapable either getting past Stelimus' blade or penetrate his armor. That's when Yolumay witnessed one come from her brother's right side and jet towards his neck. She jumped in front of it and immediately felt a sharp pain in her rib cage. Stelimus had no time to react to the vine, but he was horrified by what happened to his sister.

"Yolumay!" He fell to her side and put her head on his hoof. She was already in poor condition before, but now? She definitely wouldn't make it.

"She'll love me in death if she didn't love me in life, and so will you, Stelimus. She tried to kill you! This is another gift to you. Shouldn't you be happy and love me as well?!" Effervescence begged.

The stag kept a stoic face and said nothing. Removing himself from his sister, he faced his aunt and closed his eyes. Death energies started to focus into his growing antlers. The lights around the forest began to dim and white bolts of magic started to erupt in mid-air between the two warring parties. Stelimus was blown back when a tear in space opened itself. Looking at it, the stag witnessed a giant, long, arm of bones reaching out and opening the portal more. Out of it came some sort of gigantic, clothed being. It hadn't even fully stepped out that Effervescence was already blasting it with a tremendous amount of life magic to push it back in. She was absolutely terrified of whatever that thing was, but it took every bit of effort and concentration to keep it at bay, preventing her from stopping a gigantic, undead worm from erupting out of the ground and 'eating' Stelimus and his sister before burrowing back deep underground and refilling the hole behind it.

With a final effort, the doe pushed the creature back into its hole and closed the spatial tear. She fell to her knees on the ground and huffed, then she started to cry quietly and held her head low in the darkness. "You'll love me. Everyone will love me. I don't want to be alone...I want family, too."

Unexpected Reaction

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The tundras were covered with legions upon legions of ponies and deer in square formations accompanied by siege engines sitting behind them. Catapults, trebuchets, and even a few strange cylindrical objects surrounded by crystals. The only thing comparable was the Roman Legion, and even they weren't so numerous. Stelimus was standing behind everything on an incline for a reason that eluded him. His father was shouting something to his troops while the ponies were being cheered on by their own rulers. During these speeches, a thick white mist settled onto the field and a familiar, gigantic black figure emerged from it. The ponies and deer charged forward, attacking the creature while Grimliss and Effervescence charge forward, Anglacite following closely.

Soldiers were swiped away like toys by its massive arms and siege projectiles bounced off of its body like pieces of cotton. Effervescence was caught on the ground and smushed under foot while Grimliss was caught in midair and crushed by its massive grip. Stelimus couldn't believe what he was seeing. His own family, the lauded 'gods', crushed in mere seconds. He was too caught up in disbelief to register what was happening. The deer's stare was interrupted by Copper Blossom grabbing him and shaking him.

"Stelimus! We have to leave! We have to go!"

"But...My family...How?" Stelimus stared blankly at the giant while Copper started to shake him.

A shadow glared over the two and became smaller and smaller as time passed. Copper backed away in fear and started to look around, only to look up at the last moment and get flattened by a crystal cannon.

"No!" Stelimus shouted.

The giant was staring at Stelimus from across the battlefield. There was nothing left standing, and the grounds were littered with the broken and shattered remains of two armies as well as the bodies of two god-kings and the rulers of the Crystal Kingdom. The enormous behemoth started walking towards the young stag who, in a panic, created spirit-fire orbs to attack it, but they had no effect. By the time it was in arm's reach, it started to tremble and its eyes ceased to glow. Long, bony protrusions erupted from its body and split its abdomen in half. The protrusions were fingers on thin hands and attached to a terrifying creature that Stelimus' mind could not recognize, but its laughter was easy to associate.

"A dream within a dream? Or are you just hopping through time and space?"

"What are you?!"

"The idealism and idolism of the mortal plane always amuses, but when reaching out to this plane, many weak minds were found, but yours is the most familiar."

"Y-you didn't answer my question!" Stelimus was backing up away from the mass of darkness approaching him and averted his gaze.

"Yes. Fear. Phobias. Paranoia. It sustains. Continue like this and you won't see the missing piece of the future. Even false gods can die, but not all are so fortunate."

"Wake up!"

"What?!"

Stelimus bounced up in fright and looked around to see he was in a some room surrounded by crystal walls. His bed was a large, monarch style complete with rooftop, but there wasn't much else in there aside from Copper Blossom, Princess Cadance, and God-King Anglacite, and it was said God-King who woke Stelimus up.

"What's going on? When did we get here?"

"That is what I wish to find out. I learned that my own was wounded by his Aunt and somehow survived." Anglacite bellowed in laughter and patted his son on his back. "I knew you would be a true heir despite your shortcomings!"

"What?!" Cadance stepped up towards the stag until she was mere inches away from his face. "Your own son was nearly killed, by his own family no less, and this is how you react? How could you be so...heartless?"

The deer looked away and placed a hoof in front of the princess' muzzle. "Away from my face, pony-song. I have no need to explain the thoughts of my kind to you."

"That's no excuse for your behavior towards your own family!"

Anglacite lowered his hoof and slowly turned to face the pink pony, his eyes filled with rage. "And what would YOU know about family? What would YOU know about losing so many and living so long? Lives become trivial. Lives ARE trivial. Only those born with value deserve to live. Not the strongest. Not the weakest. Only those with value."

"What?" Cadance reared back.

While they bickered, Copper glomphed Stelimus and hugged him close. "I was so worried. I thought I was going to lose you!"

"What are you talking about? What happened? Where's my sister? Where's my armor and weapon?"

"Your sister is in intensive treatment for magical purification and recovery. She isn't doing very well, but the doctors say she should have died weeks ago. How she's still alive, they don't know."

"I need to go see her."

"No. Stay in bed. You're still being treated as well."

"What?"

Looking at his left foreleg, Stelimus could see that his arm had a tube going into it and feeding him nutrients as well as a large halo of floating, blue crystals draining something from him and gradually going from a pale blue to a sickly yellow-green.

"You and your sister were infected by some sort of contaminated magic. You'll have to ask the doctors."

"And what happened?"

"Well, when that giant worm-thing your sister and you came in burst through the ground of the town square -destroying many houses and tossing others in a hole- it spat you two out, but you were unconscious, then it disappeared back into its hole. It was...fairly gross. Everypony called for help and you two were taken here."

"Here? Why not the hospital?"

"We didn't really know what to do. It was all so sudden, so we brought you to the tower. Then, well, you know the rest."

"And my stuff?"

"Oh, it's right there against the wall," the mare pointed to a pile of white armor.

"Huh. It is."

The two said nothing until Anglacite broke the silence and walked away from Cadance.

"Don't you walk away from me!" Cadance commanded.

"I'm going to take my own bone and velvet to his people to be treated there."

Stelimus raised an eyebrow. "And what about Yolumay?"

"Yolumay?"

The young stag sat up. "Yes, Yolumay. Your daughter? The one you tossed onto her aunt and nearly killed her because of it?"

Anglacite shrugged in response. He seemed genuinely confused. Stelimus' face started to turn red although he didn't have time to explode before a doctor came into the room by literally kicking the doors down. He was a very burly stallion of massive proportions. He towered over Cadance but didn't quite reach Anglacite's height. He wore a white coat that wasn't even button shut and, so, drooped to his sides and nearly got caught under his hooves with every step he took. His coat was a sickly brown and his tail was a contrasting, bright purple. His eyes were the same color as his mane. Judging by the bulges under his coat, he was also a pegasus. The most notable thing about him is that he wore a puffy white wig akin to those worn by nobles in Europe during the eighteenth century, and it was well kempt, too!

"He will be going nowhere." Anglacite had no time to say anything before a patch of surgical was applied to his mouth. "His condition is dire despite him feeling well about it."

"But I-Wait, how--"

The doctor turned towards the princess of love and handed her a note he hid in a pocket inside his coat. "Princess Cadance, I will need you to assist the general of the Crystal Guard and help control the female deer."

"Why? What's wrong with her?" Stelimus asked.

The doctor cleared his throat and adjusted his wig. "Unlike you, she is...extremely 'energetic'. Almost half of the ER staff has been knocked out simply from exhaustion or by having their heads rammed through the ceiling." He turned around and looked at Anglacite struggling to take the tape off his mouth. "You deer don't exactly have high regard for ponies, do you?" He lift an eyebrow and peeked at his patient from the corner of his eye.

The room started to get colder as frost grew along the walls and started to crack the crystal. A shattering noise was heard coming from the tape on Anglacite's mouth, and the doctor had no time to comment on it before the god-king whacked him with his leg with such strength and ferocity that the good doctor found himself flying through several crystal walls.

"DRILL PICK!" Cadance shouted in horror and chased after him.

"Hmph. Serves him right for trying to humiliate me." Anglacite snorted then turned his gaze to his son. "If you have a chance to perish, then I will leave you in the care of these..." He looked around, taking in his surroundings. "Ponies," he spat.

He left shortly after and Cadance came back in holding the doctor in a field and placed him carefully on the ground. He held a foreleg to his chest and gasped for air while Cadance consoled him.

"Are you okay, Drill Pick?"

"Aye. It's a good thing you're such a quick shot with your barriers. I think he might've broken a rib or...twelve."

"Oh no. We need to get you to the hospital immediately!"

"I would rather we go to the beauty salon."

"What? Why?"

"Because he ruined my wig." Drill Pick pushed out a pouty lip and started to tap his wig.

Cadance chuckled calmly and started to relax. "You know, you're lucky I'm so good at creating barriers." She turned towards Stelimus and her mood swam towards the deepest depths. "And you."

"What 'And you'? Are you going to blame me for the behavior of my dad? Oh, I'm SO sorry. I forgot I control the minds of everyone." Stelimus reached under his pillow and pulled a hoof out with nothing on there. "Here's the controller for his collar. I set it on 'edgy'."

Copper giggled and Cadance rolled her eyes. "I just wanted to thank you for not being like your family. You're the first of that family that I've known which hasn't been extremely violent and-or rude towards ponies."

"Oh." Stelimus leaned back and calmed down. "Sorry."

"I've also met the rest of your family and I really don't know what you did but your uncle has become a lot more joyful and kindly than he used to."

"Really? How was he before?"

Cadance looked worriedly away and put a hoof gently to her teeth. "Eeeehhh, I'd rather not say. He wasn't violent, sure, but he was...distant. Yes. Distant. That's the best adjective."

"I see."

"So, Doctor. What's wrong with my Stely?" Copper rubbed her head in Stelimus' neck.

"'My Stely'?" Stelimus was perplexed.

"Well, and it's the same issue as with his sister, but--"

What's wrong with you?

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"-the issue lies with their magic," Drill Pick cleared his throat.

"What?" Copper said.

"Their bodies were being corrupted by whatever magical energies existed there, but their own magic was treated in such a way that it was practically tainted. Stelimus here, for some reason I'm unclear for, was practically shielded from magical corruption."

"It might have to do with the spirit essence I absorbed when training with my uncle in the swamps."

Drill tapped his chin. "Was he constantly emitting magical energies around himself violently or was there a source of the magic around?"

"No to both."

"Then your body and magical flow had time to adapt to the differences, preventing corruption, and this magic might have been stronger than the outside influence trying to corrupt you, hence why you're practically unaffected."

Cadance held the doctor up and winced from worry. "What would this corruption have done to them had they not left in time?"

"Well, a wide variety of things. Medical records are unclear on it as there are very VERY few instances when magical corruption actually occurred throughout the history of the lands. I can only hypothesize at this point."

"Then give it to me straight, doc." Stelimus calmly demanded. "I need to know what might happen to my sister."

Drill Pick kept his wig from falling and looked Stelimus in the eyes. "The most obvious would be death."

"Oh my." Copper put a hoof to her mouth.

"But, as we crystal ponies know; There are things far worse than death."

"Oblivion?" Stelimus added.

"No. That goes against many laws of physics and conservation. The issue would be the possible chance of minor or major mutation. This can just minorly affect the body or also completely warp the mind. Both could occur as well."

"Warp the mind? Doctor, my aunt was said to have been much calmer and a bit more level headed before departing from the tundra and reaching the forest she lived in. Is it possible--"

"That she became corrupted by something there? Most possible, but then what happened to your uncle?" Pick wondered curiously.

Stelimus' ears flopped onto his head and he looked away. "That's...personal, but he did so that to himself unintentionally."

"He must have a strong will to have only been physically corrupted, then. Fascinating." Drill Pick walked up to Stelimus and cleared his throat. "Stelimus, your family has been through some major events and their dna could help us cure many problems and learn about the current unknowns--"

"I'm not calling them just so you can experiment on them."

The doctor shrugged and casually walked away. "Well, I tried. However, I'm still curious about your aunt. Is it true that your 'god-kings', as they so humbly call themselves, were all affiliated to ice?"

"They didn't call themselves that, the deer did, then they adopted the title and got big heads over it, but yes. They were."

"Well, that's news to me." Drill pushed the air down several times with one hoof to try and focus. "Concentrate!" He whispered to himself. "Anyways, we know that your father is still connected to ice, and now we know that your uncle did that voluntarily to himself, but what about your aunt? Her case doesn't make sense."

"And she was erratic in behavior, often doing things that never made sense when linked together or simply not doing what she did in the past."

Cadance and the doctor gulped. "Stelimus, I don't know how to say this, but your sister was not only extensively corrupted physically, but her magic was tainted to the point that we could not filter her sources and rejuvenate a clean production."

"So...she might have gone crazy?"

"And her body mutated over the time we've kept her in the emergency room. It was a grueling process and we just weren't able to cleanse her. We just don't have the knowledge to do so!"

There was a long moment of silence.

"Do you think Yolumay's...operation, or whatever you've been doing to her, is over?" Stelimus asked.

"If we get you out of bed now and get you to the hospital, it will be."

"Then let's go!" Drill Pick threw himself onto the bed, pinning Stelimus down and causing Stelimus to struggle and try to break free. "Hey! Let me go! I'm going to go see my sister."

"It's not that, you idiot. We can let you get out of your bed when you're still hooked up to all these devices. It could be dangerous to just rip them out."

Stelimus was embarrassed. "Oh..."

After the relatively painless procedure of removing needles embedded into the skin, the stag was held up by Copper and he chuckled at this fact. "Well, I helped you when you were little and it looks like you're helping me now. How...awkward."

Copper chuckled. "Well, I'm not going to let you go from now on," she smiled.

The group went to the hospital where a number of low-level patients were standing outside the hospital walls, prompting Drill Pick's intrigue. He ran up to one of the patients currently standing in front of that tall, squarish structure.

"What's going on here? Why are you out of your room?"

"We don't know. There was an alert for us to leave. Something about contamination, and then--"

A loud flash and resounding explosion burst all the windows on the forty-one floors of the hospital into pieces which rained down onto the ponies below. Stelimus had a very bad feeling about the whole situation, then he heard the horrendous, whispering voice from his dream.

"A living nightmare can be just as it says, familiar soul. Would you let the soul chip exist in it or would you 'wake' it? The panic sustains."

"Come on, Copper. Let's go!"

"But it's dangerous!"

"I don't care."

Cadance was too busy tending to those wounded by the falling shards of glass to pay attention to the couple entering the hospital. The lobby was a mess, but the ponies in charge of the reception counter were still at their posts.

"Hey, get back out! You can't come in!"

Stelimus focused spiritual essence through his antlers and summoned a ghost to lead him to his sister. The ghost, with limbs shackled and a face in a cage, was more than happy to oblige, surprisingly. It led them down a hail, leaving a trail of wisping, white air behind it for the couple to follow. The ponies at the counter were too terrified by the spirit to do anything but cower. Another burst of energy went flying through the complex and the light flew across the walls, floors, and ceilings. It had no adverse affects aside from creating a light show and some distortions to the ghosts' spectral solidity. The couple galloped down several flights of stairs to the emergency section where the corruption of Effervescence's magic was far more apparent.

Giant roots were struggling to stick to where they were in the walls. They were being pulled back by something to their point of origin. If it was Yolumay herself or the doctors, Stelimus did not know, but he had to reach her. Unfortunately, he could not move forward anymore, and the guide spirit could not aid him. This time, Stelimus summoned death energies that left his antlers and chest with the appearances of floating, thin, black strands worming their way to the roots. Slithering within the wood caused them to instantly wither and rot away while the strands continued forward. With the path now clear, the couple hurried forward and rushed after the guide. After rounding two corners, the couple entered a room where Yolumay was. She was sitting upright and appeared to be meditating with the help of a few unicorns wearing helmets that covered their eyes but left their horns and ears free. Doctors were standing around and taking notes and preparing several cases of medication and injections. The unicorns in question were surrounding Yolumay with a bubble of pure magic that was absorbing the stray taint in her magic that kept bursting outwards.

"What's going on here?" Stelimus asked.

One of the unicorns broke off from the formation and spoke to the stag. "You must be her brother."

"Wow. That was fast. Uhhh, yes. She mentioned me?"

"No. We just know through obvious deduction."

Stelimus was curious and felt his inner prankster rise up when he waved his foreleg in front of the mare and received a smack upside the head in return.

"Ow!" The stag clutched his head. "What was that for?"

"Just because I don't use my eyes doesn't mean I can't see you."

She turned around and called out to Yolumay who stopped meditating and looked directly at her sibling. The other unicorns also ceased their actions, freeing her.

"We were using ancient magics to attempt control over the corruption so that it does not damage Yolumay's mind. Strangely, it already should have," the unicorn added.

"Really?"

"Hello, Stelimus," Yolumay said.

"Hello, sister. How are you?"

The doe creaked her neck and stretched a foreleg. "I could be better."

"So what was with all the explosions and bursts of magic?"

"The magic she could not control and that we could not hold back," one of the other unicorns said.

"Oh. I guess that makes sense...And you guys are supposed to be?"

"That's a secret, but we study and practice forbidden magics to better counter them."

Stelimus blinked several times. "Should you really be saying things like that in front of them?" He pointed to the doctors.

One of the doctors stepped forward. "They've helped us on occasion with magically inflicted sicknesses so we have no reason to denounce them, especially as they've never threatened anypony."

"I see."

Yolumay noticed a pony standing next to her smiling widely and staring at her with sparkly eyes.

"Who's the yellow pony-song?"

"I'm Copper Blossom! So your name is Yolumay?" She cheered and hugged the princess close to her.

"OW!" Yolumay shouted. "Get off of me!"

Copper obliged and apologized. "I'm sorry. I'm just very excited because I'm going to have my own family soon," she squeed.

"Oh, well good for you," Stelimus grinned.

Yolumay's eyes went wide when she suddenly realized what was going on in front of her, then smiled at her brother a devious grin. "Why, Stelimus, this is the one you're betrothed to?"

The smile melted off the stag's face. "Wh-wh-what are you t-talking about?"

"Why, she's the one you'll marry to forge an alliance between our people."

"Isn't it great?!" Copper hopped towards Stelimus and kissed him on the mouth before embracing him again.

The stag had ceased moving.

Copper Blossom let go of Stelimus. "Stelly?" She worried.

Stelimus fell onto the floor, rigid like a toy. Outside, Cadance jumped up to her hooves, interrupting her treatments of one of the wounded ponies.

"Princess Cadance? What's wrong?" the pony asked.

"I felt a disturbance in the flow."

Before a joining

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Cadance followed the trail of destruction and reached the room where only doctors, Copper, and two deer were standing. The group of 'arcaneomancers', as Stelimus would've called them, had disappeared in just the blink of an eye.

"What's going on here? What happened?" Cadance asked.

"Stelimus' sister's magic was going haywire while we tried to purge it from her system," one of the doctors explained.

"But we couldn't purge it completely, so we'll need her to return here every now and then to get it back under control until she can do so on her own," another added.

"I see." Cadance looked down and was surprised at what Stelimus was doing. "What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know!" Copper yelled. She kept pushing him, but he wouldn't change from his stiff position.

Yolumay laughed quite loudly then cleared her throat. "I told him he was betrothed to that ponysong, then he went stiff."

"He went...He didn't know?"

Yolumay shook her head. Cadance took the opportunity to observe the stag a bit closer and noticed that he seemed to have grown quite a bit since she last saw him. "Deer have strange growth spurts, it seems. Copper, my dear, please let go of him. I need to talk to him."

"But--" Copper immediately shut up when her mother widened her eyes and lowered her head slightly to make a creepy, overhead gaze that nobody likes.

The pink pony embraced the deer with her magic and took him out into the halls. Some of the branches that had grown along the hospital's interiors were still decaying and crumbling to dust while Cadance walked. Finding a nice place far enough away that the others wouldn't be able to overhear them wasn't actually very hard. Cadance cleared her throat and sternly looked at Stelimus.

"Did you really not know about the betrothal?" Stelimus did not respond. "Then why were you helping my daughter to get better after you met her?"

Stelimus gradually broke out of his trance and started to place his hooves on the ground.

"Because...it was the right thing to do."

"But you were barely a few years old. You couldn't have known to do something like that."

Stelimus had a guilty expression on his face and avoided looking Cadance in the eyes. "I would tell you, but it's a secret."

"Too much of a secret for your eventual mother-in-law?" Cadance raised an eyebrow.

Stelimus responded by looking at her with an apathetic gaze. "Yes. Your position within my life will not affect what I am doing and what I will be doing."

Cadance tilted her head slightly. She agreed. "This is true, but I must know; Do you love my daughter?"

"Yes."

"Love-love?"

"Ehhhhh...not 'love-'love'."

"Because she is a pony, I imagine?"

Stelimus looked baffled. "Wh...In a sense, but not the same way you think. I feel nothing for deer either, no matter the gender."

Cadance reared her head back. "You're--"

"No. Like I said, it involves my secret."

"I see..."

Stelimus tapped his hoof on the floor a few times then looked at Cadance directly in her eyes. "What would happen if I refused this marriage?"

Cadance whistled. "Well, you already know that the alliance would not happen."

"Yes."

"But we were already planning on calling on my aunts far south in Equestria."

"They have their own armies?"

"And they're the oldest alicorns still alive on the physical plane." Stelimus became curious at this mention. "They even have a rather large army at their disposal, so it would have bolstered our forces tremendously in combating the black snow."

"So, then, why would you bother with this alliance in the first place if you could fight them anyways?"

"Because only your father and his siblings know the black snow and how to combat it efficiently." Cadance turned around and walked a bit to keep her mind in shape. "Just because we can bring about a massive army does not mean we can fight this threat. Not only that, but regardless of what you may think, we've learned from your father's boasting that with every encounter they've had with the creature, one of them has died. As the alicorn of love, I have the greatest amount of empathy among most creatures in this world. I didn't want to see them break apart again--"

"But you would gladly sacrifice your own?" Stelimus interrupted.

Cadance turned around and glared at him. "-and see Deer kind eventually collapse from lack of guidance. They're so focused in every aspect around the 'god-kings' that, were the last three to disappear, they would likely collapse and disappear from the world."

Stelimus swiped a hoof. "Pshaw. You're just exaggerating."

"AM I? What do the reindeer do when they see you? What do they most complain about?"

"Uhh--"

"Who is the one that taught generation after generation what to think about ponies?"

"Not all of them--"

"Who is the one who would disown his own children because they don't meet their own standards and would corrupt the way their own people view them?"

"Now, Cadance. You know that's a loaded question. Many nobles do this as well. That's a problem you pulled out your ass at a magic parlor and called it the 'Giant pink hat trick."

Cadance cringed and looked at her rear, then covered it with her tail and blushed. "It's not that big..."

"Focus."

The pink alicorn shook her head. "I'm supposed to be the ruler of the Crystal Kingdom and Equestria's first line of information concerning relations with the people in the Tundra." She started pulling at her mane. "Yet I don't even know what to do with the deer! The only thing that can help me is the marriage with you!"

Stelimus became playful and shied away. "Oh, Cadance, I didn't think you cared." He looked above his foreleg and fluttered his eyes.

"Gah! I meant between you and my daughter! WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE THIS?!"

Stelimus blew some air. "To lighten the mood. You're obviously stressed but I'm helping you out by using humor."

Cadance lift a hoof then lowered it as she had nothing to say against that statement. "Thank you."

"I just need to know, what happens if I don't marry?"

"I already answered that question."

"N-n-n-no. I know that. I didn't mean the death and destruction that will be wreaked and the eventual war my father will declare on ponykind to raze the Crystal Kingdom to the ground, but--"

"WHAT?!"

"What 'what'? It's obvious he'd do that."

Cadance tapped her chin a few times. "...You're very clever for somepony who isn't even two decades old yet."

"Age does not bring wisdom. Experience does."

"I see. So, what was your question, exactly?"

"What happens if I don't marry Copper? I mean, what happens to her?"

"Oooohhh." Cadance looked worried. "Well, it's not too farfetched to say she's become obsessed with you."

Stelimus narrowed his eyes. "Obsessed to what point?"

"I think she daydreams about you when reading romantic novels?"

The deer prince relaxed. "Oh. So nothing out of the norm."

"What...Any pony your age would have been horrified."

"Pfff. I have much more experience with this sort of thing than you think."

"I see..."

"So, if I said no, then she would likely go into a depression sharp enough to probably warrant her own suicide regardless of how I say it and all the stuff we mentioned before; but if I say yes she'll be happy and all the good things that come with it happen but under the guise of a lie that could potentially destroy her in the future if she finds out." Cadance blinked several times in confusion at Stelimus' assessments.. "Well...if we have to, perhaps it would be best to become better acquainted after a while, maybe?"

More discussions happened between the two regarding the situation, with some information spoken by Cadance that more than relaxed Stelimus, allowing the two to calmly return to the room where Yolumay was held. Stelimus quietly pointed and laughed at his sister behind Cadance's back upon seeing Copper glomphing the deer princess in a huge hug.

Walking along the breeze

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"So, Copper, you want to hang out today?" Stelimus reluctantly suggested.

The energetic mare let go of Yolumay and latched onto Stelimus like some sort of parasite.

"Oh yes! Let's go! I know several places we can go to have fun!" she cheerfully sang.

The two ended up leaving the doctors, patient, and Cadance behind to continue what they needed to. Yolumay scoffed, but it quickly turned into an actual cough. The princess covered her mouth with a hoof and removed it to see that yellow sap had stained it. A good sign was the little bits of red meshed into a thin speckle of orange, although 'good' would be subjective in this scenario.

"I really have sap instead of blood?" Yolumay calmly noted.

"Yes, unfortunately. That energy was, as mentioned prior, very thorough in morphing you into something we've yet to understand." The doctor adjusted his glasses. "Even so, I'm glad of the progress we made here."

Cadance looked at the deer with poorly veiled disgust, but not because of the substances exiting Yolumay's body.

"So, you're Stelimus' sister?"

"Yes." Yolumay wasn't looking at the pony in front of her. She was more preoccupied by what was in front of her.

"I've heard things about you. Things that I don't appreciate."

"I don't care what you think about me, pony-song. It's inconsequential."

Cadence reared her head back in surprise. "Pony song?"

"Yes, Empress Cadence."

"That's PRINCESS Cadance. I am not an empress."

Yolumay looked up at the pink pony without moving her head. "You are an empress. You are married and control an empire." Cadance was about to refute the term, but the title was logical in a sense. "Either way, it seems my brother and your daughter are to be betrothed, meaning that you and I will become family, regardless of what we think of each other."

"That may be, but I'd rather you stay away from my daughter."

"No can do."

"And why is that?"

"Because the whole situation wouldn't look very promising now, would it? The alliance might not happen if you alienate me."

Cadance rubbed her forehead and calmed down. "I'm sorry. I'm just on edge a bit."

"Is it because my brother doesn't have any kind of physical or mental infatuation with the betrothed?"

"Yes, but--"

"Just because you're the alicorn of 'love' doesn't mean you'll be able to affect my brother."

"But I didn't even--"

Yolumay leaned forward and glared at the pink pony. "And I don't like it when someone's free will is played with."

"I wasn't going to manipulate his mind! Do I look like a monster to you?" Cadance was insulted, and the deer simply sticking out her tongue playfully drove a nail into the alicorn's anger bubble. "I was going to use my magic to try and...nudge him. I know he loves her. My magic only amplifies the feeling. It doesn't create new ones."

"Yeah...That's not going to work."

"And why not?"

"I already know about your powers. I've studied all of your history, pony-song."

"Why? I thought that the reindeer hated ponies."

"We do, but I'm more of the militaristic type, and I know that, in order to defeat your enemy you have to know your enemy. History and culture is the most important thing to know."

"I see. And why won't my magic work on him, anyways?" Cadance raised an eyebrow.

"Because my aunt, Effervescence, has a more powerful form of magic that she passively emits from herself which creates and amplifies feelings and emotions for her." Yolumay scratched the back of her head. "I am loathe to say that the magic in question actually did affect me after some time despite me doing my best to resist it, and I rarely ever stayed close to her."

"And how does this imply Stelimus?"

"Because he was with her practically the entire time he was in the forest, even in direct contact with her, and he was absolutely unaffected by her. He either has an incredibly powerful mind...or is gay." She tapped her chin and chuckled. "I'm leaning towards gay."

Cadance frowned at the bad joke, let alone if it could even be considered a 'joke'. Meanwhile, Copper had taken Stelimus outside to a group of towering pillars near the outskirts of the empire and smiled. The towers were all wider than a pony and narrowed at the tip like spikes, but they were all of varying sizes. There were even little stubs at the bottom growing out of the ground.

"Why did you take me to a pile of crystals?"

"They're 'Color Crystals™'. They change in shape and form when you touch them. They're fun to play around with. Come on!"

The young mare poked one of the crystals that immediately turned into a short, fat, yellow crystal. Its transformation filled the air with a grinding noise akin to a fart, something that even the grimmest of people might laugh to. Stelimus couldn't help but a stifle a little chuckle and followed suite, although he was more cautious with the crystals. The one Stelimus pushed on became a very tall, red crystal that latched onto his hoof and pulled him with its group. His screaming and situation made Copper laugh at his misfortune simply because she felt like teasing him.

The little trauma subsided quickly as the mare came to Stelimus' rescue by creating a tall-yet-wide blue crystal that came to about his height, allowing her to pull him out of his trap. The whole day was practically just this: The two playing, and Stelimus knew this all too well. His daughter had a nasty tendency to pull her 'target of lovertunity' all around to play with him and have them know each other better without getting into any sort of bizarre and unneeded situation. After all, he's the one who taught her that technique. A crowded area and just fun to be had at the same time. All the needed traps. That wasn't to see he wasn't enjoying himself, but there was a little emotion gnawing at his heart and mind and making his throat feel swollen.

Later on, Copper took him to a permanent gaming area where one could fish for plastic ducks, use magic to knock down floating targets, and even play around in a crude form of go-kart. Copper had a rather unnerving tendency to cuddle into Stelimus' neck and under his chin, making him blush and several ponies around mumble. Many were aggressive mumbles, but some were endearing. They found amusement in seeing such a 'cute' display. Gregary was never one for 'cute' displays of affection.

"That was fun, wasn't it?" Copper asked.

They were both inside of the tower now, and Stelimus was exhausted due to her dragging him all over the place. He needed to recover his bearings.

"I...guess," he gasped. "Can we take a break and rest a bit? I'm melting, and with this fur, it's not easy to cool down."

"Oh. Of-of course." Copper looked down in disappointment.

Stelimus came to a sudden realization and face-hoofed. He sat upright and clapped his forehooves together, slowly separating and creating an ever-expanding bubble of cold mist. It enveloped him and he sighed in relief.

"Much better."

"That was...so cool," Copper exclaimed. "Oh yeah! I want to show you something. Wait here."

The pony dashed off through the halls and disappeared quickly afterwards, leaving Stelimus alone and under the watchful gaze of the suspicious guardsponies. The calm and lack of his arm risking to get ripped left the deer with his thoughts. It had been several hours since they went on the playing spree, and Gregary, despite his younger body, still felt he was too old for all of this. Plus, he was still curious about the mental state of his sister. She seemed to have changed quite a bit. No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't find any reasonable explanation for such a drastic change. Was he the reason? Was it the corruption that affected her personality? A little voice whispered in the deer's ear while he was thinking.

"Continue to doubt. Continue to question. It will spread and it will become complete. The familiar soul will not know what is to come even when the painting has been made in front of his eyes."

"So? What do you think?"

"Huh?"

Copper snuck up on the stag during his trance and shocked him. She was wearing a dress that was mostly a hot pink on the front and lowering to the bottom of the dress like wings starting from her chest. The rest of the dress was a cool, pale pink, and a red ribbon wrapped all around it. It crossed on the front of the chest and spread around the mare's back neck then joined into a large band running to the base of her tail then splitting off in their separate directions, lining over her hind legs in a curve then waving along the dress before plummeting towards the base of her hooves and rising back up to the crossing area. Her mane was fluffed up and made out into several blades curving upwards going outwards and causing her hair to absorb the sunlight and shine off the curves. This was only the left side of her hair. The right side was obviously shortened because of it and so was covered with a pink bow. She rubbed her left foreleg in embarassment and shied away.

"So? Do you like it?"

Stelimus reared his head back slightly, squeezed his lips into his mouth as though he just a lemon, and the final change were his pupils shrinking. He was speechless, but not for the reason Copper thought.

"He's speechless! That means he loves it!" Copper squeed.

"Oh shit. She's really serious about this. Now I really DON'T know what to do!"

"I was thinking maybe we could walk around the Empire to show everypony my new dress. What do you think?"

"Uhhh...that would be fine."

"Don't you have something to wear?"

"Only my armor."

"And it's still in the room. Let's go!" she cheered.

Now the two were standing outside of the tower, bringing about everyone's attention. The daughter of the royal couple accompanied by a deer knight. Copper couldn't help but feel like her fantasies were coming true, but Stelimus was the one receiving the brunt of embarrassment. It was a miracle that his head wasn't literally expelling steam by how red he had become. He did learn something about how quadrupeds do things better though: To hold eachother's 'hand', ponies would interlock their forelegs and support eachother's weight.

"So, what do you think about where I live? My parents?"

"Should I be honest?"

"Of course."

"I'm not too fond of the crystals randomly spewed about the empire's outskirts, but I do like the main city in it. Very sparkly."

Copper chuckled nervously. "Yeah. I don't really like them either so much. They're...strange."

"But you looked like you had lots of fun with them earlier."

"Oh! Uh, n-no! It wasn't the same thing!"

Stelimus cocked an eyebrow. "Noooo. She couldn't be. She's not that naive, is she? I don't mind your parents so much, but I think your dad hates me."

"Oh, yeah. He can be a stick in the mud sometimes."

"Of course." Stelimus stopped and held Copper back. "Copper, are you just agreeing with me because you don't want to alienate me or something?"

"What? N-no! Of course not!"

"Okay then, because a couple who agrees with everything never lasts long mentally."

"What do you mean?"

"Disagreements and discovering each other's likes and dislikes are what makes most relationships interesting and fun. Some couples stay together simply because they find it invigorating to fight, but not for aggressive reasons. Simply because it's fun and can be destressing." He scratched the back of his head. "It's not the healthiest of lifestyles, which is why calm arguing is better for the more sane."

"But, wouldn't couples be better off if they liked everything each other liked?"

"That depends if they BOTH actually think that, but we both know you don't think that. Nothing can work if you can't be true to yourself, Copper."

"Well, I really really love you, Stelimus. You were the first to actually help me out after...that incident." She looked away.

"Oh geez. Now we just need the little tear to wipe away and a rainbow."

"And I guess I developed strong emotions for you over time, but sometimes I wonder if it would really work."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I mean, we're two different races, and I'm worried what your dad would think and what your own people would do."

"Well, I don't really see what our races have to do here, but I really don't care what my dad thinks," Stelimus said while scratching his ear.

"What? Why? He's your dad!"

"Perhaps, but one could say that he's not the sharpest spoon in the knife drawer." Copper looked down, trying to make sense of Stelimus' words. "Don't think too hard on that."

Blossom got out of her confusion and looked at Stelimus with a sad and almost desperate expression. "So you still love me?"

The deer looked from side to side and worry was thrown onto his face. "Uhh, of course. Why? Oh no. That was the wrong answer."

And then there were glomphs and kisses, in public, in front of hundreds of ponies, of varying ages. Copper took too much of the love magic her adoptive mother possessed and was extremely sensitive to romantic situations, regardless of how corny they might have been.

I need an end

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Stelimus remained in the Crystal Kingdom for quite a few days after that...kissu-kissu incident. Today, Stelimus had come back from a training drill with the crystal ponies and needed to lie down on his bed, but when he opened the door to his room, he was bemused, at best.

"Hi, Stelly! Look who stopped by!"

Copper and Yolumay were having sweet drinks on the prince's king-sized bed. The deer princess seemed as emotionless as ever. If anything, she was moving mountains to make even the tiniest effort to play along with the pony. Her hatred for the 'pony-song' hadn't simmered down, even after all they did for her, but at least she was trying to think for herself rather than let centuries of brainwashing affect her.

"Why sister, I didn't realize you loved tea time," Stelimus teased.

The doe slowly raised her neck and cracked it to the side as though her joints were rusted. It was a miracle that Stelimus didn't hear the horrid creaks of a rusty door.

"It's not tea, and I'm not having it. I'm drinking this strange, sweetened beverage the likes I have never tasted. I'm loving it so far...even if it's pony made." She burped after her comment.

Stelimus squinted to get a better look at her cup. "Is that soda?"

"Yes!" Copper cheered.

"Oh. I see that you got to enjoy this while I was...away..." Yolumay looked down at her tea cup.

"No. It's...complicated, really."

Stelimus approached the two and hopped onto the bed. He thanked Copper who passed him his drink and then took a sip. The bubbles were tickling his throat on their way down.

"Oh, I missed this feeling so much." Like his sister, he let out a right loud belch and slumped back a bit. "Ahhhh. Now that's a real burp. This is nice. Sitting on my bed with a glass of orange soda and a gentle, white light coming out from the outside."

"You're disgusting," Yolumay groaned.

"You also burped, 'sister'," Copper teased.

Yolumay's gaze became hot enough to melt through metal, and Stelimus didn't notice it in time that his sister was poking Copper in the chest.

"Look, pony. You're not my sister. Not yet, at least, and I don't want you calling me that even after you've married my brother, am I understood?" Copper nodded nervously. "Good. I'm already making tremendous strides in effort per my own brother's request. So consider that the best effort physically and spiritually powerful."

Copper's ears drooped down and she looked away from the doe, sadness and grief on her face. "I...I understand."

Stelimus groaned loudly and slapped his sister behind her head, careful to not slap her antlers as well. "Yolumay, I thought I told you to stop yelling at her because she's a pony."

"But--"

"You'll never improve yourself with that attitude nor will your own people come to accept you if you constantly destroy anyone who does something you don't like." He took another sip from his glass and licked his lips with delight. "If you don't like it, you need to tell them in a calm, nice, and concise manner. Like this:" He turned to Copper and spoke calmly. "Copper, my sister doesn't like being called 'sister', even by me. She's just become a bit more accepting of the term lately, but I wouldn't push it." The mare looked up briefly at 'Stelly' and gave a weak smile. "There we go! Much better."

"What's much better?"

"Huh?"

The room took on the allure of the spirit world, with gray and white reigning supreme and the water-in-ink effect floating around.

"Grimliss?" Stelimus asked aloud.

"Aye. How's my nephew?"

"He's doing fine."

"I see that Effervescence's magic has been slowly getting out of your system, too."

"Actually..." Stelimus rubbed the back of his head. "Her magic didn't affect me and barely contaminated my body. A bit of draining by the doctors and I was all right to go."

There was a moment of silence before Grimliss spoke. "Really? And what about your sister?"

"She's more intensely changed. I think her blood was changed into sap," he said in disgust.

"Ew. Oh. Looks like she was almost turned into a permanent resident. Well, glad you're both doing alright."

"Yup. Nothing much here, and I'm learning a lot about Copper Blossom."

Grimliss voice had a disappointed tone to it. "He's not even going ask what I meant by 'permanent'. Anyways, glad to hear that your efforts have been successful regardless of...you know."

"Perhaps, but even with my age, I don't know how to do this. I know how most relationships end up and what she'll want. I can't do that part."

"Ahhhhhhh. So that's what your concerns were mostly about." Grimliss cracked his neck so loudly that, even disembodied, the noise filled the prince's ears and caused him to cringe. "Well, the first time you do it I would be able to control your body like a puppet while you're knocked out, or one of the gentler spirits here can temporarily take possession of your body."

Stelimus felt the soda bubbling out with reinforcements. "Uhhh, nnnnoooooooo. Let's not, okay?"

He didn't see it, but Stelimus knew his uncle was shrugging. "No skin off my back. Oh, but I have no skin. Hahaha!"

"Aha. Aside from horrible jokes, what is there that you wanted to talk about that you interrupted me here?"

"Interrupted? I don't even know what you're doing when I start these."

"Ehhh, I figured your better handling of these powers gave you more insight on them and their functions."

"That may be, but I have enough decency to not spy on others before talking to them."

"Aside from that, it's about time."

"For the marriage?!" Stelimus stood up on his hind legs and clenched his head.

"No! The creature is starting to spread its influence all around the tundra rather than just wander about like before."

"Oh, but, I thought we needed to marry first before the war started."

"Well, you can announce your will to marry after the battle is over, provided the two of you survive the fight."

"What? The two of us? But she's not a fighter! She shouldn't go there!"

"She won't be going to the front lines, but you will. She'll be watching from a safe distance."

"She still shouldn't have to see something like war!"

"Tough. That's how reality is. She'll need to deal with it sooner or later as the royal family of a country will need to deal with the threat of war on an almost daily basis. A king usually sees a war at least once in his life time, so don't think she can get out of this unscathed. The sooner she deals with it, the better."

"But--"

"There are no buts, Stelimus. We can discuss the issues with your arranged marriage later, but there can be some dark consequences if you refuse it. I'll see you in battle."

With those last few words, the world returned to normal, leaving Stelimus with his sister and Copper.

"Dark consequences, huh? I wonder if Copper was what he was referring to."

Announcements and preparations

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"So...what are you doing in my room?" Stelimus asked his sister.

"Oh...I was just curious about how you were living." She nodded approvingly. "A nice home, I must say. Not as impressive as deer architecture, though."

"Even so, who let you out of the hospital."

Yolumay analyzed the cup she held in her hoof. "I did. I let myself out."

"You shouldn't--"

"I intercepted a message along the way."

Stelimus tilted his head slightly. "What message?"

Shining Armor came through the door, fully vested in his armor. He spoke with a dark, monotonous tone. "Stelimus, it's time to meet up with your family in the war room."

Stelimus looked at his sister then at copper, as if wanting them to save him. Unfortunately for him, Yolumay retained her smarmy, better-than-you smirk and waved him off, but Copper wasn't going to accept that.

"If he's going, so am I." The young pony looked at her father sternly.

"What? I will not have you put into danger! The black snow has started falling and that gigantic monster has started moving south. The tundra is being corrupted. Transformed Saber Tyrants have started running amok and destroying everything in sight. The kobold tribes nearby have started hunting them, but they won't last long. There are other abominations 'dripping' off the giant even as we speak and are heading towards us now."

Stelimus looked at Copper. He was extremely worried for her well-being. "I could die, Copper. WE could die if you come with me."

"Then we'll be together even in the after-life." She tugged on Stelimus and pulled him through the door. "Come on, Stelly. I know where the War Room is."

Neither Shining nor Stelimus understood what was happening or what had just occurred. Shining's attention was dragged towards Yolumay's giggling.

"What are you laughing at?" Shining Armor asked.

"Nothing. I just find you pony-songs to be so...varied? IS that the word? Probably. It's amusing, like watching a court jester."

The white stallion lost interest in the deer and left the room to follow after his daughter. The room itself was guarded by two crystal guards and two deer guards, although they were also accompanied by four, static deer of Grimliss. Needless to say, the living were very uncomfortable in the presence of these undead abominations. The room itself was very small. In fact, it was a miracle that the oval table in it had even managed to fit after assembly. Perhaps the lack of chairs helped the fitting, but the few individuals currently present were practically compressed into the wall.

Anglacite and Cadance were at the farthest ridge from the entrance and weren't seeing eye-to-eye. Grimliss was between them and Effervescence was next to Anglacite. Her ears were drooping and she was looking downwards with a depressed expression. Shining passed by Copper and Stelimus to sit next to his wife while Copper had the two sit at the opposite ends of the two 'rulers' of the tundra.

"Stelimus. Good to see you again," Anglacite spoke.

"Yes, yes." Stelimus brushed his words off.

"Are you okay, sister? You seem fatigued," Grimliss wondered.

Effervescence's colors had gone from bright and flowery to a more 'Golden Autumn' shade. She only huffed in response to Grimliss' question.

"Well, now that we're all seated, we need to decide on how to approach this creature. It has started corrupting everything in the tundra and we need to find a way to stop those corrupted beasts while the main force and artillery attacks the giant," Cadance said.

"Well." Anglacite spoke calmly. "The ponies should take the full brunt of the charge while my people attack the black snow."

Shining smashed his hoof on the table. "What?! And have all of our own potentially die while you sit in your cozy tent? Not happening! This is a JOINT effort. Ponies are not your toys to play with and discard when you're 'bored' with them."

"I will not have you speak to me that way, pony-song," Anglacite warned. He was speaking calmly, but his widening eyes demonstrated his growing ferocity.

"Oh? What are you going to do, kill me?" Shining scoffed in Anglacite's face. "I'd like to see you try."

"Very well."

Frost started growing out from under the god-king and engulfing the room. It was not affecting Anglacite's two siblings, but it WAS starting to turn Shining into an icicle, something Cadance was not liking.

"Dad!" Copper and Stelimus shouted in unison.

Below, at the base of the tower, the Crystal Heart began to wobble and vibrate with a great intensity while Cadance's body started to glow a deep, hot pink. A blast of energy melted away the ice and compressed Anglacite against the wall, pushing him deeper and deeper into its crystalline grip. When the pink alicorn looked up, her eyes had become pure white with a black ring at the edges of her eyes.

"NEVER attack my husband EVER again, do you understand me?" Anglacite ignored her threat and tried summoning more of his magic, but it was of no use. The Crystal Heart was reacting too powerfully to Cadance's anger, fear, and love. "I am the 'god' here, King Anglacite. I rule, and you will respect us if you want to get out of here alive."

"Uhhh, Princess Cadance, maybe you should tone it down a bit?" Stelimus suggested.

The young stag soon found himself engulfed in the corrupted magic of the alicorn and started to choke. He grabbed relentlessly at his throat but couldn't free himself.

"She's become Anakin Skywalker from Revenge of the Sith. That's why...he was so...bad at romance."

"Yes. Let the fear grip them, familiar soul. They feed and sustain. It can't be a coincidence."

"Mom! Stop!" Copper cried out.

The mare's yell made Cadance return to her senses and shake her head. A throbbing headache wracked her skull as well as Shining's.

"I hope that these issues are out of the way?" Grimliss teased.

"He's not right in the head," Copper thought to herself. "Why didn't he react to his own family getting attacked?"

Anglacite pushed himself out of the wall and wiped the dust off of his coat. "I haven't had fun like that in quite a while." Anglacite spoke with a monotonous tone. "Thank you for that."

"Brother," Grimliss started. "-this still does not aid us in formulating a battle plan."

"I already gave the proper battle pla--" Anglacite was interrupted by Grimliss' hoof placed onto his mouth.

"That wasn't a plan. That was just you enacting your judgmental issues."

"I have a plan," Stelimus said. He felt a need to tug on his collar when all the heads turned to him in unison...well, all except Effervescence's.

"Well? What is it?" Shining wondered.

"There's a stallion currently residing in the deer capital and helping called 'Clyde of Dale'."

"What is so special about him?" Cadance asked.

"Well, he may not agree, but he's a very efficient hunter."

"Anglacite's army also has specialized hunters. I see where you're going with this, nephew," Grimliss complimented.

Shining started to think. "So...We could send them out into the tundra a few hours before we move towards the giant. If they were efficient enough, then they could significantly cut the number of corrupted beasts and both of our armies could get to their destination relatively unscathed."

"And you could have rows of magic users creating walls to protect from the remainders attacks while the second line fires off their spells, then have those attackers become the barrier makers and so forth. It would give time for the siege equipment to advance unharmed," Stelimus added.

"Then it is agreed." Anglacite snorted. "I shall bring my army forth while my siblings go around the flanks with their own equipment. Together, we will finally bring this threat to its knees and eliminate it from existence."

"Then that just leaves the matter of recovering the wounded, camping equipment to protect them, communication crystals and radio, and so forth," Shining added.

"And this means that both my daughter and Stelimus will see war for the first time," Cadance said. She looked at the couple with worry clearly displayed in her eyes. "I would prefer that you two remain in the back, where nothing will happen to you. I would rather prefer you not be harmed, let alone..." She couldn't finish the sentence that she averted her gaze and looked away. There was a slight hiccup in her voice at the end of her sentence.

"Are we forced to go to the battlefield?" Stelimus asked.

"Yes," his uncle answered stoically.

The stag took a deep breath and felt Copper put her hoof onto his chest to feel his heart beating far faster than it should. "I...Well, my aunt did give me armor and a weapon to use in case something bad happens."

"And I can fly, if that's necessary," Copper boldly stated.

Stelimus' face scrunched up slightly in confusion. "Fly?"

"Yeah. I'm a pegasus. See?" She looked to her back and flapped her wings. "Didn't you notice?"

"Huh. Well. That's something."

"I will go to the capital and find this 'clyde'," Shining said.

"I'll inform everypony that we're going to need hunting squads and to prepare the war machines." Cadance took a deep breath. "I was hoping I would never have to use what Sombra created so long ago, but I guess we have no choice."

"The creature is right at our doorstep, so I would put the time for preparations at one day at best." Anglacite stood up. "Send the hunting groups three hours before our departure."

"I'm not liking this dream anymore. I want to wake up now," Stelimus cried internally.

It Stares of Yellow

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When the group finished their discussions and left the room, Grimliss intercepted his nephew and stared him down aggressively. It was the first time Stelimus ever felt an icy grip coming from his uncle and closing around his spine. He was quite displeased.

"I see you summoned that creature, Stelimus, judging by your aunt's uncharacteristic behavior." Grimliss frowned.

"What thing? The giant skeleton thingy when I had to escape with my sister?"

"Yes. It tends to...wrench out the hidden emotions of individuals it doesn't kill and can amplify emotions felt by the target at the time of the attack. I would suggest you refrain from summoning that creature again, Stelimus." Grimliss walked down the corridor, accompanied by his guards, and did not turn back to finish his suggestion. "It would be better for all of us."

"Why? It helped me!"

"Because the world of the dead is far bigger and allows more expansive possibilities than that of the living. Ancient beings no longer allowed to walk the world reside within, and you summoned one of the most ancient of those beings. While it might have helped you this time, that might not happen afterwards." Stelimus was going to try and ask for more information, but Grimliss stopped him. "I won't explain more. In some cases, ignorance is bliss."

That was the last Stelimus saw of his uncle before the encounter. Messengers were sent out to the Deer Capital and the around the Crystal Empire to prepare the hunting parties. Clyde was quick to answer the call and left alone for the tundran wastes and leaving what should have been his companions far behind him. Stelimus and Copper remained in the stag's room; his sister having longs since left. Even when a few specks of black snow tapped against the glass of the windows, the two did not move. They were statues formed from trees having just rooted themselves into the bed and refused to move, regardless of what nature bellowed at them. And, like trees, they could not sleep.

The night seemed to echo quietly with the stomps of the colossus and the muffled roars of beasts in the distance. The wind somehow dragged their voices to the tower and through its walls. Whatever comfort Stelimus had was the occasional shout of Clyde that also glided upon the air followed by a death wail of whatever beast he had hunted. Anglacite burst through the door of his son's room as soon as the dawning head of the sun started creeping up from the horizon.

"It is time, son. Grab the pony-song and follow me to our army."

Stelimus said nothing, nor did Copper. In fact, the whole tower was vibrating with the frantic galloping of the soldiers and guards. Everyone the couple could see had either an expression of terror on their faces or simple nervousness. The only one that didn't was Anglacite. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself. He was almost bouncing with a trot and his head bobbed almost unnoticeable side to side while an enormous grin grew on his face the longer he moved forward. He took in a deep breathe and exhaled in laughter.

"Ahhhh. I have been awaiting this moment for centuries, now. I can't wait to see that creature get destroyed in vengeance of your dead aunt and uncle." He slammed his son on the back. Somehow, Anglacite's strike went through the armor and hit the poor stag hard. "This will surely make you understand the true value of being a reindeer, Stelimus, and I will be so proud of you when you get through this. If we're lucky, the pony will also die and you will be able to wed a reindeer, curing us of this potential filth sired into our tree and preventing the pony-song from becoming uselessly angry," he thought to himself.

Stelimus only nodded slowly in response, but he felt a cold breeze wash over him.

"Do not worry, my son. There is nothing to fret over. All will be fine, and we will both be off for the better of it," Anglacite spoke gently. Even his expression became all the more softer and caring, even for a moment. Yet, it reverted back to his usual, superior-toned expression.

"What the hell was that?" Stelimus wondered.

The tundra was still very dark, and the sounds of snow crunching below everyone's hooves was practically inaudible in comparison to the roars and screams painting the tundra's very atmosphere. Finally, Stelimus and Copper arrived atop a hill with Anglacite and got to view thousands of deer as well as catapults and trebuchets abound. They were war machines, yes, but Stelimus couldn't help but feel disappointed...that is, until he saw what Grimliss and Effervescence had flanking the main deer army while their own was far away. Gigantic, humanoid skeletons wrapped in shadow and a six-legged beast with a cannon-like mouth stomped around, eager to fight. Effervescence, meanwhile, had her own colossus made up of swirling leaves of autumn with golden leaves serving as eyes. Several wooden creatures of varying appearances ran around the potential battlefield and buried themselves into the snow.

While Stelimus tried to get a better view of his aunt and uncle further away, Copper tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to something sitting between the reindeer nearby. It was comprised of the three 'floors' of five crystals pointing outwards diagonally but connected to a small, ice-blue orb floating atop a square podium. It was an enormous monstrosity easily the length and width of four ponies and the height of eight. The rings of ice crystal slowly rotated around the core but made no other sound apart from that.

"What in the world is that thing?" Copper wondered aloud.

"I don't know," Stelimus spoke with a crackling voice.

He looked off in the distance to see the pony army now walking over the ridge of snow surrounding the battlefield. Pegasi were flying in the air, some holding platforms where multiple unicorns stood, while the earth ponies and unicorns below pushed catapults, ballista, and trebuchets, as well as some hidden under a large, gray cloth. It was even bigger than the contraption made from ice the deer had. The only thing Stelimus could make out were giant wheels of wood surround by metallic plates that had been bolted onto them. The wheels, for comparisons sake, were twice the size of the unicorns struggling to pull what they were attached to.

"Hey, Copper." Stelimus attracted the attention of the pony. "It's your parents."

Copper whined, something Stelimus couldn't help but find cute despite the situation. "I hope they'll be alright."

"They'll be alright. Don't worry about...it..."

Stelimus' sentence was interrupted by him bouncing up and down at the sound of thudding. The Tundra was being filled and covered with a violent, straining wall of black snow. Everyone readied themselves, with the three god-kings standing in front of their respective armies. Shining Armor was shouting inspirational words to his troops while he galloped along their lines and Cadance remained next to the giant, hidden machine, supposedly waiting for the opportune moment to use it. Stelimus couldn't help but think of William Wallace when seeing Shining armor. He could almost see him wearing a kilt and wearing the paint on his face. He even had the colors for it, too.

"There can be only oooooooooone!" he thought to himself and chuckled.

Two, enormous yellow eyes illuminated through the smog like fog lights. The wind intensified with a noise akin to a tornado, and then nothing happened. Everyone stared the colossus down, and it did the same with them, but in a more literal sense. Monsters poured out from behind the wall and swarmed towards the armies while machines started letting their ammo loose, then the giant jolted its gaze towards Stelimus who felt his heart seize up momentarily. It was not a feeling he wanted to relive.

"The familiar soul stands before the construct of the one. Obey since before. The outcome is not important, only the fear that arises from it. If the familiar soul survives, then perhaps it will meet the worshipers. It cannot speak, for it has no mind and is linked to the one of old. The familiar soul knows who it is and has lived with it for a long time, but it is not that which it thinks at this moment."

Stelimus clutched at his chest piece when he saw a wide, warped smile grow from the creature's left leg and rise all the way to the upper right of its head. The edges curled enough for him to realize it was a smile.

"Pleasure derived from fear and paranoia. Feed. Believe. Worship. Obey and spread."

Unexpected Ends

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A stampede of monsters of various forms, shapes, and sizes rushed towards the armies, all of them breaking off of the colossus like fighters from a space ship. The blizzard's strength was intensifying even further. In a way, it was imitating a roar by a gigantic beast. An extension of the colossus, perhaps?

Several sabre tyrants and gigantic creatures made up of random assortments of tentacles or wings, claws or fangs, ran across the snowy plains, kicking up the resting white until they rammed into the first line of deer and ponies. Stone crushed the occasional beast and the ballista pierced through several, but it wasn't significant enough to diminish their numbers in a significant manner. For the ponies, while the shields held the smaller creatures at bay and the spears impaled the jumpers, the sword wielders jumped out from between them to give a clean slice. The sword wielders and spear ponies then spun around, back-to-back so as to have an equally alternating line of sword-wielder and spear-thruster. The pegasi in the air used swords and whips damage the wings of the flyers and keep them off balance while the 'artillery' holding the unicorns let fly various colored spells ranging from damaging beams to paralyzing dodecahedrons clamping through the monsters' bodies.

The deer did not move when the monsters approached them. Instead, windigos flew up from the ice and froze the monsters in place, leaving the barmephants to walk through their two-dimensional, black door of reality and shatter the ice statues. One would expect ghosts to be untouchable by the black snow, and indeed they were, but how long would it last?

"So...This is war in person?" Stelimus whispered to himself. "This isn't...what I was expecting. It's far different in person..." He looked down to see his father standing next to the strange ice construct, then to his aunt and uncle far on the other side. "But, the dream..."

Copper looked on to her mother and father and grimaced. She didn't like this. She just wanted to take them away from this place, but what would be the point? She knew they wouldn't escape the black snow, and nopony south of the tundra knew anything about it nor how to fight it.

The colossus stood in place and watched everyone fighting it. Stelimus wondered if the creature was taking amusement from the display before it or if it was waiting for something. A call or a sign. Perhaps it needed the armies to be whittled down enough for it not to be harmed? Regardless of the situation, it was still sending out hordes from its own body, then new creatures came through to charge at the reindeer using ghosts. These creatures had a single, large green eye shaped like a large triangle occupying most of their blackened bodies. They stood upon three, needle-esque legs and possessed two, extremely large arms. When they approached the line, two windigos charged towards these new enemies. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the triangle eye glowed a deep green and engulfed the arms which they used to punch the ghosts into literal dust.

"What?!" Anglacite roared. "It was never capable of doing that!"

A soldier approached his king and saluted. "Should I activate it now, my god-king?"

"No. Send in the troops. We'll use it when too many monsters swarm the field."

The battle was certainly lasting, as two hours later, no one was making any progress. Bodies littered the land at various distances and both ponies a deer forces were being whittled down due to fatigue and casualties. One pony, completely exhausted from the battle, approached Shining Armor, who was preparing to strike from the third line.

"We can't...we can't keep going like this."

"Well we can't stop now, soldier. We're all here and there will be no reinforcements."

"We should have called the princesses!" the soldier cried.

Shining slapped with the back of his hoof. "Stow away that talk, soldier! You are a proud crystal pony of the Crystal Kingdom, under the supervision of both your prince and princess! We will not fail in this battle, and you will have many tales to tell your grandchildren after this is all over."

Another enormous wave of creatures flew from behind the black, swirling vortex surrounding the battlefield.

"They've got reinforcements!" the soldier shouted.

Before most of the creatures could do anything, another horde come from the left of the armies and slammed into the colossus' reinforcements.

"The hunters?!" Shining shouted.

Clyde was riding a corrupted Sabre Tyrant and leading the head of the riders into the battle. The gigantic skeletal beasts Grimliss added to his brother's army seemed to be amusing themselves with crushing everything approaching them but still had the sense to avoid the creatures being ridden. Clyde and several other hunters jumped from their mounts to slam into the creatures below them, impaling dagger, sword, and spear into their bodies while the now-trained mounts assisted their riders in battle. Even amongst this massacre, ponies and deer were still trying their best to recover the wounded on the battlefield. Many of them did not make it. Stelimus and Copper both wanted to help everyone out, but they were too petrified by terror. The mind was willing but the body was not.

Anglacite took a deep breath and exhaled. He straightened himself out and said "It's time" to his soldiers.

Three of them approached the machine and connected their antlers to the crystals. Frost essence poured into it in cascades and the ice crystals reacted. They stopped rotating and shot towards the spherical core, gluing onto it and folding upwards like flower petals ready to open and flood the world with their beauty. The machine started humming ominously, the sound getting louder and louder until a vortex of ice and snow burst forth from it, shredding the wall of black snow around the battlefield and expanding across the tundra. Almost the entirety of the field was now clean of black snow abomination, yet the colossus still remained immobile. The ice construct slowly melted while the core and crystals receded into the 'base' where they rested.

Anglacite stepped forward and glared at the creature. "What do you want?" he wondered.

The colossus finally started moving forward, stomping away at the lands before it. The pony and deer armies all charged forward, stupidly, unaware that the creature was stretching out its arms.

"GET BACK YOU FOOLS!" Grimliss bellowed.

More monsters flew out from its body. These were giants, nearly five times the height of a pony standing upright, and they were just as warped as their brethren. Tripedal or bipedal with various different extensions serving as appendages, such as claws or crab pincers. They smashed, sliced, and crushed everything near them before the leaf constructs and undead creations could hold them down. The leaf construct was unaffected by their attacks and preferred to 'grab' their limbs, extending the veins on their surface into the body of the creatures and draining them dry.

"It's time," Cadence said.

She used her magic to pull the curtain off the creation of hers and show its horrid beauty. It was a gigantic cannon. The barrel was made of a golden metal and had rings of bolted iron placed onto it. Behind it was a small spot where the Crystal Heart floated, and behind that was yet another lens attached to a small podium where Cadance took her seat. The whole creation rested atop a cage of wood with the giant wheels noticed earlier. The alicorn held onto the large, pony-sized lens and focused her magic.

The dark magic Sombra was known for engulfed the lens, darkening it. The magic slowly expanded around the heart which reacted to the magic by blasting its own beam of heart magic, mixing and corrupted the bubble of protection and focusing it through the second lens. A loud thunderclap followed by what sounded like the buzzing of hundreds of wasps filled the air. A beam of corrupt magic hit the colossus, forcing it to stumble and causing it to wail in pain. Cadence hung onto the lens and panted. It was exhausting to summon that magic.

"You hurt it!" one of the soldiers yelled. "Again!"

"Again!" everypony around shouted.

"You almost have it!" the same soldier insisted.

The colossus looked towards the source of its pain and noticed the cannon on the hill. It started to actually make some semblance of running to reach the cannon. A few of the remaining unicorns on the ground tried to block it with joined barriers, but it was no use. Shining and a few other ponies tried to hinder its movements by stabbing its ankles, but it ignored them and tossed them aside with a loud stomp. Grimliss and Effervescence redirected their troops and monsters to try and intercept it in time. Seeing as it wouldn't work, they tried to reach it in time, all while Anglacite only watched on, bemused by the circumstances.

"Stop the abomination!" several captains shouted.

Their attempts at stopping the colossus weren't much better, but it all went silent when its giant hand descended onto the canon and crushed it into shards. Before that happened, however, Cadance managed to throw the heart to safety. The colossus stomped the ground behind it in anger then raised both of its hands, balled them into fists, and pummeled the wreck over and over again, all while taking in several ponies and nearby, approaching deer into the vacuum of its strikes. A final, downwards punch broke through the hill of snow and rock, quite literally obliterating everything and anything that could have been there.

Both Grimliss and Stelimus looked at Copper instinctively. The mare had a saddened frown etched onto her face and her lips trembled.

"Not again..." she wheezed.

When Gods Walk the Land

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"Shoot," Grimliss jabbed at the air. "It killed the pink pony. This'll complicate future relationships."

Effervescence stepped next to her brother and sternly glared at the colossus who continued to pummel the cannon and the mare into dust through the purest form of rage she had ever seen.

She had a bored, almost depressed expression both to her face and tone of voice. "It's our turn to go, Grimliss."

Grimliss nodded and followed her as they both galloped to the beast pounding the crater ever deeper while the ponies could only watch in terror. Shining tried to gallop back up to it and stab its feet so as to reach its face and rip out its throat in sorrowful anger, but the creature swiped him off like a fly then tried to crush him. The stallion rolled out of the way, but not quick enough. Both legs on his left side were completely crushed into powder and his yell of utter pain caused Copper to, for lack of a better term, 'break'.

Stelimus noticed her predicament was linked to Shining Armor's status and galloped over to the stallion as fast as he could. He used the abilities he learned over time to fight through the remaining monsters that bothered attacking him. Sometimes, he would roll under them, and sometimes he would jab his spear in their hides to vault over them and slice them in half during the process. His heart was pounding like a hammer on an anvil, and he somehow felt cold. Fear sweat can freeze even the warmest of reindeer, it seemed.

And while Stelimus hurried over to try and pull Shining Armor out of the crossfire, Anglacite rushed in front of him, propelled himself through the air with a wave of snow and surrounded his body in a ball of ice, allowing him to slam into the colossus like a cannonball. The creature lost its balance and stumbled over, crushing a few of the deer and ponies that were under Effervescence's rule. The god-king of ice undid the sphere around him but at the worst time, as the colossus grabbed hold of him, crushed him as best as it could within its grip, then threw him directly downwards into the snow, propelling him towards the ground a few kilometers below. The ground had not seen anything but snow all these centuries, so certainly it found this new company as a welcome sight, but Anglacite did not.

Effervescence stood on her hindlegs and spread her forelegs wide open, letting a calm wave of pink and yellow pollen erupt from the flowers growing on her antlers and warping the surface of the snow, letting more vines and grass grow and snake towards the colossus. Grimliss took the opportunity to summon binding chains from a realm of spirits to tie the colossus down, but they didn't seem to hinder its movements much. It stomped around whilst trying to get rid of the nuisances until several vines along the ground formed together and grew to immense heights, becoming a multi-headed flytrap. Grimliss filled the plant with some spirit essence, empowering it with the power of undeath and turning its stems and leaves a deep violet while the veins and heads became bone-white.

While the colossus and the plant fought, they stomped and slithered around, and, unfortunately, Shining was in that area. The deer prince was forced to be more athletic than he really was and dodged around out of the way of everything he could, bits of snow blasting everywhere and large plates of the white powder lifting up and throwing the deer around. When he finally saw Copper's father, he was nearly crushed by one of the heads of the fly trap falling onto him. Normally, being fused with the power of undeath should have allowed it to continue biting the colossus for a time, but, instead, it seemed to wither from a spreading, black contagion then turn into dust.

"I've got you, Shining Armor," Stelimus reassured.

The stallion winced in pain. "What are you doing here? You'll get us both killed!"

"Not my problem. Plus, I'm not technically alive here, so I can do whatever I want. Your daughter needs you, especially after what happened, and so do I."

Stelimus conjured some spirit hands to help lift the stallion up and place him carefully on the deer's back.

"You? What do you need me for?"

"To reassure your daughter and help your people. After seeing what happened to Cadance..." Stelimus looked away to hide his sadness.

"...A fair enough reason."

"I'm going to keep you on my back with the help of frost essence, so you might be a little chilly for a while."

"That's okay. Just get me out of here while I yell out to my soldiers to retreat as well."

Effervescence wrapped herself up in wood grown from her strange powers to take on the appearance of a flying serpent. The leaves and moss grown on her 'wings' allowed her to fly high in the sky and slam into the colossus, chomping into its neck while it still tried to fend off the flytrap. The colossus howled, but it didn't go down. In fact, it seemed to let spread the same black substance through the plant and let it dissolve into nothing while Effervescence was corrupted by the same substance. She screamed in pain as it started tearing away at her and stripping the construct from around her, exposing her to even more of the substance.

Grimliss used his own body as a brief vessel for what looked like a giant creature whose ribs were torn outwards into curved claws with black fur of times past worn as a cape, and a beastial, draconic face. It clamped down onto the arms of the enemy and tightened until the ribs sliced through the surface of the colossus' skin. Effervescence fell down and landed on the snow, contorting in pain as the black snow rushed through her body. The vines and grass bolted towards her and wrapped around the doe, absorbing whatever vile substance was corrupting her and cleansing her of the pain.

She wobbled left to right when she tried to stand up and glared at the colossus as best she could. She was exhausted. She had already spent so much essence fighting the creature and so much effort to maintain what she already had, but she still had the energy to taunt.

"Not this time, abomination. I fought you enough times to know how to counter your corruption."

The colossus' body strained under the clamping of the strange spirit that Grimliss had summoned, but with a bit of 'flexing' the spirit's 'bones' snapped off and it faded, letting the deer throw several hooks into his enemy's body and try draining away what life force it had. By this time Anglacite somehow managed to climb out of the hole and turn the air around the monster into a balloon full of transparent, shredding shards of ice. If it could breath it would have certainly in practically an instant. Unfortunately, it did not breath, so only its body was cut up while it moved forward.

While the god-kings fought, Stelimus laid Shining carefully onto the ground next to Copper who glomphed him silently. Nary a bead of moisture leaked from her eyes. Unfortunately, the stallion still protested to her fears.

"Ow! Copper, let go! I'm bruised there."

Copper didn't listen and, instead, refused to let go. She remained hooked around her father and breathed slowly, any blinking being nonexistent. Shining's anger led to confusion, then worried intrigue, then a sympathized sadness. Stelimus figured that her actions came from the trauma she lived through so long ago. Living with a traumatizing memory is one thing. You can go back on it and learn how to identify and avoid the incident or even help those having gone through the same, but living through it again. Such things shouldn't occur.

"Shining, your troops are leaving and so are the deer and other ponies. We need to get out of here before we're caught in the crossfire. I can already see my...father," Stelimus spat out in disdain "amusing himself with his powers."

"You're right. Carry me out of here, please."

"But...what about mom," Copper spoke in a low hum.

"We'll come back for her later, Copper. We need to go!"

"I'm not leaving her alone! She's still alive!" The pony let go of her father and jumped to her hooves. "If neither of you are going to help me get her back, then I'll go myse--" Copper faceplanted into the snow.

Shining looked at her with wide eyes then slowly rotate his gaze towards Stelimus who was brushing off his antlers. He looked bored.

"I've had enough drama for the day. I'd rather not live through more. Let's get you two out of here."

The battle continued for several more hours. Anglacite's control over his immediate, tundra surroundings tore the lands apart. Grimliss was still summoning new spirits and Effervescence still contaminated the air with her pollen and plants. With some strange powers, the colossus was capable of crushing and cutting the god-kings up from a distance, and the longer it stayed in place the longer the tundra around it started turning lack and the snow falling from the sky adopted the same coloration.

When Anglacite created a golem of ice to wrestle with the colossus, said giant picked up the featureless centaur, lifted it up overhead, and slammed it into the ground, shattering it and throwing a wave of snow all around the tundra and even engulfing the survivors who were a few kilometers away. Grimliss found the opportune moment to create a disk of bone and ice and launch it at the creature. While it get through the side of its torso and push through a little more, it lodged into the colossus' body and dissolved after the monster clenched whatever it had that served as muscles. The cut had left a brief opening that Effervescence used as an opportunity to create instant sprouting plants that grew from the wound and through the body of the creature. The plant did significant damage, but the colossus preferred to dig through its own chest and pull the entire thing out of its own body rather than try and kill Effervescence. It was a very stubborn creature.

Everyone turned their heads when they finally saw the colossus below loudly, deafening them, then pause briefly and dissolve into nothing. The battle was finally over, but not without important losses to everyone. Grimliss' left side was completely shattered and had lost half his right foreleg and femur as well as parts of his face. Effervescence lost her antlers and large swaths of her fur were charred. Her antlers were also barren, she had a black eye, and her ligaments had been torn in all of her legs. She could still move somewhat by replacing them with some inner vines to serve the same purpose until she healed, but limped heavily. As for Anglacite, his left antler had been torn off and his left foreleg broken. He seemed to have also hurt his back and refused to move too much while limping away with his siblings.

The black snow had still fallen all around the tundra, but, with a bit of work, it would be easy to remove. However, the consequences of its actions would not be as easy to remove.

The Truth

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The aftermath of the battle was not pretty. Thousands wounded, and even more dead. The captains of the Crystal Kingdom came with ten-thousand soldiers; eighty percent being earth ponies, thirteen being pegasi, and the remaining seven being unicorns. Only about, two-thousand fifty-seven made it out with minor injuries. Five-thousand seven-hundred and three are gravely wounded. the rest are, obviously, dead. The reindeer came with about twenty-thousand troops, but most survived the encounter due to Anglacite's specific tactics and use of spirits, leading to barely a thousand and thirty-three casualties. Grimliss' are already dead, and Effervescence left with her own people long before tallies were counted. The hunters returned to their respective homes and Clyde of Dale returned upon his trips across the world, feeling his job here fulfilled. Anglacite left his losses in the snow, stating that 'What was part of the tundra must return to it. Those bodies are no longer the reindeer that inhabited them'.

Cadance was killed during the 'tantrum' the colossus had and was brought back to the Crystal Kingdom under the sorrow of Shining Armor and the crystal ponies, but the one who felt the pain most of all was Copper. Shining was using magical constructs to replace his powdered limbs which had to be removed. He would get mechanical replacements eventually, but he had one loss which couldn't be repaired. Stelimus took a little time to comfort Copper as best he could, but she was non-receptive to his words, so the deer quietly crept away, rejoining his uncle. It didn't go completely unnoticed, and Shining waited that they were far enough away to intercept them and stomp his intact hoof down.

"Can't you revive her?" Shining pleaded to Grimliss.

The god-king looked away and dryly answered. "No."

"But you control life and death! This is surely not something outside your abilities!"

Grimliss didn't bother lowering his head to look at Shining Armor despite the height difference. "I am what I am BECAUSE I tried to bring back life to the dead. The god who watches the dead for the ponies is not an entity I would want to irritate. I've already annoyed one god of the dead.Your wife is dead, and there's nothing you can do to bring her back, so you best get used to that now or be forever tortured within a prison of your own mind."

"I..." Shining collapsed onto the ground after his constructs faded. "But you commune with the undead all the time. Everypony knows it," he started to tear up.

"Oh? A stallion crying? I thought the 'male' aspect of crying faded out centuries ago."

Stelimus tapped his uncle on his shoulder and pulled him away. "Don't keep adding to his pain."

"Then let me explain to him so he stops getting this idea in his mind." Grimliss turned around and lowered himself to Shining's level. "You are right. I 'commune' with spirits and tend to guide them until they can pass on or until the end times come, but I cannot return life to what lost it. To do so is to incur the wrath of the gods of death, and those are the gods you do NOT want to irritate, as I've mentioned before."

"But...then the Crystal Heart? Why didn't it save her?" Stelimus asked.

"If I understood the intricacies of pony magic, and the functions of that heart, one would say that it is formed from pure, crystallized love, but...love is a fickle thing."

Stelimus lifted his head slightly, showing his fur matted with tears. "What are you trying to say?"

"Love can only protect you from so much, especially from normal creatures. However, the magic, no matter how strong or from what source it comes from, could not save her from the colossus' rage, especially on her own."

"Stelimus, brother, are we leaving?" Anglacite shouted.

"Come, nephew. We need to return you to your home before anything and reassess your position. You might have not done much, but I believe that might change once we reach the capital, otherwise..." Grimliss trailed off.

Stelimus was completely confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Shhhhh."

The prince shrugged it off and followed the entire deer army back to the capital. They were all welcome with cheers and open arms once the screaming doors announced their presence. The wounded were immediately taken away to the various hospitals dotted around the city while the two god-kings who came back denied the need for medical attention. The rest of the city was gathering towards the center where a mighty feast awaited. It was almost identical in appearance to the day Stelimus was taken on the festival shortly after his birth, and his mother and sister were both waiting for their family at the main table closest to the steps leading up to the palace. Yolumay had sneaked towards the capital during the battle and seemed rather proud of herself. Effervescence's corruption appeared to have eteched a permanent smug on her face.

"That was a great battle, wasn't it, Grimliss?!" Anglacite cheered.

The stag narrowed...the smoke serving as his eyelids. "Yes. A great battle."

Anglacite stopped and turned to face his brother. "Is there a problem, brother? You seem to be upset about something."

"Well, the ponies did lose one of their most esteemed rulers, tearing a pony traumatized by a similar form of parental loss into a state of depression that I believe even your own son won't be able to get her out of."

Anglacite rubbed his chin and pretended to think about that event, but brushed it off casually. "The qualms of the pony-song is not part of my to-do list. I have more important things to take care of."

"While that may be true, there are a few things I have been mulling over these past few years since Stelimus' birth."

"Oh? And what would you be thinking of that is so important that you needed to wait that we were in the capital, in front of my people, to talk about it now?"

"What are you doing?" Stelimus whisper-shouted.

"I'm accusing YOU of being the Black Snow!"

Loud gasps resonated all around the three, but Anglacite laughed it off. "Really? The Black Snow corrupted living things in the past, but it didn't corrupt any deer, let alone a god-king."

"Oh, but it can corrupt over time. In fact, I found it bizarre how the colossus left when it was staring at the city those many years past. Even more bizarre was that it arrived at the precise time Stelimus was born."

"Coincidences, of course," Anglacite said dismissively.

"Even MORE bizarre was that it appeared when Stelimus and I were traveling through the tundra to reach the Crystal Kingdom and it was waiting for us in the blizzard and aimed only at Stelimus." Anglacite was about to argue, but was interrupted by Grimliss. "It even appeared fifteen years before Stelimus' planned conception, and wandered around the tundra, passively, ignoring even the deer when they passed by it, then it suddenly became aggressive when it witnessed your son? Even with a direct line of sight presented to it?"

Anglacite frowned and stood tall. "Oh? Then tell me, brother, why would I plan something so long in advance? Why would I kill myself? Why would I try to kill my own son?"

"Because Stelimus was planned as a link between deer and ponies, and you had already discussed this thirty-seven years ago with the white one from the south. The plan then went to the ponies of the north here after their emergence as a full power, but if you had your son killed by the colossus and killed everyone else, then you could have blamed it on the ponies as the tundra would have hidden the proof.

You could have remained in the tundra without worrying about the black snow as it would only target ponies and the southern equines would not have declared war on us."

Anglacite smiled. "So you're saying I would have tried to rid the world of the pony-song to better my own people and sate my anger of their kind?"

"Precisely. You masqueraded the whole thing as a semi-willful endeavor to eventually use the black snow as a weapon to destroy the ponies. This explains everything. You were corrupted by it and became a controller for it, which is why it always knew everything it needed to and why it did what it did, but you didn't take into account a change in your whole plan. The one thing that was the support pillar for it all."

Anglacite looked downwards briefly and seemed to be confused, then he looked up and tilted his head. "Stelimus?"

"Exactly!"

"What do I have to do with this?" the young deer asked.

Grimliss turned to face his nephew. Stelimus could see his body trembling. "Your personality is the most drastically different of any child my brother has ever conceived. Your sister is the average ideal of the children he has sired, so my brother expected you to end up like him. In fact, he also expected me to remain impassive to you like I was with the others. You were the one thing on which the whole plan depended on, yet you were the one who destroyed the whole plan before it even started."

The reindeer all around were mumbling and most did not want to believe it, but considering they had already heard about the events mentioned, albeit distorted by rumor, but the gist was there, and they were both god-kings. Grimliss was a god-king of the dead, and even the reindeer have heard the saying 'The dead do not lie', but Anglacite was their ruler and guardian...but this sort of thing didn't seem beyond his methodical-yet-simplistic mindset. They all started turning towards King Anglacite. Their eyes were begging for it to all be a lie.

Anglacite snorted. "Fine. I'm the black snow, but it's also me! If I must manipulate everything and destroy the rest to let my people prosper, then I will do that! And I won't let you, nor my 'son' ruin those plans!"

Grimliss and Anglacite crossed antlers, blasting frost and undead mist all over the area and across the deer around. The god-kings were both too exhausted to use their full powers, but the black snow was revealing itself through Anglacite's body. Large patches of fur became pure black as did the ice on his antlers. A black mist started rising from that ice and mixing with the uncorrupted ice's mist in the air. And while they fought, that same voice from before whispered in Stelimus' head.

"Yes. The fear feeds. The horned, frozen soul will spread it and feed, but what will the familiar soul do? Two paths lie ahead, and both will still create fear and feed."

"You may be tired," Stelimus whispered to himself "But I'm not!"

The prince dug deep inside himself and focused to try and summon the monster that protected him in the forest, and with so much more intentional power added into the summoning, the spirit was coming out much stronger for it and was warping the light and colors all around it. Four, gigantic skeletal arms came through a tear and spread it open, allowing the cloaked being to reach out and grab hold of Anglacite.

"STELIMUS, NO!" Grimliss shouted.

Anglacite could not focus, and without his full powers, he could not repel the creature. When he looked at its face, his eyes widened and he stopped struggling. The winds were blowing in literally every conceivable direction, as if reality were being warped by the realm of the dead.

The god-king struggled to look away and gaze at his son's surprised expression. The only thing Anglacite could utter was 'I lost control' and impaled himself with several stalagmites of ice. The undead monster retreated back into the tear and pulled the winds back with it to properly close the portal, leaving silence and the frozen corpse amidst everyone. Grimliss buried his emotions on what just occurred and hurried the situation by pushing Stelimus towards the chair right next to his mother who could only look on in horror. It was best to get a new royal member as fast as possible onto the leading throne to prevent confusion, mass panic, and nobles vying for power.

"Anglacite's son is now your king. I will remain here to counsel him so that he may lead you appropriately."

"And if you don't like it, then make sure to tell me," Yolumay growled after sitting next to her brother.

"This is a new age, deer, and one that will allow you to prosper in a world of progress, rather than stagnation!" Grimliss shouted.

A large portion of reindeer started cheering, but many did not. There was far too much that could be said right now, and everyone needed some time to think and understand. But the cheering...that was just how reindeer culture grew under the rule of Anglacite, and that still left many questions unanswered. Anglacite sending his own son around to become stronger and his moments of passiveness which were unfitting of his current personality were just two questions left unanswered.

"Yes. The path that feeds the most, but will the sand aid the familiar soul in its future? Awaiting for the unraveling of amusement"

When the black snow falls, an icicle melts.

Deer Me: Black Snow

by The Psychopath

Chest Ablaze

Please be reasonable, highness

The clichés! They burn!

Pony-Song

God-King's Festival

Windigo's cry

Are gods real?

A thin veil

It hides in plain sight

Fluffy workers

Meeting most profound

Meet the Queen

What...is your favorite color?!

Daddy's faja

Time for hunting

One vs all

Visits

To the swamps

Wrong Bone

I can see

Don't

You again

The source of it all

Great Family

Why you little!

The ivory stone

Oh no, Tremor!

Unexpected Reaction

What's wrong with you?

Before a joining

Walking along the breeze

I need an end

Announcements and preparations

It Stares of Yellow

Unexpected Ends

When Gods Walk the Land

The Truth