Three days, two thousand years, and one angry pony. What does it all make? [Harmony's Wrath sequel, OLD STORY]
Warning: This story is a sequel to Harmony's Wrath. This is an Alternate Universe, many elements of the setting have changed drastically, and won't make sense if you haven't read it.Even the cover picture.IT IS ALSO, LIKE THE FIRST ONE, REALLY OLD WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE
Six months on from its rude awakening, Equestria is still dealing with the fallout. Daily life has changed irrevocably, and it's only a matter of time before the dangers of the real world inevitably rear their ugly head. Twilight Sparkle and her friends are taking the lead in preparing ponykind for its trials, but some unusual reports from the outskirts of Trottingham lead them to believe that the world might be a lot wilder than they had anticipated.
Cover art by me and prequel by me.
Tag update: Reduced character tags to Mane 6, CMC, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash. While the Mane 6 and CMC provide most of the ensemble cast, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash are the primary viewpoint characters.
Additional Tags: Anthro, conspiracy, high fantasy, gryphons, war.
A stallion stumbled forth from the cavemouth, his legs uneasy, his throat burning. Around him was mere smoke and ash, loose rubble where once were the finest works of architecture in the land. Embers stung his eyes as he staggered through the remains of Canterlot. Everything around him was an affront to the senses; the irritant smoke, the chill wind on his near-naked body, the pain in his legs...
He dropped to the ground. The alien structures at the ends of his front limbs cut easily on the jagged stones. Fires roared in the distance. Occasionally, a body or a lump of masonry would return to earth with a loud thud. About a hundred lengths ahead, he could just about make out part of the palace - a crumbling archway, the entrance to a building no longer there. He tried to climb upright again to no avail. He cursed and spat, and crawled.
In his mind, those hundred lengths were a walk of shame. Yesterday he was an upstanding noble, the pinnacle of what it meant to be a pony; today, he struggled through the burning ruins of his home with the awkward gait of a newborn foal, the winter's wind biting at his exposed thighs, prints of dirty blood left in his wake. His pristine white coat was smeared with dirty black and brown, and his mane and tail were a tangled mess.
When he reached the arch, he put a shaky... what were these blasted things called again... hands? He put a shaky hand up to one pillar, and pulled himself upright again. The smoke was starting to clear by now, which brought some minor relief, but also tenfold heartbreak, revealing the full extent of the devastation. The palace was gone. The gardens were gone. All the shops, the houses, even some of the streets themselves lay broken. The foul stench of burning sewage was starting to fill the air. The pillar he clung to was the last thing he owned.
He sank to his knees, took a gulp of the fetid air, and cried to the heavens. He cried for anguish. He cried for loss. He cried for the life stolen from him. He cried for revenge. He cried for an undying hate.
He cried for the blood of the ones who took it from him.
"Lots of control, sir!" the line of cadets yelled in unison. Rainbow Dash paced along the line, eyeing each one scrutinously.
"Good."
"Screaming, sir!"
"And most importantly?"
"Courage, sir!"
"Right. Now that you know the elements of a good warcry, let's hear one!" She raised both arms above her head, paused, and swung them out like an orchestra conductor. In return, she received a discordant, sheepish murmur from her charges. "Horsefeathers, let me see your war face!" she screamed. The second response was a little more hearty, but far from heartfelt. "You don't scare m-" She stopped, catching something in the corner of her eye. Did that cadet have his hand raised? Hanging somewhere between disbelief and absolute fury, she marched over and addressed his concern personally. "What the hell do you want, sweetcheeks?"
"Wh... when do we break for lunch?" he stammered. Rainbow slapped her forehead, almost hard enough to knock herself over.
"We have a lot of work to do..."
"You can go in now."
"Thank you kindly, nurse." Applejack tipped her hat, and proceeded down the corridor from the waiting room. Fluttershy nodded timidly and followed.
"I'll have to ask you to be..." Bang. Nurse Redheart's warning was too late - Applejack burst down the door she was directed to. "... quiet..."
"So just what the hay didja do to yourself this time, Big Macintosh?" she exclaimed. The farm pony muffled a response through a jaw brace.
"He has a broken jaw and left hand, he can't talk," the nurse explained, closing the door behind her. Fluttershy murmured an apology as she passed.
"What? Again?"
"I'm afraid so. Hand and mouth injuries have increased dramatically in the last six months, since the... well, you know." The nurse sighed and shook her head, flipping through her chart. "A lot of ponies haven't quite gotten the hang of hands." Applejack and Fluttershy exchanged worried glances.
"Zhhhyzhp," Big Macintosh mumbled.
"I think we've had enough lunch, Pinkie..." Scootaloo whimpered, deliberately sticking her belly forward in her chair.
"Hm. Suit yourselves!" The party pony giggled, and scooped up the remaining cakes from the plate, stuffing them into her mouth with gusto. Dinky Hooves grimaced, and leaned over to whisper something to Sweetie Belle.
"Who thought it was a good idea to let Pinkie Pie babysit us again?" Sweetie just shrugged.
"So what do you wanna do now k-" Burp. "... kids?" Pinkie wiped the icing off her face, and bounced in her chair.
"Ah wanna go outside!" Applebloom stood up, accidentally flinging her chair backwards. The other three fillies chimed in their agreement, and without even waiting for their caretaker's permission, sprang from their seats and bolted for Sugarcube Corner's door. Pinkie shrugged, and raced after them. Mr. Cake sighed, and picked up the abandoned chairs.
Outside, the activity of choice seemed to have landed on tree-climbing. By the time Pinkie had found the four crusaders, they were already clambering up the biggest tree they could find, an old oak near the edge of the park. She chuckled and watched, listening to the near incomprehensible whoops and squeals. 'First one to the top wins!' 'Hey, that's cheating! No wings, Scootaloo!' 'Help, I'm stuck!'
"Wait a second... that doesn't sound like fun at all! What happened?"
"Sweetie Belle slipped and now she's stuck in the tree!" Applebloom whimpered, sliding down the trunk. Dinky followed behind her, and Scootaloo glided to the ground.
"I'll save you!" Pinkie puffed up her chest, and launched herself at the tree... only to get skulled by a branch, and fall back to the ground, dazed. The three fillies on the ground blinked, and shared confused looks.
"Should we call the fire engine?"
"Help! Somepony!"
"Whah would a fire engine help, Scootaloo? Sweetie Belle isn't on fire!"
"They get cats out of trees, they should be able to get ponies out of trees too! Tell her, Dinky!" Scootaloo looked over to the spot where the unicorn was, only to find empty space. "... Dinky?"
"She's up there!" Applebloom pointed to the tree, where Dinky had scaled the trunk again, and was shimmying along one of the larger branches. Pretty soon, the two branches Sweetie Belle was wedged between were prised apart far enough for her to come free, and she squealed as she began to fall. Dinky immediately grasped the branch with one hand, and launched herself towards the falling unicorn, just in time to grab her wrist. Sweetie's scream petered out, replaced with relieved panting as she swung.
"Dinky, that was amazing!" Scootaloo cheered. Dinky let Sweetie Belle drop to a soft landing on the grass, and followed a moment later.
"See, ah told you we didn't need no fire engine!" Applebloom stuck her tongue out at the pegasus filly.
"Wow, you're pretty good at this!"
"Thanks!" Dinky smiled proudly. "Now who wants to go play soccer? Maybe that's my special talent!" Without delay, the Cutie Mark Crusaders went straight for the park. Pinkie Pie just burbled on the ground.
Ponyville was bustling. It seemed like everypony was out and about today, and why shouldn't they be? The Summer Sun celebration was only three days away, and even though Princess Celestia wasn't around to be its centrepiece, everypony loves a carnival. So Rarity, laden with boxes of decorations and other odds and ends, was having a pretty tough time navigating the crowd. It was only a matter of time before she collided with somepony and sent her burden flying.
"Ah! Careful, some of those things are fragile!" She scrambled around, stuffing ribbons and trinkets back into the boxes.
"My sincerest apologies, ma'am, are you alright?"
"Honestly, some... ponies..." Her indignation just slipped away when she realised just who was offering her a hand up from the ground. Pulling a bag off his head and offering his most concerned smile was a white unicorn stallion, sporting a sharp suit, an elegantly kept blue mane, and a wafer thin moustache to match. "F... Fancypants?" she gibbered. What in Equestria is he doing in Ponyville?
"I say, that's... one way to make an introduction." He chuckled, handing the bag over to her. Behind him, a unicorn mare peered over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of the bag's contents; mostly gems and fine silk ribbons.
"Hmm... a pony with expensive tastes," she whispered; Fancypants sneaked a peek, and nodded subtly in agreement. Rarity busied herself with reassembling her luggage.
"My goodness, I am so sorry, I didn't see you there, I just had so many bags, and I was in a hurry to get to my friend Twilight's house, they have me organising the decorations for the Summer Sun celebration again this year..."
"Twilight? Twilight Sparkle?" Fancypants blinked, and levitated a monocle in front of his face. "Is this the same Twilight from the... incident in Canterlot?" Rarity didn't even miss a beat, putting her last few things together.
"Why yes, I was with her the whole time..."
"I say..." A little wry smile crept across his face.
"Rarity! Wonderful. Listen, I'm having a little soirée the evening before the Summer Sun celebration at my summer home just out of town..." That explains what he's doing here, then. "... would you be so kind as to join me, and a few of my companions there?"
"Me? I... uh... yes! Yes!"
"Splendid!"
Thump thump thump. "Spike! Can you get that?"
"Alright, I doof!" As soon as Spike twisted the handle on the library door, it swung open in his face, and Rarity stumbled through, boxes stacked in her arms, bags floating behind her.
"I've got those decorations Twilight, I do hope they're up to par..." Rarity called, setting them down on a table. "Twilight?"
"Just a second..." The reply came from upstairs.
"Darling, surely you can't still be stuck writing those letters, can you?" A pause.
"I'm afraid so, Rarity..." Twilight sighed, folding away a piece of paper and starting down the stairs. Her mane looked like it hadn't seen a brush for days, and her eyes had thick bags under them. "I wasn't aware some of Equestria's region leaders could be so stubborn! The Mayor is calling for nationwide elections, the Consul of Cloudsdale wants to instate martial law, and don't even get me started on Prince Blueblood!"
"Blueblood?" Rarity looked as if she'd been served a mould sandwich. "Tell me he's not."
"He is," Twilight groaned. "As the eldest living relative of the Princesses, he inherited the throne of Canterlot... he's been insufferable ever since. And then there's rumours of another gryphon horde on the march, Appleloosa is threatening secession... ugh, I'm going out of my mind here!"
"Heavens! You must join Fluttershy and I at the spa one of these days, you could really use a break from all this stress... are you sure you can handle the Summer Sun preparations?"
"I'm... I'm fine. It's fine. Thanks for your concern, but I just have to knuckle down and do this." Rarity paused and bit her lip, while Twilight fiddled with some more scrolls.
"Uhh... speaking of gryphons... sort of... how is Rainbow Dash doing? Have you heard back from her?"
"Oh! Yes, she's doing great!" Twilight's face lit up, and she tossed the scrolls aside to search for something else, quickly pulling out a letter and reading it. Spike staggered from the door, only for one of them to land on his head with a bonk. "She says that now that the training camp is settling in, she should be home every two weeks, starting from the Summer Sun celebration!"
"Wonderful!"
"I know! She would make it every week, but the flight from Trottingham is too long. Unfortunately, she doesn't know when she'll be back for good, but she misses all of us."
"You uh, want me to send these, Twi?" Spike rubbed his head, and held up one of the discarded scrolls.
"Sure, go a..." Twilight stopped when she saw Spike double over, clutching his stomach and bulging his cheeks. After a couple of seconds of this nauseous expression, he unleashed a small belch of green flames, and a scroll materialised in the air from them. "...head? Funny, I wasn't expecting mail..." She picked it up and unfurled it. The paper was faintly marked with the Wonderbolts' insignia in the background. She raised an eyebrow and started to read aloud. "'Dear Twilight...
Scratch that last letter I sent you. Something's come up." Both she and Rarity gulped. "I can't give you all the details, because well, I'm not quite sure what the hell is going on myself. I just need you and the others to get over here ASAP. I borrowed a dragon for this, so yeah, it's urgent.
Rainbow Dash'"
"I see boot camp is doing her literacy skills the world of good." Rarity folded her arms and leaned on the wall. Twilight shook her head, rereading the letter to herself.
"This train ride is taking forever!" Pinkie whinged, slumping over the cubicle's table. Applejack slept with her hat pulled down over her face, and Twilight was deep in a book.
"What in the world are they doing up there?" Rarity tried to get a look at the lead car through the window. It wouldn't open, so she saw nothing. "Don't they know how to use a steam engine?" Fluttershy just cast a worried look at the parts of the engine's smoke trail that she could see, passing over the tops of the conifers.
Thump. All five jumped. Rarity reached into her coat and slowly drew her dagger.
"What was that?" Twilight snapped her book shut, and stashed it in her bag. Her horn started to glow. Thump. Thump.
"It's on the roof..." Applejack adjusted her hat.
"And it's... moving!" Fluttershy whimpered, retreating into the corner of the cabin. Twilight went straight for the end of the carriage, waiting about a length short of the door. Rarity and Applejack filed in behind her and braced themselves. Thump. Rattle. Whatever was on the roof, it was making plans for an entry. Click. The door slid open, and Twilight reacted, whipping out the first defensive spell that came to mind: a simple push.
Thud. A familiar voice yelped in pain. Twilight opened her eyes to see Rainbow Dash spread flat against the door of the next carriage, her mane blown back, her eyes wide with surprise.
"Oh my gosh! I'm sorry! Are you okay?"
"Yeah..." The pegasus wheezed. "I'm good..."
"Rainbow! What the hay were y'doin' landin' on the roof an' scarin' us like that?"
"Well..." Dash peeled herself off the door and entered the carriage after them. "Your train was running a bit late, so I went to see if there was a problehglk!" Applejack grabbed her around the neck, treating her to a friendly noogie.
"Daw, look at you, ya big lug, comin' to see if we're alright! Inn't that sweet?"
"Hey, I..." Dash tried to struggle out of the chokehold, but quickly gave up and chuckled, "It's good to see you too, AJ."
"So what, is it customary for military ponies to be greeted by assault?" Rarity quipped, returning her dagger to its underarm sheath. Applejack stuck out her tongue, and released the pegasus.
"Pff, military pony my ass..."
"Ya sure been pickin' up some of the lingo while yer there." Applejack gave her a light dig in the arm.
"Eh, I gue-"
"I wonder what's taking them so loh my gosh it's Dashie!" A fluffy, bouncy pink blur spilled out of the cabin and tackled Rainbow to the ground. Fluttershy poked her head out of the cabin.
"Hi, Pinkie..." Dash wheezed. "... y'know Rarity, you might be on to something..."
"We are gonna have so much fun!"
"Actually Pinkie, we're here on business first." Twilight closed the carriage door. Pinkie made a disappointed noise, and let Dash stagger to her hooves. "Which reminds me, what was it you, uh, didn't have time to explain in the letter?"
"We should be coming up on it now..." The pegasus pointed out the window and scanned the horizon, drawing the others' gaze. They watched silently, at a loss for what she was trying to pick out. After a couple of minutes, she pointed in a very specific direction. "There. See that pink cloud there?" Twilight squinted, trying to find it.
"... is that it? Did you call us all the way out here because of a pink cloud?"
"There's more." Dash grimaced. Sure enough, as they neared Trottingham, a few more oddities became visible; a few pigs fluttering through the air on tiny white wings, faint brown drizzle fell from the clouds, some trees in the distance could be spotted in bright pinks, blues, reds and yellows, and a rainbow started to appear, twisting and looping across the sky like a tangled ribbon.
"What in tarnation?"
"You see why I called you guys then?"
"Don't you have th-the W-Wonderbolts around for this kind of thing?" Fluttershy gibbered.
"We tried that. You don't wanna know what happened to our scouts." Grim silence fell on the cabin.
"Alright, this is the edge of the disturbance." Rainbow Dash stopped the group at a stream. On one side, everything was fine; on the other, the water was flowing backwards, the trees were decked out with Hearth's Warming decorations, and the ground was marked with a checkerboard pattern. "Remember the signal, Twi - if we get in trouble, just fire something big and flashy into the sky, and the Wonderbolts should come bail us out." Twilight nodded, and stepped forward into the stream. One by one, the others followed, even if Fluttershy practically had to be dragged along.
"Heh, just like old times, eh, guys?" Applejack tried to keep a relatively chipper tone, but didn't seem to have much of an effect - everyone just carried on what they were doing. Pinkie bounced around, admiring the trees; Twilight and Rainbow Dash were just focussed on the mission, while Rarity was more focussed on her mane, and Fluttershy seemed preoccupied with hiding from everything. "Never mind..."
"Ahahahah..."
"What was that?" Twilight stopped in place. Fluttershy squeaked, and darted for cover behind a rock. It smelled faintly of mint and sugar. "This doesn't make any sense..."
"Make sense, hmm?" A deep, male voice called, the sound echoing around so much that it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. "What fun is there in... making sense?"
"Show yourself!" Rainbow Dash yelled. Smoke started to seep from the ground and circle them.
"Ah don't like this..."
"Six little ponies, lost in the wood... such a shame if something were to happen to them!"
"What in the..." Rarity blinked, pulling out her dagger again.
"What?" The various echoes began to converge on a single point in front of the group, and the smoke thickened at that spot. A head started to appear from the mist, first two mismatched horns, followed by a long face with differently sized eyes, a single fang in the mouth and a wispy beard. With a wry smile, it spoke; "Did you think gryphons were the only thing Celestia was protecting you from?"
"Twilight, what are we dealing with here?" Dash nudged the unicorn, flaring out her wings and preparing to take to the air. She just stared, slack-jawed.
"I... I don't know! I..."
"Ohoho, Twilight Sparkle, how does it feel to be dumbfounded?" The stranger lifted a lion's paw from the smoke, and clicked its fingers; with a flash, he disappeared, and reappeared next to her. She jumped and shied away. The rest of his body became visible - a long, serpentine form, to which different appendages from all kinds of different animals were attached; a snake's tail, one dragon foot and one horse foot, one dragon's wing and one pigeon's wing, and an eagle claw to complete the set. "What's wrong? Never found a book about me? No tales of the all-powerful Discord?" He taunted, getting his face alarmingly close to hers. She backed away with a look hanging somewhere between disgust and seething rage.
"Hey! What's the deal?" Dash yelled from the air.
"And the great Rainbow Dash, loyal to the very end!" The stranger clicked his fingers again with a sly grin, and the pegasus's wings vanished. "However soon that end may be." She squealed in horror and fell from the sky, landing with a firm thud. While she groaned and burbled on the ground, he clicked again, returning them to her.
"Now see here, Mister Discord!" Click. The draconequus appeared under Applejack's hat, resting his head in his paw and claw, elbows on her forehead.
"Ahh, honest Applejack, always standing up for what's right..." he tittered. With a deft flick of his tail, he snapped her in the back of the leg, making her shout in pain, and forcing her to her knees. "... most of the time."
"Oh come on, this is hardly fair..." Rarity pouted, crossing her arms.
"How rude of me, Rarity!" Discord slinked through the air, like an eel through water, coiling around her shoulders. With another click, he summoned a heap of mud in the air above her head. She shrieked, and it covered her from head to hoof. "Your friends have been treating me like dirt, so why don't I treat you to some?"
"Should have seen that one coming..." she grumbled, wiping the mud from her eyes. Pinkie failed to hold back a giggle.
"And Pinkie Pie! The old element of laughter, a personal favourite of mine..." He grinned, bounding over to her and just lightly tickling her under the arms. She seized up and fell to the ground, laughing herself to tears.
"Okay! I give! I give!" she squealed, thumping the ground. He smirked, and started to circle the group.
"There's another one here... I wonder where she is?" He put his claw to his forehead and looked around, with comic exaggeration. Fluttershy curled herself up even tighter, whimpering in terror. "Fluttershy... Fluttershy!" he called softly, throwing his voice as he drew closer to her rock. She gulped, breathed deeply a few times, and rustled up the courage to take a peek out of cover. In this time, the draconequus had sneaked around the far side of the rock, silently crawling up to her ear, and whispering; "Boo." She screeched and leapt over the rock, and was quivering behind Twilight in a snap. Pinkie's mirth evaporated. The unicorn snarled and turned to the grinning trickster.
"Alright, quit the games, Discord. What the hell do you want?"
"Oh, this is going to be fun, I can already tell..." he chuckled to himself, before snapping again, summoning an iced cocktail from thin air, and sipping lightly on it. "I have a riddle for you all. You have until the Summer Sun celebration to solve it, and should you fail, or refuse, your beloved Equestria will burn..." Twilight scowled, staring him down. As far as she knew, this could all be an elaborate bluff, but with the magical prowess he was demonstrating, he might well be the real deal. She cursed under her breath, and made a note to dig up Diaries of a Planeswalker when she got home.
"Fine. Shoot," she growled.
"I've got a recipe. Three days, two thousand years and one angry pony. What does it all make?" He fluttered through the air with his mischievous grin. All he got in return was Twilight's deathly glare. "I'll be waiting on the ramparts of Canterlot at sunrise on the longest day for your answer. Good luck, everypony! Ahahaha, ahahahah!" As he began cackling maliciously to himself, he whipped the smoke up into a small whirlwind, blinding the ponies on the ground and making them hack and cough. By the time they recovered, the smoke was gone, the trees and ground were back to normal, and Discord had vanished.
"Did... did that just happen?" Rarity blinked, still wringing mud from her mane. Rainbow Dash frantically checked her wings to make sure they were intact.
"Nah, pretty sure it did..." Applejack brushed herself off. Pinkie Pie just about managed to prise Fluttershy off Twilight's leg and carry her, much to the unicorn's relief. Unburdened, she began to pace and think.
"Hmm... three days, two thousand years and one angry pony..."
"Ain't it three days 'til the Summer Sun celebration?"
"Yes, but that might be too obvious... it could be any three days, they might not even be together... it should make more sense when we have context. We need to research the other parts of the riddle."
"Why are even doing Discord's stupid riddle anyway?" Dash sneered, finally confident that her wings were in fact present and functional. Twilight huffed, her concentration broken.
"Because, Rainbow, we don't know what he's capable of. He took away your wings once, what's to say he can't do it again?" Dash gulped, and backed down.
"Ah don't like this any more than you do, sugarcube, but we can't take chances." Applejack nodded grimly.
"Besides, while I'm looking for clues, I can look for information on Discord, if there is any."
"I must say, if we're finding this kind of thing in our backyard, who knows what we'll find further afield..." Rarity mused, to murmurs of mild, worried agreement.
"She's here! She's here!" Scootaloo sat up excitedly, knocking an elaborate marble run set flying. Cheerilee squeaked, and most of the pieces clattered over her head. The pegasus filly bounced to the door of the schoolhouse, throwing it open to find Rainbow Dash standing in the doorway, looking a little weary, but smiling nonetheless. "Rainbow Dash!"
"Heya, squirt!" Her grin broadened as the younger pegasus tackled her stomach with a hug. Either she's getting big, or the trip back was really long... Dash thought, staggering a little from the assault. A quick glance down at the filly, barely up to her bust, and another up to the last remnants of the day's sunlight answered her question.
"I missed you so much!"
"I missed you too, Scoots," Dash beamed, ruffling her mane a little. Cheerilee appeared at the door with a suitcase, drawing Dash's attention. "I trust she hasn't been too much trouble?"
"Oh, you know her!" the earth pony chuckled and waved dismissively, before muttering through gritted teeth, "The little rascal..." Dash just snorted a laugh, and took the bag, towing it alongside her own.
"Again, I can't thank you enough, I had no idea I was gonna be away so much so soon..."
"Don't worry about it, it's practically her home away from home, right Scootaloo?"
"I guess, kinda..." the filly mumbled. Rainbow Dash chuckled and pulled an envelope out of her jacket, and held it out to Cheerilee.
"D'oh, I can't accept this!"
"Please, it's the least I can do."
"You do enough for all of us already, you deserve the bits more than I do." She pushed the envelope back. Dash shrugged, and put it away again.
"Okay, suit yourself." She made a note to have Scootaloo leave it lying around next time she was over. "C'mon Scoots, let's get us home! I'm beat."
"Alright!" Scootaloo took her suitcase, grabbed her guardian by the hand and charged away. Dash barely had time to wave goodbye.
"... and then Dinky was all like 'nooooo!' And she caught Sweetie Belle before she fell!"
"Wow, sounds like you might have competition in the awesome department!"
"No way!"
"I dunno, Scoot, that sounded pretty awesome to me."
"I'm way more awesome than Dinky!"
"You can prove it another time, we're ho-" Dash stopped just short of their cloud home, looking over it carefully. She raised a finger, and Scootaloo frowned.
"What's wrong?" the filly whispered.
"There's a hole in the wall. Somepony's been in here... recently." She narrowed her gaze, and silently lowered her bag to the ground. "Stay here." Scootaloo nodded, and Dash fluttered up to an upstairs window.
Inside seemed to be mostly as she'd left it - Derpy and Fluttershy could usually be trusted to keep her house in one piece. The whole thing seemed to be very slightly tilted to one side, probably a storm a little while back, but there didn't seem to be any actual damage. As she crept along the corridor, she could hear occasional whoops and giggles coming from her living room. She poked her head down the stairs first. She saw her rainbow fountain flowing and illuminated - the intruder must have turned it on - and a figure in the shadows on the far side of the room. Every now and then it would jump in the air, spread its wings, and emit a high-pitched giggle. After observing a couple of repetitions of this, she could pick out something unusual on its face - a beak. Not somepony... some gryphon!
She tucked her wings in tight and tipped down the stairs. At the bottom, she crouched and flared them out again. She kicked against the floor and threw one arm out to the side, simultaneously launching her into the air and hitting a switch. A canned spell lit several lanterns at once, lighting up the room, bright as day. By the time the intruder turned, Dash was already leaping towards her. Only too late did she realise something from the interloper's petrified squeak, big eyes and diminutive stature - this was a gryphlet.
Thump. She was too late to call off the tackle, and pinned it to the floor. Being clouds, it wasn't going to hurt much, but gryphon or not, Dash was still concerned about jumping on a child. As soon as she hit the floor, she pushed herself up and sat back, giving her a moment to look at the intruder more closely. It was clearly female, and based on size, the remnants of a few downy feathers on her chest and comparison to her experience of Gilda, she'd say she was about Scootaloo's age too.
Much to her surprise, she didn't cry. She wasn't even winded. She just brushed it off and sat right back up. Heh. Tough kid. Maybe all gryphlets are like that.
"Are you okay, kid?"
"Hi! Are you Rainbow Dash?" The little gryphon just blinked and tilted her head.
"Uhm..." Dash hesitated. This was a child, but it was still a gryphon. Then again, even if it was a spy, she wouldn't have any problem apprehending her. She felt bad about that logic, but it still held. "... yeah, why?" As soon as she identified herself, the gryphlet's eyes lit up, and she pounced, not to attack, but to embrace. She was as confused as she was startled.
"I'm so glad I found you!"
"Okay, hold up a second." Dash gently pushed her off. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you!" the gryphlet chuffed. Dash just boggled at her.
"Why?"
"You killed Gilda, so you must be strong!"
"How..." Dash put one hand to her forehead and sighed. "How did you know I killed her?" Thanks for reminding me.
"'Cos she was my sister." Dash's jaw dropped slowly. Did she really hear that? This somehow made even less sense than before. "And I knew it was you 'cos I found this here!" The gryphlet picked a feather off the floor and held it up. Dash instantly recognised it as one of Gilda's feathers - it was part of a pair of mementos they had exchanged at the end of the Junior Speedster's camp. Dash had given one of her own in exchange. She knew now it meant nothing, but sometimes she liked to pretend.
"Hey, careful with that!" She snatched it off her and inspected it for damage. Once she was sure it was unharmed, she put it back on the cloud shelf, and turned back to her visitor. "So... let me get this straight. You, Gilda's sister... came all the way to Ponyville, because I killed her..." She got a nod in response. "... Why?"
"You must be a much better sister than Gilda!" The gryphlet walked up and hugged her leg again. When Dash stood upright, she only came up to her knee.
"Wait, wait wait... so you came here, because you want me to adopt you... not for revenge, not for some weird gryphon justice thing, but because you want me to be your big sister..."
"Mmmhm!" She nodded sincerely. I guess Gilda did say they were raised to be cold-blooded. Man, gryphons are weird...
"Rainbow Dash, why is there a gryphon on your leg?" Dash looked over her shoulder to see Scootaloo, panting. She'd brought both bags inside by herself.
"Honestly? I have no idea."
"My name's Kalza by the way!" The gryphlet cheeped. The two pegasi just stared.
Twilight groaned and stretched as she approached the library. She'd fallen asleep on the train, and wasn't fully awake again as she stumbled home. The light was fading, and she wanted to get in bed with a book as soon as she could. Ah, bed sounded so nice about now. So warm and comfortable, and soft... and warm...
"Hey, Twilight... are you okay?"
"Hmm? What?" The unicorn shook herself awake and looked up to see Derpy Hooves standing next to her. She noticed that she was leaning against her front door, drooling slightly. She pushed herself off and rubbed one eye with a chuckle. "Oh. Yeah, I'm fine, musta just... fallen asleep there! Had a really long day..."
"You're gonna work yourself to death one of these days." The mailmare smirked, raising a brow.
"Pffft, it's fine, it's just until this succession thing gets worked out. Anyway, you're out pretty late for your rounds, don't you think?"
"Actually, I just got a couple of urgent letters that needed to get to you right away." Derpy pulled two scrolls from her bag and handed them to her. One of them was sealed with blue wax, imprinted with a pair of wings, and the other in white, with an eight-pointed star.
"Ugh, not more letters!" Twilight groaned, and sank her head into her hands.
"Hey, don't blame me, I'm just the messenger."
"Alright, let's have a look at them." Twilight took the white-sealed one, picked off the wax and unfurled it. "Since Blueblood and Jetstream obviously can't wait until morning, oh no! Let's see here... Dear Twilight Sparkle..."
"Don't!" Derpy cringed. "Don't read your mail to me!"
"I really don't mind, their letters are actually kinda funny, in an ironic way. At this point there's barely anything to keep confidential in these things."
"Okay, I guess..."
"Dear Twilight Sparkle,
I grow weary of this correspondence. This matter is too big and too urgent to be worked out at long distance. I will be arriving in Ponyville tomorrow to enter talks with you and Mayor Mare. That is all.
Blueblood, Sovereign Prince of Canterlot'... Oh. Well that was..."
"A little less funny than you expected?"
"Yeah..." Twilight sighed, rolling the scroll up again and unwrapping the other one. "Dear Twilight yadda yadda... arriving in Ponyville tomorrow afternoon... Consul Jetstream of Cloudsdale. Just perfect. Exactly what I needed to hear." She sank her head in her hands, and leaned back against her door.
"I... this might just be a hunch, but I'm guessing there's a little more than the Summer Sun celebration on your mind." Derpy folded her arms. Twilight emitted a breathy snort and straightened up.
"You're too good. Can you keep a secret?"
"I did it before, didn't I?"
"Of course. Come in." The two ponies ducked inside, and Twilight closed the door gently behind her. She could hear Spike snoozing, so she kept her voice down. "Alright. We found something near Trottingham earlier today. We're not sure what it is, but it's powerful, mischevious and calls itself Discord."
"Discord?" The mailmare quirked a brow.
"Yeah, it's confusing me too. It set us a riddle, and gave us until the Summer Sun celebration to solve it, or 'Equestria will burn', so he said. What does a recipe of three days, two thousand years and one angry pony make?"
"Uhm..." Derpy screwed up her face, thinking. Twilight couldn't help but giggle a little.
"Don't worry about it, I need to do some research anyway. Which is why this..." She held up the scrolls. "... is the last thing I need right now."
"I can imagine... listen, if I can help you with anything, just holler, okay?"
"Thanks... I know I can count on you." The unicorn smiled and nodded, and Derpy returned the gesture. She paused, before making motions towards the door.
"Listen, I should probably..."
"I understand. Take care!" The mailmare waved, and quietly exited the library.
Now alone, Twilight tossed the two letters aside, and started digging through some of the piles of books around the room. The whole place was a mess - she hadn't had time for reshelving in months, only adding to her stress. Piles clattered and collapsed, and tomes flew across the room as the librarian rifled through them, occasionally making a frustrated grunt. After a few minutes, she heard a voice yawn and call to her from the mezzanine.
"Twilight, what are you doing..." She gasped and looked up, to see Spike leaning over the side, clutching his blanket.
"Oh! Spike... I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to wake you, I..." Spike just raised his eyebrows and blinked. "Sorry. I was looking for the Planeswalker's diary..."
"It's up here, I kept it by your desk, on the 'important and memorable' shelf."
"Of course!" Twilight cringed, pulled herself out of the rubble of books and scampered upstairs. "My head is just all over the place today..."
"Something wrong? You look pretty stressed. I mean, more stressed than normal."
"I... yeah, there is. But it can wait until morning. You need your sleep." She smiled, and levitated him back to his basket.
"What? I..." As soon as the dragon's head hit the pillow, he yawned, and was falling asleep again in seconds. "... alright..." Twilight giggled, and turned back to her desk. She pulled Diaries of a Planeswalker from the shelf, and settled in to read.
"Wh... what?" Twilight stirred, her vision and feeling slowly returning. She felt something damp and slightly sticky on the side of her face, and an ache in her neck and back. She straightened out, pushing herself up from her desk, an old diary in front of her. When she connected the dots, she wiped the drool from her face, and checked the condition of the book in a mild panic. Fortunately, its enchantment still seemed to hold - there was just a sticky patch where her face was overnight. Some of her notes, however, were not so lucky - she could just about make out some of the moisture-damaged scribbles, tantamount to 'this book don't got squat about this Discord guy'.
"Twilight!" Thump thump thump. Twilight rolled her eyes and stretched. They can't be here already, can they?
"Gimme a second!" she called. Spike started to show signs of life, but with a disturbed night last night, she wasn't expecting him to answer the door in a hurry. She pottered down the stairs, rubbing her eyes, and pulled the door open to see Rainbow Dash, arms folded and eyebrows furrowed anxiously. "Oh. Hey Rainbow, what's... what's up?"
"Twilight, ya gotta help me... I... you're not gonna believe this."
"Huh. Try me."
"Last night, I came home and there was... ah hell, I'm not gonna sugar-coat it. There was a gryphon in my house. A freaking gryphon."
"Ugh, more stuff to worry about... did it try to kill you? Is Scootaloo okay?"
"She's fine, it... it was just a kid. She says she's Gilda's sister or something, and she wasn't trying to kill me, she..." Dash rubbed her hand over her face again. "This is the part I just don't get. She wants me to adopt her."
"She wyoowha?" Twilight's jaw hung slack, and she screwed up her face. "You didn't, did you?"
"I... I didn't give her a real answer. I let her stay for the night, and came here first thing this morning."
"You've got to get rid of her, Dash."
"I can't just throw a kid out on her flank like that! If what she says is true, she ran way from home for this."
"And what if she's lying? What if she's just spying on you?"
"When have gryphons ever used spies?"
"Gilda."
"Gil..." Dash failed to find an appropriate rebuttal, and sighed. "I guess."
"I don't like this, Rainbow. I've got too much on my plate right now without you picking up stray gryphons on us..."
"I didn't ask for this!" The pegasus flung her arms in the air in frustration, and paced a little on the doorstep. "Still, I... I know you won't hear me say this a lot, Twi, but... I can't do this on my own." Twilight snorted and smirked. "Sonic Rainbooms, gryphon hordes, no problem. But this kinda thing is just something else. I'm having a hard enough time trying to be a good mom for Scootaloo, and now this... I just don't know what I should do." The unicorn could almost hear a faint whimper in her friend's voice.
"You... actually want to give this kid a chance?"
"I don't want to keep her, I just don't want to toss her out. Even if she is a spy, she's just a kid, and it's not fair on her."
"That's awfully... heartfelt of you, are you going soft on us?" Twilight chuckled.
"Shut up!" Dash couldn't help but crack a smile, breaking some of the tension. "You know what I mean."
"I guess... let's just wait and see. I don't know about you, but there's just so much stuff I have to do today. Where is she now, anyway?"
"Oh, I left her at home with Scootaloo."
"You left her with Scootaloo? Alone?" Twilight gawped. "Rainbow what the hell are you thinking?"
"Relax, Scoot's a tough kid. I'm sure they'll be fine on their own for a little while..."
"You'd better be right about that..."
"I'm pretty sure. So, uh... thanks for your help?"
"Not sure what I did, but okay. Oh! While you're here, there's something I need your help with..."
Scootaloo yawned and staggered down the stairs, rubbing her eyes. She still hadn't quite gotten used to waking up in a house made of clouds, but she was getting there. It was only when she saw a bundle of white and brown feathers crawling over the cloud shelves in search of food that she was finally sure that last night had in fact happened.
"Uhh... hey, Kal..." she croaked. "If you don't mind me calling you that. What are you looking for?"
"I'm trying to make breakfast, is there any meat in here?" Kalza replied casually, tossing an apple over her shoulder. "All I keep finding are leaves..." Scootaloo gasped, and dived to catch it before it fell through the floor.
"Meat?" The pegasus filly grimaced. "Uhm... no, ponies don't eat meat... I think we might have some eggs, if that'll do..."
"Oh boy! I love eggs!" Kalza leaped off the counter and on to the floor next to Scootaloo. She accidentally put a claw through the floor and stumbled, taking a moment to regain her balance. "Heh... sorry, not used to clouds..."
"Don't worry, I'm still a bit shaky on 'em too..." The pegasus forced a smile, and brushed a small chunk of cloud away from the wall, revealing a few shelves of cloud packed so firm it almost looked like cotton wool, and laden with fruit juice, milk and eggs. She carefully lifted the eggbox out, and set it down on the counter, on a small plate of similarly compressed vapour. The box teetered in place, as if being set float in water. "Hmm... how do you cook eggs again?"
"That's okay, I'll just eat 'em straight!" Kalza roughly grabbed one, the knock destabilising the box enough to tip it through the plate, and it sank straight through the counter. Scootaloo could only watch the eggs fall away to the ground below, leaving behind a hole, while the gryphlet cracked her prize in her claw and held it over her open beak. A sudden foul odour made her back up a little and cast the egg aside. Scootaloo covered her muzzle.
"Eww... bad eggs!"
"Blech." While Kalza struggled to flick the smelly slime off her claw, Scootaloo checked the milk carton. The scent was just as bad, if not worse.
"Figures... Rainbow Dash has been away for a few weeks, so these are probably way old..."
"Why would she leave you alone for weeks?" Kalza tilted her head innocently, trying to wipe her claw in the clouds, to limited success.
"Eh... it's a long story. Speaking of her, where is she?" The pegasus turned to look for any signs she'd been here. A small note soon caught her eye, left in the middle of the table, pinned between two blobs of thick cloud. "Huh... 'Heya Scoot and Kal!" The words 'and Kal' were squashed in, in small writing, as if an afterthought. "'I'm just going to Twilight's place to sort out something important, and then I'll be RIGHT back. As in, you won't even be finished breakfast by the time I'm back.' Heh, you got that right..." she grumbled. "'Love, Rainbow Dash'".
"So what does that mean?"
"It means..." The pegasus smirked, grabbing a pencil. "... we're going out for breakfast."
"Guys, I'm home!" Rainbow Dash ploughed through the kitchen wall, hastily squishing the clouds back together behind her. She took a few steps towards the stairs, confused by the silence. "Guys?" she called again. "Ugh, what is that smell..." She wafted her nose, and turned her attention to the counter. An open milk carton was laid on its side, some of its viscous, chunky contents dripping away, and some of the clouds near the floor had blobs of a foul-smelling goo floating in them. She sighed, and shook her head. "Gah, I'm stupid... what's this?" A scrap of paper on the counter caught her eye as she returned the carton to the shelf. On one side, there was the note she had originally left for Scootaloo, and on the other was another. The writing got abruptly neater halfway through, so she could tell it was Scootaloo's - she'd probably written the first half by hand, and then given up and written the rest with her mouth, the way she'd learned to write.
'Dear Rainbow Dash, we couldn't find anything to eat...' You don't say? '... so we're going to meet up with Applebloom for breakfast, and probably stay there until lunch. See ya later! - Scootaloo & Kalza'
Dash raised an eyebrow, and shrugged. They'll be fine.
The kitchen door of the farmhouse swung open with a bang, making the two visitors jump back a little.
"Well howdy, Scootaloo! What are you doiah look out there's a gryphon behmff...?" No sooner had Applebloom greeted them, she started to panic. Scootaloo immediately clapped her hand to the earth pony's mouth.
"Relax, she's with me!" She whispered. Applebloom threw her off, and backed away a little.
"What the hay are ya doin'? Ya tryin' to get us killed?"
"She's fine, she just turned up last night. I think she was just lost or something."
"I wanted to live with Rainbow Dash!" Kalza chipped in, in an out-of-place cheery tone.
"See? We've got something in common already. Just keep quiet about it, okay?"
"Hmm... if you say so..." Applebloom kept a wary eye on the oblivious gryphlet, and carried on. "What were ya lookin' for anyway?"
"Well, Rainbow Dash kinda forgot to get food when she got back last night, so there's nothing to eat at home... could we maybe have breakfast with you guys?" The pegasus put on her most innocent smile. Applebloom stared at them sceptically for a moment, before stepping back out of the doorway.
"Alright... but don't go makin' a ton o' noise. Y'should thank your lucky stars there's only me 'n Granny Smith home right now."
"Where's Applejack?"
"Y'just missed her, Rainbow Dash came callin', said Twilight needed her for somethin'. Didn't say what."
"Hmm..." Scootaloo rubbed her chin. "Suspicious..."
"Alright, listen up." Twilight Sparkle thumped a book on the table to grab the attention of the room. Rarity and Fluttershy were quietly chatting off to the side of the library, Rainbow Dash was snoozing on top of a bookshelf, Pinkie Pie was having an energetic discussion with Derpy Hooves about baked produce, Applejack was leaning on the wall by the door with a strand of hay in her mouth, and Zecora was balancing on her head at the bottom of the stairs. Spike yelped as the book came down next to him on the table. "I've called you all here because you're all ponies I can trust completely, and this is a matter of grave importance." She set a couple of books and scrolls down on the table.
"Please tell me you're not dragging us into this succession crap, Twi," Rainbow Dash whined. Applejack shot her a dirty look, mouthing 'watch your language'. Dash rolled her eyes.
"Actually, this is about Discord. To recap, especially for those of you who weren't there in person..." The unicorn quickly glanced at Derpy, and then at Zecora. "Yesterday, we encountered a strange being just west of Trottingham, that looked like it was put together from a bunch of different creatures, and it called itself Discord. It seems to have powerful illusion and summoning magic, possibly transmutation aswell, he wasn't around long enough for me to get much detail. He also gave us a riddle, 'Three days, two thousand years and one angry pony. What does this make?' But what's most concerning is the terms he gave us for it. He wants our answer on the walls of Canterlot on the morning of the Summer Sun celebration, or he says 'Equestria will burn'."
"Hmm... an ominous sign indeed..." Zecora carefully dismounted from her position, and walked up to the table. "But what from us do you need?"
"I'm getting to that. I did some research last night..." Twilight held up the Diaries of a Planeswalker, before tossing it into the middle of the table. "... and found nothing. Not even a resemblance. From the records I have here, nopony's ever seen anything like Discord, not in this world, not in any other plane of existence. Similarly, none of my histories have anything concrete beyond about a thousand years, and who knows what kind of censorship they have anyway."
"And since we went and blew up Canterlot, the great library there is..." Derpy pouted.
"Destroyed, yes, but I wasn't thinking of there. If anything, the information there would be the least useful, because it was right under Celestia's nose. As Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy might remember, we have another, more reliable source of information. Underneath the ruined castle in the Everfree Forest, there's another library, preserved by enchantment and probably untouched for well over a thousand years. That's where we found these..." The unicorn spread the small stack of books out, revealing Magic of the Body and Manual of the Elements, along with the Diaries. "Books about types of magic not only forgotten about by modern Equestria, but also banned in ancient Equestria. So if anywhere's going to have an account of Discord, or details of what might have happened two thousand years ago, it's there."
"The old smash'n'grab, okay then!" Dash hopped off the bookshelf and fluttered down to the table.
"More or less. The reason I need all of you here is because, as you might remember, Rainbow, it's dangerous down there." Twilight took the scroll, and rolled it out over the table revealing a sketched map of the forest, with a few locations marked on it. She tapped the map as she talked. "We'll split into two teams. Rainbow, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie, you're all with me. We'll head to the ruins first. Zecora, I want you, Derpy and Spike to hang back at your hut. You're our backup - give us four hours, and if we're not back by then, come looking for us."
"An interesting split, but I don't quite understand it." Zecora quirked a brow, and folded her arms.
"I chose the six of us to head in first because of something some of you might have noticed in the last six months, which I like to call hypercompetency."
"Hyper what now?" Applejack shot a questioning glance.
"Hypercompetency. The six of us are all, what... twenty-two, twenty-three years old? But, because of the banishment, we've lived that length of time twice, and since the whole Celestia incident, we've had access to twice the life experience of anypony else our age. For example, Rainbow Dash, last year, you were deathly afraid of going forward for a Wonderbolts trial."
"Pshh..." The pegasus waved dismissively, before mumbling, "... yeah..."
"But now, you're easily the best flier in the whole squad." Dash smirked, and did an acrobatic flip in place. "But don't let it get to your head."
"Too late!" Applejack thumped Dash on the shoulder playfully.
"Or Rarity, before, your designs were only just starting to get attention outside of Ponyville. Now, you're a rising star in fashion all over Equestria!" Rarity blushed a little, and kicked one hoof against the other. "Anyway, because the six of us are hypercompetent, we're the best able to deal with threats as they arise. Derpy and Zecora, the only reason I'm involving you in this at all is as a failsafe, and because we can trust you. Spike, I'm just leaving you with them to balance numbers. Is everyone clear?"
"There is one thing..." Rarity stepped forward. "I was under the impression you were meeting with Consul Jetstream and Prince... ugh... Blueblood today. I'm not saying they're more important than the potential world-eater we have here, I just assume that you're going to do more than leave a 'back in five minutes' sign on your door for them."
"I've already left a message with the Mayor saying I'll be out of town until this afternoon, which should buy me some time. They might not even need me around to come to some kind of agreement, but I doubt we'll be that lucky. Now, if there aren't any more questions..." Twilight rolled the map back up. "Let's move out!"
Rainbow Dash was the first to leave the library, almost bursting the door down with enthusiasm. Behind her, Applejack shook her head and followed. Dash chuckled, and looked back, crossing her arms and waiting for the others to catch up. Without warning, her vision blacked out, and her sense of balance went wild. She went to wave an arm in front of her face, only to feel nothing. For a brief moment, she panicked.
Crunch.
She felt something hard impact her face, like she'd just fallen on it from height. She groaned, sat up, and looked around. The library was gone the sun was gone, and the cobblestone road was gone. The only thing she could see was Twilight, standing a few lengths away from her, and the light at the tip of her horn was the only light around to see with. From what she could tell, the floor was a barren white, and outside of the range of Twilight's light was just an infinite black.
"Twilight?" Dash blinked. "What is this?"
"The simplest way I can describe it is, I'm in your head."
"What?" With just a couple of flaps, she pulled into the air and hovered in front of Twilight, scowling. "What are you doing in my head then? Where did the town go?" Twilight sighed.
"I suppose if you want a more accurate summary, one of those old books had a couple of chapters on Neuromancy. Nerve magic. You're seeing and feeling all this, but it's not really there. Well, it's really me talking to you, but I'm just controlling an image of myself that you can see, I'm still inside the library."
"Then..."
"And before you ask, I'm running this inside a time bubble. You're not missing anything." Dash calmed a little, still pouting, but less visibly angry.
"So... why are you in my head?"
"I need to talk to you about that gryphlet. In private."
"And you couldn't have just pulled me to one side somewhere in the forest to talk about this?"
"Well colour me paranoid, but with all this succession and Discord nonsense going on, I can't afford to let anypony know we have a gryphon in Ponyville. Now, we have to be quick, because this is pretty draining for me. Where is she?"
"Last I checked, Kalza went out to breakfast with Scootaloo..."
"Ugh, Rainbow, you are impossible!" The unicorn smacked herself on the forehead.
"What? Scoot should keep her busy, and hopefully out of the way..."
"Do you know your own adopted daughter at all? The kind of mischief the Cutie Mark Crusaders get up to?"
"I..." Dash dropped to the ground, ears drooping. Twilight sighed.
"In a situation like this, there's no telling where they are by now. It'll probably be all over the town by the time we get back, but it's... out of our hands for now. So much for privacy..."
"Sorry..."
"If we're lucky they'll just be running around Sweet Apple Acres all day. And she won't try to eat Applebloom." Twilight glared at the pegasus for a moment, before extinguishing her light. "Now act natural, we're going back to Ponyville. I'm going to try and keep this under wraps as long as I can, as hard as you're making that for me..."
With another flash of light, the library, the sun and the cobblestone floor returned. Nopony had moved at all from where they were a few minutes ago. The transition broke her wing rhythm for a moment, making her drop a couple of feet in the air.
"Y'alright, sugarcube? Get up too fast?" Applejack taunted. Hmm... act natural...
"Sun," Dash eventually answered, pointing in a random direction. She hastily corrected to the right one. Yeah. Natural.
"Ah remember this cliff!" Applejack broke ahead of the group, and stood on the crest of a hill, overlooking a canyon. They were making good time in the forest - travelling in daytime made it much easier to navigate. One might even describe their journey so far as pleasant - the summer sun left an ambient warmth in the air, but the shade of the trees kept the direct sunlight off them, and harboured a gentle breeze.
"So Twilight, have you got any crazy magic tricks that involve jumping to your death this time?" Rainbow Dash sailed around in the air behind the unicorn.
"Please don't do that again..." Fluttershy added.
"Don't worry, I... haven't had time to prepare any new spells," Twilight sighed. "Anyway, with the daylight it shouldn't be too hard to cross the canyon..."
"Why bother?" Applejack called from the bottom of the hill. "We all know the way from the bottom, and besides, it ain't that far down!"
"Are you sure about that? Seemed pretty far the last two times I fell there." Twilight crossed her arms.
"Well sure!" The farmer casually vaulted over the edge, prompting Rainbow Dash to go wide-eyed and race to the bottom of the hill. She was barely halfway down when she heard the thud of hooves on earth, and another call echoing from the canyon; "See? Easy as apple pie!" Dash turned back to the others and shrugged.
"I suppose she had the Element of honesty for a reason..." Twilight conceded, and started down the hill. It was still too steep to walk it normally, and about halfway down she was practically sliding. Rarity was doing her best to stabilise herself with magic, and Pinkie Pie was treating the slope like a children's slide. Rainbow Dash was marshalling Fluttershy around the air in case something went wrong. Twilight was just about able to bring herself to a stop at the rim of the canyon. She let out a sigh of relief, only to panic when she received a firm thump in the back, nearly knocking her off the edge.
"Hello, darling!" The unicorn behind her tittered nervously.
"Gangway! Wheee!" Both of them looked over their shoulders, colour draining from their faces, to see Pinkie barrelling towards them on her back. With just another thump, she knocked the three of them flying.
Rainbow Dash was off like a shot. Fluttershy lagged a little behind, eyes wide in terror. A pair of flashes in their peripheral vision told them Twilight would be fine. Dash went straight for Pinkie, though her wild flailing - she wasn't sure if it was panic, or if the party pony just thought it was part of a carnival ride - made her very difficult to catch. A stray fist stunned her, and Pinkie landed at full speed in the bushes. Fluttershy went to catch Rarity, but she just fell faster than she could fly. Twilight sat a few lengths away in the middle of the canyon, rubbing her back, next to a bewildered Applejack.
"Is everypony okay?"
"Owie, owie, owie!" Pinkie crawled from a bush, covered in scrapes and clutching her side.
"I woulda caught you if you weren't swinging your arms around like that..." Dash grumbled, helping her up.
"Augh, my ensemble is ruined!" Rarity staggered to her hooves, lamenting the long rip in her white summer jacket. She seemed more concerned with the bloodstains left by the gash in her side than the bleeding itself.
"Sorry..." Fluttershy whimpered as she touched down.
"That's a 'no' then..." Twilight frowned, and reached into her carryall for Magic of the Body. Once Rainbow Dash was satisfied that Pinkie was in one piece, she turned to the other earth pony, fuming.
"What the hell, Applejack?"
"Wh- it didn't look that high from up there!"
"Are you blind? That's nearly fifty feet!"
"Well ah'm sorry if ah ain't got no fancy pegasus distance vision, but it was perfectly safe when ah saw it!"
"Now that's just a straight-up lie!"
"Guys! Quit it!" Twilight pushed herself between them. Applejack looked visibly hurt by the accusation, but Dash just stared unapologetically. "This isn't helping!" And it's probably what Discord wants... I'll bet he had something to do with this. Hmm... better be careful. "Look, it was... it was probably an honest mistake." The pair's sour expressions remained, but Dash backed off.
"Honest mistakes can still get ponies killed."
"What am I gonna do with you..." Twilight sighed, and walked over to Pinkie, opening her book. Her horn started to glow, and she leafed through the manual. "Let's see... a fractured rib, some superficial scratches... you'll be fine. Just walk it off." She snapped the book shut, and turned to examine Rarity's cut. Pinkie groaned, and resumed pulling twigs out of her mane. "Now..."
"Ooh! Careful Twilight, that's ah! Sensitive..."
"Hmm... it's not too deep. Should be a simple fix..." Twilight's horn started to glow again, and slowly, the wound started to shrink, as if the two sides were being welded together. When she was done, there was only a small bruise left.
"You... couldn't do anything about this, could you?" Rarity held out the blood-stained, ripped ends of her coat.
"Probably not without giving you severe anaemia. Sorry."
"Fine..." She sighed, and took the jacket off, tying it around her waist to hide the worst of the stain. "Just aswell it's the height of summer."
"Y'know, I gotta wonder, Mrs. Derpy..." Spike mused, sprawled out on one of Zecora's rugs. "Where did you get your cutie mark from? Bubbles don't have anything to do with the mail!" He pointed to the patch of silver bubbles, sewn into the side of the mail bag hung next to the door, right next to the Equestrian Postal Service logo.
"Indeed you raise a point most curious... the connection is a little spurious." The zebra added, scooping a cup of tea from her cauldron.
"Oh, is it story time now? Alright..." The mailmare was lying upside down on a homemade bean bag. "Well! It all started way back in Cloudsdale, where I was born! Back then my eyes weren't funny, because I hadn't had my accident, but I still wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Even I'll admit that!" She chuckled. Spike frowned. "Back then I used to get bullied a lot by these three colts, Storm Chaser and... I forget what the other two were called. But they're not important. Anyway, I didn't realise how bad they were treating me at the time, and even though they kept taking my lunch money and calling me names, I always forgave them.
"Then one day, I found Storm Chaser on his own, and he was crying. I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't say anything! I kept trying and kept trying, but he just pushed me away. So eventually I got an idea! I went and got a bottle of liquid soap, came back to him and tapped him on the shoulder, and he looked up just in time to watch me taking a big gulp of the soap - yes, it tasted disgusting - and then I just hiccupped. I didn't even plan on that part, I wasn't even sure what I was doing. But I hiccupped, and bubbles came out. And he stopped crying, and started laughing! And it wasn't mean laughing, like when he called me some dumb name. He was honestly feeling better!
"Then we talked, and it turns out the other two had left him for somepony 'cooler' or something. Y'know, bratty kids being bratty kids. So poor ol' Storm Chaser was left on his own with no friends... so when I came along it cheered him up a lot. And that's when my cutie mark appeared! It's a bit cryptic, but I know what it means. My special talent is making ponies happy! Whether it's being the best mother I can be, or delivering the mail with a friendly smile... or just hiccupping bubbles to make somepony feel better!"
"A heartwarming tale, young mailmare..." Zecora smiled, and pointed to Spike. The dragon had dozed off some time in the story. "Though not everyone gives it its dues fair!"
"That's okay," Derpy chuckled. "I've been told Spike was never one for sentimental stories."
"If it's not much trouble, I have to add, what became of this young lad?"
"Who, Storm Chaser? Well... after that, we became friends, and years later, we got married! He's Dinky's father. And then..." Derpy's smile started to fade, and her enthusiastic forward lean drooped into a slouch. "... well, I'd... rather not talk about that..." Zecora frowned, and decided not to push it.
"You sure you're okay to walk on that leg, Pinkie?"
"Yep!" The party pony giggled, bouncing around the group. They kept moving, retracing the same route they took, almost two years ago.
"Doesn't it... y'know, hurt?" Applejack tilted her hat.
"A little." Pinkie just skipped obliviously past her. Applejack shrugged, and kept walking. Maybe the ball of pink fluff was tougher than she looked, she reasoned.
"Now, if my estimates are correct, and we don't have any interruptions, the castle should be only twenty to thirty minutes away! In this sunlight, we shouldn't have to worry about..."
"Bear!"
"What? There's no.,." A deafening roar in Twilight's ear made her jump and fall backwards. She looked up with growing disbelief, at a brown, hulking mass of muscle and fur standing just feet away from her, its dripping jaws hanging open hungrily, its foul breath wafting uncomfortably close. "... bear?" She felt something yank at her arms, pulling her away from the beast. She looked over her shoulder to see Fluttershy dragging her to safety, smiling nervously at the bear.
"It's okay Mr. Bear, we were just passing through, we'll be on our way now..." The bear just let rip another fearsome cry. Fluttershy let Twilight drop after a few lengths of retreat, and calmly walked up to the bear, doing her best to keep an upright posture, and mask her fear under a soothing tone. Huge and terrifying he might be, but he was still an animal, and she was still going to try. "We didn't mean to bother you..."
"Fluttershy, I don't think it's working!" Twilight called back, struggling to an upright posture. She knew the pegasus was capable of these insane feats of animal handling - manticores, dragons, cockatrices... but something was wrong here. The bear wasn't calming down, and Fluttershy just didn't seem to notice. Fortunately, she was the only one not noticing, and before long, Rainbow Dash dove in to scoop her out of the way.
Swish. The beast's angry swipe met only thin air and a few loose feathers. Dash deposited her stunned friend behind the rest of the group.
"What do we do? We ain't got no weapons!" Applejack grabbed Twilight by the scruff of her neck, bringing her out of the path of the bear's slam. Rarity reached into her jacket, whipping out her dagger and spinning it in her hand.
"Forgetting something?"
"Ya really gonna try and kill a bear with that thing?"
"I told you we were underprepared!" Dash yelled.
"No ya didn't..."
"And why should I believe you?"
"Girls!" Twilight yelled, getting up between them. "This is not the time!" The unicorn shoved them apart and walked a few paces back towards the bear, her horn glowing. As she approached it, the glow intensified, starting to generate an air current. "I did have time to work on one new spell..." she growled, starting to crouch a little, as if the intensity of her magic was a weight on her shoulders. "I call this one... unrelenting fo-"
Thump. Before she had the chance to release the arcane energy building in her horn, the bear charged forward, headbutting her in the chest. The wind and light dissipated, and the shove knocked her flying. She landed just behind the group with an uncomfortably loud thud.
"Twilight!" Pinkie yelped. Rarity knelt next to her. She seemed to be dazed and winded, but not seriously hurt.
"Oh, you're gonna get it now..." Dash growled, launching herself into the air, a fist outstretched to the bear. Applejack leaped after her, grabbing her by the tail, bringing them both crashing down to earth.
"Hold on there, sugarcube! No sense gettin' both of ya hurt!"
"So what's your plan? Run away?" While the pair's arguing intensified, Fluttershy picked herself up and examined the situation again. The bear was taking its time, plodding up to the bumper meal before it. A rustling in the long grass in her peripheral vision caught her eye, just in time to see a snake pop its head out to watch the commotion. She squinted, quickly identifying it as a viper. It looked at the bear, and then back to her. In that instant, an idea struck her. For the briefest moment, she made eye contact with the snake. She gave it the subtlest of nods, and it gave one in return, before returning to the long grass. A few seconds later, It slithered into the open, coiled up and struck at the bear, both fangs extended for a lethal bite.
The fangs sank into the bear's paw silently, and a roar of pain from the beast was the only indication it had happened at all. Distracted from its impending meal, it lifted its paw and bit down on the snake's body, ripping it away. The force was enough to separate its head from the rest of its body, leaving the fangs embedded in the bear's flesh. It started to stagger about as it shook the snake about in its jaws, making a half-hearted attempt to swallow the body, before eventually collapsing on its side. Fluttershy squeaked, and rushed over to it, its chest still heaving.
"Oh no... oh no!" Starting to tear up, she picked up the rubbery strip that remained of the snake's body, and started pushing it against the back of the severed head, as if it would somehow reattach. When this was starting to fail, she kneeled at the bear's side and dropped her head into its fur. His breathing was strained already, and she could hear it getting more so by the second. Pretty soon, his breathing disappeared, and there was only the sound of her weeping.
"Was that... was that you, Fluttershy?" Dash blinked, jaw hanging a little slack. "That was aweso-" Applejack and Rarity both got the idea to smack her around the head, cutting her off. Twilight, still wheezing a little, slowly walked over to her and gently put a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry..." The pegasus shoved her hand away, her face still buried in the bear's chest. Ugh. At this rate it'll be at least an hour...
Eventually they convinced the broken-hearted Fluttershy to leave the two dead creatures behind, and continue their journey. The next half-mile of their route was a lot darker than Twilight had remembered; the hills around the hollow sheltered it from direct sunlight, and the dense tree canopy provided even more shade. It was just about hitting lunchtime, and they could barely see where they were going. She figured she wouldn't have noticed in the night conditions she last passed through here; still, she found it odd needing to light up her horn in the middle of the day.
The atmosphere was even less pleasant than before - Twilight specifically instructed Pinkie Pie to stay between Rainbow Dash and Applejack at all times, and Rarity to keep an eye on Fluttershy, so she could do her best to lead the way without distraction. After a nearly solid ten minutes of silence, the lilac librarian picked something out as she passed, and tried to strike up a conversation.
"Hey, Pinkie, isn't that one of those trees you got us to laugh at last time?" She pointed to one particularly gnarled trunk.
"Hey... you're right!" The earth pony giggled, and danced up to the tree to inspect it. "We sure were silly to see faces in these things, hah!" She prodded it in the middle of one of its knots, blew a raspberry and giggled to herself.
"Heheheh..." A throaty voice chirped. She blinked, and started looking around the tree for the source. It chuckled again, and Pinkie looked up to see a small, curious-looking creature sitting on top of the tree, a deep scarlet, almost brown. It had hoofed feet, clawed hands, an innocent smile, beady yellow eyes and a small pair of bat-wings behind it.
"Well hey there little guy! What's your name?" Pinkie blinked innocently. The creature just jumped off the trunk, bounced on Pinkie's poofy mane like a trampoline, and leaped towards Twilight.
"What did you find Pi-ah!" It swung its claws around her horn, using them to grapple on to her head. The personal space invasion shook her concentration, extinguishing her light briefly. She frowned, and grabbed it telekinetically by the leg, holding it out in front of her. "Hmm... it looks like some kind of imp..." Without warning, the ensared creature spat a small lick of flame from its mouth, breaking her focus again and causing her to drop it. Twilight yelped, and shied away from it, making Pinkie giggle again. "Ah! Cheeky little guy, isn't he..." she grumbled. The imp scurried over with an awkward knuckle-walk to Rainbow Dash. She took a wary step back, but he was having none of it. He pounced, grabbing her by the knee and climbing up her leg, making her panic.
"Hey! Hey, get the hell off me!" She tried swiping at him, but he was too quick for her - every time she swung her arm at the little trickster, he jumped to the other leg, or swung around behind her. Pinkie broke into open laughter. "I'm glad you think this is fu-hey get out of there!" The imp started to scurry under her t-shirt, printed with her cutie mark. She started thumping at her stomach and chest to try and crush the little beast, but she only ended up winding herself. After another moment of frantic struggle, he popped out the top of her shirt and leaped away, taking shelter on Applejack's hat. By now, Pinkie was rolling on the ground, thumping the ground and whooping with laughter.
"Okay, that's enough of this..." Twilight's horn glowed, and she lifted the imp from Applejack's head, before conjuring a hamster cage and dropping him in it. She gave it a light kick, and a bar slid over the hatch, locking it. "There! That should keep you under..."
Fwoosh. With a click of the imp's fingers, the cage was incinerated. "... control...?" The trickster shot Rarity a little sly grin, prompting her to whip out her dagger and back away.
"Ohh no you don't! You are not touching my hair! Falling off cliffs is one thing, scrappy little ahhh!" The imp just clicked again, teleporting above Rarity's head, where he could ruffle her mane at his leisure. She made a few wild swings above her head with the ornamental blade, prompting him to leap on her hand and prise it free. She started to topple in her panic, and the imp dove for the ground again. Pinkie was in fits.
"I don't get it! Where's all this magic suddenly coming from?" Twilight mused. The imp busied itself with leaping between Applejack and Rainbow Dash, delivering the occasional slap, stealing a hat, or giving the gift of a good, hard wedgie. Every prank renewed the vigour in Pinkie's laughter, and made the creature a little harder to catch, employing successively more sophisticated magic to evade capture. After a moment of watching this, Twilight got a brainwave. She turned to Pinkie, and dragged the giggling pony off the ground roughly. "Pinkie, I need you to stop laughing!"
"But-but..." She just pointed back to the scene the imp was making, in time for Rainbow to swing a punch at the imp, only for the little beast to guide her fist to Applejack's face. "Baahahahah!"
"Pinkie! The imp is feeding off your laughter! The more you laugh, the stronger it-uah!" The creature jumped on her head, interrupting her. She tried firing off spell after spell to throw him off, but he just pulled up a little red, translucent shield and started dancing on it, and they bounced away harmlessly.
"It's... it's dancing on your head! Oh, I can't breathe!" Pinkie just resumed being debilitated with her wild cackling, and the imp kicked Twilight nose-first into the dirt.
Through all the fray, one pony had escaped the gremlin's attention; but he had no intention of it staying that way. Fluttershy had quietly backed up to a tree at the other end of the clearing, still shaken from earlier, and the sight of two of her friends beating each other into a pulp certainly wasn't helping. With a little click, the imp cast itself through space to the air above her head. He swung from a branch for a moment or two, savouring her uncertain terror, before quietly dropping on to the back of her neck. She shrieked in fright, squirming and falling to the ground, trying to reach behind her for whatever that... thing was.
The scream seemed to go ignored at first - just another voice in the cacophony of mischief. The imp just carried on fluttering around, teasing his victims with the occasional shove or light shock. But when the terrified squeal died off, another sound died with it - the sound of laughing. Pinkie pushed herself off the ground, slowly and purposefuly, all traces of glee gone from her expression. The imp went to zap Fluttershy again, only for a miniscule puff of smoke to appear at his fingertips instead. He blinked, and turned in time to watch the earth pony march up and snatch him out of the air.
"No one treats Fluttershy like that. No one!" she growled. The gremlin gulped. Pinkie hurled it to the ground, making a little crack on impact, and after a moment's windup, swung her hoof as hard as she could at it, kicking it through the tree canopy and out of sight.
"Ughh... what happened? Is it gone?" Twilight sat up and rubbed her head. The look on Pinkie's face when she turned around answered her question. She said nothing - the unicorn could read her furrowed brow and mean pout perfectly. Playtime's over. "... okay then! Let's get..."
"And another thing!" Smack. Rainbow Dash's knee connected with Applejack's stomach.
"Uh, guys, the imp is gone, we can go..."
"Ugh! ... y'all just don't know when to quit!" Whack. The earth pony retaliated with a headbutt, knocking her opponent back a few lengths, only for the pegasus to stabilise with her wings.
"Stop it, both of you!" Twilight yelled, plucking them both from the ground with her magic and holding them apart in the air. They took another couple of ineffectual swings, before giving up and just staring at each other. "Don't you see? This is exactly what he wants!"
"Who." Dash replied after a brief pause, her gaze still fixed on Applejack.
"Discord!"
"The hay has he got to do with this." The earth pony asked, her tone disinterested. Instead, she just met Dash's stare with equal contempt, and spat a mouthful of blood.
"I'd have thought the clue was in the name!"
"Uhm, darling..." Rarity tapped Twilight on the shoulder, and whispered in her ear. "I'm not sure everypony here has quite the vocabulary you or I might."
"Ugh. 'Discord' means strife, disagreement, conflict, disharmony. And that's exactly what's started happening between us since we set hoof in this forest today! And how? Illusions, contrived circumstances, things appearing where they shouldn't! The same tricks Discord uses."
"So what yer sayin' is..."
"... we've been tricked..."
"Exactly." Twilight folded her arms like an aggravated mother. The boiling fury in the expressions of her two captives started to drain, and she let them back down gently. If she had to guess by their faces, they were as much hurt and embarrassed at the mockery that had been made of them, as they were apologetic.
"Ah... ah'm sorry, Rainbow..."
"No, I should be the one apologising. I'm sorry for not trusting you." Dash plucked the hat off the ground, dusted it off and held it out as a peace offering. Applejack smiled, snatched it from her and pulled her into a firm bear hug. Twilight smiled, her work done. She turned to Fluttershy, being helped up by a still-grumpy Pinkie Pie.
"Fluttershy, are you okay?"
"I've... been better..." she squeaked. Twilight put her hands on her shoulders and lowered her head, to try and meet the eye of the cowering pegasus.
"Fluttershy, listen. I know this kind of thing is hard for you, but I need you to keep it together! I know you have courage in there somewhere. Just dig deep, and know that we're all here for you."
"I'll try..." She nodded, giving a weak smile. Twilight pulled her into a soft, comforting hug to try and consolidate her encouragements. She tried not to let it show, but she was still mulling over doubts. Hmm... if I'm right about this... if it is Discord... then he's probably still watching us. In which case, I've probably just blown our hand... If he's keeping up this pattern, he's probably going to throw some curveballs.
Behind her, Rarity reclaimed her dagger and took a moment to fix her mane again. She paused, and quirked a brow at Pinkie.
"I still can't believe my laughing was actually hurting somepony!" Pinkie Pie whined, tugging at her mane.
"We know, Pinkie..." Rainbow Dash grumbled. "You've been lamenting for like, ten minutes straight now."
"But it's true!" The earth pony jumped in her friend's face, eyes bugged out. Dash grimaced and tried to lean back to little avail.
"Alright, we should be on to the final leg of our route, as soon as we cross this..." Twilight reached the edge of the trees, and the river ford came into view. Along with the large river wyvern slumped across it, tail waving around idly in the air, leaning lazily on one elbow. Her ears went flat. "... river..."
"What now..." Applejack groaned. Twilight sighed, folded up her map and strode up to the dragon. It appeared to be sleeping.
"Hello!" she called. There was no answer. She looked back at her friends still standing on the hill for instruction. All she got was a shrug from Applejack. The unicorn just turned back to the wyvern and continued. "My name is Twilight Sparkle, and my friends and I were rather hoping we could cross the river here..." Her pleas were met with an idle huff from the wyvern's nostrils. Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, and took to the air.
"Oh for the love of Pete, just climb over him!"
Slap. As she was passing over the river, a large, fish-finned tail came out of leftfield and smacked her forcefully back to the ground. Applejack and Pinkie Pie rushed to where she landed - she was winded and dazed, but didn't seem to have any lasting damage done.
"What the horseapples was that about?" Twilight snarled to the dragon. The beast shifted in place a little, rotating its head and stretching its neck muscles, before answering simply;
"Toll please."
"What? Toll? This is crazy! There's no way we-" A small velvet bag whistled over her head, prompting her to stop talking. The wyvern deftly snatched it out of the air.
"Keep the change." Rarity cut in, walking purposefully past her. The dragon sniffed the bag curiously, before extending his tongue out and upending the contents on to it; an assortment of fine, cut gems of several kinds. She couldn't help but wince when he pulled them back into his mouth and started chewing, but the relief was universal when he swallowed and gave his judgement.
"Acceptable."
"Alright everypony, now that that's out of the way, let's move!" Twilight assumed control again, walking up to the ford and waiting for the blockage to remove itself. And wait she did. "Anytime now." She folded her arms. "Aren't you gonna move your tail?"
"I never sa-" Burp. "-id the toll was for crossing the river."
"Horseapples!" Applejack barked.
"He's... technically right, he never said anything about letting us cross..." Twilight grumbled.
"Hmmyes, it's less of a toll and more of an... admission charge." The dragon started picking his teeth and scratching his side, drawing looks of disgust from all around. Rarity looked particularly offended; she looked like she was about to explode. Suddenly, she disappeared in a flash.
"Wha-where'd she go?" Dash burbled.
"Rarity, what are you doing..." The librarian sank her head into her hand. She did her best to try and keep up with Rarity's concealed hoofsteps, but on the short grass they were nearly impossible to see. She gulped when she just about saw a phantom dent on the wyvern's tail, and she was able to follow it for another couple of lengths along his body, but quickly lost track after that.
"Take advantage of my generosity, will you?" The cry came a few seconds later, coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the river guardian's head. The group looked up, just in time to see Rarity reveal herself and launch herself at his neck, dagger outstretched.
Schling.
With the full force of her weight behind her, and the dragon's lethargy to her advantage, she drove the blade through his scales at his neck. He opened his eyes and let out a pained roar, that quickly reduced to semi-conscious gurgling as she swung around, carving a long, curving gash, thick, navy blue blood starting to ooze from the wound. Her maneuver allowed her to fling herself around and back to shore. She was unable to escape a squirt of the viscous, sticky fluid during her dismount, and she let out a frustrated growl as she rolled to a safe landing. While the wyvern's head and claws fell limply to the ground, she stood up, throwing the worst of the sticky mess off and sheathing her dagger. "Hm. Ruffian."
"Rarity... that was..." Twilight blinked. "... a bit extreme, don't you think?"
"Eh, it got the job done. Let's go!" Dash shrugged and flew over to perch on the motionless tail, ready to help the others across. Rarity took the other unicorn aside, still panting and wringing the tarry blue mess from her mane.
"Twilight, I know that was a little hot-headed of me, and I'm not entirely happy about it either, but it had to be done."
"But... you killed him. You stabbed him in the throat."
"I suppose it may have been a trifle on the rash side, but you saw him. I could just tell there was no reasoning with him. If he was contrary enough to charge a toll just for being in his presence, he had it coming." Twilight remained unimpressed. "Hopefully this was just one of Discord's tricks anyway. Which, I might add, didn't work!" Rarity chuckled, cocking her head back. A thick glob of the wyvern's blood slicked at the end of her forelock and dripped off. Twilight sighed and shook her head, and winked out next to Rainbow Dash, atop the beast's tail.
"Come on, move it, hut hut hut!" Dash barked, helping Applejack up the scaly wall.
"Easy sugarcube, we ain't yer air force pals!" The earth pony smirked, greeting her with a jocular thump on the shoulder.
"Don't you start that too!" Dash laughed, shoving her towards the other side. While Applejack held her balance fairly well, the slippery surface inevitably led her to drop face-first into the ford. Twilight frowned.
"Is it just me, or are we all a little more... violent today than usual?"
"Forest's a tough place. And besides, if Discord's messing with our heads like you say he is, th-" Slap. Dash stumbled back after taking a fish to the face. Twilight looked down to see Applejack standing in the ford, a mischeivous grin on her face despite the bloody graze on her forehead, and her hat in hand, a couple of fish flapping about in it. "Oh you're gonna get it now!" The pegasus yelled, swooping down to pluck another trout from the water and hurl it back like a missile. The unicorn sighed, and took over Dash's work of helping the others over the heavy tail. At least they're only play fighting this time.
"Why can't we meet your other friends? I'd like to make some new friends!" Kalza chirped as she bounced around the Cutie Mark Crusaders' clubhouse.
"Listen, ah think it's best if you just stay here..." Applebloom grumbled. Scootaloo followed her up the ladder, an apologetic look painted on her face. "Your types ain't exactly welcome in Ponyville."
"My types? What does that mean?" The gryphlet tilted her head.
"Ugh... can you just... go on the roof and check for bird nests or somethin'?"
"Sounds fun!" Kalza cheeped, darting out the window and out of sight. As soon as Scootaloo was safely inside, Applebloom grabbed her and took her over to the corner, whispering to her.
"We gotta get rid of her, Scoot."
"We can't just ditch her!"
"She's a gryphon. They eat ponies."
"What do you want me to do? Just leave her in the Everfree forest?"
"That could work."
"I was being sarcastic!"
"Hey guys!" A familiar voice called. They broke their huddle in time to see Sweetie Belle climb through the door, and Dinky Hooves eagerly scampering after her.
"Oh! Is someone else coming?" Kalza ducked her head in the window, hanging upside down from the roof with a yellow feather in her beak. Sweetie Belle squealed and fell backwards, catching her dress on the floorboards and nearly falling out the door again. Dinky jumped, startled, but clung to the ladder for dear life.
"It's a g-g-gr-gr-gryfmmf!" Applebloom rolled her eyes and covered Sweetie Belle's mouth when she started to panic.
"Keep it down! We know. She's..." She sighed, not quite believing what she was doing. "... she's just lost. She ain't tryin' ta kill us. She's just a little'un."
"Excuse me, I am not little!" Kalza scowled, and vaulted through the window, landing with her legs spread wide and her head held high, imitating a proud lion. Applebloom's expression remained deadpan. "I don't even have downy feathers. And listen to this!" She took a deep breath and a step back, preparing her mighty roar... only to release a shrill chirp, barely louder than a robin. She quickly blushed, and covered her beak. Applebloom didn't even flinch.
"Y'see?"
"I-I... guess..." Sweetie Belle was still panting a little.
"But what is it... she... doing here?" Dinky blurted out.
"Well..." Scootaloo cut in.
Twilight stumbled across the ditch at the edge of the tree line, hastily stopping herself at the cliff. Before her, a rickety rope bridge spanned the gap to another ledge, and beyond that was a path leading to a crumbling stone hall. Her eyes lit up, and a wry smile spread across her face.
"We're here!" she called back.
"Finally..." Rarity groaned, uneasily tip-hoofing down the slope. Pinkie Pie just fell from the top and wheezed on the ground.
"I really gotta lay off the cakes..."
"No time for restin' sugarcube, gettin' there's the easy part..." Applejack chuckled, giving her fellow a light kick as she passed. Rainbow Dash swooped ahead of the group, inspecting the bridge. A couple of the planks were a little soft to the touch, but not really any worse than last time.
"Sweet, I don't even need to pull it up this time!"
"I wouldn't be so sure, Rainbow, we still better be careful." Twilight stood cross-armed by the posts the bridge was tied to.
"I'm telling you, it's fine..." Dash flew straight up about fifteen lengths, then banked around, diving straight into the bridge. She held her hands out in front of her, pushing the bridge down like an elastic band. It quickly sprang back into place, shooting her back into the air. When it settled again, she landed with one hoof on each of the guide ropes, grinning confidently.
"Alright, s'your neck on the line if this thing snaps when we're on it." Applejack shrugged, and gently pushed past Twilight to start across the bridge. One by one, the others followed her.
"Fine, if you're that worried..." Dash huffed, and dropped on to the planks to walk with them, just ahead of the group. Rarity leaned out to the side as she tenatively stepped on to the first board.
"I have to say, with the impeccable placement of all the other... trials, shall we say, I wouldn't be quite so confident there's nothing wrong if I were you..."
"Oh relax, even if something did happen, I've got your backs. I never leave my friends hangin'!"
"Famous last words..." Rarity muttered.
Twilight was the last to step on to the bridge, and she did so apprehensively. It was easy enough crossing it in the dark, and it was always nice knowing she could teleport if things did go pear-shaped, but she couldn't say the same for the others. She kept a close eye where she was standing, and frequently looked up to check the ropes, listening out for every creak the old bridge made. Her previous experience with rope bridges did little to calm her nerves. At least this one wasn't icy.
When they were about halfway across, she ran her eyes along the rope again, and gasped. The cord itself was in pretty good condition, but the knot around the post on the other side was unravelling suspiciously quickly. A lantern flicked on inside her head. She stopped in place and leaned forward to cast a very particular spell.
The world around her ground to a halt. The ponies in front of her stopped walking. A bird flying nearby slowly froze in place, mid-wing-beat. She felt her muscles lock up and ignore any direction she tried to give them. A creaking sound from the bridge dropped in pitch until it was too low to hear, like an unplugged record player. And to top it off, Rainbow Dash's voice started echoing in her head.
"What the hell? What's the deal? Why can't I move?"
"It's working then!"
"Ah! Twili- what the..."
"Relax Rainbow, this is a similar spell to the one from earlier. I just didn't bother with the visuals, there's no time. Plus, it's way less taxing on me like this."
"Oh, okay." Dash's tone remained a little suspicious. "So what did I do this time?"
"This isn't about you, not like that at least. I've figured out the way Discord's set up his tricks."
"Not sure why you had to stop time to tell just me, but alright, let's hear it."
"They're based on the Elements of Harmony, maybe to try and taunt us or something. But the way they're set up is unmistakable - they're all subversions of the virtues they represent! The cliff that Applejack thought was shorter than it really was was meant to make us doubt her honesty. The bear that Fluttershy had to manipulate a snake into killing was meant to challenge her kindness. That imp in the forest was feeding on Pinkie's laughter. That wyvern at the river abused Rarity's generosity. And they've all worked beautifully so far. So here..."
"I don't see anything..."
"Look at the posts on the other side. The ropes are coming undone."
"No they're n- whoa. Whoa, okay. That's some freaky mind stuff there. One minute it looks fine, and the moment you point that out..."
"Sounds like Discord's mind tricks alright. I think what's supposed to happen here is that the bridge gives way, we all fall, and you won't be able to catch all of us before we hit the rocks below, confusing your loyalty. I think he's trying to make you choose which one or two of us to save."
"Wow... Discord's an asshole."
"Ahem. Quite. But since we spotted this in time, I think we can beat him here. If you grab..."
"I think I gotcha... but I have a better plan. If I fly backwards right now at top speed, it'll get everyone off the bridge in one move. It might be a bit rough for some ponies, but better than jagged rocks."
"Alright, go for it. I'll wind down my spell when you're ready."
"Just... one last thing. How do I know you're not Discord pretending to be Twilight in my head?"
"I..." She's... got a point. "... you'll just have to trust me, Rainbow. I can't really prove anything."
"Hm. Okay." She paused, as if thinking. "Ready when you are."
Twilight didn't say another word. First, she broke the mind link. Second, she started dispelling the time bubble. The ponies in front of her started, ever so slowly, to walk again. The bird in the background started to creep across the sky, accelerating as the neurotemporal distortion wore off. The creak started winding up again. As soon as she could feel herself being able to move again, she braced for impact.
She heard a series of successive thumps, each one a higher pitch than the last. The final one sent Pinkie Pie falling back into her, knocking her flying too. After a couple of seconds of blur, she found herself flat on her back on the grass. She sat up, just in time to see the knots give out, and the empty bridge fall away. Behind her, the other five sprawled in a groaning heap.
"Toldja!" Dash coughed. "I never leave my friends hanging..."
Spike yawned and picked himself off the floor, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times to alleviate that sticky sensation that accompanies awakening. The rug wasn't an altogether comfortable place for a nap, and Derpy Hooves was still sitting upside down on the bean bag, so he reasoned that he musn't have been asleep for very long.
"Are we still talking about sissy girly stuff?" he mumbled. Zecora chuckled.
"That story's reached its end, my little dragon friend."
"Actually, while we're talking about cutie marks..." Derpy added, lifting a finger to gesture raising a point. She wasn't entirely aware that she was just pointing at the ground.
"Ugh! Do zebras even have cutie marks?" Spike groaned as he slumped back to the floor. Zecora smiled, knocked back the last of her tea, and sat forward.
"While ponies and zebras aren't quite the same, the marks on their flanks are playing the same game! Though a zebra's mark is oft hard to discern, it remains the sign of one's field of concern." She held up the amulet draped over the hoops around her neck; a strip of gold hammered into a narrow spiral, with several smaller prongs of gold radiating from the outermost swirl. Derpy screwed up her face trying to filter the rhyme for meaning.
"So... even though it kinda looks like the rest of your stripes, it still works the same way?"
"That is correct, young mailmare..."
"Wake me when you're done..." Spike turned over on the carpet and groaned. Zecora snorted, and turned back to Derpy.
"... would you wish me my story to share?"
"Sure! Let me just..." Derpy shifted around in the seat a little, and prepared to concentrate. After all, rhyme. "... okay. Ready."
"Our tale begins in a faraway land, unsullied by the work of hoof and hand, Bathed eternal in tropical sun, where things were still in the old ways done... A long time ago, a filly was born, and to her tribe's honour she was sworn; Her parents, the village's finest at arms, named her Zecora, the bringer of charms.
"They hoped, one day, she would take up their spear... but, she wasn't as athletic as her peers! Her balance was fine, and so was her sight, but she couldn't quite measure in physical might; Her eyes were as keen as those of a cat, but running and jumping just knocked her flat! Try as she would, she was hopeless you see - a warrior's life just wasn't for me.
"There was only so much she could take of the stress, and over her mark she began to obsess; Her clan insisted on the warrior's way, so she ran from home on her twelfth birthday. She was barely an hour's walk from her door, when she encountered a zebra most poor; A wandering witch doctor, lain in the grass, screaming and howling like an injured ass.
"She was not sure what made him yelp, or what a young filly could do to help, But she wished him stay put, and was off like a shot, to see if aid was within a short trot. Nobody she found, but something else she spied - some herbs and flowers caught her eye; She began to recall some rhymes from her youth, about a meek herb's power to soothe.
"There are as many plants that hurt as heal, and some will harm you an awful great deal; But somehow, the filly knew in her heart, the simple wisdom of the witch doctor's art. She chose a few leaves, a root and a petal, and returned to her charge to bid him settle; She fed him the herbs, and rubbed his chest, and within a few minutes he was back to his best!
"The wandering stallion was greatly impressed, and instantly saw that this filly was blessed, With sharpest sight and an intuition, ideal for a witch doctor's mission. He removed his mask and cracked a smile, and gave it to her to reward her while; She accepted his gift with many thanks, and a brand new spiral upon her flanks."
Derpy blinked, and transfixed by the story, eventually acknowledging it with a juvenile smile and a simple response.
"Neat!"
Spike snored quietly.
"Okay, seems legit..." Dinky rubbed her chin, sitting by the wall, opposite Kalza. The others sat more or less in a circle on the floor as she shared her story. "I guess it'd be okay if she hung out with us for a while..."
"It's not like she has anywhere to go!" Sweetie Belle chipped in. Scootaloo stuck her tongue out at Applebloom.
"Ugh, fine, you win. But you've only got yerselves to blame if she takes a bite out o' one o' you!"
"Why would I bite peoples? Peoples aren't food..." Kalza stroked her beak with a claw.
"So what's the Cutie Mark Crusaders agenda for today?" Dinky stood up and walked over to a chest in the corner of the room. She opened it, pulled out a scroll labelled 'Cutie Mark Crusaders Crusades' with one of the e's written backwards, and rolled it out on the table.
"Cutie Mark Crusaders?" Kalza just looked even more baffled.
"That's our secrwhoa!" Sweetie Belle's first attempt at getting up was a false start. Scootaloo chuckled. "Our secret club!"
"We made it... wow, is it nearly two years ago already? But yeah, way back when before we earned our cutie marks!" The pegasus filly added.
"What's a cutie mark?" The gryphlet blinked.
"Oh, right! A cutie mark is a special mark that appears on a pony's flank when they discover what their special talent in life is. We all have them! Mine is my scooter..." She gestured to the patch on the shoulder of her t-shirt, bearing a wheel, spinning and emitting a purple flame.
"... mine is singing..." Sweetie Belle held up a necklace with the image of three bells.
"... and mine is handiwork!" Applebloom pulled on the badge on her dungarees; a hammer superimposed on a red apple.
"I don't have mine yet, but that's what the Cutie Mark Crusaders are for!" Dinky chirped.
"Uh, neat, I guess... I thought you said they were on your flanks, not..."
"Ah ain't showin' you mah butt!" Applebloom yelled, audibly offended. Scootaloo laughed again.
"I think you're gonna have to take our word for it, Kal."
"Oh, okay..." She looked at the ground disappointedly for a moment, before she shot another smile. "Can I get one?"
"Uhh... I dunno, can gryphons even get cutie marks?"
"Of course they can't, don't be silly, Scootaloo!" Applebloom laughed.
"How do you know?" Dinky blinked.
"Have you ever seen a gryphon with a cutie mark?"
"How many gryphons have you ever seen?"
"Guys, guys!" Sweetie Belle pushed herself in between Applebloom and Dinky before things got too out of hand. "Why don't we go find out?"
"Ah dunno...." Applebloom folded her arms. "That sounds kinda..."
"Fun!" Scootaloo cut in.
"Yeah! It'd be an adventure!" Kalza added.
"I'm liking this idea!" Dinky smirked. Applebloom glared back at her. Next time, Hooves. Next time.
"Okay, sure, why not..."
"Cutie Mark Crusaders gry... griff..." Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Dinky shouted together, though their unison quickly broke down.
"Gryphon... studiers?" Sweetie Belle scratched her head and blinked.
"Gryphonologists?" Applebloom offered with a raised eyebrow.
"Cutie Mark Crusaders gryphonologists, yay!" they cheered, and charged out the door, ahead of a less than enthusiastic Applebloom and a positively dumbfounded Kalza.
Once Twilight and her friends were ferried across the bridge, they hastened through the castle. The ruins were in slightly worse nick than they had been last time they were here; she wasn't sure whether it was just a particularly harsh winter, or there was an enchantment recently unbound. If anything, this accentuated her desire to investigate the ruins further - she wouldn't be able to find out who built them after they were gone. On top of that, she wasn't enthusiastic about the prospect of a challenge centred on her. Hmm... magic... magic of friendship... hypnotism? Some kind of airborne aggression aura? She remained ahead of the group, ensconced in her thoughts. She was supposed to be leading the party back to the old library, but more than once, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had to correct her. Every time, she put it down to distraction, and hastily carried on.
Even with a preoccupied navigator, they reached the room outside the library in no time. The soil bursting through one set of windows had crept a length or two across the room, and all that remained of the skeleton they uncovered last time was the skull. The door was still fairly clear, still propped open an inch by an indestructible book. Twilight grinned and bounded up to the door to inspect it. It wasn't even bent.
"Hahah! Good ol' Stable & Cooper! I'm keeping you when we're done."
"Twilight, are you... talking to a book?" Rarity blinked.
"Quiet. Let me have my moment," Twilight blurted. Dash pulled a face and waved her finger in a circle around her temple, drawing a little giggle from Pinkie. Once she was done admiring the volume wedged in the door, the unicorn turned back to the group and held out her arms. "Alright, everypony grab on!"
"Aren't you gonna open the door?" Dash tilted her head.
"Actually, it's easier to just teleport the five of you inside than crack the hornlock again."
"Why didn't you do that before?" The pegasus furrowed her brow.
"I couldn't be sure what was on the other side the first time, or even that it was a door. And, well, bad things happen when you try to wink into solid objects." Twilight's warning drew a couple of grimaces. Without further delay, everypony took hold of a part of Twilight's arm, and they disappeared from the room in a burst of white light.
Inside, they reappeared a few inches from the ground. The drop took only Rarity by surprise; Twilight was expecting it, and the others were a bit more used to short falls anyway. Without further instruction, they got to work. Applejack made it her mission to keep Twilight from spending all day in here, while Fluttershy couldn't help but sneak a look at a few natural history books, and Rarity slipped some fashion histories away to browse later. Rainbow Dash quietly relieved a shelf of its contents so she could nap on it, while Pinkie Pie seemed happy to build book forts.
When Twilight found the histories shelf, she was overwhelmed with the amount of literature. Detailed histories about nations and races she never knew existed, books in languages she'd never even heard of, and most importantly, massive tomes about the collected history of the world. With some help, she heaved the most complete-looking one of these - Index of Recorded History - off the shelf and began to trawl.
Her first observation was that the timeline stopped abruptly after "Canterlot sacked by Aurum's horde", with a number of empty pages afterwards. She figured the library's owners were probably equine from this, though based on the year numbering, they clearly weren't Equestrian. She was nearly overwhelmed by the troves of accounts and myriad timelines - she promised herself she'd come back to peruse these one day. Eventually she settled on a cluster of articles that interested her around what she guessed was the right date.
"Okay, says here, about two thousand years ago we have... the Colonisation of Equestria from Hippaea, Civil War crisis and Foundation of the Canterlot?"
"Huh." Applejack frowned, and folded her arms. "Ah don't know about you, but that sounds an awful lot like the Hearth's Warming story to me."
"Discord doesn't have anything to do with Hearth's Warming... but on the other hand, the version of that story we know was probably butchered and watered down. Let's see... 'During the civil war crisis, the three tribes of ponies, fleeing a Wendigo problem in Hippaea, fought to settle in a new land..." Her eyes lit up as she skimmed. "... amidst the influence of a mysterious and powerful being known as Discord!' This should be it! 'The crisis resulted in the establishment of the principality of Canterlot, and the banishment of Discord to... space?' Huh. 'Due to the dominance of the latter in the whole affair, the event is also known as the Apple of Discord crisis.'"
"So, this thing?" Applejack pulled a book from the shelf with just that title.
"Wh- that was quick!"
"Ah saw it a few minutes ago. If it's called the Apple of Discord..." She tossed it over to the unicorn, who fumbled it a little in her hands.
"Alright, alright... Let's grab a few other things while we're here, this shelf is just gold!" She slipped The Apple of Discord into her carryall, and resumed browsing. She could just about fit another five books in alongside her current load; The Zebra Nation, A Study of Predatory Societies, Journals of Marco Pony, Troy's Hippocratic State and Hipponikes' Speculations on Prehistory. Her load was heavy, but she reassured herself it would be worth it. "Okay everypony, let's get out of here before anything else happens," she called. They reassembled by the door with varying degrees of eagerness. "Same drill." Once they all had a hold, she lowered her head and concentrated...
...and nothing happened. She tried again, and her horn continued to defy her. Confused, she tried a simple spell, just levitating a book from a shelf, but instead of Stable and Cooper: Fathers of Economics floating over to her, there was only awkward silence.
"We'd like to leave today, Twi," Dash started.
"I don't understand, my magic isn't working! I can't teleport, or levitate..." She tapped her horn and tried again, to no avail. Rarity took another look at a shelf, and focussed her gaze on it for a few seconds, before giving up.
"I'm not getting anything either!"
"Hmm... Rainbow Dash, hover for me."
"What? Uhm... okay..." The pegasus jumped backwards, and started to beat her wings to find a stable position in the air. She was quickly caught off guard when rather than stopping dead a few feet off the ground, she glided backwards a few lengths before coming to a stop. Even then, she had to really work to stay afloat, flapping her wings furiously. "...whoa! It's like walking on ice!" She quickly dropped to the ground before she started wearing herself out. Twilight rubbed her forehead and sighed.
"Dammit, Discord..."
"What? What's happening?"
"I just made the connection. Somewhere around here, he's set up an arcanonegative field, so I can't use my magic to get us out of here. I was expecting something a bit less... well, direct."
"So what do we do?" Dash's tone started to carry traces of worry, reflected in the expressions of the rest of the group.
"We have our backup plan. We wait for Derpy, Zecora and Spike to come looking for us. I told them exactly where this library is." Twilight's assurance did little to calm the pegasus.
"But that's like... three hours from now!"
"Pfff don't be such a baby, Rainbow! There are much worse places to be stuck for three hours than a library," the unicorn giggled. "Besides, it gives me a chance to look over some of the things we pulled from here."
"Maybe for eggheads like you!" Dash's exasperation wasn't shared.
"Come on y'big baby, let's find you something to do..." Applejack grabbed her shoulder and started leading her away.
Twilight took a few minutes to find herself a comfortable corner to curl up in and upended the contents of her bag onto the floor. The others were keeping themselves busy at least - Rarity and Fluttershy were deep in browsing, while Rainbow Dash appeared to be adding to Pinkie's book fort. At least they can't break these ones, she thought with a smirk. Her attention returned to the volumes on the floor in front of her. Let's see what we've got here... Predatory Societies... maybe later. Need to be in the mood for that. Hipponikes, this seems interesting... She flipped it the little book open, and ran her eyes over a paragraph. She found herself having to reread the paragraph, the dense, archaic language making it a pain to understand. After a few more minutes of trying, she snapped it shut and tossed it over her shoulder. Much too heavy. I sure hope these aren't all like that. Let's try... the Apple of Discord, by Pundamilia...
O Muses sing to me this day, upon your genius I pray Aid me as I tell my tale, to ye I bid sincerely, hail!
Bitter wind howled through the streets of Troy. Today marked the sixth straight month of winter in Hippaea - snow was falling at all hours of the day, this year's crop had already failed, and every day, reports came of another victim of the ice. Nopony had any idea why this was happening, or even, for that matter, if it was happening elsewhere in the world; the sea had frozen solid, barring ships from leaving, and the Horsehead mountains to the northwest were bound with glaciers, rendering them impassable. Food stores were running low, and the situation was reaching crisis point - this very conundrum was the subject of the meeting in the grand Hipparchium, between the leaders of the three pony tribes - the military autocrat of the pegasi, Commander Hurricane, Crown Princess Platinum of the unicorns, and the archon of the earth ponies, Chancellor Tiramisu.
Whoa whoa whoa, hold up a second. Tiramisu? What happened to Chancellor Puddinghead? Twilight re-read the sentence, just to make sure it actually said what she thought it said. A distant thunk caught her attention, and when she turned her head to investigate, she found Pinkie Pie sprawled out under the remains of her book fort, and Rainbow Dash still tossing volumes on the pile. She quirked a brow, and settled back in. I guess I wouldn't put it past the censors to... alter the characters a little. "Puddinghead" is a lot easier to sell to the foals than "Tiramisu". I suppose it should surprise me more that these ponies existed at all, I always thought this story was just allegory!
Negotiations raged for days on end, always going around in circles; Tiramisu and the earth ponies were accused of hoarding food for themselves, Hurricane and the pegasi were accused of being responsible for the extended winter, and Platinum and the unicorns were accused of abusing their magic. As the summit dragged on, the mood only grew fouler, and accusations gave way to insults. "Freaks", cried the earth ponies. "Imbeciles", cried the pegasi. "Brutes", cried the unicorns. Before long, the summit collapsed under the growing weight of ethnic strife; the unicorns had the visiting delegations expelled from Troy, the earth ponies returned to their farms in the countryside, and the pegasi retreated to their stronghold atop Mount Olympegas.
"Attention! Private Viola!" Commander Hurricane was the first leader to arrive home, eager to vent her frustration on her subordinates. Private Viola, her personal assistant, was one of her favourite whipping horses - a skittish individual and a weak flier, hardly suited for military life. As shrewd a leader as Hurricane may have been, not everypony was convinced that she was altogether 'with it' upstairs. "I said, attention!"
"Oh! Commander Hurricane!" The shy private prised herself from the a cloud bank. "Sir h-how did the summit go, sir?"
"Horribly!" Hurricane hurled a stray lump of cloud in her frustration, letting off a small spark of lightning when it collided with another. "Those pathetic earth ponies and unicorns have no respect! Who do they think keeps this land safe? Who do they think slays their dragons and breaks up their storms for them? Huh?"
"Uhm..." Viola struggled not to hide behind her hands.
"We do!" The Commander's sudden yell made Viola jump and squeak with fright. No matter how long she was working as her secretary, she never got used to her outbursts. "Ugh, I've had it with everyone today! I'm retiring to my quarters and do not want to be disturbed! Is that clear?"
"Uh... s-sir yes sir!" The trembling Private Viola stood to attention again and saluted, freezing in place until her superior slammed the doors to her house behind her.
As soon as she was sure she was alone, Hurricane sighed and made herself comfortable, tossing her helmet aside and getting straight to work on removing her armour. A blur in the shadows sent a chill down her spine, and she immediately stopped. She tried to scan the room, but the half-light made it hard to see anything, and she backed away from the dark corners. One hand tentatively reaching for the sword on her belt, she lowered her stance, ready for anything the shadows might throw at her...
"Ohoho, come now... why so tense, Commander?" ... except that. The voice was deep and masculine, but sourceless and omnidirectional. It made her jump back and pull her sword free.
"What? Show yourself!"
"Relax..." Her discarded helmet swayed a little on the floor, and a snout poked out of it. Her first instinct was to run up and kick it, but she quickly abandoned that plan when the nose was followed by a long head, adorned with horns from different creatures, and a serpentine body, made from a patchwork of borrowed components. "I'm not here to kill you." Hurricane just took a couple of stunned steps back, and raised her weapon again. "Apart from anything, it just wouldn't be fair, you're unarmed, after all..." Upon a click of the stranger's fingers, her blade turned into a twig. The surprise made her drop the twig and shy back again. The moment it hit the floor, it turned back into a sword again.
"What... what kind of sorcery is this?"
"Never mind my parlour tricks. I just wanted to... have a little chat..." The beast propelled itself through the air like a sea snake swimming, coming to a rest over Hurricane's shoulders, his long face hanging uncomfortably close. "... about this whole, summit debacle..."
"What do you know about the summit?" she growled.
"Oh please, all of Hippaea could hear you three screaming at each other. All of this over some silly little wendigoes..."
"Wendigoes?"
"Didn't you know? That's the reason for this deep freeze. Winter spirits, feeding on disunity and discord... and if that meeting was anything to go by, there's plenty of that to go around..."
"Huh... disunity..." Hurricane's disgusted snarl started to slip away as the cogs in her head began to turn.
"But how were you to know that? I'll bet the unicorns already knew, but they were hardly going to just up and tell you what was going on. And those earth ponies, well... it's a miracle they know anything at all. And heavens know that they're not going to cooperate if they can help it."
"So if they won't work together under their own steam..." She didn't even notice the serpentine beast slipping away, absorbed in her own thoughts as a sly grin crept across her face. "... then we'll just have to make them..."
"Clover the Clever!" Princess Platinum wailed, ascending the spiral staircase to her quarters. "I need you!"
"Coming..." came the exasperated response, accompanied by the slam of a door and some hurried sprinting down the steps. When Clover found the Princess, she was leaning against the wall, her chest heaving.
"Clover, be a dear and... carry your Princess up to... her bedroom? I simply can't... make it up in this cold..."
"Uhm...." Clover blinked. Typical Princess Platinum - the meeting was practically downstairs in the same building, and if she was still cold under that many layers of fluffy cotton and silk, then she had bigger problems than needing to get up the stairs. Still, she put up with the Princess's folly if it meant getting to study under Starswirl the Bearded. "... yes your majesty, right away..." Her horn started to glow and twinkle, as she plucked Platinum from the stairs and floated her up the rest of the way. "So how was the summit, your highness?"
"Oh, simply dreadful! Those ruffians have no respect for the proper order of things! Those pegasi think they can just strong-arm all the food for themselves like barbarians, and those earth ponies just would hoard it and starve us! Unicorn families have ruled Hippaea for centuries! Who are they to turn around and start tearing away at the foundations of society at a time like this?"
"I'm sure they'll see reason eventually, your highness..." Clover swung the door open and closed with particular vigour, if only to mask her irritation.
"I do hope so, but I can't say I'm confident..."
"Is that everything, Princess?"
"No, that's quite enough help, be off with you." The Princess pouted and readjusted her clothes, prompting Clover to (reluctantly) bow and depart. Now in privacy, Platinum gingerly removed her gown by magic and set it down on a chair by a dresser. She sighed, flicked her mane back and went to a cabinet to fetch her night gown. But when she opened it, there were more than dresses inside.
"Expensive tastes, I see?" The source of the voice was unlike anything she'd ever seen; here was this snake-like beast, with all manner of mismatched appendages attached to it, lying on her dresses, chewing on a ruby. She jumped back, but before she could even inhale to scream, the creature reached a hand to her and placed a finger on her lips. "Come now, let's be civil..I'm just here for a little... tête-à-tête."
"W... what do you want from me?" Platinum was trembling and staggering back from the closet, giving the beast room to slither into the light. He floated in mid-air, with no obvious means of doing so; his wings were perfectly still.
"Straight to the point, eh? Well, truth be told I'm not looking for anything. In fact, I have something for you!" He shot forth and slinked up next to her, throwing an arm over her shoulder. She winced and ducked, but hesitantly stood straight again when she found herself unharmed. "A little bird told me that the pegasi and earth ponies are looking for a little... payback for what happened earlier."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"They're... shall we say, out for a bit of blood..."
"I still don't follow." The beast furrowed his brow and snorted. So much for subtle hints.
"They're planning to attack Troy for being booted from the summit."
"Ohh, right..." Platinum nodded slowly. Then, when it finally dawned on her, she whipped up into an absolute fury, pacing her room and screaming. "Why, those scoundrels! They've completely forgotten their place! This is insubordination! This is treason! I'll have their heads! I..."
"Your highness, who are you talking to?" Clover's voice outside the door made her jump. She looked around, and the beast was gone.
"I... no...pony! Nopony at all! Everything's fine!" Platinum gave a little nervous chuckle.
"O...kay..." As soon as she heard Clover returning to her study, she resumed her furious muttering.
Fthoom. The chimney of a rural town hall was violently relieved of its soot as a pony forced herself through it, ruining her suit, and the hearth while she was at it. Fortunately for her, the fire was out when she landed.
"Uhm... wouldn't it have been easier to use the door, Chancellor?"
"Silly Brandywine!" Tiramisu hauled herself out of the fireplace with a giggle, not missing a beat. "That's what the assassins want me to do!"
"... Of course." Brandywine frowned, painfully reminded that this was not unusual for the Chancellor. She coughed and brushed some of the soot off her waistcoat, and decided to move on before the conspiracy theories started. "So how did the summ-"
"Ohmygosh protect me!" Without warning, Tiramisu jumped behind her secretary, holding her between herself and something in moving in the shadows.
"Chancellor..." Brandywine sighed, and folded her arms. "... that's a pigeon."
"I'll bet it's an evil pigeon! Quick! Fetch my sword!"
"But..."
"Go go go!" Before she had a chance to protest, she was being pushed out the front door and into a heap of snow. She groaned, muttered something about democracy not working, and wearily carried out her instructions. Inside, Tiramisu was still glaring daggers at the pigeon. "I'm watching you! No funny business!"
"Oh, but I thought you liked to laugh, Chancellor!" Her jaw dropped. Did that pigeon just... talk? As she stood there, blinking incredulously, the bird hopped from the rafters and fluttered down to the desk. It settled on top of a mug, and promptly exploded in a puff of feathers and smoke. By the time she'd wafted the worst of it away, she saw in its place a bizarre serpentine beast, sprawled across the table, resting his head in one arm - a lion's paw - and picking his teeth with the other - an eagle's claw.
"I knew it! Evil pigeon! Evil pigeon!" She screamed, shying back and pointing.
"Oh, relax..." With a click of his fingers, he pulled a low-slung wicker chair from the other side of the room, simultaneously tripping her and catching her in it. With another, he conjured a glass of apple brandy into her open hand. She wasn't sure whether to be very alarmed or pleasantly surprised. "If I was going to kill you, I'd have gone through the door." His quip drew a vindicated snort and smirk from the earth pony. "Though... I do have an idea who might try."
"What? Who? Who!"
"Well, think about it. You - the earth ponies - have the food. The pegasi and unicorns want the food. And if you're not giving it to them, they're going to try and take it."
"But we can't give them any food! We barely have enough to feed ourselves!"
"Oh I know, so tragic..." The beast pulled an exagerrated frown and dreary voice, slinking over to her to rest on the back of the chair. "Of course, there's another way around it... if there aren't any pegasi or unicorns to feed, they don't need to be fed! With their fancy flying and magic, they're taking way more food than they deserve. Earth ponies could do so much better if they didn't have to feed them, right?"
"... right..." Tiramisu took a sip of the brandy and started to stroke her chin, a devilish smirk growing in the corner of her mouth. In three different places, three different ponies said the same thing to themselves;
"Wow, I never knew Chancellor Puddinghead was such an asshole."
"I, wait... what? Rainbow Dash?" Twilight nearly dropped the book when she heard the pegasus interrupt. Yet there she was, sitting crosslegged on top of a nearby bookshelf. In positions of varying degrees of comfort, the others reclined on the floor between them. "When did you guys get here?"
"Uh, sugarcube..." Applejack quirked a brow and adjusted her hat. "You've been reading aloud for about ten minutes now."
"Oh..." The unicorn pouted, and sank back a little in her seat.
"Well we didn't say stop!" Rarity chuckled, sprawled across a fainting couch. Nopony was quite sure where she found it.
"Uhm... okay, I guess... now where was I..."
The soulless, synchronised flapping of hundreds of pegasus wings, beating in time to a dull, thumping drum pierced the sound of the howling wind around Mount Olympegas. Though hunger weighed them down as much as their armour, the soldiers found courage in the pounding beat, and were lured on by the prospect of showing their compatriots their place. Commander Hurricane's centurions were only too happy to remind the troops of this goal, and did so at every opportunity the gaps in the wall of noise afforded them.
Ahead of the march, Hurricane kept a keen eye on the ground below, her course following the overgrown roads down the mountain to Troy. All the while she had a sly grin plastered across her face, and only rarely tore her eyes away from the ground. While Private Viola was quite relieved to not be at the brunt of her abuse, it concerned her that something was preoccupying Hurricane so. Several times she asked what was wrong; was something bothering her? Was there anything in particular that warranted such focus? Every time she inquired, she received a careless handwave in response, occasionally accompanied by a frustrated growl or mutter, and sometimes connecting with her face if she got too close. She knew better than to protest. Either way, nothing about this situation sat right with Viola. Commander Hurricane clearly wasn't herself, the army was especially riled up, and marching the day after the summit's collapse seemed a tad rash, even for Hurricane.
Viola shivered a little in her armour. She didn't normally feel the cold, but even she thought it was a bit chilly for her liking.
From the other direction came the muffled march of scores of hoof-falls on snow. A disorganised flying column of earth ponies, dragging rudimentary cannons through the coldest wind any of them had ever felt, only the fire of hate in their hearts keeping them going. For some, this was not enough; from time to time, an individual dropped to the ground, their body already as ice, never to rise again. Chancellor Tiramisu ordered they leave them there - there was no time to lose. Brandywine was shocked by this callousness, but the masses seemed to agree, and they kept marching. Every turn of this whole escapade filled her with doubt. She knew Tiramisu was paranoid, but this was a whole new level - she wasn't even moved by the deaths of her fellows, and their blindness in following her was just plain disturbing. Still, she was sworn to carry her burdens, and suppressed her qualms for the time being. With any luck, this would all blow over as soon as Tiramisu got bored.
She gritted her teeth, and pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders. It would take more than a blizzard to stop her.
Atop the battlements of Troy, Princess Platinum surveyed the scene with a wry smirk. She knew the pegasi and earth ponies would arrive any hour now, and was determined to be ready for them. All of the city's finest archers and mages were lined up along the ramparts with orders to shoot on sight. All the entrances were sealed with enchanted barricades, and every last ounce of the meagre supplies they could scrape up was holed up in the city's cellars for siege. Clover the Clever kept her station by the Princess, fear and uncertainty scraping at the back of her mind. As far as she was concerned, this whole endeavour was utterly insane - the bubbling over of racial tensions into open conflict at the worst possible moment. Still, she kept her mouth shut. Examples had already been made, and she didn't want to be counted among them.
"Charge!" The shriek came from an uncertain direction. A few archers drew arrows and looked around frantically, but Clover knew better. There was only one thing that could be attempting to charge the top of a battlement, and it was hiding in the storm clouds above. She dropped prone and scurried behind a parapet in time to watch three figures shoot from the cloud layer, each one arcing their path to sweep an archer from the battlements. A fourth pegasus attempted to charge Platinum, lagging a little behind his peers.
Crack.
An arc of lightning jumped between the cloud and an ethereal sphere enclosing the royal, coursing through the pegasus in the process. Momentum carried his body to the edge of the battlement, colliding with the parapets with a wet crack, and sliding limply off to the moat below. Clover gulped, and chanced a look out of cover.
Above them, the heavens opened. The clouds dispersed as individual soldiers took them away, hitting them to hurl a lightning bolt or deliver a blast of driving snow, or just hiding in them until they had a chance to strike. Behind the clouds, Commander Hurricane watched the scene with a malicious grin, Private Viola cowering to the side. For the briefest of moments, Clover's eyes met with Viola's. The distance made details hard to pick out, and conversation was impossible (not that their superiors would tolerate such a thing), but their expressions said everything that needed to be said. It let each of them know that they weren't the only ones carrying doubt into this battle, they weren't the only ones harbouring the idea that something was very wrong, and just maybe, they weren't the only ones who hadn't completely lost their minds.
"Fire!" came another cry from the ground, rapidly followed by a series of dull thuds and booms. The noises brought eerie silence across the battlefield, through which the soft whistle echoed. The defenders had only the briefest of intervals to contemplate this, before the cannonballs connected with the stone of the upper battlements.
Crack.
The barrage tore through the masonry, all aimed at the same spot. The cold made the stones brittle, and they easily split and shattered. The second volley tore a hole clean through the walls, more than big enough for a pony to fit through. The mages quickly set about closing the gap with shields, but with the cold weakening their magic, they were little match for the third round. The pegasi were the first to capitalise on the breach, with the first earth pony guerrillas still charging across the plains. Archers worked as fast as equinely possible, but with the strength of this blizzard, the arrows barely made it further than the moat. At the top of the hill, Clover could just about pick out the outline of Tiramisu, barking orders to the cannon crews, next to a hapless-looking Brandywine.
"Give it up, Platinum!" Commander Hurricane grabbed her attention again. She hovered with impunity before the unicorn defence - arrows and javelins tumbled uselessly to the side as soon as they were let go, and the weakened spells were mere breezes by the time they reached her, drowned out by the storm around them. "There's no way you can win this! Pegasi are masters of the cold!"
"Try all you like, you ruffians, Troy will never fall to the likes of you!" Platinum yelled back. They could barely hear each other over the roaring wind; the blizzard had only gotten worse since hostilities opened.
"We don't want Troy! We only want your submission or your blood!"
"I knew you pegasi were just treacherous swine all along!"
"Pah! Your ignorance never ceases to amaze me. We know about the wendigoes..." Private Viola threw Hurricane a double-take. The Commander didn't miss a beat. "... and we know that to beat them this needs to end, now."
"Wendigoes? What in the heavens above are you talking about, you dolt?"
"Wendigoes?" Clover muttered. The bottom fell from her stomach. Hurricane's word was hardly the most reliable on the subject, but the fact that she even knew their name was suspect.
"Don't play dumb with me! You know exactly what I mean!"
"Maybe the cold is getting to your head, featherbrain, because I know nothing of the sort!" Leaving them to argue, Clover slipped away, dropping quietly over the edge of the battlements. She wasn't sure what she was going to do, but she knew something was very wrong, and this certainly wasn't the way to fix it.
The snow by the moat was exceptionally thick, and the moat itself was frozen over. If there were wendigoes about, then this battle was only going to make them even stronger. At this rate, she feared Hippaea would be nothing but ice by the end of it. She hurried away from the castle, escaping the notice of the marauding pegasi above, and the earth pony artillery on the hill... save for two. She could barely make out the two other figures rushing to join her, one descending from the clouds, masked by the driving hail, the other sliding down the hill and wading through the snow to meet her. They met somewhere in the middle, and simply exchanged nods. They didn't waste time on introductions - each knew something was wrong, and both time and horsepower were of the essence.
"So what's the plan?" Brandywine spoke up, shouting to be heard over the wind.
"We need to stop the fighting, somehow!" Clover clutched her whipping robes tight to her body.
"Uhm..." Viola tapped the unicorn on the shoulder and pointed back to the castle. Pegasi were starting to crash to earth as water vapour froze out of the air, leaving them at the mercy of the wind, and unicorns on the battlements started collapsing. Behind Brandywine, the rate of cannon fire had been dropping off dramatically as the ponies attending them passed out from the cold. "I don't think anypony can fight in this..."
"This is worse than I thought..." Clover muttered. They had perfect views of their respective leaders, still shouting with their remaining strength to anypony who was listening, as the ice started to claim them too. Tiramisu miraculously remained on her feet as they froze over, barking at the wind to keep firing right up to her final breath. Platinum sprawled over the parapets of the city walls, adamant that her beloved Troy would never be taken, and Hurricane didn't even feel the cold claiming her, as she defiantly called out for the unicorns' blood. Fear struck in their hearts, Clover, Viola and Brandywine backed up to each other, shivering as the blizzard around them intensified.
"Hey... why aren't we frozen yet? We're the only ones still standin'!" Brandywine furrowed her brow.
"I... that's it!" Clover's face lit up. "We're still alive because it's not as cold where we're standing, which could be because we're not fighting, and if that's the case then it must be wendigoes!" Her smile quickly slid away when the triumph of her deduction drained off. "On the other hand, we're dealing with wendigoes..."
"W-wendigoes?" Viola and Brandywine gibbered in unison.
"Wendigoes are malicious ice spirits, bringing harsh cold wherever they go. And, as we're painfully aware, they're attracted to things like hate, violence, and..."
"... Discord."
"What?" Clover wheeled around to face the strange voice behind her. Sprawled out in the snow, sipping an iced drink from a glass and wearing a pair of blacked-out glasses, was a curious, serpentine beast, with a lion paw and an eagle claw.
"Lovely weather, don't you think?" he chirped.
"What in the hay is that?" Brandywine yelled. Viola cowered behind her.
"Who are you and what did you do?" In a flash of light, he disappeared from his lounging spot in the snow, and reappeared, draped across Clover's shoulders like a scarf.
"Oh, I'm insulted! You were just on the cusp of calling me by name, and you've already forgotten..."
"What... discord?"
"Anyway Clover, it's hardly me you should be asking. I thought it was..." With another click of his fingers, Discord vanished from her shoulders. Instead of reappearing, four misty white streaks descended from the clouds, assembling into the vague shapes of ponies. They had hollow pits for eyes, their arms were missing, and their manes whipped behind them, releasing flakes of snow into the wind. All four spoke with one voice - the same voice as the curious serpentine beast. "... those pesky wendigoes..." Clover's jaw dropped.
"Starswirl's beard..." With another flash, they vanished, and Discord reappeared in their place, hovering with a devious smirk.
"Well, I think it's about time I hit the ol' dusty trail..." He circled around them, effortlessly sailing through the air in spite of the wind. "... I think it's going to get pretty dead around here soon..." With an echoing, non-directional cackle, he dove into a pile of snow, covering the three of them in it, and disappearing completely.
"What did he mean, get p-pretty dead soon?" Viola gibbered.
"I think we might be running out of time..." Clover spluttered, throwing snow off herself. She turned back to Viola and Brandywine, struggling to wade through the depth of snow. It seemed like it had gotten deeper around their feet while they were talking. She could tell by their trembling, and her own numbness, that they wouldn't last much longer in this. Still, she swallowed, and painted determination on her face. "... but I think I have a plan."
"I don't think I like the Hearth's Warming story anymore..." Pinkie Pie frowned, pouting. Her tone was almost like a balloon slowly deflating. Rainbow Dash suppressed a chuckle, and rolled a little in her perch atop the bookcase.
"What's wrong, Pinkie? Afraid of a little action in your festive cheer?"
"Ah think," Applejack cut in. "She means that this ain't the version you'd wanna tell to Scoots at night."
"Are you kidding? She'd find this awesome!" Dash grinned. The earth pony exchanged a worried look with Rarity.
"A responsible parent might wait until she's just a tad older," she quipped, and returned her attention to Twilight. The other unicorn fumbled the book, and hurriedly resumed the story.
Bang.
A signalling spell, weakened with the cold, echoed out across the fields of Ilium. It was virtually the only light for miles; the blizzard had extinguished the torches on Troy's walls, and the clouds above were so thick that the sun might as well have not risen. The flare's burst of sound was barely heard over the roar of the wind, but it still caught the attention of its intended recipient. A serpentine form snaked from the cloud layer and impacted the snow, spraying it in all directions. But for a well timed shield, Clover would have been buried. It was getting harder to cast as she felt frostbite set in, but she could still manage for now. Inside the crater, the snow had been cleared in a perfect circle, revealing the ground below - flattened, yellow grass, and a familiar monstrosity sprawled across a checquered tablecloth, swinging a picnic basket on his finger. Almost as surprising was the depth of the snow - she guessed the crater was about three feet deep.
"Given up yet, Clover?" he jeered, setting the basket afloat. A pie drifted gently from the under the covers. The unicorn's sombre expression gave way to a knowing smirk, and her horn lit up.
"Never." At that word, two nearby piles of snow burst open. The outlines of Brandywine and Viola glowed a soft lilac - a magical layer keeping their bodies above freezing. Three other figures, not so conveniently insulated and highlighted, burst free with them, not so much actively jumping from hiding as being tossed haphazardly into the clearing. Not wasting a breath, Clover scooped up the bodies of Commander Hurricane, Princess Platinum and Chancellor Tiramisu in her arcane hold, and navigated them over Discord. It was happening so fast that the beast had barely registered any of this, but she wasn't going to risk any hesitation.
Kshing.
A steaming hot sword shot from the snow, and pierced the three bodies in a single motion. With a sickening wet crunch, she twisted the blade, and dark crimson began to flow liberally down the handle. All it took to form the sigil was a few deft flicks of her magic, spraying the pattern on the ground around the crater. As soon as the flow ceased, she tossed the bodies away, their final function exhausted. Now for a simple igni-
"What? No!" the beast cried in terror. Clover broke her concentration to see the pattern already glowing bright white. The gore had frozen almost on contact with the ground.
"Blood rituals work with ice?" she queried to herself, before shaking it off and watching the fireworks. Brandywine and Viola were already putting some distance between themselves and the terrible display. Discord threw everything he could at the ritual - in the space of seconds, he conjured molten lava from the ground, detonated the air around him, threw impact after impact at the hard walls of light rising from the trails on the ground, but nothing penetrated the cosmic barriers erected by the frozen symbol.
"I swear to you, Clover the Clever..." Discord spat, giving up on escaping his fate. His words dripped with acidic contempt. "As long as your miserable kind lives, they will never find rest in Hippaea! Never!" In response, Clover just snorted and watched. Wordlessly, the beast accepted his fate, and light overcame him.
The brightness of the ritual made it difficult to see anything at all when it was over; but she knew that at least it was. As soon as the light faded, the chill wind of the blizzard faded to a whisper, and then stillness. The calm was almost a warmth in itself, and the tranquility, consolation to the weary mage. At last; peace.
"Yeehaw! We did it!" Brandywine shocked her out of her melancholy with a firm thump on the back, almost knocking her face-first into the snow. She stumbled, and Viola rushed over to catch her.
"It's not over yet..." Clover grimaced, and stepped down into the clearing in the snow. Discord's escape attempts had incinerated the grass, leaving just bare, charred earth. Sat in the middle of the crater, emitting little throbs of soft orange light, was a gemstone, chaotically faceted, with no apparent pattern to its cut. It was about the size of a large apple, and roughly shaped like one too. Cautiously, Clover levitated it into the air to examine it. It emanated an aberrant energy, and felt cool in her arcane grasp, like a block of ice. However, she dared not touch it with her hands.
"Y'want me to smash it?" Brandywine offered, sliding down the wall of the crater to join her. Viola sailed overhead, nervously hovering over the crater.
"... No." The unicorn lowered the crystal, and turned to her companion. "There's no telling what might happen if this is damaged, but it can't be good. From what I can tell, this stone is the beast's prison..."
"So we just have to keep it safe and make sure nopony breaks it?" Viola blurted, still visibly shivering. Clover sighed, and looked the gem over again.
"Hmm... I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust anypony in Hippaea to keep this safe..." She grimaced, turning the stone in the air in front of her. A brief flash on one facet caught her eye - the reflection of a single point of light. Looking up, she found a small clearing in the clouds, just enough to see a single star, and the first traces of dawn. Without giving it another thought, she took a step back, reared up an arcane charge, and fired the crystal into the sky, its soft light quickly disappearing from view.
"Well what'ja do that for?"
"If we lock it away, sooner or later, something is going to try and use it for some ill purpose. This way, nothing can reach it." Clover watched it carefully, tracking the last vestiges of the apple's light as it careered away into sky. Viola and Brandywine nodded and shrugged, exchanging some murmurs of agreement.
"So... can we go home now?"
"Actually..." Clover's heart sank, Discord's last words replaying in her mind. "... there's a problem with that. A couple of problems." She turned back to her worried companions. "Even though the blizzard is over, Hippaea is still buried in ice, and who knows how long it'll take to recover... and then the beast..." She took another deep breath, and sighed before continuing. "With his last words he cursed us. Ponykind. He cursed us never to find rest in Hippaea again."
"So that's it then? Just like that? We just up sticks an' giddout just 'cos some furry snake said so?"
"We won't know for sure until somepony tries to sleep, but with the power he had, I wouldn't doubt it. Blood rituals draw on the very forces that bind the planes together, and it took one of those to subdue him!"
"'I hope upon hope that to the end of days, that that infernal stone never returns this way,' star-blessed Clover warned her friends, as the three little ponies gazed into the end. Alas, Discord's prophecy came true, and Hippaea was lost for pastures new; a trail for many a year they blazed, and over countless hills they grazed, 'til over the mountains beyond the sea, they found an ideal land for pony; Equestria was its given name, and to this day, there they remain." Flipping idly over the blank pages at the end of the codex, Twilight swallowed and closed it over, silently announcing the end of the story.
"So they don't turn out to be us all along? I was kinda hoping for that ending..." Rainbow Dash pouted, laying on her stomach on the end of the shelf. Twilight's straight face failed utterly.
"I should hope not, those tribe leaders were simply horrid!" Rarity chimed in.
"Now that you mention it, recursive hypercompetency would be kinda cool..." Twilight chuckled, stuffing the books back in her bag. The others exchanged a couple of quizzical looks, but knew better than to start her on a chain of arcanobabble. "But no, not everyone was as careless in their curses as Celestia's impostor."
"I miss Chancellor Puddinghead..." Pinkie frowned, hugging her tail for comfort. Dash sighed, and decided not to press it. She turned to lie on her back and changed the topic.
"Say, how long until Zecora's bailing us outta here again?"
"I-" Twilight was interrupted by a couple of clicks and some slow, mechanical whirring, muffled, like it was coming from the walls. The whole group perked up and looked around. Only Dash was high enough up to see the door rattle and slide into the floor, and as the ancient mechanical clanks subsided, a familiar black and white form stepped through. She was carrying an urgent look and a bone fragment with some vines wrapped around it.
"Ponies, ponies! Come this way, the door will not be open all day!"
"Speak of the- Zecora?" Twilight craned her neck to get a look, and idly started stuffing books back into her bag.
"And Derpy!" The mailmare herself popped her head in the door, wearing her usual goofy grin. Spike sauntered in behind her, looking less than impressed. Rainbow Dash immediately stood up high on her shelf and started marshalling the others to the exit.
"Alright, you heard the mare, let's move! Nopony wants to be locked in here!" She stumbled when Applejack playfully knocked her shelf. Twilight rolled her eyes, and jogged ahead to speak with Zecora.
"How did you know we were stuck? We weren't expecting you for another two hours, at least!"
"The forest is an enchanted place, but not everything wants to eat your face. A little bird told me you were in trouble, and as soon as we heard, we came on the double." The explanation did little to sate Twilight's curiosity, but she figured straight answers might be hard to come by, at least for the time being. As they hurried out the door, she scooped up Stable and Cooper's Guide to Tax Law and pressed a different subject.
"More to the point, how did you open the door? I was half-expecting you to need help, or... something..."
"Ah, a unicorn's horn is not the only means by which to perform magical routines!" The zebra held up the strange assemblage she was carrying. Twilight recognised it as the horn from the skull left outside, to which a number of vines, flowers and gemstones had been attached in confusing, haphazard manner. "Many things that one finds outside, are to magical functions tied. Moonshine quartz and Starswirl's pea, with the right anchor form a skeleton key." Zecora waved the horn a little, before retiring it underarm. Twilight muttered a few fascinated observations under her breath while they waited for the rest of their group to emerge. "So has your literary pursuit delivered any worthwhile fruit?"
"We've found a few things... not much, but... something at least. We learned that about two thousand years ago, Clover the Clever imprisoned Discord in an artifact called the Apple of Discord, before hurling it into space. It makes sense with the 'two thousand years' part of the riddle, but it still doesn't say much about where he came from..."
"Hmm... with exile to space there is a concern, that gravity's ballet will cause his return. Do you remember, fourteen months ago, when meteors set the sky aglow?"
"I..." Twilight's heart nearly stopped. "Yes, I was watching that meteor shower, we all were, that was the night I first met Owloysius..."
"Given the second clause of his terms, the shower's fatefulness it confirms." The unicorn's alarmed stare said all she needed to. "I guessed the comets fell in northern extremes, but your notes likely outstrip mine on this theme."
A little puff of noxious smoke blew away in weak summer breeze, a gentle zephyr through a Ponyville back street. It was just about hitting lunchtime, and a unicorn was inhaling hers, leaning against the back wall of an old terrace. She was pretty sure this stuff was illegal, but what she liked about this town was that everypony was too polite to call her out on it. She smirked at the thought, and pushed the purple sunglasses back up her nose. Man, that sun was bright...
She slumped to sit on a small crate. That dizzy feeling was starting to kick in already - better head inside soon. Trying to mix on this was practically impossible, but it was better than trying to deal with nosy neighbours and law enforcement while falling about the place. She checked her pockets for her supply - squat. She made a note to hit up tha-
"... the best teacher we could hope for..." She didn't care who said that or what they were saying, she just knew someone was coming. She flicked the smouldering roll of paper away, and hoped nothing flammable was around. "... the perfect stallion you and I must find..." Now just wait a second... She craned her ears to the source of the sound. It was somewhere around the corner, and was being carried on a pretty catchy melody. That's... one heck of a voice! She tossed the electric blue bangs out of her face and nodded gently in time to the singing, keeping a watch on the nearby street corner out of the corner of her eye. "One to really make her heart soar!" At this lyric, the source of the song emerged from around the corner; a unicorn filly, riding side-saddle on the back of a... was that a pint-sized gryphon? Eh, it didn't matter, and neither did the three other fillies bouncing in tow - just that voice.
"Hey, kid," she spoke up, lifting her glasses off. Her voice was a little husky from her lunch, and her eyes were possibly a bit bloodshot, but she did her best to appear sober. "You got some serious pipes!"
"Uhm..." Sweetie Belle, and exchanged a puzzled look with Kalza. "... thanks?"
"I think she means she likes your singing." Dinky gave her a little nudge.
"Ohh... thanks!" Realisation dawned, and she repeated in earnest. "It's my special talent, y'know!"
"You don't say?" The other unicorn quirked a brow and smirked. An idea crossed her mind - possibly of questionable morals, depending on how old this kid was, but she decided it couldn't hurt to ask. "You ever think of recording? Like, getting that on a record?"
"A record? Me?" Sweetie Belle went wide-eyed. The thought had never occurred to her - she was perfectly happy to sing all day long to anypony and everypony, but this was the first time she'd considered committing her voice to posterity.
"You should totally sing for a record!" Scootaloo jumped up behind Sweetie Belle.
"Yeah! Go for it!" Applebloom chimed in, adding to the stack, much to Kalza's discomfort.
"I know ponies who could set you up. Get you started in the business," the stranger added.
"That sounds great! When do I start?"
"Whoa! Easy, kiddo. You kinda caught me at a bad time, I got... work to do. I'm just on break from mixing. This is my studio." The older unicorn patted the limewashed wall, and swayed a bit. "You should probably, like... tell somepony before you walk into a stranger's house. But hit me up any time! Name's Vinyl Scratch."
"And I'm Sweetie Belle!"
"Hm. Sweetie Belle." Vinyl nodded, and smiled. "I'll remember that." She gave her front door kick to swing it open, and unhitched her shades from their perch atop her horn. "Now get outta here, back alleys ain't safe for kids. Never know who's gonnrargh!" She made a play-lunge in their direction, mocking some kind of monster. The stack of foals collapsed, giggling, and the group was quickly on their way. Vinyl smirked to herself and retired inside. Where it wasn't so damn bright.
"Man, I could really use some lunch..." Rainbow Dash groaned, sailing along in casual flight, a yard or so ahead of the group. The treeline was just breaking, and Fluttershy's cottage was among the familiar buildings starting to appear. "Pinkie's place first stop?" Immediately, Pinkie Pie's face lit up.
"Actually..." However, the party pony was quickly deflated at Twilight's objection. "I need to get back to the library right away. We haven't a moment to lose!" Dash sighed and rolled her eyes, only to be yanked down by her tail, brought face to face with Twilight, her horn aglow. "And you should probably track down Scootaloo before she gets herself into trouble."
"And Ka-mm?" Before she could spill any further information, she found her jaws slammed shut with another ethereal push. Twilight just gave her another cold glare and released her.
"If you guys want to you can go eat without me."
"Wow, Twilight, you're really killing yourself over all this." Dash swooped around on the other side, almost teasing. "Can we at least bring lunch to you? Or are we not allowed to be nice to you anymore?"
"Pfft, Rainbow, I..."
"You hear that?" Applejack cut in. The group stopped, and stood listening for a moment. From where they were, just beyond the outskirts of Ponyville, they could hear some kind of commotion, the faint rumble of a far-off crowd in uproar. Rainbow Dash didn't need to be told twice, and bolted ahead to investigate. The others hastened after her.
From her perch atop the library, Dash had a perfect view of the ruckus below - a veritable sea of ponies, crowded around a clearing. In the clearing, three entourages stood, clearly separated from each other. She could just about make out the familiar face of the Mayor, flanked by her magistrates, on one side, and on another, Prince Blueblood, surrounded by guards and sprawled across the seat of a chariot. Opposing them was a third retinue, headed up by a white pegasus in antiquated guard dress uniform, his pale blue mane cropped short and pinned back with an olive wreath, and a cape in Clousdale cerulean draped across his back. Consul Jetstream was hard to miss, and he was even harder to sleep through - a fact to which the wincing front row of the audience could attest.
"Slavery and death!" He bellowed, pacing and gesturing for maximum effect. Even above the murmurs of the crowd, Rainbow Dash could hear him perfectly. "Are what awaits us beyond our borders. Our bubble has burst. Our ivory tower has - in a painfully literal fashion..." Blueblood looked about ready to explode. "... collapsed. We cannot afford this disunity any longer! This is an emergency situation and it calls for emergency measures!"
"You forget, Consul," The Mayor had some surprising power in her voice, easily able to compete with Jetstream's pontification. "That if we abandon the very laws we are trying to protect, we are no better than those who wish to see them crumble. Martial law may look rosy from up in the air, but on the ground, you'd see that the rights of ponies are crucial! Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither!"
"Regardless of your views on Celestia," Blueblood's tone was substantially less strained, telling of a voice amplification spell. "Our current laws have served us well for centuries! Canterlot has been the de facto capital of Equestria since time immemorial, the simplest solution is to carry on that tradition and let the monarchy deal with this cri-" The Mayor scowled and cut him off.
"You're just saying that because it puts you in control!" The crowd erupted in cheers and boos, and the shouting match continued.
Pamf.
A burst of purple light at her side drew Rainbow Dash's attention away from the public debate. Twilight had teleported to sit next to her in one of the upper branches. Precariously so, but sitting nonetheless.
"I think they got here a little early."
"Shoot..." the unicorn grumbled. "If we don't step in now, this could get ugly."
"Wait a minute, who's 'we'?"
"I'm gonna need all the backup I can get here. The others should already be making their way there."
"Fine..." Dash sighed, and kicked off the tree and entered into a glide, carrying herself effortlessly to the clearing. Twilight was already there when she landed, and just behind her, Fluttershy and Derpy dropped Applejack and Rarity in to join the fray.
"Alright! Calm down everypony!" Twilight conjured a large gavel and sounding block from thin air, and banged them together a few times, before letting them evaporate. The crowd fell silent again, and the debating parties observed a Twilight's authority grudgingly. "First of all, a public debate is highly unorthodox for a matter of state this important. This meeting should be being conducted indoors, in private."
"I don't see why we should; these matters do concern everypony, so I think everypony should have the right to know," the Mayor retorted.
"For once, I think she's on to something," Jetstream chimed in. The Mayor raised her arm to argue, but backed down when Twilight frowned and brought the gavel out again.
"Fine. I'll make that concession. Second, lay off the insults! We can't afford to be petty at a time like this! We're all adults here, so let's act like adults. Alright?" Twilight's scornful tone and folded arms were met with irritated mutters, but eventual murmurs of agreement. "Now that that's cleared up, we can move on to some constructive dialogue. No shouting, no melodrama, just discuss. Okay? As you were." She took a step back, prompting the others to retreat to the edges.
"As I was saying..." Blueblood cleared his throat, and idly twiddled his cane in his hands. "Implementing drastic change at a time like this is extremely risky. Apart from anything else, Trottingham and the northern border fall under Canterlot jurisdiction, so I'd be responsible for most of the mess at any rate..."
"You're already responsible for one mess, Blueblood, the last gryphon horde strolled up to your front door like they owned the place," Jetstream cut in. "The Canterlot Guard have gotten rusty, and rusty armour breaks."
"Look, since we clearly can't decide among ourselves, we should hold a referendum! To save paperwork we can hold it alongside an election... you!" The Mayor cast a finger in Applejack's direction. It took the crowd - and her - a moment to figure out who was being pointed at. "Yes, you! Applejack! You're an honest hardworking citizen of Ponyville, don't you agree with my... reasonable proposition?"
"Uhm..." The farmer pony frowned, and adjusted her hat. "Ah don't think y'should be draggin' me into this, regardless o' what ah think." The Mayor rolled her eyes.
"Ugh, there's no time for that kind of red tape!" Jetstream threw his arms up in frustration. "It's tactical suicide! My officers can attest to that, isn't that right Wing Commander Rainbow Dash?"
"What?" It took a moment for it to click that she was being asked a question. "Hey, leave me out of this! This is your thing, not mine." While Jetstream fumed at this insubordination, Blueblood thumbed his chin in thought, before looking to Twilight.
"Sparkle, you're from Canterlot, aren't you? Talk some sense into these country oafs." Twilight just furrowed her brow.
"I'm arbitrating."
"Your highness..." A voice came from the nearby crowd, taking advantage of the deteriorating order. A unicorn stallion in a sharp suit stepped forward to make his presence known better. Rarity went wide-eyed at Fancy Pants' courage. "You would do well to show some courtesy. The ponies of Ponyville have been gracious enough to play host to us in our hour of ne-"
"Silence, you old fool!"
Crack. The foot of Blueblood's cane swung from rest to swat Fancy Pants across the cheek; the sheer surprise sent him stumbling to the ground. Immediately, Rarity raced across the clearing to help him up, aided by his assistant from earlier. He blinked a little in disbelief, and briefly touched a finger to his lips. A red smear came away.
"Your hubris will be your undoing," he spat back. Rarity shot Blueblood a look like jagged icicles as she helped him away for medical attention.
"Okay, maybe time we take a little recess..." Twilight chuckled awkwardly, bringing out the phantom gavel again for the sake of formality.
"I'll say, I won't be part of a meeting with that kind of barbarous behaviour!" Jetstream flared out his wings, and kicked into the sky. His delegation shrugged to each other, and followed suit. "Good day to you, sirs and dames!" He huffed, and his party took off in the direction of Cloudsdale.
"Oh, you're one to talk about barbarism! You and your... your... shut up! Guards, get me out of here..." Blueblood shrank back into his seat and snapped his fingers, and slowly and shakily, his chariot began to heave into the air. His pegasus guards did not look particularly pleased. The crowd quickly began to disperse, leaving the Mayor's officials to bicker among themselves, and Twilight and her friends to muse glumly on the whole affair.
"Did all of that seem a little too familiar for anypony else's liking?" Twilight frowned, watching the departing parties disappear across the horizon. After a short pause, Applejack spoke up.
"Eeyup."
"Did something happen? I didn't see anything!" Spike called from around Twilight's knees.
"Aha! Here's my charts from that night!" Twilight pulled a few crumpled scrolls left sticking out of a drawer, sandwiched in between two books. Out the window behind her, the sun was starting to set. Rainbow Dash was slumped over the banister of her mezzanine, swatting some of the mess of books around idly.
"Finally! If I spend any more time in a library today, I'm gonna start turning into an egghead..." She held up one book at arms length, examining it with trepidation - Daring Do and the Sapphire Stone.
"Well you're certainly not getting any more eloquent," Rarity remarked off-hand, casually examining her nails in a seat by the opposite window. Dash tensed up in frustration, but let it go. Applejack, laid back in a chair by the table, lifted her hat and rolled her eyes.
The thump of the charts on the table brought all their attentions back to the matter at hand. Spike jumped a little, and nearly fell off the table, but for a timely flick of Zecora's staff. Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Derpy were absent. The first chart was a large-scale map of Equestria; it charted everywhere known to modern ponies, from Neighvada in the west to Mane in the east. Large parts of the map were just blank; the south-western edge stopped more or less at the Everfree Forest, a conspicuous bare spot rose from the bottom marked simply 'Lost Lands', and Twilight had written 'Gryphon Kingdoms' and 'Zebrica' on the map herself, with arrows pointing off the northern and southeastern edges respectively. Twilight quirked a brow, and took a moment to underline 'Lost Lands' with 'Hippaea?'. The second map was of a smaller scale, depicting just Ponyville and the surrounding area. On this had been scrawled a series of numbers, lines and circles; the librarian murmured some nothings to herself while she examined them. After a few mental calculations, muttering something about 'mean distances and headings' and 'relative scales', she took a long, folding wooden ruler, measured out an angle, and drew out a line of a very precise length. The tip stopped a couple of finger-widths from Trottingham.
"Hm. Just as I thought."
"Thought what?"
"Girls, pack your stuff. We're heading for Trottingham in the morning."
"Kal, keep that thing up! Ponies around here are a little edgy!"
"Alright, alright..." Kalza pulled the hood of her borrowed Wonderbolts hoodie back over her crest, and kept her head down as they disembarked from the train. This didn't stop her from joining the other Cutie Mark Crusaders as they scampered up to the wall to gawp in awe at Trottingham's most spectacular sights. The station opened out to a dramatic vista of the Great Bridge; the only thing that spanned wide enough to cross the estuary of the river Maresey below, framing the sea just a mile or so beyond. Even in the middle of summer, the winds here had a bite of frost to them, and most of the trees around were conifers. The other way, inland, the permanently snow-capped northern parts of the Dragon Mountains snaked across the horizon.
"Are you sure it was a good plan to bring the young ones to Trottingham?" Zecora whispered from close behind Twilight as they stepped off. The librarian grimaced, and leaned back to respond.
"The other option was leaving them to their own devices in Ponyville." Zecora gave a cautious look, and carried on.
The group's plan had been laid out on their way there. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity and Derpy Hooves would drop off the children at a cousin of Derpy's; they were looking to move to Ponyville later that year, and had a young son called Pipsqueak. Getting the Cutie Mark Crusaders out of harm's way for the day was easy to pass off as offering to let little Pip make some Ponyville friends before they moved. Meanwhile, Twilight, Zecora, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie could make headway on route planning. Which is to say, Twilight, Zecora and Fluttershy could make headway on route planning while Pinkie tucked in to everyone's lunch.
The two groups had just reconvened when the peal of distant thunder grabbed everyone's attention. Passers-by appeared confused - the sky was almost cloudless. However, ponies that knew better instantly saw deeper. That could only mean trouble.
Rainbow Dash immediately took to the sky, leaving earshot before the rest of her party could protest. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere to the north - an observation that unsettled her deeply. Within seconds, she was over the northern gate of the city. The guards on duty were milling about in a mild panic - none of them seemed to be any the wiser. One of the towers had a distinctive burn mark at the top, and the sight and smell of smoke belied its recency. She frowned, and touched down above the gate.
"Pull yourselves together!" she barked. Immediately the guards stood to attention and formed up along the parapets. She picked a skittish looking pegasus guard and singled him out. "You! Alert the Wonderbolts! Go!" Muttering something incoherent but probably resembling 'yes ma'am', he stumbled into flight and darted away. "The rest of you, keep it together! The last thing we need right now is-"
Kerrack.
A tree near the edge of the forest below exploded in two, and a bolt of lightning ripped from the blast to strike another tower on the wall. As the dust settled and the smoke cleared, Dash picked herself up from her instinctive protective crouch to peer over at the source. A gryphon stood over the charred stump, propped up on his hind legs with the aid of an enormous ornate warhammer - black with a sparkling gold trim, emitting a few crackles and arcs of static electricity around the head. Over his back and between his wings was a flowing fur cape, and atop his head was a battered iron crown with a few garnets set in it, flanking the crown jewel: a red, pulsating, steaming, cracked, irregular crystal. With his free claw he raised a fist to the gates and unleashed a mighty roar;
"Charge!"
Dash was entirely too familiar with this sight by now. Scores of gryphon raiders, rising from their hiding places in the trees, letting loose blood-curdling battle cries and bearing down on underprepared, virtually unarmed pony guards. Still, she couldn't afford to lose her cool now. With a deft aerial feint, she liberated a raider of its spear, and hurled it into a rooftop below. Before the thump and squawk of the crash was over, she had another one to deal with. The guards below her were being cut to pieces, the best of them managing a couple of unarmed deflections and dodges before they either fell to the spears or panicked and fled. Quickly finding herself defending solo, she gave a frustrated grunt, and beat a hasty retreat.
"Rainbow! What's going on?" Twilight leapt when the pegasus thumped to the ground, panting.
"Gr-... Gryphons! We're under attack!"
"Oh for... of all the days they could have chosen to attack Trottingham, they had to pick today!"
"I've sent somepony for the Wonderbolts. Their leader has this lightning hammer thing... and I think he has the Apple too!"
"This just gets better and better!" Applejack grimaced. Twilight clapped her hands together and started pacing.
"Okay, we can salvage this. Rainbow Dash, alert the rest of the city watch."
"On it!" With a salute, she was off again.
"Rarity, try and get close to the leader. If they do have the Apple we need to get it from them, pronto."
"I, um... yes! Alright." Rarity nodded shakily, and scampered off to see what she could do.
"Zecora, I need... where'd Zecora go?" All the remaining group looked around bewilderedly for a moment, before turning up a blank.
"Should ah start lookin' for her then?"
"It should be fine. I trust Zecora not to summon demons when I'm not looking. We can work with it. Applejack, Fluttershy and Derpy, start coordinating evacuation. The forest to the south should be good cover, and we'll try and work on a distraction back here."
"What... kinda distraction?" Applejack tilted her head back, an uneasy tone to her voice.
"Pinkie!"
"This can't be good."
For several minutes, Rainbow Dash darted around the city walls and between keeps across the city, barking the news to the guards. All they seemed to do was panic - it wasn't surprising, but frustrating nonetheless. She was largely just killing time until the Wonderbolts arrived - wading into the aerial melee over the northern wall was suicide. After all, what kind of defence should she expect from the calibre of soldier that asks to break for lunch, or thought defending Appleloosa with pies was a good idea? Before long, she gave up and prioritised. Saving the whole town was proving a big ask, but she could at least try and save what she cared about the most.
Bang. The front door of Derpy's cousin's house burst off its hinges, and Dash stumbled in.
"Guys! I hope you didn't get too comfortable, we're going!" she called. "Guys?" A hatch burst open from under a carpet, and Applebloom popped her head out. She could just about see Sweetie Belle over her shoulder.
"Rainbow Dash! What's goin' on out there?"
"Uh... would you panic if I said 'gryphon attack'?"
"Gryphons? Cool!" The prospect just seemed to excite the fillies, and Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Dinky Hooves stumbled out of the cellar and tried to push past Dash. She blocked the door forcefully.
"No you don't, it's too dangerous out there for fillies!"
"But Scootaloo and Kalza already left!" Sweetie Belle protested.
"Wh- they did? Ah, fuck..." Immediately sidetracked, Rainbow Dash took off again. The remaining Crusaders shrugged, and pottered out the door in search of adventure. Behind them, a mottled earth pony colt tried to follow them, only to be picked up by magic and pulled back into the cellar.
"Mum! Let me go!"
"No Pipsqueak, I'm not going to have you getting yourself killed out there!"
Kalza had to work hard to fly for two. She was a little surprised to learn that Scootaloo wasn't fully confident in flying yet, but she was okay with being used as a mount, as long as she was actually able to do so. They had just crossed the river, when she decided she needed to stop for a breather. They set down on top of a house on the northern bank, and the pegasus filly stepped off to watch the carnage in the distance. It was kind of like a train wreck - she knew she was watching a disaster, but she couldn't take her ey-
Thud.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Hey Rainbow Dash! We just came up h-"
"Don't you 'hey Rainbow Dash' me, you're not safe up here!" Scootaloo rolled her eyes. "And Kalza, you're no better! Y-... coming out here is just insane, okay? If anyone, pony or gryphon, sees you two together, they're not gonna think twice about-"
Crack.
The sound of a clay splitting from impact made Dash raise her spear and wheel around to face the source. On top of the next house, a raider had perched on a chimney top. The battle-scarred beast looked up with familiar gold eyes, and gingerly pulled the spear from his back. Kalza's face lit up, and she waved enthusiastically.
"Hi Dad!"
"Kalza, stop playing with your food!" he called back. "And you!" He thrust his spear in the direction of Rainbow Dash. "Get away from my daughter so I can gut you!"
"She made her choice!" Dash snarled. She crouched, and used the butt of her own spear to usher Kalza and Scootaloo behind her. Who's this creep?
"Hmm... so you're the... pal Gilda brought home? That one Kalza wouldn't shut up about?" He shot the gryphlet a mean look, and she cowered behind Dash's legs. "Well, well, miss... Rainbow Dash. You may have taken one daughter from me, but I won't let you take another. En garde!"
Pamf. Twilight stumbled a little upon reappearing at the top of one of the bridge towers. It was a little disorienting looking over the edge, but with shields and teleporting at her disposal, she was more than equipped to handle any mishaps. Added to this, the advantage of an aerial view of the battlefield far outweighed any personal unease she was feeling at this height. This was cold comfort to Spike, who was clinging to the back of her head for dear life. Her attention was drawn to a light bonk on her shield wall - a pegasus was hovering just outside in a familiar blue jumpsuit, knocking on it. When the crash helmet came off, she recognised her pretty quickly as Spitfire, which made sense of the similarly dressed pegasi patrolling the sky nearby. This was an entirely new Wonderbolt uniform - gone was the camp show spandex, and in its place was light armour; gauntlets, shinguards, a chestplate and a single pauldron on the right shoulder, all in the yellow-and-blue motif. Additionally, she had a bow and quiver strapped to her back, and a baton hanging from her belt. These were pegasi dressed for battle. Twilight dropped the shield.
"What's the situation?"
"Full-on gryphon raid, from what I can see the city watch are dropping like flies. I have ponies on the ground running evacuation, and we need cover."
"We can handle that. Where's Rainbow Dash?"
"She's... around."
"Doesn't surprise me," Spitfire chuckled. "I'm guessing this is field base, so I'll send somepony over ever-"
Crack. A bolt of lightning briefly connected Spitfire with an obscure spot on the ground, and arced to the edge of the tower to complete the circuit. Twilight backed away from the edge and hid from the worst of it, but looked up in time to see Spitfire's charred body go limp and start to fall. A blue blur shot from above to catch her before she fell too far. Soarin quickly dumped her on the top of the tower to check her breathing and pulse.
"She's... she's alive!" He laughed, a little desperately.
"Dammit, that must be that 'lightning hammer' Rainbow mentioned... okay, I have a pony setting up shelter and a field hospital south of the city. First get Spitfire there."
"No need to tell me twice."
"Next, I need the Wonderbolts to run cover for the evacuators. Try and keep the gryphons on the ground and funnel them to the bridge. If you stay up high and away from buildings, you should be safe from lightning. It won't earth through you if you're too far away from the ground."
"Roger that." Soarin nodded dutifully, scooped up his captain and high-tailed it to safety.
"At least I hope that's how it works..." Twilight grimaced and pulled her shield back up. Spike fainted and fell off her back.
In an impressively synchronised pair of swings, the metal points of two spears bounced off each other, and the two combatants kicked away. Rainbow Dash could tell this guy knew what he was doing much better than Gilda did - his may have been bigger and heavier, but he was certainly more adept with his weapon, and more in control of his movements. For the ever-hasty Rainbow Dash, this was a trait that worked to her disadvantage, and on more than one occasion she'd taken a scratch to the arm, or left a wing out for a split second longer than she'd meant to. She could easily flee and outrun him, but with Scootaloo and Kalza watching from the rooftop below, she dared not, for fear of losing them both.
Clack. Her thrust was parried, and but for a rapid reverse, she would have found herself with a neckful of razor sharp beak. He wasn't even trying - he'd barely moved from his original spot over the broken chimney pot, and he was making her do all the work. She grumbled and kept going, holding on until help arrived. That said, she wasn't particularly hopeful - she figured Fluttershy would be more helpful in this fight than one of the guards.
Perched on the tip of the gable, the two kids watched the fight closely, oblivious to Dash's peril.
"Which one are we rooting for again?" Kalza tilted her head, following the duel like a cat might follow a spot of light on the wall. Scootaloo didn't think too hard about it - any questions about the fact that she had to ask were ignored for what was, to her, the obvious answer.
"Duh, Rainbow Dash."
"Okay."
The whistle of an arrow sailing overhead caught Rainbow Dash's attention. It wasn't aimed at her - or if it was, it was some horrible aim - but it came startlingly close to her opponent, before clattering uselessly on the shingles below. Both of them followed the motion vectors back to the source - hovering in the air, framed by the towers of the bridge in the background, was Soarin, readying another arrow, and followed by two more Wonderbolts. Dash had never been so pleased to see his goofy, pie-munching face. She took advantage of her sparring partner's distraction to swing a hoof, roundhouse, in his general direction. He was too sharp to fall for that, but he had no choice but to abscond to the next rooftop, safely away from the children. With the added distance, Soarin felt he could safely fire again, forcing the gryphon into full retreat.
"You haven't seen the last of me, Rainbow Dash!" He growled, shooting the pegasi one last baleful look before withdrawing to the advancing gryphon front line. Relieved just to have made it through the encounter in one piece, Dash sighed and perched on the edge of the roof for a breather. Soarin, however, had no such liberty with time. He stowed his bow and swooped down to hover over the opposite roof.
"We have orders to cover the evacuation and funnel the horde to the bridge, and try and keep them on the ground. Sparkle has something planned, but she's pretty tight-lipped about it. Captain Spitfire's been incapacitated and left acting command of the squad to me."
"Roger. Request permission to get my daughter and her friend to safety first?" Dash chuckled nervously, and motioned to Scootaloo and Kalza, sitting obliviously on the far roof. Soarin quirked a brow suspiciously at the gryphlet, and hesitated before continuing.
"The gryphon kid's with you?"
"It's a long and really confusing story, but yes. Yes she is." Dash's confident, serious tone went some way to allay Soarin's fears, but his nod was still a touch reluctant.
"I trust you know what you're doing, but if anything bad happens, it's your ass on the line." Yes, mother.
"Acknowledged, sir." She saluted attentively, and in a single, deft sweep, she kicked off the edge of the roof, scooped the filly and gryphlet in her arms, and set off for the south wall.
Crossing the bridge under the cover of a cloaking spell felt too easy. Arrows and spears flew around like a blizzard overhead, but when she stuck to sheltered parts, Rarity felt fairly safe. She didn't even have to be quiet - the din of battle was ample audio cover. Liberating this leader-fellow of his treasures should be a trivial task. He was romping about atop his litter near the far end of the bridge, waving his dirty great hammer this way and that, making all kinds of covering noise. As she got closer, she could clearly pick out the steaming red gemstone on his crown. As far as gems go, it was positively horrid - no gemcutter with an eye in their head would fashion something like that and consider their job done. Unless, of course, gryphons were more alien than they initially thought. Which, judging by the ferocity of the assault around her, they just might be.
She wasn't quite sure how the raiders had found the wherewithal to even put this thing together, let alone haul it this far into the city. It was gaudy, sloppily made, lined and studded with whatever valuable metals and gemstones they seemed to be able to find... she was almost nauseous looking at this crime against style. Still, that would just make grabbing the Apple all the more satisfying. Taking a wide approach, she slipped around the edge of the clearing the raiders had formed around their leader, and approached from behind. His oversized throne, made of wood with some clumsy gold plating hammered on made for ample cover - she guessed she might even be able to sneak up on him in her Gala dress, it looked that easy. She hit the back of the litter running, propelling her into the air to perch on the top of the throne. She wobbled a bit - she was still getting the hang of this acrobatics business, hypercompetency or no - but once steady, she drew her dagger. She might even be able to off him now, and save everypony a lot of trouble later on - if he'd just stand still for a moment! He was having entirely too much fun swinging that hammer around, hurling lightning bolts around like frisbe-
Smash.
A wayward swing went too far back, and he clumsily cleared out his own throne. The pile of wood and metal flew cleanly off the platform and crashed in a pile of scrap at the side of the road, pulling Rarity's hooves from under her. When she landed with a thump on her side, the distraction broke her spell, and the panting gryphon stared.
"Who dares test the unstoppable might of King Eisen?" he roared, brimming with machismo. He didn't look like he was going to wait for an answer either, and he was already pulling back to squash the unicorn like an ant. She snatched her dropped knife and rolled back to get out of the way. The slow swing was easy to dodge, but the force behind it more than made up for it. The impact site was positively obliterated, sending shockwaves of force and electricity out around it. The former threw and the latter stunned Rarity, and she landed on her back on the road. The crack of the back of her head against the cobblestones nearly knocked her out cold there and then, and the landing winded her. Between concussion and breathlessness, she was all but immobilised, creeping back from the litter as Eisen prepared to swing again.
"You there, ugly! Lend me your eyes!" Thok. A broken plank span through the air, and the blunt side skulled Eisen in the temple, knocking his crown askew. His infuriated turn finished the job, and it fell away behind him. He was angry enough that he didn't even notice. "Pick on somebody your own size!" When Rarity followed the source, she saw a familiar zebra perched on a nearby lamppost, balancing with a staff. Zecora? Spotting her chance, she pushed through her pain to take advantage of Eisen's distraction to scramble on to the litter and make a grab for the crown. The thud of a spear into the boards next to the crown made her flinch and retreat. Not a moment later, another gryphon slammed down to reclaim its weapon, and make off with the crown.
Oh, shoot.
A basement window swung open, and three fillies ducked inside. They were almost at the bridge, and the anarchic melee up ahead looked a bit impenetrable, so they decided on a less obvious path. Upon landing, Applebloom tumbled down a stack of tubes against the wall, rolling along them to a dizzy halt by the opposite wall. Obliviously, Sweetie Belle and Dinky Hooves followed her and made the same mistake, creating a small pile of foal in the corner.
"Hey girls! What are you doing in here?" A mountain of pink fluff emerged from behind a busy table of black powder and stacks of the same tubes the (reduced) Cutie Mark Crusaders had fallen foul of. A few of them were stacked and taped together with some wires and clocks, and Pinkie Pie's face had some black smears on it.
"We came to kick some gryphon butt!" Applebloom bounced up, and performed some of the old karate moves Rainbow Dash had taught her last year. She promptly flipped herself over onto her face. Pinkie giggled, but couldn't hide a concerned head tilt.
"I dunno, fighting gryphons is mostly for big ponies. Gryphons are big and mean and scary and go raaar!" Pinkie leapt clean over her table and pounced on the floor, picking Sweetie Belle up by a hoof and hoisting her into the air.
"Hey, lemme go!" Applebloom gave Pinkie a timely dig in the shin, causing her to lose grip of the unicorn filly. Dinky was already in place to catch her and return her to terra firma.
"Ah think we can handle ourselves." Pinkie frowned and rubbed her shin.
"Maybe there's another way you can help, like, uh..." She looked around the room trying to come up with ideas from some of the junk scattered around. "Uh..." Applebloom picked up something sitting by her hooves. She wasn't sure what this was initially made to do - some circular rack, spinning on ball-bearings. But as she beat it to spin, gears started turning in her head.
"Ah think ah know a way..."
"Packages are in place!" The mailmare gave a goofy, half-right salute, hovering by Twilight's perch atop the south tower.
"Good work, Derpy. As soon as Applejack's home safe, let 'er rip."
"Aye-aye!" As the pegasus darted off to continue running communications, Twilight took another wary glance at the battle below. She'd already seen Rarity and Zecora retreating across the bridge, empty-handed, solving one problem but leaving another, and Pinkie's "surprise" was all ready to go. The day hadn't been without its losses - a few bodies were scattered across the bridge and floating in the river below, mostly of ponies - but her damage control had been fairly effective so far. The south side of the city had been evacuated fairly cleanly, messengers had been sent to Cloudsdale for assistance, and the worst casualties had been sent to Canterlot with the last trains. She wasn't hopeful for the north side though, and Applejack would have one heck of a time getting past the gryphons camping the plaza.
"Twilight!" The unicorn looked up to see Rainbow Dash hovering by her shield, urgency in her eyes. "Applejack's pinned down around the corner from the bridge. We don't have enough pegasi to do an airlift and keep up suppressing fire, what do we do?"
"I... gah, let me think..."
On the ground below, Pinkie Pie lumbered on to the bridge, struggling to lift the weighty contraption in her hands. A mess of tubes, wires and mechanical junk, and the piece at the end spinning like a top, she had no idea what this was supposed to do, but it seemed like a better use of her time than sitting around and waiting to get evacuated. Still, she had her doubts.
"Applebloom! Are you sure this will work?" Behind her, the machine was connected by an articulated axle and a flexible tube to another such machine, mounted on wheels and trundling along behind her, upon which the three fillies were riding - two of them were turning cranks, while Applebloom just sat on top, looking over Pinkie's shoulder. When asked, she just chuckled, and shot back a dark grin.
"Ah have no idea!" She gave the machine a kick, and it hummed into life. It started feeding small rockets into the tube, which slotted into the bottom of the spinning component at the end. A flint lit their shortened fuse, such that by the time they reached the top, they fired. The first firework took Pinkie by surprise, and she almost dropped the machine altogether, but the idea behind it soon clicked - the rockets careened towards the concentration of gryphons at the other end, almost two per second, to devastating effect. The front line didn't even know what hit them, and the line behind them scattered like pigeons, throwing themselves into the open - only to be cut down by arrow fire from above. Eisen swung his hammer to retaliate, but only succeeded in detonating one round in mid air, while three of its fellows blew out the wall behind him. Spotting imminent defeat, he retreated down a back street and out of sight. It worked beautifully, and Pinkie couldn't help but laugh. Not just a mere giggle - she was soon roaring with maniacal cackling at the sheer destructive power in her hands. Cry some more.
Around the corner from the carnage, Applejack was huddled in cover with a small group of survivors, clutching a sledgehammer. The scene was fairly grim on this side of the city - for a lot of ponies, she simply got there too late, and casualties had been high on the way back. She'd taken a few scratches on the way, but she'd live. The roaring cascade of explosions nearby took her off guard initially, when she risked a peek around the corner, she was pleasantly surprised.
"Alright, that's our cue, let's move! Head down and don't stop for nothin', go!" Her charges didn't need to be told twice. They numbered only two dozen, and most of them were pretty distraught. She put herself between the fleeing ponies and the mayhem. Not like she'd be much of a shield if an errant rocket did find its way to her - it was merely for morale. When the last ponies were on their way - an injured earth pony being helped along by his wife - she breathed a sigh of relief, and tacked long behind them.
Click. The deafening hail of rocket-fire subsided, and Pinkie's laughter dried up. The fillies on the cart stopped turning cranks, and looked ahead. The gryphons that hadn't been caught in the onslaught or fled in terror started to peer out of their hiding places. Applebloom opened a hatch and checked inside.
"Uh... she's empty."
"What do we do now?" Sweetie Belle blinked, not liking the hungry looks on the raiders in the distance one bit.
"Run!" Pinkie threw down the machine, scooped up the three foals and hoofed it to safety.
Crack. Applejack wheeled around and cleared out a gryphon approaching from behind her, shattering its skull with the head of her hammer. She nearly lost the grip of it, and it left her wide open for the one behind it. With another wet crunch, it hit the ground when Rainbow Dash came down on it from out of the blue, with the twin assault of her hoof and spear. They didn't exchange words - there was no time. With Dash's wings on the down-beat, Applejack vaulted over her back, adding momentum to her next hammer swing, ventilating the frontal lobe of the next gryphon and buying the pegasus time to pull her spear out and rejoin the battle. They knew they wouldn't last here for very long - this was a distraction operation.
Pamf. A ball of mauve light appeared next to them, dropping Twilight on the ground. Without even blinking, she shot off a few bolts of pure force, pushing back some of the closest attackers, before throwing up a shield wall.
"Quit screwing around guys, let's go!"
Kerr-ack. An impact shattered Twilight's shield, sending an electric shock through the arcane fields propagating it, and throwing her to the ground, stunned. A second later, the origin of that impact thumped to the ground. King Eisen, crownless and propped up on three legs, just gave them a malicious smirk, before winding up the crackling warhammer again. Dash darted to the side, grabbing Twilight by the shoulders to pull her out of harm's way and shake her back to consciousness. Applejack leapt into the air a split second before the impact, dodging the shockwave and preparing a counter-attack. The gryphon king just let go of his weapon swept back, and the farmer's hammer found only cobblestone. He was also quick to retaliate, sending her flying with a haymaker.
"Ugh, this is hopeless!" Dash threw up her arms in frustration, and snatched the hat before it hit the ground to return it to its owner. Twilight disappeared in another puff of purple light, and Dash knew what she had to do. As she was pulling away with the dazed Applejack hanging underneath, a minor impact knocked her out of her hands. When she turned to see what happened, Eisen was still pulling his hammer up - it wasn't him. Instead, by Applejack's hooves was a... tortoise? What was that doing here? Didn't matter. She picked up the burbling earth pony again, and scooped up the tortoise to sit on her head. After all, it wasn't his fault Applejack fell. Spotting nothing else that needed rescuing, she made a beeline for base.
As soon as she was clear of the south tower, a muffled boom grabbed her attention. The Wonderbolts were still keeping the horde ground-bound, forcing them to charge across the bridge on foot. They hesitated at the first noise, and were starting to rout at the second. The bridge started rumbling, and by the third, a billow of flame split the cobblestones. Every second or so, another explosion ripped apart another stretch of the deck, hastening the retreat of those fortunate enough not to be caught in the blast. Seriously Twilight? That's the 'surprise'? Is blowing stuff up our only tactic now? It seemed to be working - the raiders were in full retreat, and even Eisen looked startled as he fled the explosions.
"You are one lucky turtle."
The rest of the day comprised hiding and retreat. Blowing the bridge succeeded at scaring the horde away, but only temporarily - once they felt safe that the city wasn't going to blow out from under their claws, they quickly took the now-empty Trottingham. Defence efforts were centred on keeping attention away from the forest camp, while carriages arrived constantly to ferry ponies to safety in Canterlot. However, the horde seemed mostly content to pillage the city, and as long as they kept quiet, the pony camp was safe.
By mid-evening, Twilight and her friends were among the last ponies left on-site. The Wonderbolts were still on duty, bar Spitfire, who was still recovering from her lightning strike. Most of the problem seemed to be psychological shock - her armour had conducted most of the current, leaving a few burns, but sparing more internal injuries. She was proving a difficult patient, and eventually ponies had to take shifts to ensure she didn't try to rejoin the fight.
Things were starting to calm down as the gryphons settled in for the night, when a messenger arrived at the camp. A pegasus in Cloudsdale guard armour, he went straight for the first Wonderbolt uniform he recognised - the very bored looking Spitfire, sat up on the improvised bed. She skimmed the message and frowned, but fully understood.
"Rainbow Dash!" she called. Dash was at her side in a snap. "We have orders to return to Cloudsdale post-haste. Office of Jetstream himself. Spread the word around, we're leaving as soon as."
"Eh..." Dash hesitated. She could see Applejack applying bandages to her own head with Fluttershy's help on the bed just beyond, and to her side, Twilight was dictating notes to Spike. She knew what she had to do. "With all due respect, captain, I have to decline." Spitfire paused, and cocked her head a little. She didn't look angry - just pensive.
"I understand. You have your priorities." Whew. "Sparkle briefed me on Discord. You'd probably do more good working on that for now. But..." Uh-oh. "I'm gonna have to relieve you from duty." Dash kept a brave face, but her flat ears belied her disappointment. "At least until this whole thing blows over. Protocol is protocol." Spitfire held out her hand. "The goggles." Dash hesitated, before gingerly removing the baby-blue goggles and tossing them on the bed. They exchanged a silent salute, and Dash departed.
The chariot thudded to the ground and fell apart, leaving three pegasi to collapse from exhaustion as soon as their hooves hit terra firma, and their cautious passengers to fall in a heap behind them. With most of the train tracks out of Trottingham scuppered, the group had to rely on other means to transport themselves back to friendly territory, and a hike through the forests of Mareseyside would just take too long. Pegasus-drawn chariots weren't ideal either - the bipedal form had rendered most horse-drawn transportation impractical - but it wouldn't advertise them like a balloon would. Fluttershy passed out almost upon landing, and Derpy just lay on her back, panting. Rainbow Dash had the stamina to pick herself up and stumble a few lengths ahead, but soon succumbed to exertion, and sat down at the side of the road.
They were at the foot of the mountain that Canterlot was built into; it was the nearest urban centre to their south, and it only made sense to stop where they were due to deliver their answer in the morning. It was a cloudless night, and the horizon over the Dragon Mountains to the west still held licks of orange and mauve from the recently set sun. The reconstruction efforts were going well from what they could see; the walls had been the first things to go up, and the spires of the new palace were already towering into the sky. Based on the style, they seemed to be recreating Canterlot as it was - and Twilight couldn't fault them for that. Though something that did strike her as odd was the translucent dome enclosing the city, barely visible, but definitely something she could sense. Additionally, a few tents had been set up outside the gates. She wasn't entirely sure what that was about.
"Stay here girls, I'll... see what's going on up ahead." The gates themselves were totally missing; the shield wall seemed to serve as a selective barrier. Behind, two guards were standing watch. The tents around the gate were housing some of the injured from Trottingham. She was suspicious, but tried to play it cool. "Excuse me, my friends and I were looking to get into Canterlot, and..."
"We'll need to see some identity. City's on lockdown," one of the guards replied, blunt, but respectful in tone.
"I..." She rubbed her forehead, and attacked the more general topic. "Lockdown? Why?"
"We don't know. Orders is orders."
"I'm going to guess that your orders passed through one Captain Shining Armor at some point?"
"Possibly, why?"
"I don't suppose I could take this up with my brother?" She folded her arms, and flicked her castigating look between the two guards. It took a moment for one of them to make the connection and recognise her.
"Oh! You're... you're Twilight Sparkle! I-I'll fetch him right away!" They seemed to be just as skittish as the ones in Trottingham, doing little to reassure her after their abysmal defence of the city. Moments later, he returned alone. "He says he'll meet you on... the ramparts?" The guard seemed a trifle confused, but she knew exactly what he was getting at. Without another word, she bowed her head, and disappeared in a burst of purple light.
On a precarious beam jutting out from the walls, at the highest possible point one could sit over the surrounding landscape, she reappeared, just outside the shield wall. She stumbled a little, but quickly caught her balance and sat down, straddling the beam. Heights didn't really concern her anymore; she'd grown rather confident in her teleportation spell in recent months, and was finding increasingly creative ways to use it. She could see a white unicorn pop his head out from the stairs on the far side and look around; when he spotted Twilight, sat casually over a two-hundred length drop, his face lit up.
"Twilie!" He bounded up the last few steps and rushed to the edge of the shield. He was mostly in his civvies, but still wearing a single pauldron, emblazoned with his cutie mark.
"Shining!" She leaned forward instinctively and attempted to hug him, but just ended up sprawled over the shield. He just stood there and chuckled.
"Come a long way from 'sunshine, sunshine', eh?" Another voice chimed in. Twilight peeled herself off the barrier to get a better look, and nearly jumped for joy when she did.
"Cadence? What are you doing here?" Shining put his arm around the smiling pink unicorn with a little knowing smirk and an aside glance.
"Oh, I just thought you might like to meet my, fiancée..." He did his best to contain his grin, practically puckering his mouth and watching his sister's reaction out of the corner of his eye. At first she blinked incredulously, and her mouth hung open. She looked to Cadence, and received a subtle nod. Then, she swung back in her excitement, and plunged off the back of the beam.
"Twilight!" Shining and Cadence rushed up to the edge of the shield. With another pamf, she quickly repositioned herself to fall back on to the beam, sitting in exactly the same place as before. The wood creaked a little, but it held.
"Sorry!" She giggled, and fixed her hair. "Got a little carried away there. But yeah! That's great! How long has this been... this?"
"Actually we were engaged a few months ago, we sent you a letter, but..."
"Oh." Twilight's humour drained like water in a sieve. "That might be why I didn't hear about it. I've had a lot of letters in the last few months, not all of them welcome, so it probably got a bit lost..."
"I can imagine..." Cadence rolled her eyes. "You think Blueblood is tough to deal with professionally, try having him for a brother."
"Ouch..." Creak. Twilight blinked, and scooched up closer to the shield wall again to reduce the effect of her weight on the beam. "Anyway. What's with the lockdown?" She gave the barrier a knock for effect. Shining Armor sighed.
"News about Trottingham spread fast. All the towns freaked - there were still refugees arriving when we got separate declarations of secession from Ponyville and Cloudsdale. We're expecting attack on multiple fronts, which is why they have me doing this..." He waved his hand in a circle, generally gesturing to the translucent dome around them. "Just as well, I... wouldn't bet on us in a fight." You said it.
"They wanted ID from me at the gate, I'm guessing this is related?"
"On account of the secessions, they're restricting entry to Canterlot citizens. That camp outside is all ponies that couldn't produce identification."
"Shining, this is insane! What are you d-"
"These are all Blueblood's ideas!"
"You're the captain of the guard, you should be able to stop this!"
"And then what?" he snapped. "If I go against orders, they'll just appoint somepony else who will, and throw me in the dungeons or worse. So that solves nothing. And what's more, that leaves Canterlot without this shield, which is the only thing standing between the ponies in here and oblivion." Twilight frowned, and lowered her gaze. "I don't want to leave those ponies out in the cold, but there's nothing I can do."
"Can't I at least get in? Try and talk some sense into Blueblood?"
"Pff." Cadence waved a hand dismissively. "Not even I can get through to him at this stage. He's gone mad with power."
"Not only that, but he's got you on a list of traitors to the realm."
"Wh-... what?"
"Did I mention he's paranoid too?" Cadence continued. "Get this. Ponyville threw out all its Canterlot asylum seekers earlier, right? When Fancy Pants made his way back here he was arrested at the gates for that little stunt yesterday. I think his reason for having you on the list is that your arbitration makes you a defector or something? I don't know. His logic is kinda flimsy."
"So, you understand why I can't be seen letting you in." Shining Armor took a step back, arms folded.
"Just a guess - Blueblood would have both our heads on a pike. Right?" He nodded grimly.
"Even talking to you like this is taking a risk."
"Hmm..." Twilight rubbed her chin. "I'll see what I can do. I'd best go before this beam breaks, or you two get caught."
"Right."
"Oh! And..." Shining reached a hand out, distracting Twilight from winding up her teleport. "Love you, Twilie." As angry as he was a moment ago, his smile was earnest and forgiving. She couldn't help but grin, and return the sendoff in the corniest way she knew how.
"Love you too, B.B.B.F.F." She could just about see his faint blush and Cadence's stifled giggle, before the purple aura filled her vision, and deposited her by the dark roadside. Fluttershy was still out cold, Derpy was sitting up, and Applebloom was trying her best to put their chariot back together.
"So what's goin' on up there?" Applejack hopped over, still a little mindful of her injuries.
"The place is locked up like a bank vault, we're gonna be camping out."
"Unless..." Rainbow Dash piped up, gazing up thoughtfully.
"The storm drains are caved in, Rainbow."
"Aw..."
"Well ain't this just peachy. We can't get in, we ain't got the apple, we're about to be caught up in a warzone and we ain't no closer to solving Discord's consarned riddle!" Applejack tossed her hat on the ground with frustration. Twilight started pacing, mulling over the riddle again. She'd been so absorbed in trying to procure the apple that riddle had slipped her mind. That said, it left her with a comparatively fresh take on it, and looking up at the soft glow of the shield over Canterlot, an idea struck.
"Actually, I think we might be a little closer."
"I'm sure this shocking revelation will turn the game on its head..." Rarity didn't even look up from tending to her nails. Twilight glared at her for a moment, before continuing.
"Prince Blueblood."
"Could have told you that one at the Gala last year."
"Ahem... At first, I thought it could be anypony at the summit in Ponyville yesterday. Blueblood, Jetstream and the mayor were at it hammer and tongs in front of the whole town. But, only one of them resorted to violence. Furthermore, he had Fancy Pants arrested earlier today."
"What?" The whole (conscious) group was visibly surprised, but Rarity vocally so.
"Ponyville and Cloudsdale formally seceded after hearing about Trottingham, and threw out their non-citizens. I don't know how they're defining that, but evidently Fancy Pants was among those expelled. And to top all that, it looks like Canterlot is preparing for a war it's unlikely to win."
"This is crazy!" Applejack yelled. "We can't just sit on our butts out here while this is goin' on!"
"I know!" Twilight matched her tone, but quickly dropped off to keep them calm. "But we don't have a way in."
"Can't teleport in or something?"
"Shield wall bounces the targeting. It would dump me somewhere over Whitetail."
"We'd get about eight feet in by sunrise, and there's no guarantee we won't hit the shield wall anyway." The unicorn sighed, and resumed pacing pensively. "Keep suggesting things, we'll hit on something eventually..." Three days, two thousand years, and Prince Blueblood... what does it mean though? Ugh, this is a stupid riddle. It's more of a guessing game than a logical puzzle...
Lower down on the hill, a pony struggled up the slope, pulling a voluminous and rather heavy cart. A cycle element attached to the front had made most of the journey here a breeze, but this slope was steep enough that it had to be walked. She was used to being her own roadie in her early years, but this was just ridiculous...
By the remains of the chariot, a filly popped her head up, having heard the grunts and curses further down. It took her a moment to recognise the purple shades perched on her horn and the electric blue bangs, ruffled from exertion, but when she did, she remembered them fondly.
"Hi Mrs. Scratch!" Sweetie Belle jumped up and waved enthusiastically. Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash froze. Did they really just hear that? Is that the pony they think it is?
"Oh, hey Sweetie Belle, fancy meeting you here..."
"Okay, okay, lay this on me, one more time..." Rainbow Dash shook her head and tried to stifle her laughter. "You. A bunch of foals, barely just got their cutie marks. Know DJ-PON3? The DJ-PON3?" Applebloom gave it a moment's thought, just to tease, before nodding.
"Well, if it weren't for the little marshmallow here..." Scratch reached down and gave Sweetie Belle a playful nudge. "It wouldn't'a happened. Kid's a real talent."
"Really? I... you... I..." Rarity was flabbergasted.
"Honestly, I'm surprised I didn't run into her sooner, when you're running fashion shows out of your house. Ponyville's a small town."
"Ooh! Ooh! Can I get your autograph? Oh! Sign my head! No, sign my belly! Oh! Even better, sign m-" Applejack clamped a hand around Pinkie's mouth before she could embarass herself.
"Listen, it was real nice meetin' y'all, but y'look like y'got someplace to be, and we ain't gonna keep you."
"Actually..." Twilight cut in, a smirk developing on her face. "Where are you headed?"
"Oh. They evicted me from Ponyville earlier today for whatever reason, said I couldn't prove citizenship or some bullshit like that. All the ID I had on me was this Canterlot alchemy licence..."
Twilight quirked a brow. "Why do you have an alchemy licence?"
Vinyl Scratch's expression went entirely blank. "Reasons." Her eyes shifted from side to side, and Twilight shook her head, waving her on. "Anyway, I was on my way to Manehattan, and was gonna stop over here along the way. Things are getting hot all over Whitetail, ponies were running around sharpening swords when I left Ponyville. Figured Hoofington wouldn't be any friendlier."
"That's... interesting." The librarian held her hand over her chin pensively. "Say... that cart looks pretty heavy. I could probably help you lift it up this hill, on a condition..."
"Oh boy, I smell mischief!" Scratch chuckled.
At the bottom of the hill, the three pegasi remained, Fluttershy only just beginning to regain consciousness. All five youngsters had been left with them, along with Spike, curled up at the side of the road, sleeping. Rainbow Dash was sprawled out on her back, looking bored. The tortoise she rescued earler was slowly making its way over her body, claiming a perch on her belly.
"'Watch the kids, Rainbow, you need your rest'. Pfff, do they even know who they're talking to? Do I look like a daycare centre?"
"Uh..." Derpy couldn't help but chuckle, when Scootaloo and Kalza landed in the dirt next to her, and started arguing over who tripped who, trying to appeal to their guardian for arbitration. "Do you want me to answer that?" Dash gave her a stare you could split rocks on. The other pegasus just giggled. "I thought you'd be happy to spend time with your... with Scootaloo." The two kids got distracted by something, and went back to playing with the others.
"I just..." Dash sighed. "I didn't think being a mom would be so demanding. You give the kid a room, put food on the table, send her to school, play with her sometimes..."
"But it's more than that, isn't it?" Dash nodded and frowned. "There's a special... stuff that makes a good parent. Anyone can cook dinner and make a bed. The difference between a mother and a mom is, well... going the extra mile. Going out of your way to make sure she's safe and happy. And I'm not talking about ice cream and balloons, 'cos those are fun, but when they're gone, they're gone, I mean... staying up 'til three in the morning making costumes for the school play, getting up at the crack of dawn for birthday surprises, flying cross-country in driving rain to pick them up from camp because they got hurt. That kind of dedication, that kind of..."
"Loyalty."
"... yeah. That's one way of putting it. I was gonna say, you have that spark of it in you. Back six months ago, you wouldn't have gone back to save Scootaloo if you didn't care about her at least a little." Dash gave a weak smile. "You've already got something special. You have not one, but two foals... er, kids, who look up to you like nopony else, and you were good enough to take them in when they needed it most. If you show them even half the kind of loyalty you have to your friends, I think I might have competition in the mom department."
"... really? You're not just... saying that?"
"Well. I'm not gonna lie, it's a lot of work. But I think you have it in you." They paused for a little while, just watching the kids playing at the roadside. Eventually, Dash smiled, and acknowledged.
"Thanks."
The cart trundled up to the gates, substantially lighter than it had been on the way here. Vinyl whistled while she cycled along, casual as could be. The screech of the brakes alerted the guards to her presence, and the sudden stop made the contents thump loudly against the walls of the cart.
"Evening fellas," she chirped.
"Do you have proof of identity on your person? Entry to the city is restricted."
"Oh, I, hmm..." she made a show of patting herself down and looking around, before pulling a card out from inside her top and lifting her glasses to inspect it. "Aha! Here we go." She sat back in her seat and folded her arms, while she floated the card over and pressed it against the forcefield. The guards leaned in close to inspect it, sharing a couple of suspicious glances, but, the picture checked out, and it had 'Canterlot' in big letters along the top, so they couldn't really fault that. They gave a nod to an unseen comrade, and the shield across the gateway dissipated. She smirked, tucked the card away and got back to pedalling.
"Before you continue..." A firm hand blocked her entry. "We'll need to inspect your cart for banned weapons, magical artifacts and substances."
"I... what?" The colour would have drained from her face, had there been any there to start with. "Okay." She took a couple of deep breaths. One of the guards kept a suspicious eye on her, while the other moved over to her cart and pulled the tarpaulin away. Scratch gulped, and chewed on her fist. The guard gave a slightly puzzled look, and craned his neck to get a good look around the inside of the cart. He had a good rummage, turning over the speakers and mixing desks, and shaking a couple of them to see if anything fell out. Eventually, satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about its contents, he gave a nod.
"All seems above board. Carry on." The two guards pulled the tarp back over the cart and stepped back to let her through. She gave a deep sigh of relief, raised two fingers to her brow, and cycled on into the city.
Much of lower Canterlot was still a mess, with lots of hastily constructed housing and poor roads, sitting on top of often-unreliable bridges over the old city below. Indeed, there had been a number of accidents where the floor had given way under a pony, and in some places, the damage to the roads had been so bad that it was just easier to build into the old city and storm drains. As such, there were plenty of places were unseemly individuals might hide if they needed somewhere to hide from the law, or somewhere to stash sound equipment filled with illegal plant products from the Everfree forest. Vinyl Scratch quickly detoured from the main streets, down a rickety side-street, leading into the roof of a house in the old city. She parked by a doorway, hopped off and entered, finding a room with five ponies and three large monitor speakers recovering from a mass teleport.
"Oh, hey! It worked!"
"Told you!" Twilight chuckled. "All I needed was a couple of seconds' gap in the shield. For a city primarily populated with unicorns, Canterlot's magical defences are pitiful. Anyway, as agreed, here's your gear..."
"Awesome..." Scratch lifted the three speakers in turn to her cart by magic. "Listen, if there's any favour you need, just hit me up..."
"I... don't think you understand how much you helped us just now."
"And I don't think you understand how much you helped me just now..." With a chuckle and a lazy wave, Scratch saddled up again, and was on her way. Twilight scratched behind her head and blinked.
"I don't get it... all we did was carry some heavy equipment for her.
Zecora put a hand on her shoulder, smirking. "If by her load's odour I had to guess, suspicious elixirs I'd say she'd possess." Twilight went wide-eyed. She'd been wondering what that smell was. There's something else to add to the list of 'things not to introduce Pinkie Pie to'.
The group descended the stairs to traverse Canterlot through the old city. The air was clearer now than it was when it was just a sewer - most of the buildup had been detonated in the explosion six months ago, the open ceiling in many places provided much better ventilation, and the streets were in no state to facilitate their continued use as sewers. Indeed, many of the streets were cracked open right down to the bottom of the storm drains, leaving buildings half-collapsed over sheer hundred foot drops, pipes emerging from the broken rock faces to empty water directly into the pool below, and making the old city level a veritable maze of chasms and ruins.
"Okay, this might be trickier than I originally thought..."
"Can't y'just magic us over again?"
"Mass teleports take a lot of energy, Applejack, I'm still recovering from the last one. And at this range, we could just as easily end up over empty space, or inside a wall, or something. Heck, we were lucky not to end up stuck in rubble just now!"
"Coming through!" Pinkie Pie barged her way in between the two, and leapt at the edge of the nearest chasm, to universal alarm. For a few horrible seconds, she sailed through the air towards the other side, before landing with a thump and a hard roll, scuffing her pants on the edge. "See? It's easy!"
"She's kidding." Rarity looked to Twilight. "She's kidding, right?"
"I..." Before she could express her disbelief, Zecora ran past her, aiming the end of her staff for a notch in the rock near the edge, and once it slotted in, using it to launch herself across the gap, landing in a hard crouch. "...wow."
"If you would like to arrive today," the zebra called back. "You may need to make a leap of faith."
"Welp, s'worth a shot!" With a little run-up, Applejack launched herself into the air, making full use of her years of apple-bucking to clear the gap and make a sideways roll on landing. Her hat was a little crumpled, but it would be a quick fix.
Rarity had to shake herself out of her stupor. "This is insane! We can't make that kind of jump, Twilight!"
"Hmm... no, we can't. That... that actually makes some sense, that earth ponies and zebras would have better leg strength than us."
"That's all well and good as an assessment of the situation, but it's not helping us across this ruddy great cliff." She snorted, and folded her arms.
"I, ah... hmm..." For a couple of minutes, Twilight started intently at the gap, humming and hawing and making false starts. Eventually she called back across. "You girls go on ahead. We'll... we'll find another way around." Hopefully.
As Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Zecora disappeared into the subterranean darkness, Twilight and Rarity were left to pace the edge of the chasm in thought. They weren't too worried about them - there was only just enough light to see by, from shafts of moonlight penetrating cracks in the ceiling and the occasional drain. Their attention was more on the problem at hand. The chasm ran perpendicular the street, extending into the distance, past insurmountable walls of rubble and collapsed building on each side of the ruined road.
"And you're sure you can't just wink us across? Is it really too much to ask?"
"I just don't think it's safe with how fatigued I am. It's been a really long day, and that last jump into the city really took it out of me..." Twilight sighed, and levitated a large brick over to sit on. Rarity, upon seeing this, tilted her head. She glanced at the gorge, and back at the rock.
"How about a more... direct approach?"
"What?"
"You lift me over the gap. And then yourself."
"I..." Twilight rubbed her head and yawned. "I suppose it's worth trying. After all, if I can hold up rocks..." With a wince, she picked up a small boulder and tossed it across, obliterating the remains of a wall on the other side. "Why not ponies?"
"I do hope you'll be just a tad more careful when that's me you're hurling around like a sack of potatoes."
"Of course..." Twilight stood up again, and braced herself near the edge. She gave herself a couple of slaps in the face to wake herself up, and readied her horn. "Ready when you are." Rarity nodded in acknowledgement, and jumped in place once or twice to warm up. She jogged back a few paces, before running to the edge at the fastest sprint she could manage. Once she was in the air, she felt Twilight's push giving her that little bit of extra lift, getting her as far as the edge of the other side. The impact knocked the wind from her lungs, and it was a desperate scramble to find a good hand hold. Hoofholds below were proving hard to find.
"Ngh! Twilight, a little help?"
"I'm... trying!" When Rarity got a glance back, Twilight was on her knees, visibly straining to hold her up. She could still feel the push, but it wasn't going to get her to safety by herself. And worse still, her handholds were crumbling; the old mortar, disturbed by the recent impact, was about as sturdy as oatmeal. Before long, her grip was gone, and the rock face slipped away. She wasn't falling as fast as she thought she should be; the extra lift was playing its role, but as her distance from Twilight grew, and acceleration built up, she could feel the wind starting to whip past her.
Falling from heights was becoming something of a habit of hers. Not to the point that she had a plan ready to deal with it at all times, but enough and recently enough that her first instinct wasn't to panic. It was almost as if, upon spotting a crevice or a ledge, some part of her expected to fall into it at some point. This, accompanied by her slowed descent, gave her the time she needed to put some of her own magic to work, and supplement Twilight's lift with her own. It wasn't as potent, and she hadn't believed her about the effect of fatigue on magic until she tried, but she tried to ignore it and ease her fall as best she could.
Thud.
She received another blow to her back, knocking her forward to land on her chest on the floor immediately after. She was in substantial pain, but she was fairly sure nothing was broken or severely cut. With a guttural groan, she turned to lie on her back and look up. It was still pretty dark up above, but surrounded by pitch black, it was her only reference point. She was too winded to call back up with any great effectiveness, but it didn't matter - Twilight was already on her way down. Sliding down the cliff face and hopping between surfaces with magic-assisted jumps, showing her state with a few sloppy landings and ultimately tumbling the last few lengths to the bottom, Twilight was at her side within moments of seeing her fall. She looked a little bruised herself, and the light spell she was trying to activate was dim and flickering.
"Rarity, are..." she panted, not even standing up properly as she crawled over. "Are you al..." She didn't even make it to the end of her sentence before she collapsed from exhaustion. Rarity wasn't sure if she'd fainted or not, but she figured she could do with the rest.
Hup. Applejack struggled on her landing, with Pinkie and Zecora having to help her up. Fortunately by now they were past the biggest gaps, and the way to the remains of the old palace looked fairly straightforward. The way behind them was criss-crossed with cracks in the earth, all of which they'd crossed at their narrowest point, making their route rather circuitous. The darkness had made their journey perilous - more often than not, their crossings were terrifyingly literal leaps of faith, simply guessing where they were going to land based on what they could see. So it was not without shaky relief that Applejack stumbled to her hooves and started towards the ruins ahead.
The blast hadn't been kind to the old palace; the bricks had been knocked aside like toy blocks, part of the level above had caved in, where a marble pillar from the Celestia-era palace had penetrated the roof. The only indication that this was even the same place was a set of black smears on the floor, in some shapes that Applejack and Pinkie only vaguely recognised. They picked their way through the devastation, turning over stones and poking at things, seeing if anything could be salvaged. What they remembered as the doorway was entirely caved in, and it seemed like nopony had been here since the incident at all. And why should they have? It was almost impossible to get here, and there would have been nothing to look for. By all accounts, everything in the old city should have been incinerated. It was a miracle the city wasn't blown off the side of the mountain entirely.
"How'dya reckon we get up?"
"This way!" Pinkie bounded at the wall nearest the hole in the ceiling and tried to grab an edge, succeeding only in throwing herself on a pile of rubble and scuffing her face. "Ouchies..."
"The route you suggest is indeed promising, but we will need a way to reach the ceiling."
Applejack gave it a mere moment's thought. Stairs were in short supply, but not the materials for a makeshift set. "Got some lights in that there stick? We could really use 'em if we're movin' rocks." The darkness masked the extent to which Zecora's eyebrow rose in response to the farmer pony's quip. Without even waiting for an answer, Applejack started feeling around the floor for rubble.
Fszh. A pale, flickering yellow light sprang into life. When she looked back around, Zecora held a small vial containing the source of the light, a meagre amount of yellow fluid. "An extract of the firefly's tail, properly disturbed, will light the way." Whatever you say, Mrs. fancy rhymes. "Now hurry, build the path up strong, the insects' light will not last long!"
Applejack wasted no time in piling some of the loose bricks and pieces of wall up into a small mound, not high enough to climb, but certainly high enough to use as a stepping stone for reaching the upper level. Pinkie tried to help too, but... well, it's the thought that counts. In reaching for her third brick (while Applejack was on her ninth), Pinkie put her hand on something slightly damp, kinda squishy, and definitely very icky.
"Ew! What is that?"
"What is it now, Pinkie?" Applejack rolled her eyes, set her brick down at the foot of the pile, and came to check out what had Pinkie so worked up.
"I put my hand in there and felt something icky-sticky!" Pinkie pointed at a crack, and looked for some other handholds to pull the rock free with.
"Pinkie Pie, now ain't the time to start freakin' out over... ah... oh mah stars." When the rock came free, a limp hoof, bloody, blackened and squashed out of shape dangled out. Without hesitation, the pair of them worked to pull the other rocks off of the hoof's owner. At the last one, uncovering her face, Applejack took a step back, removed her hat and held it to her chest. Pinkie chewed her knuckle, and even Zecora's inscrutable façade broke for a moment.
The body was barely recognisable; the face was mostly bare bone, and the coat was heavily charred and bloodstained, masking much of the pale midnight blue fur with a deep, earthy brown, matted with gangrene in places. The stomach was mostly gone, along with the viscera within, leaving a hollow blue shell with four legs attached. All four of them terminated in nubby hooves - this body had been here a while. Two wings hung from its back, at angles that looked like they'd be painful if this poor unfortunate still had the capacity for such sensation. The mane and tail had been tugged at and tussled, leaving them as messy mats, pressed against the stones below like the rest of her. Still, despite the ravages of time, Princess Luna's remains were unmistakeable.
None of them knew just where to begin - respects? Apologies? Should anything be said at all? Pinkie looked to Applejack. Hesitantly, she in turn looked to Zecora. The zebra raised her eyebrows and opened the hand on her shaft, keeping it in place with just the thumb, in the most minimal shrug she could manage. Unable to find words, Applejack just frowned, nodded at the body, and replaced her hat to get back to work. As far as she was concerned, it was a miracle it was in as good nick as it was, but they hadn't time to mourn her sacrifice now, and they certainly weren't properly equipped to move it to a safer place. To be fair, its current location was fairly safe - cold, dry, slightly slanted to drain any water that did find its way down here, and away from disturbance.
Before they left, with Zecora's light starting to fade away, Applejack deemed it fit to take few tiles that had fallen from the corridor above, and place them over the body. No sense leaving it in the open. Then, wordlessly, she carefully climbed the rock pile she'd built, and successfully grabbed the edge of the hole in the roof. With a helpful shove on her hooves, she was through, setting her up to pull her companions up.
The sun had disappeared over the horizon not a few minutes ago. There was still more than enough light to see by - it was a clear night with a waxing half moon, and the dome over Canterlot gave enough of a soft glow to light up the places the moon couldn't. Most of the Crusaders had succumbed to the exertion of the day and found somewhere to curl up and sleep - Rainbow Dash had pulled a cloud down for Scootaloo and Kalza, and Applebloom and Sweetie Belle made do with the grass. Dinky wasn't altogether pleased with these arrangements, regardless of how many times the farm pony told her to quit whining. Unable to sleep, she pottered up the hill to check out the refugee camp. She guessed that if she was lucky she'd be able to borrow a couple of blankets, but in any case it would be an interesting diversion.
The camp wasn't a particularly happy place. She'd asked her mother why it was here, and she'd dodged straight answers, but the little unicorn was bright enough to put the pieces together herself. None of these ponies wanted to be out here. A few looked pretty badly injured, sprawling out with bloodied bandages on stretchers and rolled up towels; others were weeping quietly to themselves. From time to time a guard or two would carry some supplies out of the city - they weren't allowed let them in, but they weren't going to leave them totally helpless. Conditions inside Canterlot didn't look much better from what she could see - the cobbled road outside was in better nick than the muddy trails inside.
She sighed, and sat herself on a rock at the top of the hill. This was just depressing - a refugee camp outside Canterlot. What was the world coming to?
"H-hey!" A timid voice called. Dinky looked up and spotted a nearby tent with a familiar colt sitting inside.
"Oh! Hey Pip!" She smiled and bounced over. "You... don't mind me calling you Pip, right?"
"Naw, it's fine," he chuckled. "Gotta outgrow 'Pipsqueak' sometime, eh?" His high spirits despite everything were a little disarming; still, it was welcome. She sat herself down next to him at the edge of the tent, rolling her eyes.
"I know that feeling..." He looked at least a year her junior, but she guessed he might be a bit short for his age too. "Couldn't sleep either?"
"Nah. Got a gammy ankle, but they, uhm. Other ponies need the bandages more."
"Right, right..." She laid back a bit, shimmying down to lie on her back, looking up at the stars, with just her head in the tent. After a bit of a pause, Pipsqueak spoke up again.
"So what d'you think'll happen?"
"Huh?"
"Y'know. With the gryphons'n'stuff."
"I don't... I kinda don't want to think about it."
"That bad, eh?"
"I'd like to be hopeful. Seeing mom and her friends do the things they do is pretty amazing. But at the same time..."
"... here we are in a muddy camp, miles away from home?"
"Yeah."
"'Assa shame. I really wanted to see Ponyville..."
"Oh, don't be like that!" Dinky rolled over to sit opposite Pip. "Hey. If it makes you feel any better, how about this." After a quick scan of the tent, she picked out a red blanket, and reached forward to tie it around the colt's neck.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Despite his protests, she continued; grabbing a blue tissue, she drew something messy on it, practically invisible in the black ink against blue, and pinned it to the end of the blanket.
"We make you... a Cutie Mark Crusader!"
"Cutie mark... crusader?" With a raised brow, he tugged at his makeshift cape to inspect it.
"It's our secret club!"
"You want me, in a club... with girls?" He screwed up his face in exaggerated disgust.
"What's the matter? Afraid you'll catch cooties?" Dinky smirked. Pip's guise broke, and with a chuckle, he gave his cousin a playful dig in the shoulder.
"Pff, I'm just havin' you on."
"Blaarhgrhg, I am the cootie monster!" Dinky lunged lightly at him, and ended up pushed to the side, to land on her back with a giggle.
The lower levels of the Celestia-era palace blended almost seamlessly into the ancient one, and telling which was which was further complicated by the blast damage. A number of corridors had collapsed in entirely, and the fresh masonry covering some of the ceilings indicated that they seemed to be just building over the whole thing. A few valuables had been looted - marble tiles stripped away to leave bare stone, statues taken in whole or in part from their pedestals, and textiles removed wholesale. Not that they were doing anything down here, but the haphazard job indicated that they may not have been recovered with the intent of becoming part of the new palace.
Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Zecora stuck close together. The corridors were deathly silent - not even activity from above could be heard. There probably wasn't going to be much, given the time of night. None of them had checked a clock since Trottingham, but Applejack reckoned it had just gone 10PM based on the time of year, and where the sun was last. They weren't sure how long they were wandering around the abandoned palace, but before long, she was getting frustrated. They were going in circles, and all the staircases going up were blocked in some fashion. They stopped in an atrium, strewn with rubble. The mezzanine had been assimilated into the level above, with a few wooden support pillars and much cleaner stones on the ceiling.
"Agh! This is hopeless!" Applejack hurled her at the ground again, kicking up a small cloud of dust. "Every exit we find is just another dead end!"
Pinkie pouted, and examined the floor above. The workmanship was pretty shoddy - probably a rushed job. Cogs started whirring in her head. "Maybe if we can't find an exit... we can make one!"
"Ohhh no. We ain't blowin' anythin' up, Pinkie."
"Aw..." The party pony checked her pockets, and slouched. "I got nothing anyway..."
"Of a subtler approach we may be able..." Zecora took a look at one of the pillars, poking her staff at the joint with the ceiling. "The stones above look less than stable."
Applejack took a closer look at where she was pointing while she replaced her hat. Details were difficult to spot, but all that seemed to be holding the beam in place was gravity. Seeing little else in the way of plans, she reared up, and pulled down on the brim of her hat.
"Stand back..." Her companions hastily did so, and with a couple of lengths' run up, she leaped into the air and fired a two-hoofed kick at the pillar. It gave a satisfying crack from the blow, and scraped against the ceiling a little. She was hasty to pick herself up and get out of the way - the impact had knocked loose a wave of dust from the ceiling, and it had started to bow already. She gave the beam another light kick, and scampered away to safety.
The creaks of the metastable ceiling rang out for several minutes, always starting up again as soon as they thought it was safe. Eventually, a single brick fell to the floor, initiating a cascade of clatters, kicking up a massive cloud of dust. Even before it had cleared, they knew they had hit on something - orange light bathed the room from the hole above, not more than two lengths across. The dust cleared slowly - it took a good minute of coughing and waving to get some visibility back.
"I say..." A fourth voice added, in between splutters.
"What th- who's that?" Applejack recognised the voice as male.
"Is somepony there? I didn't fall on anyone, did I?"
"Wh- Fancy Pants? Lemme help ya..." As soon as she saw the blue moustache and classy (if ruffled) suit through the dust, she knew whose cell they'd just caved the floor from under. He was sitting on a simple bed that lay bent on the rubble - when she looked up through the hole, she could see the rest of his cell. "We're friends of Rarity's, y'mighta seen us yesterday in Ponyville. We'd heard y'were thrown in the dungeon..."
"Pardon me for looking a gift horse in the mouth, but... how?"
"It's... a long story, an' the guards pro'lly heard that..."
"Ah. Fair dinkum. Is this the part where I make myself scarce?"
"Eeyup. Yer in the lower levels of the palace, make yer way to the bottom an' it'll lead out into the ol' city. There's some mighty big drops down there, so watch yerself!"
"I... see. I'm going to hazard a guess that liberating me wasn't part of your initial plan?"
Zecora stepped in. "It's best described as a happy mistake, we did have plans besides your jailbreak. Prince Blueblood is our common foe - we were looking to find out what he knows."
"Ah! The spoiled brat, yes... he has a reading room on the level just above the dungeon, I saw it on my way down. But if you want to avoid a fight, you may want to look for another way up. If my memory of the old castle serves me right, it's where the servants' quarters used to be, so there may be some back corridors leading to it, if you haven't tried that yet. Now, without further ado..." He cast another look up at the vacant cell. One or two of the bricks were still falling every now and then, and frantic hoofsteps could be heard on the floor above. "... shall we?"
"Say no more." Without exchanging another look, they split again, hurrying in opposite directions.
Twilight was sore all over. Her head was thumping, her leg and side were bruised, her muscles ached and her horn gave a dull ache. It took her a minute or two to pull herself up from the ground and get a look around. The dried silt felt disgusting, and left dirty marks all over her front. She ignored the light sting she felt from lighting up her horn, and sat up to get a look around. The first thing she noticed was Rarity, curled up a few lengths away on some stones, with her eyes shut.
"Rarity!" Her call startled the other unicorn, and she jumped in her seat.
"Oh! Twilight, you're awake!"
"How long was I out?"
"I... I don't know. You fainted after you jumped down to see if I was okay, and rather than push on, I thought it best to let you get a bit of rest. I must have, uhm... dozed off myself in the meantime..." She chuckled nervously, averting her gaze.
"Ugh! Who knows how much time we've lost? We'd better get moving, for all we know it could be sunrise already..." She staggered a little upon standing up, but quickly stabilised. "Are you alright?"
"My mane will take some time to properly coiffure again, but I'll live. Just a few bumps and scrapes besides." Twilight gave a snort, and smirked. Typical Rarity. Turning her attention to their surroundings, she amplified her light to get a better look. They were at the bottom of a spacious, roughly square room. Finished wall gave way to gorge about seventy lengths up, and on two sides of the room, there were large side drains with arched ceilings. They were too distant to properly pick out detail, but black gaps at regular intervals told her that there were smaller drains still branching off of those. The central drain that they sat in had arrays of stone platforms built into the sides. Many of them had collapsed in the blast, but a few were intact. In the middle of the room there was a circular platform about eight feet tall, caked in silt all the way up to the top.
"Hmm... I wonder." She levitated a decent-sized rock over to her, and used it to give herself a boost. It was a struggle, but she was soon perched on top. The platform was hollow, leading to a curved pipe, and a bent, buckled grate sat on the rubble blocking it.
"What's the matter, darling? Can you see someth-ah!" At Rarity's squeak, Twilight immediately turned her attention back to her. She'd just tripped over a rusty metal ladder laid on the floor, half-buried in rubble.
"I think... I think we've been here before." She looked up at the gash in the ceiling again, working out some distances and angles in her head. "This is the part of the storm drains we passed through six months ago."
"That's nice, but from the looks of it, our route from before is now that empty space above our heads."
"Right... but it's a start." She hopped down from the pedestal, and effortlessly pulled the ladder free. It was a little bent, but it would do. "We at least know which way we're going." She set it against the wall by one of the side drains, and started climbing.
"I do hope you're right, because if you aren't, we'll be prized artifacts ourselves by the time they find us."
"There's something I still don't get..." The sound of Derpy Hooves talking after a few minutes of quiet stirred Rainbow Dash out of her light snooze. She was slumped over a branch overlooking their camp at the bottom of the hill, with the cloud bed just underneath, and the chariot-turned-tent just a few yards away.
"Hm?"
"Why did she come find you? Kalza I mean." Derpy nodded at the cloud, where the gryphlet was fast asleep next to Scootaloo, still wearing the hoodie from earlier. Fluttershy was perched on another cloud, adoring them remotely.
"I... I was able to get a few details earlier, but I'm still doing some guessing, so bear with me." She cleared her throat, and rolled to swing down to a lower branch, so she could keep her voice a bit lower. "Gryphons... think a bit differently to ponies. We teach our kids about friendship and harmony, and trying to get everypony to get along. Gryphon kids are raised to be competitive and ruthless, they're taught that the world is mean and out to get them, and if they want something they have to take it."
"That's horrible!" Fluttershy squeaked.
"You met Gilda, right? And you saw how much trouble she caused being in Ponyville for just one day? Well, she's like... a lightweight in gryphon terms."
"But... Kalza's just so cute, there's no way she could grow up to be so mean," Fluttershy whimpered, hovering just next to her, watching the gryphlet give a little yawn.
"You've worked with manticore cubs, right?" Dash received a hesitant nod. "It's kinda like that. Anyway, Kal's logic in finding me is... kinda twisted to a pony, but it makes sense in gryphon terms. Because I beat Gilda in that duel, it's like I took her place as her big sister. She doesn't want revenge or anything like that, she just... thinks I'd be better at it." The other two pegasi winced in visible disgust.
"And you're going to keep her?" Derpy struggled to keep her voice down, so as not wake up the foals.
"Well... I'm just wondering something. This... way of life. Is it hard-wired, or just taught? I mean, no offence to her, but Kal isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. There's a few nuances of gryphon culture that she's been a bit slow on the uptake on. I'm thinking, maybe it's not too late. Maybe she can grow up different."
Derpy frowned. "Even I think that's pretty optimistic..."
"Now I see what had Twilight so worried..." Fluttershy reclaimed her cloud from earlier. Dash sighed.
"When it comes down to it, I don't think pegasi and gryphons are that different. It's not something most ponies would like to admit, but... just look at Cloudsdale. It's a really hard place to live if you're not competitive and motivated."
"Or a weak flier..." Fluttershy mumbled.
"Or have a unicorn for a daughter..." Derpy added. Dash sighed, gave one last worried look at the sleeping youngsters, and settled again on her branch.
A party of two can navigate the cramped, dark confines of ruined storm drains a lot better than a crowd of six can, especially when the two in question have torches mounted on their foreheads. Twilight and Rarity took it in turns to light the way; Twilight brought the ladder as far as it would fit, which wasn't very far at all. They were able to use it to access the upper level of the main side drain, but it was too big to comfortably move through any drains smaller than that. Most of these pipes were dry, much to their benefit - they had no idea whether these drains were still functional at all, but in any case, Twilight knew that rain would have made their job much more difficult. There was the occasional pool around the network that was still ankle deep in stagnant water, but nothing uncrossable (regardless of Rarity's protests). At one point, they encountered another crevice extending from the sewer layer above; this one was much narrower at the bottom, making it easy to cross, but it was still too wide to climb up. At least it was a useful barometer of how deep in the system they were.
Before long, Twilight couldn't keep track of her dead reckoning estimates of direction, and a lot of their exploration became guesswork. As a rule of thumb, they went up wherever possible. To pass the time, she tried dating the structures she passed. She guessed about four or five hundred years before the original loss of Canterlot, but there wasn't much to go on - any inscriptions left by the masons had long since eroded to smooth bumps. Some of the channels looked like they were designed with an upright form in mind, as maintenance access for the ancient ponies. It amazed her how well the system had held up against the ravages of time; maybe stray magic from the population above had warded off its decay somehow, or it could just be that the city's comfortable position, well away from earthquake and hurricane risk zones, meant that it never saw much punishment.
Reckoning the time they'd spent travelling was entirely guesswork. Twilight gave a measured estimate of half an hour; Rarity was more convinced that they'd been walking around these mucky pipes for two hours, at least. Either way, when they spotted a space of tiled ceiling, sticking out sharply from the unfinished limestone of the drains, they were eager to crack it open. A quick concussive blast was all it took to dislodge it, dropping a large, ceramic bowl in front of them, shattering upon impact. It was stained heavily on the inside, and seemed to be connected to the remains of some lead pipes. Twilight wasn't yet confident enough in her own state of rest to try teleporting, but had no problem launching herself up the hole by lifting herself mid-jump.
"Aha! Now we're getting somewhere!"
"And where's 'somewhere'?"
Twilight turned to give her friend a helping hand up into the room. "This is, or was at some point, a bathroom!" Rarity wasn't impressed. "It means we're on the level of the city!"
"Just help me up." Once the two of them were safely up, Twilight immediately started examining the room. This room seemed to be fairly sheltered from the blast - the mosaic tiles on the floor were in dissarray, but still resembled their original shape; an eight pointed star. All along the walls were the remains of toilets; similar bowls to the one that broke in their entry, many of them lying loose. If her histories were anything to go by, they would have had a wooden bracket holding them in place, which had long since rotted away. Communal toilets hadn't been the norm for several hundred years - this was definitely part of the old city.
Rarity was only too happy to hurry on. Instead of drains, they found themselves in corridors. Again, these rooms showed more wear from time than fire; collapses where wooden bracing structures had failed centuries ago, rotted mortar, loose stones... The way was cramped, but not impassable. If she had to guess, Twilight would say that these were servants' quarters and workplaces, maybe from the pre-Celestial palace.
"Good heavens, Twilight, how much tunnel is there under Canterlot? It's like the mountain is just made of cheese!"
"There is quite a lot, yeah," the librarian chuckled. "The caves must have made it easy to build underground structures. I wouldn't be surprised if the storm drains are just paved caves, or if part of the system just drains staight into the water table."
"At this rate, we'll be finding entire lost civilisations down here..." Twilight's eyes glazed over. Rarity sank her face into a hand. "Oh, now I'm giving her ideas..."
Applejack, Pinkie and Zecora were quick to make themselves scarce. They were long away from the scene when the bumbling guards finally forced the cell doors open and stumbled into the hole made by the cave-in. Seeing little evidence of anyone that might have passed, and deeply unwilling to venture into the dark, they quickly gave up their search and returned to their posts, hoping that their superiors wouldn't notice.
Further along the darkened corridor, Applejack had taken to flinging herself at anything she could find that looked like a door. Many of them led to dead ends; abandoned bedrooms and boiler rooms, galleries overlooking vistas no longer there; a few weren't even doors, just square recesses in the wall. Fairly soon, though, she tore down a thin barrier to a long, thin-looking corridor that ran alongside the more grandiose one. It looked like it wasn't fantastically decorated to begin with - bare stone blocks paved the way, held up by rough wooden beams - but it still looked a dishevelled mess. She was getting pretty tired of this - everywhere seemed to look the same, Pinkie Pie was starting to whine about how boring these tunnels were, and Zecora didn't seem to have anything to offer except cryptic rhymes along the theme of 'just get on with it'. Still, in the name of higher purpose, she soldiered on.
Keeping a vague sense of direction and distance in her head, she led the group around the servants' network, on a circuitous route that at some point incorporated two flights of stairs. As they passed, they were able to see the occasional shaft of light through a gap in the mortar, or hear activity going on behind the walls; this corrdor went right around the back of the new dungeon. Eventually, the passageway terminated in an old archway, blocked up with recent-looking wood panel. She pressed her ear up to it, held her breath, and held a finger back to the others. Moments passed, with just silence.
"Ah think it's clear... should we bust it down?"
"We may need, later, to cover our tracks; it may be difficult if the door has cracks."
"Hmm... bust it down gently then?" The farmer started examining the joint between the wood and the arch. Zecora just smacked her forehead.
Not wasting what might be a narrow window of opportunity, Applejack knelt by the panel and started leaning into it to test the fittings. She had no idea what was keeping this board in place - nails? Screws? Just something heavy on the other side? Her question was soon answered when the whole thing budged back an inch and wobbled in place, after some fairly intense effort. Rather than risk knocking something over, she stopped and let it settle. A light knock on it revealed that it was hollow. She snorted. These Canterlot ponies could be so lazy sometimes - empty doorway to nowhere in the reading room? Just put that bookshelf in front of it, it'll be fine. It's not like anypony's going to come from the other side and use it to sneak in. She motioned for Zecora to hold the top of the shelf while she pushed on the bottom. It slid again another foot, barely wide enough for Applejack to squeeze through on her side. The zebra was able to carefully sidestep out, and Pinkie... well, it's a miracle she didn't send the contents of the shelf flying.
The room itself was calm; it looked like Blueblood was using the place as a retreat from the stress of Canterlot above. A fire crackled gently in the fireplace, and a couple of lanterns ensured the room was well-lit. The walls were a patchwork of crumbling old stone and the newer, cleaner but shoddier work, with a couple of procured marble pillars from the Celestia-era palace. The intent seemed to have been a sort of 'rugged charm' deal - everything else about the room was of the finest craftsmanship, red carpet, intricately carved desks and cupboards, and a plush scarlet armchair by the fireplace. But, they didn't have time to get comfortable - they immediately set to work rifling through the contents of the desk.
It was mostly a mess of official papers, half-filled out. Some filing system this was! A small stack of books sat to the side; a couple of diaries and organisers, a copy of Romeo and Muliet that seemed to have a magazine sticking out of the middle, and a much older... hold on. She picked the musty old book out of the stack - she thought it looked familiar.
"I see a light!" Twilight perked up, spotting the first light coming from a source besides themselves in what had to be hours. Her tiredness was evident in her voice; again, time had gotten away from them, and she was running on fumes.
"Really? Heavens, I thought we'd never see daylight again..."
"I hope it's not daylight..." She swallowed, extinguished her horn, and approached the light with caution. Rarity followed suit, sticking close behind her. The light was in a long, thin line, running from floor to ceiling; she guessed it was a door left ajar. If they were reaching inhabited rooms, they must have been further up than she thought. She could tell Rarity was similarly exhausted - the spells she was using to cover their tracks were only half-working, and as she approached the light, she dropped to her hands and knees to mask the awkward clack of hooves on stone. Hesitantly, her friend followed suit.
She could hear some intermittent, dull thumps from the room ahead. Visual details were still obscured by the veneer of light's meagre width, but it sounded like hoofsteps on a soft rug. By the pattern, she'd guess it was pacing; a few in rapid succession, then a pause, then another few quickly following, and another pause. She held her breath and leaned in, listening out for words; a mutter, a curse under their breath, anything. She almost gave them away entirely when her hand slipped on something loose on the floor.
Rarity caught her before she fell flat on her face, but she couldn't stifle the gasp of surprise. The thumps stopped. They didn't even allow themselves to breathe. The three seconds of airless terror lasted entirely too long; they shakily relaxed when they heard the mutter come from inside the room, and the pacing resume.
"Gah... too early in the morning for this." The voice sounded male, and just as weary as Twilight did. She sincerely hoped that he was being ironic. Still trembling, she felt around for the thing she slipped on. A loose tile maybe? It felt a bit too soft for stone though. The gap into the room was just a few feet away, but the light was dim and diffuse enough that it was practically useless. There was maybe a single candle inside, and while it was enough to see their faces by, finding the nuisance object remained a matter of touch.
She felt herself slip in the same way, but she was ready for it this time, and deftly scooped up the offending article in the same motion as her recovery. It was much too light to be a stone... she quickly identified it as a book, even before she turned to put the bulk of the light on it. Before proceeding, she sat back against the illuminated wall and closed her eyes to cast. Rarity, can you hear me?
"Tw-" Before she could make any real sound, Twilight clapped a hand to her mouth. Don't say, think.
"L... like this?"
Yes, that's it. Okay, the spell is working. This way we can keep talking.
"Good plan. What did you find?"
It's a book, I'm not sure what it's doing out here... she took a moment to examine it in the best light she could. Magic of the B... hey, wait a second, this is mine! I recognise these uh... these saliva stains...
"You're kidding!"
I was wondering where this was yesterday, I meant to cross reference the ritual described in the Apple of Discord with this, but I couldn't find it, and I was going to look again when we got back from Trottingham...
"But what's it doing here?"
I... I don't know. On the one hand it's kinda lucky, but on the other, highly disturbing. Somepony took this from the library while we were at the ruins, and I'll bet they were with Blueblood...
"That doesn't explain why it's out here in particular. As much of a pig as he is, I doubt he's careless enough to leave it on the floor out here."
Unless... unless he's hiding it. I don't know... but this does tell us that he may know a lot more than we thought.
She went quiet for a moment. The pacing from inside continued, occasionally broken up with an intermittent, indiscernible grumble.
"Is this thing still on?"
Yeah, I'm just reading.
"Here? Can you even see?"
Barely. There's no time though, I need to speed through what I meant to read up on. Let's see, ice, ice... ice heart, eternal frost... ice prison! This sounds like the one. 'The ice prison ritual binds the spirit of the target to a lump of crystal, condensed from the astral energy that binds the planes, and the target ceases to exist in the physical plane. The strength of their binding is, unlike most ice variants of blood rituals, not tied to the integrity of the sigil, but the physical condition of the crystal and the value of the sacrifice. The exact relationship these variables have to each other is not well-studied, due to the rarity of this ritual's performance.'
"... Translation?"
Okay... this seems like adds up. At the end of the story, Discord was sealed in the Apple entirely before Clover threw it into space, but it must have been damaged when it fell back to earth last year, which allowed him some influence outside the crystal. I'd say what we saw of him back in the forest was just projections and phantoms, and that he's biding his time to trick someone or something into breaking the crystal.
"I suppose... He certainly seemed off his peak the other day if the story is anything to go by. It sounds like he could have wiped out Hippaea in a heartbeat, but... it was like watching Opal playing with a mouse."
Exactly. This is something that is, when not stuck in a crystal made of pure astral energy, very powerful and very bored.
"Good gracious..."
"Psst!" Applejack whispered. "Don't this look familiar?" She held up the old book; it showed signs of wear, but at the same time, it didn't look like it was about to fall apart. Zecora leaned over her shoulder to inspect it.
"Hmm... a volume called 'Magic of the Body'... I believe Miss Twilight owns a copy."
"That's mighty fishy if y'ask me... whatever Blueblood's doin' with this, it can't be good." The farmer tucked it underarm, and set to checking out the drawers. Meanwhile, Pinkie was busying herself with investigating the armchair thoroughly; picking the cushions off, looking under it, opening the cushions, turning it upside down... the responsible adults in the room didn't stop her as long as she wasn't being too loud, because at least she wasn't going to cause problems. So when the light thumps and impact noises came to a sudden stop, they knew something was wrong. Maybe she'd found something by chance? Or just gotten herself stuck somehow? Instead, they saw her poking her head out of the chair, looking very sternly at the end of her nose. Her ear flopped rapidly back and forth over her face, her eyelids fluttered just as intensely, and the chair rocked briefly as something around her knees twitched violently.
"Ear flop... eye flutter... knee twitch... that means... look out for opening doors!"
"Look out for opening do... opening doors?" She cast a glance at the door, then shared an alarmed look with Pinkie, and they both bolted for the bookshelf. Zecora wasn't watching long before Applejack grabbed her and started pulling her through the gap while Pinkie held it open. The book wedged in the gap and slipped out of the farmer's hand when she tried to force it through, landing somewhere on the ground in the dark corridor. She didn't bother trying to find it again - it would be pointless to try - but at least Blueblood wouldn't be able to find it in here. With an eye on the twitching door handle, Pinkie squeezed herself through the gap and pulled it shut behind herself. Or at least, she tried, she couldn't get it all the way closed without losing her fingers, and didn't have much time to be thorough before the door squeaked and swung open. The three hurried away down the corridor without chancing a look back.
The schling of metal sliding against metal alerted Jetstream to an arrival. He looked up from his desk to see his guards part their glaives to allow the visitor into his office; Spitfire, looking like she'd been caught halfway through getting dressed. She had her armour on up as far as the waist, but above that she'd only managed a tank top and goggles. She stopped in front of the desk, stood to attention and gave a salute. He waved it off with a slightly lazy salute of his own.
"At ease. Take a seat." She was only too happy to oblige, pulling a chunk of wall over and throwing herself at it cross-legged.
"You wanted to see me, sir?"
"Yes, I need to talk tactics with you, Captain. Ordinarily I'd send for Wing Commander Dash, but as you very well know, she's gone AWOL."
"I'm flattered."
Jetstream just glared at her. "Anyway... in light of recent events, plans have changed. We need to move on the offensive much quicker than anticipated." He cleared some papers off the map on the table; a detailed plan of northern and central Equestria, plotting every road, river and wind current from Trottingham to Cloudsdale, and the same distance east and west. Some small lumps of cloud served as models: groups of them sat at different points over the map. "Trottingham has fallen, and the horde will be able to close the distance to Canterlot in a matter of hours when they decide to advance. Scouts report that they have spent the night regrouping and are currently en route, ETA 0540 hours. We can't mobilise quickly enough to meet them halfway, but intelligence also reports that while Canterlot's physical defences are strong, their garrison is weak, and if we send a vanguard to capture it before the horde reaches it, we may be able to commandeer their defences. As your unit is likely to lead this vanguard, do you expect this plan to be feasible?"
Spitfire blinked, playing the words back in her head. "I'm sorry sir, did you say, capture Canterlot?"
"Yes I did. The declaration of secession was more of a declaration of no confidence. I have no intention of withdrawing Cloudsdale from Equestria. If we don't present a united front to the horde, we don't stand a chance against them, but time has run out on negotiations. If we can't broker unity, we have no choice but to force it."
"Sir..." She chewed her knuckle. The plan was ludicrous, but she knew she had to be rational in her counterargument, lest her concerns be dismissed as bleeding-heart nonsense. "Pardon me sir, but attacking our fellow ponies seems a bit counterproductive. What if you're underestimating Canterlot? All we're doing then is distracting them and ourselves."
"You witnessed the performance of the city guard at Trottingham. This is the standard of Equestrian armed forces on the ground. The Wonderbolts could probably take Canterlot by themselves if they wanted to."
"Then... what about morale? This kind of civil conflict is going to kill confidence among the troops."
"This is a necessary measure for our survival..."
Spitfire snapped. She threw herself to her hooves and cut him off mid-sentence. "This is insane!" Jetstream responded by rising, and very slowly reaching for his sword.
"You would do well to watch your mouth, Captain Spitfire, because I can very easily have you replaced..."
"You can go through every one of the Wonderbolts and not one of them will give your hair-brained plot the time of day!"
"Enough!" At the sound of the sword sliding free of its sheath, she backed up to stay out of its range. "Guards!" The sound of the two guards at the door turning to reprimand her didn't thrill her either. Still, she didn't hesitate to prove Jetstream's assessment of her ability, by quickly liberating one of the guards his weapon, stunning him, decking the other with the handle, and flinging them both back out the door by bracing herself in the doorframe and swinging a high kick to each of their chests. They'd be down for now, but there'd be more soon. Turning back to the desk, she was just in time to parry a swing of the commander's sword. She let the blade shave the wood of the glaive's handle, sacrificing the weapon's integrity to redirect the momentum of the attack. Spying opportunity, she let it go, destabilising him. She grabbed his shoulder in one hand and the dagger on his left hip in the other, and spun around behind him, holding it to his neck. "Heheh..."
"What's so funny?" she snorted.
"You think this is helping your case? This can only end with spilt blood, yours or on your hands."
"It'll be yours if you're not careful."
"Heh... you hear that?" She paused. True enough there was a noise; it sounded like wings. "Reinforcements."
Paf. The ceiling outside the office burst open, and another figure half-dressed in Wonderbolt uniform landed on his knees. Soarin had his bow already out, and within a second had an arrow drawn, pointed at the hostage situation. By the time he was able to analyse it, he paused, letting the bow slack slightly.
"Wh- Spitfire?"
"Shoot, dammit!" Jetstream growled. Spitfire gritted her teeth as Soarin pulled the arrow back again... but an idea sprung to mind.
"No, shoot him!"
"I order you to shoot her!"
"And I order you to shoot him!" Soarin blinked, shifting his aim back and forth. At a distance of only a couple of lengths, he had a perfect shot at his target... if only he could decide who his target was.
"If you kill me, you'll never make it out of here alive! You'll be marked ponies!" Jetstream barked. Spitfire just glared.
"Soarin if you shoot me, so help me Celestia I will haunt you so bad..."
"Just get on with it!" He bit his lip, still anxiously moving his bow between them. With no context, this was just a question of trust. He knew he didn't have all night, so he inhaled deeply, and opened his fingers.
Whoosh, thud. A forehead split open as bronze parted bone, spitting a jet of blood from the entry wound. After a murmur of disbelief, a body crumpled to the floor limply. Soarin lowered his bow, panting and trembling. He gasped when Spitfire threw her arms around him in a hug, equally shaken. But, they didn't have time to waste.
"So... what was that about?"
"I'll explain on the way. We need to get the others and get out of here."
"I knew it! Seize them!" The sound shook the two unicorns back to reality. The 'door' was pulled away - it was just a tall bookcase pressed against a gap in the wall, now thrown to the ground in haste. In the now blinding light, they could just about make out a pair of guards advancing on them, with a unicorn guard behind blocking up the corridor behind them with a barrier. A furious looking Prince Blueblood flicked his forelock out of his face, and his scowl twisted into a smirk. Knowing better than to resist, Twilight frowned and dropped the book on her lap, while she was roughly pulled into the room and shackled. Rarity was a little more offended by her treatment, but soon settled down, following her friend's example. "Well, well. Of all ponies, who should we find crawling around in the dry wall but the faithful student, Twilight Sparkle!" With a deft hand movement, he pulled his sword from his belt and put the point to her chin. In an instant, the humour drained from his tone. "That's the strangest arbitrating I've ever seen."
"I know you're up to something, Prince." The guards got a little jumpy when her horn lit up, but quickly calmed when they saw that all she was doing was lifting the book. Blueblood gave the horn a light backhand, and snatched the released book from the air with his own levitation.
"You would do well to choose your words and your spells carefully, Sparkle. Remember who's house you're in. The fact that you're even here could be construed as a declaration of war by Ponyville."
"I'm amazed you even know what 'construed' means."
Blueblood reacted almost instantly with another backhand slap across her face. "Don't test me!" It stung, but it was worth it. He turned his sword to Rarity next. "And don't you try anything either, you miserable harlot!" She pouted in offence, but kept quiet. She wasn't about to spend the next month wearing a pound of blush every day to hide a bruise.
"So is this the part where you tell us all the details of your evil plan and then leave us unsupervised in an overdesigned death trap?"
Rarity leaned in and whispered through gritted teeth, "Twilight please, stop... saying words..."
Blueblood just snorted, gave them a scornful look, and sheathed his sword. He nodded in the direction of the door, his gaze running over every guard in the room, prompting them to follow him out.
It was still dark out when Applejack poked her head out the door of the abandoned house. The mucky streets were empty save for the occasional patrol, lit only by the stars, moon and soft glow from the shield wall above. She sighed, and shrank back inside - no sense getting themselves caught.
"Y'think Twilight 'n' Rarity are okay?"
Zecora slid a couple of boards over the doorway to conceal their presence better; Pinkie was doing the same with the stairs. "Twilight is a capable mare; I am certain they will take care."
The farm pony frowned, and tried to get herself comfortable on the stone floor. "Ah sure hope so... ah don't like this one bit."
"Yeah, all this dark dank stone is making my face sad, and it's hard and uncomfortable and it hurts my-"
"Pinkie." Applejack shot a glare at her fellow. "Ah'm talkin' about our friends gone missin'."
Zecora chuckled, and with the aid of her staff, found herself a perch on top of a ruined shelf. "The matter is out of our hands for now; it's best this time some rest allows." She paused, screwing up her face and mulling over the rhyme in her head again. That made sense, sort of? Sort of. Close enough.
Applejack sighed again, and pulled her hat down over her eyes. "Ah guess yer right..." Truth be told there were probably more comfortable places around the room to doze off, but she didn't want to sleep too heavily. Disciplined sleep training can only get you so far, and they needed to be up at the crack of dawn. She knew she'd pay for it in the morning, but there were bigger things at stake that comfort. Sleep came quickly to all three of them - the day had taken its toll, and none of them had the energy to spend on worrying.
"Ugh. Still haven't gotten the hang of flying with these things."
"Are you complaining about your rack again, Misty? If that isn't irony, then..."
"Guys! Hurry up and suit up, Spitfire should be back any minute now..."
Pamf. The cloud wall to the mares' dormitory in the Wonderbolt barracks exploded, and a frantic looking yellow pegasus with a halberd strapped to her back stumbled in. A few red spots marked her shoulder and top. The three half-dressed pegasi jumped in surprise, one of them taking to the air by the wall mirror.
"You weren't kidding!"
"Okay ladies, listen up. Grab your shit and be ready to go in two minutes. Soarin's getting the guys. We'll all meet up en route to Canterlot."
The blue mare by a bunk on the far side of the room quirked a brow. "Canterlot? That's an... odd angle of attack."
"I'll explain on the way, but uh... let's just say we're not taking orders from Jetstream anymore." Spitfire's news elicited a few grins and fist-pumps from around the room. "I still have a few guards to give the runaround, so, I never passed through, got it?" Dutiful nods, serious looks. "Alright! Let's go!" Grabbing a spare pair of goggles from her bedside table, she started back out the hole she made and resumed her circuitous route around Cloudsdale, leaving her bemused comrades to fix it before anyone got suspicious.
They mustn't have been very deep down at all, Twilight reasoned. The reading room may have been tucked away in one of the older parts of the castle, but it was just a single floor below a corridor that ran along the ramparts, with narrow windows that overlooked the woods below. Archers were standing by near most of them, but she still had a clear view of the sky - and she wasn't thrilled by how red the rim of the horizon was looking. They must have been unconscious for a few hours - it might already be sunrise in Manehattan, which meant that sunrise here was only a few minutes away. She could probably overpower these guards with ease and make a break for it, but the sheer number of them and their uncertain position still left her and Rarity in a very vulnerable place. She gulped and kept walking.
They ascended another two levels by spiral staircase, bringing them on to the parapets of the city walls. Inside, the patchwork of shacks, ruined stone buildings and new constructions lay asleep in the shade of the mountains. Outside, beyond the translucent, swirling mauve wall, the long shadows of treetops catching first light sprawled over each other, with just the orange tips of leaves sticking out, the haze over the visible north and east horizon glowed red with the reflections and distortions of sunlight through the dust, and stars vanished in the glare by the second. In the distance, in the general direction of Trottingham, swarming, fluttering dots grew slowly closer. And on the ramparts themselves, waiting for them, were a collection of grim faces, none quite as unhappy to be there as the captain of the guard.
"Twilie?" he whispered. "What are you... how did you..." Blueblood shot him a hard glare, and he stood back to attention. The guards threw Twilight and Rarity to their knees, prompting yelps of discomfort. From the corner of her eye, Twilight could spot Princess Cadence watching the scene from behind a bodyguard a short way away, looking about as pleased as her fiancée.
Getting back in his stride, the Prince began pacing the clearing, twirling his sword in his hand. "It seems, fillies and gentlecolts, that we have a couple of spies in our midst!" His casual smirk and theatrical tone had the air of a rehearsed performance about it - like he was expecting something like this. "A pair of plucky Ponyvillians, poking around in my private possessions?" Yep, absolutely staged.
"That was my book. You stole it," Twilight spat. Shining winced at his sister's refusal to make things easy on herself.
Blueblood raised his weapon to her, the tip uncomfortably close to her face. "I'm sorry, who's the one holding the sword here?" With a pout, she just grabbed the end of the blade with magic, yanked it down and pushed back, destabilising him. When he recovered his balance, he looked ready to explode, but he took a couple of deep breaths and muttered some nothings to himself to calm down. "As I was saying..." Twilight busied herself with trying to probe the tumblers in her cuffs, while Blueblood resumed pontificating. "Under ordinary circumstances, spies would be incarcerated and interrogated. But these..." He swung his blade out at the horizon, toward the cloud of approaching black dots. "... are no ordinary circumstances. By sunrise, the horde will be upon us, and in the inevitable chaos, a breakout - much like that of our good friend Fancy Pants last night - is all but inevitable." Rarity looked up with the traces of a smile on her face. At least it wasn't all going down the tubes. "And as if that wasn't enough, Miss Sparkle here is one of Canterlot's 'most wanted'! A spy and a traitor. Fancy that..." He cast Twilight a menacing look. She kept up a defiant facade, but inside she was beginning to panic, and lose her concentration on the lock.
A skittish-looking young guard bounded along the ramparts and slid to a halt, launching straight into a salute and a message. "Sir, scouts report that the horde has reached the north watchtower. Estimated time of arrival is two minutes!"
"Very well. Let's not beat about the bush." Giving his sword quick rub with a cloth, he stood by the parapets, opposite the prisoners, with the book in arm's reach. "Under the circumstances, we have no choice but to execute the pair of you without delay. Captain Shining Armor..." He turned to him with an almost casual look, like he was discussing dinner plans, and levitated his sword over with the handle facing him. "... would you do the honours?"
Shining blinked incredulously. He looked at the sword handle facing him, then up at the smiling Prince, then at Twilight. He gave a quick glance to Cadence - she had her hands clasped to her mouth in shock. He knew what he had to do. "No."
"I'm sorry?"
Shining stepped forward and batted the sword away. "I can put up with cutting ties to the other towns. I can barely tolerate locking out refugees. But asking me to execute my own sister is where you cross the line, Blueblood. I'd sooner take her place than go through with it."
"Hm." Blueblood nodded softly and looked around, like he was mulling over the decision for a moment. "Okay then." Without warning or prompt, he turned the blade in the air and drove it through a joint in his armour, into his stomach. The stab was quick and precise, and he prolonged drawing it out, allowing blood to flow liberally down the shaft. While everyone was staring in abject disbelief, and the shield wall started fizzling out, he casually flicked the blood on the ground and returned it to his hand. Shining's legs started to go weak, and he dropped to his knees. There was a clatter as Cadence pushed her bodyguard out of the way to rush on to the scene, throwing herself at the ground by his side.
Twilight, on the other hand, stood up, lifted Blueblood in the air by his neck, making sure to grip his throat tightly. "I'm gonna strangle the life out of you!" she growled, through gritted teeth.
The Prince just chuckled, despite his constriction. "Ah-ah-ahhh..." As much as the smug little grin made her want to snap his neck there and then, she thought it prudent to check what he was laughing about. A quick glance over her shoulder showed her Rarity, with a guard holding a sword to the back of her neck. Cursing under her breath, she let him drop, scowling while he coughed and spluttered.
"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" A deep, bombastic voice piped up, coming from the airborne form of a gryphon; his approach had been concealed by the writhing Prince before.
"Well isn't that timing?" Blueblood wheeled in place, struggling to hold his reserve together. "I needed the shield lowered to parley anyway. King... Eisen, is it?"
With Fluttershy and Derpy Hooves marshalling the refugees away from Canterlot, Rainbow Dash was left to watch the scene on the walls of the city from afar, hidden in the upper branches of a tree. She rubbed her eyes and yawned - it was entirely too early in the morning for this carry-on. Now, figuring out what to do would be so much easier if...
"Hey Rainbow Dash! What are they doing?" Scootaloo's voice, practically over her shoulder, made her jump, nearly right out of the tree. The high-pitched giggle that followed told her that Kalza was with her. While she was clinging on to the branch, on the ground below she could see Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Dinky Hooves and... is that Pipsqueak? Hm. They musta really hit it off.
Reclaiming her perch, she resumed her lookout. "What are you guys doing here? I thought I told you to go with Fluttershy and Derpy!"
"We're going!" Scootaloo whined. Dash rolled her eyes - she knew that meant they had no intention of leaving.
"Ugh... they're parleying. Talking before the battle. It's customary. Or, that's what Eisen's doing anyway, it looks like there's something else going on up there, but it's too far away..." She frowned, and turned to the gryphlet, sitting on a branch closer to the trunk, with Scootaloo sitting behind her. "That reminds me, Kal, what's your dad's name?"
"Uhh... Wolfram. Why?"
"Just... thought I ought to know. I get the feeling he's gonna be looking for me."
With Blueblood and Eisen preoccupied with slinging threats and veiled insults at each other, Twilight took her chance to check on her brother. Cadence had rolled him on his back and had made a couple of attempts to pull his armour off, to little success. He was bleeding out at a frightening pace, and most of the wound was covered by the lower plates, hiding its extent. Rarity took advantage of the guards' distraction to shimmy over too.
"Shining, are you okay?" she whispered, hoping to avoid drawing Blueblood's attention again.
"Never better," he chuckled, though it caused him to clutch his stomach in pain.
The Princess tapped her shoulder. "Twilight, please tell me you have a spell for this."
"If only Blueblood didn't have my book... I have one I know by heart though. It won't do much, but it should help with the worst of it. Shining, this might feel a little weird..."
"I'm sure it can't be any worse thaaahmmmm..." Cadence clapped a hand to his mouth, while holding one of his with her free hand. Gathering her concentration and shutting out the shouting match behind her, the lilac unicorn set about probing the wound and assessing the damage. As far as Shining Armor was concerned, she might as well have been wiggling her finger around in it. All sorts of things had been cut up here, but two were proving the most problematic - a major vein had been severed, dribbling blood like an overflowing basin, as had what she guessed was part of the gut. She went about stitching the vein back together first. The tear in the gut might prove painful later and lead to infection, but it wasn't a top priority, so she went for it second.
Or she would have, if she wasn't distracted by the pang of reverberating metal. She wasn't sure what she heard or from where, but it shook her out of her trance with her job half-done. Like a rabbit in the headlights, she looked around in bewilderment, only looking over her shoulder in time to catch the first couple of arc-seconds of the sun creep over the peaks of the mountains. Time seemed to slow down - the gaps in the argument filled increasingly lengthy silences, Rarity's confused look became more vacant and detached, and... hold on, time was slowing down.
The noise around her faded away into silence, leaving her for all intents and purposes alone. This wasn't like her own perception magic - she could still move, for one thing. She saw no harm in struggling to her hooves and sneaking a look at the frozen argument. Eisen's crown had been lifted from his head (and he didn't seem too happy about it), and the Apple was in the middle of being prised from it by Blueblood's magic grip. He was also leafing through the pilfered copy of Magic of the Body, nestled in the shade between two parapets.
An unmistakably smooth voice spoke in her ear, about as comforting as a lump of ice dropped down her back. "Time's up, Twilight."
Twilight nearly fell over in her surprise, swerving around to face the voice. "Discord!"
"Well, well! We meet again, Twilight Sparkle." The serpentine form hung in the air, his face painted with his patented knowing smirk. "Feel like giving me a few lectures on how I won't get away with this? Because we have all the time in the world..."
"Save it!" she snapped. As soon as she opened her mouth, a crude hand puppet in her image appeared on his lion paw, flapping along to her. "I'm not interested in your games!" The puppet kept going.
"Somepony certainly is in a mood this morning!" Speaking out of the side of his mouth in a high-pitched voice, he continued. "Oh but Discord, I love you! Oh! Steady on, Twilight," he chuckled. The unicorn fumed, but forced herself to calm down with a couple of deep breaths.
"Fine, let's get this stupid riddle over with."
Discord sighed. "All business then? Very well..." With a snap of his fingers, he vanished, and reappeared sans-puppet on the parapets, sitting in the middle of Eisen and Blueblood's squabble. Twilight quirked a brow at the irony. "At your leisure, my dear."
"Hmm..." She started to pace while she mulled over the problem. She hadn't had the time to stop and put some of the pieces together until now. "Well... if the three days are the three days since you put the riddle to us... the two thousand years is the time since you were imprisoned by Clover the Clever..."
"You're a lot like her, you know."
Twilight stuck out her tongue, and carried on. "... and the one angry pony is this great big doofus over here..." she nodded at Blueblood with a frown. "... then..." What do these do, what do these do... two thousand years ago Discord was sealed away, he comes back with limited power, then Blueblood comes along and... oh no. She looked again at what the Prince was doing, and went white.
"Well? I'm waiting."
"... Equestria will burn. That's the answer." That's not fair. That is so not fair. "Blueblood performs a ritual to release you, as the culmination of three days and two thousand years of scheming."
Discord pouted and bounced his head around. "Halfway there. Two out of four is alright, I suppose."
"What?"
"If it's any consolation, your answer was correct. But, I can at least show you what you got wrong!"
"Ugh... fine."
"First, the three days were those between the moment you pulled a certain secret history off the shelf of your library, and the moment you banished that... thing posing as a Princess."
"Celestia."
"Whatever. Those three days. As far as 96-hour brackets of time go, none have been so pivotal in the history of Equestria as then."
"That was going to be my second choice for that, but okay..."
"And second, the angry pony isn't Prince Blueface here." Discord gave Blueblood a little flick in the side of the head. Twilight tilted her head and frowned pensively. "It's not Jetstream either. It's not the Mayor of Ponyville, it's not Commander Hurricane, it's not Princess Platinum, it's not Chancellor Tiramisu, it's not Colonel Mustard in the pantry with the lead pipe, and it's not any of these featherbrains, if you think I'm trying to pull something funny." He gestured to the gryphon horde circling the forest below. "It's so much simpler than all that!"
"Well who is it?" she snapped. With a little smirk, he kicked from his perch on the parapets to float over to the unicorn.
"It's you, Twilight."
She blinked, and dithered a moment. "M... me?"
"You, Venus Dawn Twilight Sparkle. You're far more influential than you'd like to think you are. Your ire, your indignation, your wrath has been at the heart of two of your kind's three defining events in history. And, well, one fake one. I'm not saying you're wrong, but considering you instigated a revolt, drove your friends to attack a djinn, blew that same djinn's cover and banished it back to the fire plane on the most circumstantial evidence, destroyed two cities in the process of defending them - one of them twice - and been responsible directly and indirectly for what must be thousands of deaths at this stage, your image is looking less like 'mild-mannered librarian' and more like 'harbinger of destruction'. See? You're even angry right now!"
"Shut up!" she barked, positively steaming.
"You're not helping your case."
"My brother's just been stabbed, of course I'm angry!"
"Ah, but! Where pink tiara over there went rushing to his side, your first instinct was to start throttling this little brat." The draconequus perched atop Eisen's crown and gave Blueblood's mane a little ruffle. "Choices like that are the difference between two ponies living and two ponies dying."
Twilight grumbled and glared at the ground. Her cheeks were burning, and she was struggling to think. Rather than press the point any further, she decided to get back to the riddle. "So how does all this contribute to Equestria burning?"
"I'll admit, it's a little more... circuitous than your solution. When you're trapped in a lump of astral ice and can only use a fraction of your potential, you have to think outside the box. Fortunately, some ponies take 'negotiation' quite well, isn't that right, Bluepants?" Discord lightly slapped his cheek with a chuckle. "In order for me to escape, the correct ritual must be performed on the crystal. However, because you ponies were so busy in my absence, I now had another cosmic entity to compete with, haemomancy had been forgotten for the best part of two millennia and I was stuck in a part of the world that for the average pony may as well have been the far side of the moon. Fortunately for me, the gryphons had already planted Aurum's account in your library, and you were going to find it sooner or later. Ponyville was a bit too far away for me to just... drop it on your head, so that was a waiting game.
"Once the one angry pony had done her job over the three days, I just had to line up a couple of pieces. Getting Eisen to take the Apple was easy - gryphons have a... decidedly strange sense of style, and he thought it would look good in his crown when he found it. Blueblood and Jetstream were the only tribe leaders I could reach, but getting them to start plotting against each other was a snap. They remind me so much of Platinum and Hurricane, they really do. In the end Blueshirt seemed more interested in taking any measure necessary, so a little bird told him that you had a couple of things he was interested in. While you were off playing in the forest, his men had a rummage through your stuff for the manual for this thing," He gave the Apple a little tap. "And all he has to do now is put the pieces together."
"Wait... if your influence couldn't reach Ponyville... then how were you playing tricks on us in the forest?"
Discord shrugged. "As hilarious as that all was, that wasn't me. But it wouldn't surprise me if there's other things lurking out there that share my sense of humour." Twilight gave a worried frown. "Anyway!" He clapped his hands together, generating a flash; when the light subsided, there was a wreath and a medal around the unicorn's neck and a few streamers were flying around. Her shackles had disappeared, much to her relief, but it was still unsettling. "Your starting points may have been off, but your conclusion was correct, and that's good enough for me! You win, Twilight Sparkle, and your prize is a front row seat of the action."
"That's it? You're going to let the horde ravage Equestria anyway? That's... that's horseshit!"
"Tsk, tsk, such language. Been spending a little too long with Rainbow Dash?"
"Ugh!"
"I can put those shackles right back on you if you like." She snorted, and stepped off. "Now, if we're done screwing around, lights!" Discord pointed to the sliver of burning white edging over the peaks, and it gave a shimmer in response. "Camera!" He slithered behind her, looking over her shoulder. When she looked, he was invisible, but she could still feel his presence, the uncomfortable sensation of being entirely too close to someone. She could also hear him whisper, in the same moment as she felt her head jerk involuntarily towards Blueblood and Eisen; "Action."
In an instant, time resumed. There was no wind-up; it just began playing again in a snap. She was perfectly poised to see the events unfold in front of her, blow by blow. She wanted to do something, but something was paralysing her - all she could do was watch helplessly. Blueblood peeled the Apple away from the crown and let it fall away; Eisen immediately dove for it, giving the Prince a moment to work. After quickly checking a page in the book, he snatched the crystal out of the air, freeing up his magic to move the blood shed from his sword around, arranging it into a pattern. The circle was small - only a foot or so across - but it was enough. He levitated the crystal over to it, and slammed it forcefully at the cobblestones. The friction produced a spark, which in turn gave a flash, and in that flash the sigil ignited. Twilight could hear a mad cackling behind her, as if Discord was still there.
Something was off though. Laughter gave way to screams of dread. As the seal lit up and consumed the crystal in blinding light, it didn't shatter. Rather, the Prince himself began to glow, and he hunched over as the deep magic took effect. Nobody could see what was happening; the light hurt to look at, and those who still had free control over their own limbs shielded their eyes. When it eventually subsided, Discord was silent, and another voice was indulging in a hearty fit of low, ominous laughter. Blueblood was picking himself up from his hands and knees. The ground was charred, but his suit was absolutely pristine. Even King Eisen, hovering in the air behind him, looked shocked.
Click.
With a snap of his fingers, the space behind him flashed, and a pair of wings shot out of his back, spanning far beyond those of a normal pegasus. "He didn't..." Rarity gawped. Blueblood just blew a kiss to nobody in particular, and did a back flip off the wall.
Cadence sighed. "He totally did..." Twilight shook herself back to reality, and turned back to her friends.
"Uh, darling, where did those come from?" Rarity nodded at the winner's medal and victory wreath she was still wearing. She hurriedly threw them off and tossed them to one side. Before she forgot it again, she grabbed the book and tucked it under her arm.
"Doesn't matter. We need to get out of here!" Without hesitating, she drummed up her focus and took the four of them away in a flash.
A burst of light lit up the underground room, startling three half-asleep ponies. The most alert of them jumped right to her feet and raised her fists. "Who's there? Ah'll teach you to wa-"
"Applejack?"
"Twilight? What are you doin' here?"
"I could ask you the same thing, but there's no time. Everyone, this is my brother Shining Armor, he's uh... just been stabbed," He gave a weak salute of acknowledgement. "And his fiancée and an old friend of the family, Princess Cadence," She too gave a timid wave. "And there's... a bit of a situation going on out there."
Twilight sighed, and rubbed her forehead. "I don't know. A lot of things. Something happened with Blueblood and Discord, and I don't know what, and the horde is going to be here any second now..."
"Hm," Rarity mused. "Chaos."
"You could say that. Dammit... alright, I'm making this up as I go, but it's as good a plan as any we have right now. Applejack, Rarity, I'm sure you're worried about Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, so get to the camp and link up with Fluttershy and Derpy. You can work out something from there."
Applejack tipped her hat and nodded. "Don't need to tell us twice."
"Pinkie!" The party pony was as spry as ever, obliviously munching on some candy, likely stashed somewhere from earlier. "I need you to get out there and make a distraction. Anything big and flashy that'll keep attention off us while we try and get a handle on the situation. I'm sure you'll find a way." She nodded and squeaked enthusiastically. "Zecora, you're with me. We need to figure out just what happened with Blueblood, I'll fill you in on the details along the way." The zebra acknowledged with a sage nod. "Shining and Cadence... just sit tight. Shining is stable for now, and this room should be safe until it all starts coming down."
Cadence glared seriously. "I hope you're right about this, Twilight."
"I hope I am too. Now let's go! There's no time to lose!" Applejack nodded again, and kicked away the room's makeshift door in a single blow. Here we go again, Twilight thought to herself.
Oh, not again... Rainbow Dash kicked out of the tree at the first sign of trouble at the parley in the distance. Scootaloo and Kalza struggled to keep balance in her wake, but she knew they'd be fine. The ramparts were erupting in light - suitable distraction for her approach. She latched on to a narrow window low down on the wall and hung there, sometimes swinging closer to the scene when she felt it was safe. King Eisen certainly looked irritated about something, but she couldn't t-
Whoosh.
Dash nearly lost her grip when the white form swooped behind her and launched into a glide, circling around. Is that... She gawped incredulously, straining to get a better look. It is! It's Blueblood... what the... She shook her head and returned her focus to the confused gryphon struggling to decide what to do. If only she was armed, she might have a shot at taking care of him there and then... An idea struck. The shapes and sizes of these windows were probably to protect archers, which meant there was probably some inside. She reached a hand in and grabbed at the first thing she could find. It felt promising - a thin shaft of wood. She pulled as hard as she could, and a thunk told her that its owner had made close friends with the wall. The resistance fell away, and she claimed her prize.
This wasn't like any bow she'd ever seen. The bow itself was mounted crossways on a stock, with what looked like one of Applebloom's mechanisms mounted in it. It was holding the arrow back, and seemed to be linked to a switch on the underside. Holding it at arm's length, she hesitantly flicked it. It sprung like a mousetrap, effortlessly slinging the arrow into the horizontal distance. Interesting...
Unfortunately, it distracted her enough that Eisen was well on his way, and she'd just shot her only quarrel into the bushes. Risking peeking her head into the window, she snatched the quiver from the stunned archer behind it, kicked off the wall, and set about pursuing him, keeping herself close to the ground.
Losing your balance isn't much of a problem when you have wings. Scootaloo's landing may have been a little harder than Kalza's, but they rejoined the other crusaders unharmed.
Applebloom was impatient for answers. "Where did she go?"
"She said something about 'parley', and then there was this light on the walls, and... she didn't say anything. She just up and left."
Dinky rubbed her chin and paced. "Sounds like something fishy is going on..."
"Well!" Pipsqueak clapped his hands once and cracked a smile. Since last night, he'd taken the makeshift cape and rolled it into a scarf - he felt that was much more his style. "Sounds like an investigation is in order! What d'you think, ladies?"
"Yeah!"
"Alright!"
"Nothing can go wrong with this plan!"
The Crusaders' enthusiasm dropped off when they noticed the tortoise making its steady way across the road in front of them.
"Should we, uh, put him somewhere safe?"
"Probably."
Pinkie skipped through the streets, humming merrily to herself. Around her, ponies were running back and forth, in varying states of panic and distress. Gee! They sure could use a party. Maybe this distraction could be a party! But, she doubted a load of featherbrains would be interested in cakes and muffins and stuff. Maybe they don't have cakes in the gryphon kingdoms? That sounds really boring. Imagine that, a life without cakes! How depressing would that be? That explains why they're all so huffy and mean all the time. Maybe they just need a party! But... the last time she threw a party for a gryphon it didn't work out so well.
Lost in her rambling and convoluted train of thought, she was oblivious to potential collision courses. It wasn't long until she bumped into another pony ambling idly around the place, looking lost. Or tired. Or both! It didn't matter a whole heap when they hit, knocking the unfortunate stranger's purple sunglasses flying.
"Hey! Watch where you're going y-" Vinyl Scratch paused when got a good look at the mountain of pink fluff that had just barrelled into her. Her mood instantly lightened. "Oh! I remember you... Pinkie Pie, was it?" The party pony picked her face off the pavement and pouted pensively. Connections were being made, ideas forming in her head. Vinyl couldn't really say that it made her entirely comfortable. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Come on! We've got a party to start!" When Pinkie grabbed her by the wrist and led her away, the unicorn could do little more than go along with it.
Eisen seemed to be barking some instructions to his generals, but Rainbow Dash was too far away to make sense of them. It was enough of a task trying to figure out how to load this cross-ways bow... she guessed it was a... cross...bow? It was hard enough trying to figure out how to load this crossbow while keeping up with the gryphon and dodging trees, without trying to interpret his garbled exclamations as well. With the horde looming overhead, she came to a stop at the top of a pine tree. Click. Something triggered in the bow. Did it work? She fired it at the trunk to test it, only for it to lose all its tension, with the bolt barely leaving the bow. She frowned, and tried again, this time giving the bolt a much harder pull back. She wasn't sure if she was breaking it with how far the arms bent back, but she figured that if the worst came to the worst, she could just steal a spear off a gryphon.
Click, thud. The mechanism fired off beautifully, embedding the bolt in the trunk of the tree. She couldn't get that one back, but at least she knew she was on the right track. Loading another bolt, she turned her attention back to the horde above. Eisen was pulling out that hammer he was waving around in Trottingham, and looked like he was getting ready to lead the charge. She wrapped her legs around the branch and hurriedly took aim. There was still a lot of guesswork - what was the wind like? What's the speed on this bow? How soon do these funny half-length metal arrows drop? But there was no time to find out. It was do or die.
Click. The bow triggered perfectly, and she felt the light rush of wind in the wake of the shot.
Thud. The bolt skewered a gryphon through the neck, sending him crashing to the ground. But it wasn't King Eisen - the first wave of the charge had swept in during the split-second it took for the quarrel to close the distance, and an unfortunate raider had taken the shot for his king. Just to make things worse for Rainbow Dash, it also drew the attention of every gryphon in the immediate area. She knew she'd blown it, and kicked off the tree without delay to race back to the city.
Thump, thump thump. She threw a look back at the vanguard chasing her, only to watch them decimated by a hail of arrows. Right in the nick of time - taking advantage of their distraction, she swerved to join up with the other Wonderbolts. Half of them were drawing another round, covering the retreat of the rest - Dash followed Spitfire in the retreat, hastily reloading her crossbow as she went.
"Am I glad to see you! Are Cloudsdale sending reinforcements?"
The captain chuckled nervously. "Hah, no..."
"Oh. Oh."
Spitfire tugged a pair of goggles from her belt, and tossed them at Dash. "Here, you can have these back!"
She was elated, but was back to business as soon as she'd put them back on their perch atop her forehead. "Déjà vu, eh?"
"Heh. Right."
Twilight and Zecora worked to keep themselves out of view of the sky. There was no telling where Blueblood might show up, or just what he was capable of. If only Pinkie would hurry up with her diversion! Fearfully sprinting between shadows was getting frustrating.
"... and then he clicked his fingers like Discord would, and suddenly, boom. Wings."
"It sounds to me like he drained his power, to use himself in the darkest hour."
"How can you rhyme at a time like this?"
Crash. A tree fell from the sky without warning, flattening a shack on the opposite side of the street. The pair shared worried glances. "Questions for a later date. We must stop Blueblood before it's too late!" Twilight just quirked a brow, and hurried after the zebra. A few random objects continued to rain down over the city - bits of junk lying around, the occasional rock, and once or twice, even a hapless guard was sent flying.
"I think he's... playing. He's trying out his new powers like toys."
"Intriguing, but highly disturbing... hurry on, before we eat curbing." That was weak, Zecora.
Another noise grabbed their attention. However, it wasn't the sound of things crashing into each other, or panicked screams. It was something else entirely, a guttural, mechanical roar, an eldritch scream, something with a slight... electronic edge to it. Twilight risked poking her head out of cover to investigate. The soft oranges and reds of the dawn were accented with hard lines of green and blue, clipping around wildly and catching on the dust kicked up from Blueblood's antics. Overhead there was the pop of small explosions, raining bright colours down over the whole city. Was that the distraction?
There was a mighty crash as a boulder appeared from thin air over the ramparts, somewhere over the source of the lights, and demolished them. The lights yanked away at the last minute, gave a taunting spin, and carried on, amid the roar of electronic noise and hails of fireworks. Twilight smirked, and started up a ladder to the rooftops. "There's our cue!" Zecora shrugged and followed her up.
From their vantage point, they could see Pinkie Pie and the DJ pony from earlier, making their merry way along the walls, practically carrying a party with them - lights, amplifiers, barrages of fireworks, all strapped to a cart that they were hauling around at an astonishing speed for its weight, and being nimbly lifted out of the way of any obstacles or missiles bound for them. She just had to laugh at that. They also got a good look at what Prince Blueblood was doing. With his new wings, he was hovering over the ramparts, picking things up and throwing them around, mostly in the general direction of the distraction train. "I don't get it... if he has Discord's abilities, why doesn't he just... turn the cart into a cow or something? Something a bit more efficient than tearing off chunks of the city walls and then... missing?"
Zecora frowned, and rubbed her chin. "It could be that he does not understand, the extent of power at his command."
"If that's so... then maybe we can use that against him! I'll bet that even with all of Discord's powers, he still breaks like everypony else." She was a trifle unsettled by just how callous that sounded, and especially by the smirk that crossed her face while she said it, but there was hardly time to reflect on that now. After a couple of mental calculations, she left Zecora confused and alarmed by kicking off the roof and diving head-first toward the ground.
Pamf. Moments before hitting the ground, she vanished in a puff of lilac light, and reappeared somewhere over the ramparts. Her trajectory was carefully plotted so that she'd come to a vertical stall just in front of Blueblood, just in time to lightly slap him across the face, once on each cheek. Suitably enraged, as soon as he figured out what had happened, he snapped his fingers to lift her back up and deal with her... only to grab a mess of roof tiling. Behind the next house over, the slippery little unicorn appeared again, sticking her tongue out in her stationary moment before dropping out of view. Even from her safe landing spot, she could hear his howl of frustration - that was exactly what she was looking for. The chase was on.
Seeing the gates of the city unmanned did little to reassure Applejack and Rarity as they hurried through. The camp was mostly empty, save for a couple of stragglers gathering their belongings, and Fluttershy doing her best to insist that they should go, with Spike snoozing happily on the back of her head. Derpy was circling over head, keeping an anxious eye on the horizon and the groups of ponies heading over the hill to relative safety.
"Fluttershy!" Applejack's call startled her, enough to send Spike to a rude awakening on the ground. "Fluttershy, where are the crusaders?"
"Oh! They're right... over..." The pegasus started to trail off and look increasingly terrified when there was nobody on the road down the hill. The only sign of movement was a tortoise carefully navigating the branches of a tree. It didn't look like it had found its way up there on its own. "... there..."
Rarity sank her head into a hand. "Oh, not again..."
"I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, oh, please don't be mad at me..." Fluttershy was trembling visibly.
Applejack sighed with frustration. "Don't... don't worry, t'ain't your fault they run off an' get 'emselves into trouble if you take your eyes off 'em for a second..."
Derpy fluttered down to join the conversation. "What's going on?"
"The foals are missin'."
"What?"
"Yep."
"What are we waiting for, let's go!" The mailmare started back into the city in a hurry; one-by-one, the others followed, doing their best to keep up.
Spike trailed the group, still half-asleep. "Hey, wait up!"
Rarity spotted him out of the corner of her eye, and levitated him up to sit on her shoulders. "Come on!"
It would yet be a minute before the first wave of the gryphon assault hit, but Canterlot already looked like a warzone. Rainbow Dash could spot Pinkie's antics a mile away, but something else was tearing up the city looking for something.
"What the hell is that?" Spitfire roared over the wind rushing past them, and the cacophony below.
"I don't know, but I think Twilight is handling it. Somehow..." Dash gulped. "Recommend we concentrate on the horde for now."
"Roger that." The yellow pegasus gave a nod, and rose ahead of her formation. "Follow my lead!" Without waiting for a response, she dove over the city towards what was left of the ramparts, completely reversing direction. The vanguard that were tailing them were hair-raisingly close, though they struggled to match the turning circle of the smaller, more nimble ponies. A couple of raiders just couldn't keep up, and met with rough landings on the rooftops. The rest followed through, narrowly clearing the walls and falling far below the flight path of the pegasi, who were now flying straight up to cross paths with their other squad, in one of their more practised manoeuvres. The wall of contrails blinded the second wave, leaving both waves vulnerable to volleys of archer fire; the first from the crossbow archers in the city walls, and the second from the Wonderbolts themselves, drawing their bows quickly to capitalise on their confusion. The casualties from these two waves were high, and the survivors quickly scattered.
The ponies didn't have much time to celebrate though - further, denser waves were already on their way, and nobody liked the look of the sparking, crackling hammer Eisen was reaching for.
"What now?" One of the others asked.
Spitfire thought for a moment, before stashing her bow. "Get low, stay in cover. Look for bottlenecks, link up with local defenders, stay alive and whittle them down. We're not holding out for a miracle here guys and girls, we have to be the miracle." She gave another aside glance at the approaching front. "Free fall in three..." The group fluttered about uneasily, stowing their weapons. Dash didn't have a place for her appropriated crossbow, so she held on to it. "Two..." Nods were exchanged, silent agreements made. "One..." With a deep, shuddering breath, she steeled herself. "Drop!" On command, the entire troop dropped like stones, confounding their assailants and launching into a steep dive towards the city. At the very last sane moment, they flared their wings out together, and scattered across the city.
For two-thirds of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, this was a depressingly familiar scene. Hungry gryphon raiders stalking the streets, chasing terrified ponies around, and clueless guards making paltry efforts to keep things under control. Kalza kept her hood up, and Pipsqueak had to be dragged away from danger on more than one occasion.
Applebloom poked her head out from cover to get a look at the plaza. All of one side had been laid to waste, and a small group of guards were trying to hold out in a building on another with the assistance of what might have been a Wonderbolt, but she couldn't be sure. "What are we lookin' for again?"
"I don't know!" Sweetie Belle squeaked.
Thud. The sound of Rainbow Dash hitting the floor and skidding to a halt grabbed their attention. She looked like she'd taken a couple of knocks, and had hit the cobblestones on her flank, but scrambled to a crouch by the time she stopped. One arm of her crossbow had snapped, and she'd lost her quiver somewhere. A thump heralded another landing; the hulking, quadrupedal form of a gryphon.
"I can keep this up all day, Rainbow Dash..."
"You take this city over my dead body, Wolfram!" she hissed.
He shrugged casually. "Fine by me." Dash knew she was running out of options when she saw him rear up with his spear. She was on the brink of exhaustion, injured and unarmed.
"Hey!" The high-pitched shout pierced the din of battle, and made Wolfram hesitate a moment.
"Well, well..." He cocked a smirk, and slowly turned to face the source. "If it isn't the apple of my eye. Kalza! Fancy meeting you here." The gryphlet was standing proud on top of the cover the other crusaders were cowering behind, wings flared out, her face painted with the meanest expression she could muster. Being as young as she was, it ended up looking more adorable than fearsome. "Come to watch your old man at work?"
Kalza kicked off the stone block and fluttered over to the fight, coming to a stop between the pair. "If you want to kill Rainbow Dash, you'll have to go through me."
Wolfram chuckled heartily, but quickly went deadpan. "Seriously Kalza, get out of the way."
"No."
"Kalza, look at what you're doing. Look at what you're standing up for. This pathetic sack of meat..."
Dash scowled, still panting and struggling to stand on both legs. "Hey!" Not the meat spiel again...
"... what do you think you're trying to achieve? Why are you doing this?"
Kalza frowned and thought for a moment. "When I ran away it was 'cos I thought Rainbow Dash was strong. That was all I knew." Her tone was softer, but she was still shouting to be heard. "But I found something else when I got here. Something that you, and mom, and Gilda never gave me." She paused again, spotting Scootaloo and the other crusaders peeking out of cover. "Friends." Wolfram looked absolutely livid, but she remained defiant. "Family." Dash couldn't help but smile and wipe a tear from her eye. "Maybe if you stopped thinking of ponies as food, you could be friends too."
The larger gryphon was positively seething, his whole body pulsing with tension, ready to explode. "Why you littl-"
Thok. A sharp pain in the back of his head stunned him. He swung around on a dime to see Scootaloo standing atop the brick, flipping another pebble in her hand and smirking. Applebloom was dumping more ammunition on to the brick, and Sweetie Belle was pulling faces. Seizing her opportunity, Rainbow Dash scooped up Kalza in her arms, and in the same manoeuvre, launched a roundhouse kick at Wolfram with her dead leg. It hurt like hell, but she was out of options.
Crack. Hoof connected with neck, sending him to the floor. The crunch that followed didn't sound particularly pleasant either. He was still moving though - the kick had only stunned him. Dash let Kalza down hastily, and motioned for them to move on. "Go! Get outta here!" Before Wolfram recovered, she grabbed his spear and gave him another firm whack with the butt to keep him down. She could easily kill him there and then, but she didn't think it right. She wouldn't hold herself responsible for the death of her daughter's father.
Fatigue was starting to catch up with the adrenaline rush Twilight was getting from constantly falling, and using the momentum to throw herself through the air on her next teleport. She'd resorted to hiding every now and then to catch a breather, and maybe think out her plan. Did she even have a plan? She wasn't sure. She didn't get much time to form anything concrete before she came face-to-face with a gryphon, or Blueblood spotted her and tried to squash her with something. She was a little surprised he hadn't started picking up on some of Discord's more pertinent abilities, such as teleportation or omniscience - unless of course, he just didn't have them.
Pamf. She used a bale of hay in a back street to cushion her fall, rather than use four winks in quick succession to negate her all her momentum in the space of as many lengths. The hay, however, wasn't in a mood to co-operate. Her initial landing was soft, but she bounced forward onto the cobblestones, landing with an unceremonious splat. She gave a long groan. Well, this is just super! Lying face down in muddy back street, surrounded by things that want to kill me, trying to suppress the little voice saying this is all my fault. Ugh. Why don't I just let them do it already...
"Twilight! Twilight, get up off the floor!"
The unicorn picked her face off the ground and wiped her eyes. Zecora was standing over her, shaking her awake. "Huh?" Without waiting, she stuffed something in her hand.
"Take this, it should help even the score!"
"What..." By the time she'd struggled to her feet, the zebra was gone again. She shrugged, and inspected her gift. It was a silver amulet, in the stylised image of a wing, as crafted from a single narrow ingot. She felt some kind of magical essence in it when she held it aloft by telekinesis, and it was even familiar, but she couldn't quite pin it down. Seeing no harm, she draped it over her neck and tucked the amulet inside her top. Instantly, she felt a lightness to her step, like she was more... buoyant. She tested this with a standing jump, and gave a squeal of surprise to find that she went at least twice as high as normal, and fell at least half as fast.
Crash. The roof of one of the buildings next to her was ripped away by what she could only guess was Blueblood, and a support beam was falling towards her. She leapt to the side to get out of the way, unintentionally launching herself into a high speed cartwheel along the alleyway. In her surprise, she couldn't stick the landing, but the slow falling gave her more than enough time to recover, and she when she came to a halt, she was upright. Where did Zecora get something like this? I get the feeling there's something she's not telling. Pushing doubts out of her mind for now, she resumed playing distraction for Blueblood. There has to be a way to get close to him...
Kerrack. A chimney exploded with the sheer voltage running through it, flash-frying an unfortunate guardspony in the process and sending a hail of shrapnel at another two. This was just too easy - the mêlées between raiders and guards were just a minor distraction while King Eisen went around obliterating things with his trusty enchanted hammer. The few ponies with bows were too busy trying to keep raiders from overpowering their fellows to try and take him out. It really was just a walk in the park.
Clang. The sound of something pinging against his hammer distracted him momentarily, giving the cowering pony before him a chance to get away. An arrow had been magnetically drawn to the head, and was stuck flat to the side of it. When he looked the other way, he saw two ponies sitting behind a fallen pillar - a yellow one and a blue one with rainbow hair, holding a bow. The gryphon roared aloud, and barrelled towards the pair, his weapon building a charge as he went. They exchanged looks, and dove to opposite sides of the street, getting well out of the way before the pillar exploded in a mess of static discharges and flying marble. How dare they! Where's the one with the bow?
Rainbow Dash immediately took to the wing as soon as he saw his menacing gaze fix on her. Her leg may have taken a knock, but she was still good to fly. Spitfire had already made herself scarce, leaving Eisen no choice but to chase the pony he could see. Two full spins in place worked up enough of a charge to hurl another bolt of lightning at the little gnat.
Crack. Dash squeaked and flinched with how close that came - she wasn't able to see the path it had taken, but the corner of the nearest building was blackened and smoking. She decided not to hang about and get more acquainted with him. The gryphon king, however, disagreed - he took off after her, in his own cumbersome way, his weapon gathering charge as it sailed through the air.
Applejack stumbled to a stop in the middle of a small courtyard, in one of the more finished parts of the city. She leaned over to catch her breath, and crack a couple of knuckles back into place. She'd taken a few scrapes, and her last encounter with a gryphon had been a bit messy, but she wasn't worried about that.
"Applejack!" a voice called; behind her, Rarity, looking similarly rough, staggered through the arch, Spike still clutching the back of her head. "Any sign of them?"
"Nope..." the farm pony sighed. Fluttershy and Derpy were close by too, dropping in from above. "No luck either?" They shook their heads forebodingly.
Slam.
She stood up and looked around. "Uh-oh..." The heavy wooden gates had been slammed shut. One by one, from behind each arches of the cloister, a gryphon crept out, all of them leering hungrily at their trapped prey.
Spike gulped. "I don't think these guys are from the 'missing ponies' desk..."
The group instinctively formed a back-to-back defensive formation - Applejack put up her fists, Rarity drew her dagger, Derpy pulled Spike off the unicorn's head and brandished him like a flamethrower, holding his tail cocked back and pointing his face at the attackers (much to his chagrin). Fluttershy just kept her head down.
The rooftops were by far the most dangerous way to cross town in these conditions; gryphons circling above, arrows and spears flying everywhere, explosions, chaos gods and magic weapons... One thing they did boast, however, was an excellent view of the whole thing. The expanded Cutie Mark Crusaders moved fast and kept their wits about them as they tried to get an idea of what was going on. Most of the ponies they encountered were about as apt to talk as the gryphons, so they could only go on what they saw. Running battle between two Wonderbolts and a few isolated pillagers, city guards escorting civilians into shelter, their older sisters and friends surrounded by ravenous raiders... wait a second.
Out of the corner of her eye, Dinky spotted the scene in the square below them. She yanked on Applebloom's elbow to stop the group's progress. "Guys, look!" Pretty soon, they were all peeking over the edge at the standoff. A fight hadn't broken out yet, but it wouldn't be long.
"What do we do?" Sweetie Belle squeaked.
Dinky looked around the square and the nearby rooftops, gears turning in her head. A couple of things caught her interest; there were two sets of heavy gates on the plaza (including the ones recently closed), and a trolley full of tools lying overturned a few lengths away. "I think I have an idea..." Cautiously crawling to the trolley, she pulled it over to her friends and dumped the contents out. A couple of firm kicks separated the bottom rack from the rest of it, making a flat board with wheels. "Scootaloo."
"How is this..."
Dinky picked up the board and shoved it to the pegasus before she could protest. "Take this and distract the gryphons." Scootaloo went wide-eyed for a moment, before nodding seriously. "Sweetie Belle, Kalza, when that gate opens, get m- them..." She pointed to the cornered, increasingly anxious ponies. "And herd them out. Applebloom..." She picked a slightly rusty claw hammer from the pile of spilled tools. "Hammer."
"Hammer?"
"Hammer." Dinky pointed at the gates opposite the ones their guardians had entered through.
Applebloom took the tool, smirked and nodded. "Hammer!"
"Pipsqueak... where's Pip?" A quick scan of the rooftop, and then of the square, revealed that he was nowhere to be found.
"Oh no!"
"Don't panic, we'll worry about him in a minute. Now let's go!" Dinky pulled on Applebloom to lead her to the far side of the gate; Sweetie Belle and Kalza followed. Without delay, Scootaloo kicked off the rooftop and braced herself for one hell of a ride.
She was clutching the board all the way down, for want of a handle; that was essentially what this improvised vehicle boiled down to - a scooter without handlebars. She was sure she could manage it, but then again...
Thud. That landing was a little harder than she'd have liked, and the sounds coming from the trolley weren't reassuring. Still, she had a job to do. Distraction, distraction... Her recovery consisted of launching herself into the air and riding up the back of the nearest gryphon, using her wings for propulsion. She was only mounted on this one for a moment, before using its head as a ramp to kick off and ride through the air to the next one; now she was in her element. Using the heads and backs of the invaders as perches and ramps, she rode around the square pulling off every trick she could squeeze in, taunting the gryphons with her agility. Once Applejack and Rarity were done reeling from sheer confusion, they found the time to disarm and stun a few nearby raiders, really riling them up.
Outside, Dinky and Applebloom had stopped at the edge of the roof, overlooking the street behind the gate. Sweetie Belle and Kalza sat atop the arch, keeping one eye on the chaos in the courtyard. A pair of gryphons were slouching around on the road, licking their claws; Applebloom gulped. "Any bright ideas now?"
"I..." Dinky stopped when she spotted none other than Pipsqueak emerge from around a corner on the other side of the street, ten or fifteen yards from the gate. Without a care in the world, he strolled proudly up to the two idle raiders. "What is he doing..."
"Orright, chaps!" he declared, clapping to grab their attention. The gryphons were just as confused as the two fillies on the roof were; they exchanged bewildered glances, before simultaneously coming to the same internal conclusion; get him. At the first sign of their movement, Pip launched into a sprint the other way, staying just ahead of them as they stumbled after him. What perplexed Dinky the most was the look on his face; it went beyond the knowing smirk of a pony springing a trap. It looked like he was actually getting a kick out of throwing himself into danger like this. He disappeared around the corner with the two hungry gryphons in tow.
Thud. A veritable mountain of hay slid from the side street, burying the pair. A moment later, Pipsqueak emerged, brushing the dust off his hands and smiling triumphantly. Dinky gawped.
"C'mon, now's our chance, let's go!" Applebloom tugged her shoulder and hopped off the side.
On the ground, it was clear they'd never break down the door by brute force. But they could attack its weak points - Applebloom went straight for the lock, jamming the claw in between the metal front and the wood underneath, and then sitting on the hammer. If it worked like she thought it would, the hammer would work like a lever and rip the lock right out of th-
Crack. She felt herself fall, and overhead, the guts of the lock shot out and spilled over the street. Dinky yanked her away before the hammer landed on her, and they made good their escape. Overhead, Kalza launched from the top of the arch, with Sweetie Belle on top.
"Hey!" the unicorn squealed as they made a pass at the embattled ponies. "This way!" she managed on the return, desperately clinging on to the gryphlet's shoulder feathers for dear life. To make clear which way 'this' was, Kalza continued under the arch, narrowly passing through the opening doors.
Applejack couldn't help but smile. "There's our chance!" She grabbed Fluttershy by the shoulder and started pulling her along, with Derpy and Rarity covering their exit. Spike still wasn't too pleased about being used as a weapon. Scootaloo followed them out, riding out the last structural integrity of the trolley on the way out. As soon as she was through the gate, the back wheel snapped off, and she leapt from the board to a staggering stop. At least, until she realised she had to keep running.
Once they were safely in the basement of a house, they had time to catch their breath and think. Applejack couldn't stop beaming. "Did... did you littl'uns plan all that?"
Scootaloo chuckled. "Well, Dinky came up with the plan..."
"She did?" The little unicorn was already being held up by her mother, leaving her open to the assault of hugs and kisses. "Muffin, I'm so proud of you! That was amazing!"
"Mom!" she giggled.
"It's true!"
"Ah don't think we woulda made it outta there without you!"
Rarity frowned and whispered harshly; "We wouldn't have been in that mess if they hadn't run off in the first place."
"Hush, let 'em have their moment."
Derpy frowned when she felt a hole in Dinky's clothes. "Oh, doody, your pants are ripped..."
"Wh- Hey!" Blushing, she grabbed the tear and held it shut. Though... she was reminded of something. Out of curiosity, she looked again, holding the waist out to get a good look at her flank. She clapped her hand to her mouth at what she saw.
"What is it, muffin?"
After a pause, and a little giggle, she stuck her fingers in the rip and yanked it, making it wide enough to see the dark shield bearing a pale Florian cross. "Check it!"
"A cutie mark!"
"Your cutie mark?" Derpy was starting to choke up. Pipsqueak held off on celebrating with the other crusaders for a moment, while he checked his own side.
"Look!" He cried joyfully, holding the side of his trousers down barely enough to show off the golden astrolabe adorning his flank.
Applejack tipped her hat and smiled. "Well fancy that..."
Kalza chased her tail a couple of times, trying to catch a hopeful glance at her rear, but to her dismay, there was nothing there. It didn't bother her though - she'd never even heard of a cutie mark until two days ago, so suddenly finding one upon her flank was an outside hope at best.
Sailing through the air like this was a positively surreal feeling; it was almost like Twilight was dreaming. Zecora was right though - with the assistance of the amulet, she was proving quite the slippery customer, expending a fraction of the effort she had been before. Still, she was no closer to a solution. Blueblood was just proving to quick, and she had nothing at her disposal to take him down with anyway.
Crack. In the distance, she spotted the flash of lightning by a tower at the opposite end of the city, and Rainbow Dash fleeing from the scene. Hot on her heels was a familiar gryphon dragging a familiar magic polearm. The next time lightning struck, so did inspiration.
Darting from roof to roof, swerving her course to give Blueblood the runaround, and winking a few buildings away if she felt him snap her up, she made her way towards the other chase. There was no way she could stop to talk to her... but time could. To minimise the effort on her part, she waited until their aerial courses were passing hair-raisingly close; she managed to catch Dash whirling through the air upside down, just a foot over her head. Their mutual perceptions ground to a halt with the pair just about in view of each other; the cacophony of battle around them drained away, leaving them just with the sound of each others' voices.
"This is kinda creepy, Twi."
"Rainbow, I have an idea!"
"Y'wanna make it quick? This is a really, really weird place to stop for a chat."
"You're having problems with Eisen's hammer, and I'm having problems with Blueblood."
"Yeah, what's up with that? Why is he an alicorn?"
Twilight ignored the tangent. "How about we make them each others' problems?"
"Oh. Oh."
"As soon as we land, double back. Aim for me and try to catch me, and I'll get us out of dodge."
"Got it. Sure this'll work?"
"Have you got a better plan?"
Dash paused. "Ready when you are." Her prompt given, Twilight relaxed her mind, letting the spell unwind, and reality resume its normal speed. There were a few moments (maybe a few moments too many) where she felt wind slowly building speed around her, waiting anxiously for the thud of her hooves against shingles. When it came, there was the awkward flip through the air that had followed all of her landings so far; she had an improvised technique for regaining her footing from it. When she got a look behind her, she saw Rainbow Dash on the far end of the city, crouched against sheer wall, legs coiled like a spring. As instructed, she took off towards her, and she responded in kind. Blueblood overshot, falling for the feint with all the grace of a newborn foal. Eisen appeared to do the same, and double-backed, lagging substantially behind the pegasus.
One jump - so far so good. She tipped off a chimneypot to keep her momentum going, trying to keep as straight a course towards her friend as possible. She didn't dare look back to see if Blueblood was following her - she could feel him. Third jump - nearly there. She could see the glow on Eisen's hammer by now, and the whites in Dash's eyes. Dash dropped her spear - it would only pose a hazard now. Impact was imminent, as the final lengths closed in the blink of an eye. She winced, and thought of terra firma.
Thump.
The collision knocked the wind right out of her, very nearly distracted her from sending a charge through her horn, removing herself and Rainbow Dash from the danger zone in a burst of light.
Thud.
The ground hurt - the pair hit the cobblestones of the high street hard, Twilight going flat, and Rainbow Dash bouncing off her and landing on her back a few lengths away.
Boom.
Overhead, the sky tore itself open, initiating a maelstrom of magic localised entirely within a radius of ten feet. It lit up the city brighter than the sun for a few moments, and the noise made the battle sound like a tea party by comparison. A couple of seconds later, charred fragments and chunks of things that nobody wanted to describe rained down over the whole city. The sensory overload had the pair paralysed through the whole thing.
"Twilight, Rainbow! There you are! I feared you had been blown wide and far!" It could have been a few seconds later that Zecora was shaking them back to consciousness, or an hour; they couldn't tell.
Twilight groaned, rubbing her head as she sat up. "Did it... did it work?"
"I wasn't aware you had a scheme, but, I suppose..." The zebra smirked, and held aloft a gruesome trophy; a white unicorn's severed head, brutally disfigured by impact on one side, and charred all over. Twilight barely recognised the elegantly styled forelock with a single flyaway strand. "You tell me."
"Gross, get that away."
Dash was still hurting when she popped up off the ground and hovered around anxiously. "Where's Eisen? What happened?"
"I did not see where the gryphon king landed, but I doubt he fared well, if I may be candid."
Twilight looked around, thinking out her next move; Dash was just trying to figure out what Zecora said.
The crater of dirt left by his landing was practically smoking with the heat. His front right leg had been wrenched to an unnatural angle; he couldn't see how far in his blinding pain. His wings felt like they'd been obliterated, and he certainly wasn't in a state to get up. To make matters worse, he could just about make out the forms of figures gathering on the rooftops around him. Slender, winged forms, each of them drawing a bow as they took their place. They were silhouetted against the bright sky, only able to identify them by slivers of light through their manes. The flame-haired one was the last to take her place; her cold chuckle made his blood curdle. Or at least, the blood that remained in him.
"Shocking, isn't it?" she quipped, before letting loose her arrow. The thwup of the head penetrating his ribs prompted her fellows to follow suit.
"Spitfire, that was awful."
"I know."
"He's down for now, at least."
Dash wiped her brow. "That's one gryphon down, and..." For effect, she started looking around herself, and counting the gryphons she could see on her fingers.
Twilight gave her a dig in the arm, and got back to thinking. "Hm... the defenders are overwhelmed as it is, by the time the message gets to Cloudsdale it'll be too late, retreat will be very messy at this stage... Ugh!"
"Hm. Gotta wonder, you weren't working on some anti-gryphon spell or something in the last few months, would you?"
"No, don't be sil-" The unicorn froze in place. "That's it!I don't have a spell that can help... but I know somepony who does! Come on!"
As Twilight sprinted away, Dash scratched her head. "What is she talking about?" Zecora just shrugged.
The path outside Cadence and Shining Armor's hideout was a grisly sight. The mangled remains of a couple of gryphons and liberal quantities of blood marked the ground by the door; some furniture had been dragged across the doorway itself as a barricade. Twilight cautiously stepped up to the part left open; at the back of the room, Cadence was keeping a careful watch, levitating a heavy wooden beam near the door.
"Twilight! Am I glad to see you!" The pink unicorn breathed a sigh of relief, and dropped the plank.
The other easily moved the shelf aside to enter, with her two companions hot on her heels. "How's Shining doing?"
"Been better," he quipped; he was still lying on the floor and clutching his stomach. Twilight threw herself at his side.
"Shining, I need you to put up the shield spell."
"What?"
"Modify the shield you had up over the city earlier, so that it only screens for gryphons."
Cadence frowned, and tapped Twilight on the shoulder. "Can't you do it? He's still got a hole in his stomach."
"My knowledge on them is pretty basic, shields are Shining's specialty. That's uh... that's why he has a shield on his butt." The princess quirked a brow; he couldn't help but smile.
Behind them, Rainbow Dash was only now filtering the meaning of what was being said. "Shield... gryphons... Kalza!" At this, she bolted out the door, without giving any explanation.
"What's her problem?"
Twilight shrugged. "Anyway, Shining, you have to do this! Somehow! We're running out of options here!"
"Let me just..." He took a moment to try and pull himself up into a seated position; he was grunting from pain and visibly struggling. Once comfortable - or at least, the closest he could get to comfortable - he leaned forward and began firing up his horn. Alas - after a couple of sparks, the energy fizzled out, and he groaned.
"Move." Cadence shoved Twilight out of the way and sat down on Shining Armor's legs, straddling him. She was getting blood all over her dress, but she didn't care. She held him up by the chin in one hand, and pulled him close by his breastplate with the other. "You." She whispered, so quiet that Twilight could barely hear; this was for his ears only. "You big, goofy, hot-headed hero. You can do this. I know you can do this. I believe in you. I love you." Without wasting any more breath on words, she jammed her lips against his, and like the kiss of life, he hit a second wind. They hadn't even separated, and already his horn was lighting up, and bringing up a small shield bubble, swirling and creeping across the floor. Twilight couldn't quite believe it - the power of love was going to pull them out of the fire. Maybe she'd been a bit quick to write off emotion magic after all. Before long, the spell was in full swing; Shining was still holding his lover close, and the bubble glowed brightly. Now for the hard part. He took a deep breath, and sent the shield thundering outwards.
"Kalza? Kalza!" Dash frantically scoured the streets from the air, dodging confrontations rather than getting embroiled in them. "Agh, not again!"
Nearby, Applejack was cautiously leading a convoy of survivors to safety; their improvised bunker from the night before would be ideal, but any suitably sheltered place would be a start. Spirits were high, despite everything; it was hard to bring down the mood of two young ponies who'd just earned their cutie marks, and their joy was infectious. Derpy couldn't be prouder of her little rescuer, and she couldn't wait to bring news of Pipsqueak's adventure to his mother.
Thud. Rainbow Dash touched down next to them, bringing a gust of refreshing cool wind with her.
"Hey, Rainbow! What's..." Applejack's greeting went ignored; Dash went straight to hurriedly lifting Sweetie Belle off of Kalza's back. "... goin'... on..."
The little unicorn wasn't too pleased with her rough treatment. "Hey! What's the big idea?"
"No time!" Dash blurted, before grabbing Kalza by the claw and taking to the air with her.
"Ow, ow, ow!" The gryphlet struggled for a moment to hang so that she wasn't twisting her leg; apparently wherever they had to get to so fast was more important than her comfort. A series of squawks in the distance, accompanied by the sickening cracks of bodies being thrown around like toys, only hastened Dash's flight. Looking back at the city rushing past them, Kalza could see the same pink dome as yesterday peak over the rooftops, phasing through the buildings, and any ponies she saw wandering around - but every gryphon was being scooped up and hurled into the air at dizzying speed. Those unfortunate enough to be on the ground - by now, most of the horde - were caught between the growing shield and the buildings, crushed and ground until the smears of gore couldn't be recognised as gryphons anymore. Dash dared not look back - every distraction was an inch the shield gained on them. She just kept flying, clutching Kalza with a deathly grip, until the screams stopped.
She whizzed over the city walls, passing Pinkie Pie close enough to smell gunpowder, and kept going another twenty lengths or so for good measure. There was an eerie quiet - the battle had gone silent, leaving only the sounds of the few dazed gryphons sliding off the shield and off the cliff side. Only a handful recovered before meeting a sticky end; among them, a familiar face, that cast Dash and Kalza a baleful look, before limping away with the other survivors.
On the walls, Pinkie Pie found herself a perch atop the remains of a spire. She had to look a couple of times to make sure she was seeing what she thought she saw. Inside, calm; stunned ponies at a loss to explain where the battle had gone. Outside, the scant remnants of the horde slinking away with their tails between their legs. She saw no more fitting declaration of triumph than to throw her arms in the air and scream. No fear scream was this; this was the fiery roar of victory. Gradually, the ponies below twigged; one by one, they realised their achievement, and soon, hearty cheers rang out from the city.
Outside, Kalza wriggled free of Rainbow Dash's grip, and fluttered up to hug her around the neck. It knocked a sigh of relief out of her.
Leave felt good. Even a few days after the chaotic Third Battle of Canterlot (they'd started keeping count), Rainbow Dash was still sporting bandages and keeping off her right leg, but only as far as the doctors would be appeased. She'd spent the last couple of days under a self-imposed news blackout; she didn't want to hear about anything she couldn't do anything about. Aside from anything else, it gave her a chance to spend some time in Ponyville with Scootaloo and Kalza, and get to know them better. When she spotted them sitting by themselves on a rooftop, she dropped down to perch behind them.
"Hey guys!" Ow.
"Rainbow Dash!" As soon as she was down, they attacked her with hugs.
She wheezed at the pressure on still sensitive spots, but held it in until she could peel them off. "Whatcha doing up here? You look kinda... well, bored."
"We're waiting for Sweetie Belle!" Scootaloo pointed at the inconspicuous terrace across the street. "She's talking to Vinyl... pony."
"Vinyl Scratch."
"That's the one!"
"Wow..." Dash chuckled. "Who'da thunk."
"Then we're heading to Applebloom's to meet up with the others!"
"Not a bad plan. Speaking of you... what is it, six now?" The two kids nodded. "Now that you've all got your cutie marks, are you still gonna be the Cutie Mark Crusaders?"
Scootaloo pouted. "I... hadn't thought of that! Maybe we need a new name! Right?"
"Sure..." Kalza laid her chin on her claws.
Dash frowned, looking her over; her flank was bare as a newborn. "It... Kalza, does it bother you that gryphons don't get cutie marks?"
"I... guess it shouldn't... still feels like... like I'm missing out on something."
Dash rubbed her chin. "Well... lemme put it to you this way. I'm always going to be a flier. Sweetie Belle's always going to be a singer. Scootaloo's always gonna be a... scooter." The little pegasus gave her a playful thump. "If we get bored of those talents, or worse, something happens that we can't do them anymore - like, I dunno, I break my wings - that's it. That's a personal crisis waiting to happen right there. But you... you can't be defined by a symbol on your butt. You can be whoever you want to be."
It took the gryphlet a couple of moments to grasp what was being said, but she soon smiled, and nodded. "Hmm... yeah!"
"And if you really want to fit in, we can get you a thing called a tattoo, but not 'til you're older." Scootaloo and Kalza exchanged puzzled looks. Dash shook her head - the meaning was lost on them. "Anyway. While I'm thinking about it..." She put a hand on the shoulders of both of them. "I just wanted to say, I'm really proud of both of you. Everything that happened in Canterlot. That was really brave of you, especially you standing up to Wolfram." She ruffled the gryphlet's crest, and she giggled, swatting her hand away. "If and when I have kids of my own, if they could be half the pon- half the people you are, I'd be thrilled." The pair blushed at the praise, and threw themselves at their guardian to hug her waist.
The sound of a door opening broke up the moment; a little white unicorn skipped out of the door across the street, humming merrily to herself.
"There's Sweetie Belle!"
"Okay, skin me some." Dash held her fist horizontal; Scootaloo quickly responded in kind, bumping knuckles with her. Kalza blinked, taking a moment to get it, before following suit. "Now go!" Without needing to be told twice, they hopped off the roof to join their friend, waving as they left. Rainbow Dash smiled and watched them go, before taking off again, hurrying on to her prior engagement.
Rainbow Dash swung open the door to the library, finding her friends already present; Twilight flipping through a couple of official looking papers, Applejack looking over her shoulder, Rarity and Fluttershy sitting quietly in seats to the side, and Pinkie hanging upside down from the mezzanine handrail. Spike was busying himself with stacking shelves - finally they were getting around to tidying up the library. Derpy was probably off doing rounds, and there was no telling where Zecora was. Immediately, she fluttered to a perch atop the mezzanine.
"Oh! You made it!" Twilight perked up, hearing her friend come in.
"Duh, course I did," Dash chuckled. "So what's the news? Gimme the short version."
Twilight rolled her eyes. "Well... since I've already discussed things at length with the rest of you... Let's see. The remnants of the horde have been spotted in full retreat, and Trottingham was found empty. The northern border is being reinforced before resettling can begin, but things are starting to go back to normal up there. Uhm... Cloudsdale!" Dash looked up from quietly stashing Daring Do and the Sapphire Stone inside her jacket. "After Jetstream died, executive authority fell to his second-in-command, General Thunderboom. As soon as he got the full story on what happened at Canterlot, his first actions were to annul the secession and issue Soarin a full pardon. He says the offer for the Wonderbolts to return to Cloudsdale still stands, but you probably know how that's going better than me."
Dash snorted. "Spitfire's looking forward to practicing tricks instead of attack formations, so it might be a while before we go back."
Twilight quirked a brow and smiled. "I see. Anyway, speaking of new leaders, Princess Cadence is due to be crowned in the next few weeks, and we're all invited!" Rarity was visibly elated, and Pinkie Pie babbled an incoherent alliterative sentence about parties. The others were more quietly pleased. "This is after a few important things are taken care of. Her, Thunderboom and the Mayor are going to meet for negotiation in the next few days, and... well, something tells me they're going to be a lot more productive than the last round of talks."
Applejack chuckled. "No kiddin'."
"What else do we have here... As soon as the succession is dealt with, Cadence and Shining Armor are going to get on with planning their wedding, uhm..."
"I meant to ask," Dash cut in. "What happened to Discord in the end? Considering how worked up we were over him, he just kinda... stopped being important at pretty short notice."
Twilight hesitated. Not out of fear; more of thought. "I... never figured out exactly what happened. One moment he was laughing in my ear, then halfway through Blueblood's ritual, he just started screaming, like he was afraid of something... and then he was gone. I didn't get a look at the exact ritual he used, but based on what happened after, we guessed it was a power drain, like to the one that we used on the djinn, only absorbing the power himself. Since there doesn't appear to have been a trace of him afterwards, we can only suppose that... that is the end of Discord."
Fwsh.
A burst of light by the stairs grabbed the attention of the room. A group of ponies were staggered along the staircase, looking for all the world like a mariachi band - sombreros, violins, guitars and trumpets. And slouched along the staircase was an entirely too familiar form, dressed to match.
"Au contraire, mes petits poneys!" he exclaimed. "He's back!" Without further ado, he conjured a trumpet from thin air and led the band off. Most of the group had looks hanging somewhere neatly between exasperation, disbelief and flat-out confusion. Rainbow Dash and Applejack immediately started moving to attack. Discord was on the ball though; he broke off his trumpet overture and clicked his fingers, summoning six cigars - one for everyone in the audience, already in their mouths. "Relax..." The gesture confused them enough to halt their charge and inspect the cigars. Twilight did not look impressed. "Since the cavalcade of shenanigans in Canterlot, my power in this plane is a mere fraction of what it once was. Heck, if Shining Armor hadn't pulled through, I might not even be here! So unless you're allergic to parlour tricks, I can't hurt you."
"Swell," Applejack deadpanned.
"Don't fret, Applejack! My good fortune is your good fortune!" With another click of his fingers, a pair of dancers appeared on each of her arms, fawning over her and dressed in what most might consider 'barely enough'. She just gave Discord a hard glare. "Oh, you're so stolid! You weren't like that before the djinn!" The stare only intensified. The draconequus rolled his eyes and sighed. "Very well..." Another click, and the girls disappeared... only to reappear by Rainbow Dash. She was in less of a hurry to complain.
Twilight, who had been watching this with an incredulous gawp, decided she'd had enough. "Discord!"
"But I feel like celebrating!"
"I don't!"
Reluctantly, he frowned and nodded. "Alright..." Click. The phantom mares vanished, leaving Dash looking slightly disappointed.
Twilight furrowed her brow. "All of it."
"Ugh..." Click. The mariachi band disappeared in a flash of light, leaving just himself slouched over the banister.
"Now, at the risk of being rude..."
He was quick to take the hint. "Yes, once again I've overstayed my welcome. Before my brush with mortality I was ill-equipped to be personable with you, but for my continued existence you have my everlasting gratitude." She wasn't sure if the kiss he blew was sincere, or just a taunt. "Until next time!" The prospect of there even being a 'next time' made Twilight groan. "Ah, but... before I go. There's a debt I wish to repay... to all of you." Discord slunk from his perch, making a pass at the whole room, before settling behind Twilight's shoulder. "Think of it... as a going-away present." With another flash, he was gone, leaving not a trace.
Snort. That was unexpected. Twilight doubled over a second time, slightly confused about the smile that briefly crossed her lips. She looked around - her friends were just as bewildered as she was. Out of nowhere, Rarity let slip a little giggle. Applejack choked back a snicker. Behind her, Rainbow Dash had been holding her breath for a couple of seconds now, before finally losing her resolve and giving in to a hearty whoop of laughter. Before long, the whole room was in stitches.
"Why are we - hic - laughing?" Pinkie was just about able to manage between chuckles, before losing her grip and crashing to the floor in one of the unsorted heaps of books.
"I don't know!"
Minutes passed before they were finally able to settle down. Wiping a tear from her eye, Twilight steadied herself on a shelf, and turned back to her notes. "Oh, I haven't laughed like that in so long... that was... that was good." As Spike was recovering, another noise escaped him - a deep belch that knocked him on his rump, and a scroll materialised from the twist of green fire that resulted, landing with a bonk on the unicorn's head. The little dragon chuckled at the turnaround, from a petty incident a number of days ago that likely only he remembered. She shook herself off, picked the scroll off the floor, and unfurled it to read.
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
You've done it! The Great Bridge is ship-shape again, good as new. We don't know how you did it, but regardless, thank you.
Sincerely, Battenberg, Duke of Trottingham
"Well? What's it say?" Rainbow Dash asked.
Twilight quirked a brow and folded the message back up. "Hmm. There might be a... sliver of humanity in Discord after all." When she fired the scroll away to a nearby table, there was another flash. A lit cigar appeared in her empty hand, between two fingers, and in the smoke, Discord's face was looking at her.
