Tyranny of the Sun

Chapter 2

The next morning I woke up early and slipped back to the car for the royal guards without waking anyone. My logical thinking had finally taken control once again, and I knew I couldn't risk getting caught by FeatherQuill, our tour director. If she had caught us like that, her first thought would have been that we had spent the night "riding the rails." After that, she would have freaked out and gotten half the train to come running, which would have created a huge scene that Twilight did not need. Besides, she had a big day ahead of her and I only would have gotten in the way of any preparations.

Once in my room, I extended my magic out to the lock on my chest and began to pick it open. At the beginning of the tour I had lost the key to it, however as a result the chest actually became more secure, because instead of having a key to the chest, the only way someone could get to the contents of it was if they knew how to pick locks. I felt the dark blue magic field slowly wrap around each tumbler and push it into place. Once the final tumbler was set, I opened the lid and levitated out what was inside.

I placed the small bundle that held my armor on the bed and began to magically pick up each piece and place them on my body. The armor was similar in make to those the royal guards wore, except instead of being colored gold, the plates varied between dark blue and purple. Along with the armor plating came a cloak and hood of similar colors that attached to my shoulder plates. I had always enjoyed wearing the dark-colored hooded armor as it had a way of naturally repelling those who would normally want to converse with me, and such distractions were not needed while being a bodyguard.

Once the cloak had clicked into place, I pulled the hood over my head and than picked up the last part of my uniform. With the sword floating in front of me in its sheath, I began inspecting it as I usually do. Once I was done with that I pulled the curved blade out and checked it as well. Just like every other time, the blade was spotless. A ritual inspection such as this would make more sense if I actually used my sword, but it never hurt to make sure. I slid the blade back into the sheath and than attached the sheath to its place on my right side.

As I headed for the door, I glanced toward my mirror, the only other thing in my room. I definitely looked menacing in this armor. I questioned why Celestia would have chosen these colors for the armor of a royal bodyguard, but I didn't give it so much as a second thought and continued out of my room.

I walked back to Twilight's car, where I took my position outside of her door. Looking around, I watched the other royal guards on the car begin to wake up and get ready. Although I was Twilight's personal bodyguard, we had brought a whole squad of guards along on the tour. The only reason my room wasn't taken up by another royal guard was because the stallion's wife had just given birth to a child and he didn't want to leave her alone with the child for a year. I suppose Twilight saw this as an opportunity to bring some friendly company on the tour and asked me to come along.

As the white pegasi dashed about preparing for work, I saw a few glance at me. You would think that out of all the ponies in Equestria to not be afraid of the stallion in the dark cloak it would be the royal guard, but unfortunately the opposite was true. The only people that seemed willing to talk to me on this tour while I was in uniform was FeatherQuill and Twilight.

Suddenly the sound of rapid wing flapping and yelling came from the opposite side of the car and interrupted my thoughts. FeatherQuill dashed through the door and ran clumsily toward me. As she made her way to my side of the car, she bumped into nearly everything she could. Guards, armor pieces, she even bumped into one of the light fixture on the roof when she tried to fly over it all. Through out all of this, she was muttering to herself "oh no, oh no, oh no!"

Finally the clumsy pegasus was in front of me, except she landed on her snout. Sighing silently to myself, I leaned down and helped her on her hooves and made sure she hadn't hurt herself. "You okay there FeatherQui-"

"Don't worry about me!" she interrupted "Is the princess ready? What about the guards? Did you make sure nothing happened to her last night? We are so close to Canterlot I can practically smell Donut Joe's baked goods from here and we need to be prepared when we see Celestia!!!"

As she stopped to take a breath, I quickly interjected. "First off, I don't know if the princess is ready. Second, I'm not the guard's commanding officer, I'm more like a hired mercenary, so their progress with preparations is completely unknown to me. And third, I am absolutely sure that nothing happened to her last night."

Thankfully she didn't ask how I knew that

My answers didn't seem to calm her though, as she just had more questions. "What about you? Is your armor polished? Did you sharpen your sword? What abo-"

"HEY!!!!" I interrupted before she could drive me to insanity. "Would you relax? If you must know, Princess Celestia visited Ponyville awhile back, and I can tell you now she isn't going to be that uptight." That seemed to calm her a bit, but only enough to slow her barrage of questions.

"Oooooh where is Princess Twilight? What if she overslept?" she began to chew on her hoof.

"How about this?" I said calmly "I'll check on the princess while you go find Spike and make sure he is ready."

The suggestion seemed to make her even more frantic as she dashed back the way she came. "Oh no! I forgot about Spike! I need to go find him and make sure his scales are clean and that his breath..."

I felt a small amount of regret for putting Spike in that position, but I needed to get FeatherQuill away from me at least until we got to Canterlot and she saw there was nothing to worry about. I turned to knock on Twilight's door, but just as I rose my hoof the door opened.

Twilight looked just as she did the day of her coronation, with the gown, hair and everything. The only visible evidence that it had been a year since that historic event was that the gown's tail was now shorter due to her growing taller since than. Even with the slight difference, it was still a perfect fit on her.

"Hello, you in there Sleight?"

I suddenly realized that I had been staring at her dumbfounded. Quickly shaking off my daze, I responded quickly. "Oh, yeah, sorry, I was just... thinking." Twilight giggled at my strange response, making me wonder why I had stood there transfixed for so long. Was something wrong with me?

She looked up at me and said "I missed you this morning." Obviously she was looking for an answer as to my sneaking out. With that strange feeling returning, I felt the need to not give her my answer so bluntly.

In what I believed to be an apologetic tone, I told her the truth. "Sorry about that, but imagine if FeatherQuill had seen us like that. She is already so stressed about going to Canterlot, she doesn't need to be more worried than she already is."

"I suppose you're right." I couldn't tell if she meant it or not, but before my strange emotion could convince me to say something, we heard Spike cry out through the door. Down the hall came Spike as he ran on all fours towards us. Even though he had nearly doubled in size since last year, it had not hindered his ability to move. Before we knew it he had made it to us and hidden between Twilight's legs.

Twilight bent her neck down to speak to him. "Spike, what's wrong? You know you are getting a little big to be hiding like this."

"But Twilight, she is trying to buff my scales with something that smells like lemons!"

Twilight put a hoof to her face and sighed. By now, Spike was considered an adolescent dragon so behavior such as this was becoming ridiculous. With no dragons for Spike to look up to though it would be difficult for him to grow up right.

Suddenly FeatherQuill ran in with a brush covered with soap in her mouth. Though she couldn't talk quite right, she still managed to say "Spike, get back here!" With the guards all gone to their posts, she had room to charge down the hall at Spike. She was clearly determined to get him clean for the event in Canterlot, but Spike wasn't going to make it easy for her.

"You'll never take me alive!' he yelled as he jumped out from underneath Twilight's legs and landed on my head. Before I could regain my balance, the dragon leapt off and stuck his claws into the ceiling and made his way past FeatherQuill and out the door. The force of his leap caused to me to land on my armored side.

FeatherQuill let out a battle cry: "You'll never escape!" and before I could stand back up she had left the train car in hot pursuit.

Twilight walked up next to me. "Oh my, are you alright?" I nodded in response, still feeling a twang of pain in my side from the armor hitting my ribs. Twilight looked down the hall at the door. "I should teach that dragon some manners now that he's gotten so big."

"All in due time Twilight. Right now you just have to worry about your meeting with Princess Celestia."

Without warning, Twilight snuggled up against me. "And all you have to worry about is protecting me." I felt my face go aflame once again.

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Well, it wouldn't be a princess' visit to a city without a parade, right?

Apparently we weren't told that to get to the castle, we would have to parade there. I guess we should have assumed we would have to do something like this considering the last time we were here was the coronation. That and the fact FeatherQuill had been in such a panicked state before, she probably forgot to tell us. Although we were sure whatever Celestia had to tell us was more important than a parade, we begrudgingly accepted our fate and Twilight climbed into the carriage. As two royal guards pulled the carriage slowly down the road, I trotted along side it examining the crowd for threats just as I had done in the other cities we had visited.

The crowds cheered at the sight of the Princess of Friendship. Children sat on their parent's shoulders to get a better look, photographers took pictures, and Twilight waved to all the ponies she hadn't seen in a year. Who could have guessed that the presence of one mare could make all these people so happy? It certainly didn't make sense to me.

Just as I was thinking of letting my guard down and enjoying the parade, I suddenly heard a large bang come from the other side of the carriage. Acting on instinct, I leapt on top of the carriage and pulled my blade from its sheath with my mouth. As I landed, I quickly looked for the source of the loud noise, determined to strike down whatever the threat was.

What I saw was not what I had intended.

Turns out the loud bang had come from a young colt's homemade fireworks. He had set them off hoping to impress the princess. The last thing he had expected to happen was for a stallion in dark armor to jump up on the carriage ready to strike. For a second, the colt looked like he was about to cry at the sight of me, but than suddenly his mother started pointing at his flank in excitement. He turned to look and found a cutie mark of a firework rocket on his flank. His expression of fear turned into excitement as the little guy started jumping around joyfully.

Now that I was sure that nothing was threatening the princess' safety, I sheathed my blade and stepped down. After a brief pause, the parade continued as normal with me trotting alongside the carriage. I glanced back at the small colt as he was showing off his cutie mark to his friends. I personally never understood why getting one's cutie mark was so special, but watching the foal reminded me of the day I had gotten my own cutie mark.

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It started back at my school in Fillydelphia. I had been a shy kid and had few friends, but I wasn't sad. I had found ways of entertaining myself without the need for others so I was fine with not knowing anyone. Our school was placed near a cliff for some reason, however they had built a fence around the playground to keep us from getting too close to the edge and the teacher was always watching over us during recess.

One day while we were out playing, the teacher was stung by a bee and had to go back inside to treat it. Of course, some of the more adventurous kids took this as a chance to climb under the fence and play outside the playground. At first, I wasn't interested at all in their escape. I was much more interested in the book I was reading, but suddenly I heard some screaming coming from over the fence. To this day I'm not sure what drove me to go try and help those kids who I had never even talked to before, but I did.

Once on the other side of the fence, I ran toward the screaming until I found two of the kids who had escaped. They were standing at the edge of a cliff looking over the edge and yelling at something below. I walked up and looked at what they were screaming at and found the third of their group hanging by a branch sticking out of the cliff. I could tell that the branch wasn't going to hold for long so I told one of the colt's up on the cliff with me to run and get the teacher.

As he ran off toward the school, I began to search the cliff for anything I could use to get down to her. I managed to see a few small perches that I could jump on if I landed on them right. Without thinking, I began to climb down until I was standing next to the filly as she hanged on for dear life. Just as I was about to try and reach out for one of her hooves, the branch finally gave when and she began to fall.

Yet again acting on instinct, I grabbed her with magic and levitated her into a small hole in the cliff wall only slightly bigger than the filly was. I was so tired after exerting myself I nearly fell off the ledge I was standing on. Once I had sat down, the filly I had saved called out to me.

"How are we going to get back up the cliff?" she asked. It was clear she was too shaken up to climb up herself.

Before I talked to her, I tried to make sure I sounded more confident than I actually was."We're just going to have to stay here until Ms. Buttercup gets here. I don't have the strength to levitate you all the way up." She nodded in response, not able to complain since the hole I had placed her in was too small for her to move much.

Once Ms. Buttercup made it to the cliff, she used her magic to lift the two of use carefully back on top of the cliff. Just as we both landed, the colt who had run off to get help looked at me startled. "He-hey! You got your cutie mark!" he exclaimed. Everyone, including myself, turned to look at my flank. Just like the colt had said, there was my cutie mark, a target with three daggers sticking out of the center.

When I saw my cutie mark, at first I was confused. "What does a target and daggers have to do with saving someone from a cliff?" I asked Ms. Buttercup. She herself looked puzzled about it, but before she could answer, the filly I rescued spoke up.

"Well, you landed on those rocks perfectly, and than managed to pick me up and place me exactly in a small hole. Maybe your talent is being exact!" I thought about it for a bit and realized she was right. My talent was being able to do things accurately!

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My talent had never been anything that interesting. I had been forced to make something from my talent, becoming deft in multiple things. Acrobatics, lock-picking, even swordplay required accuracy, which made learning these things much easier for me than most ponies, but I wasn't as good as a pony who's talent was specifically one of those things.

Realizing I had dozed off, I cleared my head and looked up to see the carriage had gotten ahead of me. Scolding myself for my day-dreaming, I dashed ahead to catch up.