An icy breeze blew through the training grounds, sending shivers down the spines of everypony present. Shining Armor looked up from the clipboard he was levitating in front of him, getting a good look at the recruits in front of him. Of course, he had his Captain of the Crystal Guard to assess and train new guards, but Shining liked to keep his hoof in, get acquainted with them before he might have to depend on them to take an arrow or a spell for him or his wife.
As he watched the guards practice wielding training spears (weighted wooden poles), he flipped through the paper and read the notes he was given on each of the recruits. A chill wind flipped the sheets up, one by one, till the whole bunch was hanging off the end of the clipboard, holding onto the clip for dear life. Sighing, Shining Armor gripped onto the papers and flipped them back onto the clipboard with a flick of his horn. Just as he was about to start finding his way back to his place in the group of notes, a freezing gust blew the whole lot over, dislodging about half the pages and causing them to be blown all across the race-track. Huffing, the Prince started swiping at the pages with his magic, but they kept fluttering out of reach. The wind was picking up, and it was infuriating him. He'd have to talk to the head of the weather team about this – he would have worn warmer clothes if he'd known it'd be this cold today.
Slightly annoyed, Shining walked up to Sapphire Shield, a blue crystal mare who was in charge of training his guards. “Sapphire, I'm sorry about this, but I've gotta talk to the weather ponies. We're not due a blizzard today, but I think we might be getting one. Look after the recruits for a bit, ok?”
She nodded, and performed a small salute. “Yes Shining Armor Sir!” she barked, making him smile a little. Sapphire always set a good example in everything she did in front of recruits.
Turning away, Shining Armor started a gentle trot towards the barracks, from which he could enter the castle proper. Once in the castle he could clime to the weather office from which the pegasus and unicorn weather ponies coordinated weather across the crystal city and outlying farmland.
The door was covered in a gentle patina of frost, which was a bit surprising – it had only been a couple of minutes since it'd gotten cold enough for frost to form. Shining Armor paused a moment before cocking his head slightly and opening the door.
Cadence had a rare hour of rest. Sombra's mad policies of strict punishment, insane laws and ridiculous grandstanding had plunged the Crystal Empire into disarray, resulting in massive problems across the whole domain. Under his rule the Crystal Empire lost two whole cities and countless small towns and villages, until only the capital remained.
As a result, Cadence had a lot of rebuilding to oversee; countless meetings with engineers, trade associations, workers guilds and newly established unions to arrange simple necessities such as aqueducts, houses, sewers, plumbing... Cadence felt now that she could go for one of Twilight's famed panic attacks, just to let it all out. But that wouldn't do.
Cadence lifted her leg up to her breast, breathing in, and swung it out, breathing out. Let it go, but calmly. Panic doesn't help, auntie always said, even when one desperately wants to panic. Too many slips and the whole thing may shatter; especially while it was as fragile as the Crystal Empire.
A shiver ran up Cadence's spine. With a start, Cadence realized that she was quite cold. Looking around, she noticed several other things. Firstly, the whole room was covered in a thin layer of ice. Secondly, her pony-sized windows were wide open. Thirdly, and most shockingly, something seemed to be grinning at her from just outside.
Shining Armor was starting to panic: there had been frost on each door he'd encountered on his way into the castle and up the spire. And each time he'd reached a door it had thicker ice on it. His instincts had first told him to find the weather ponies, but now this felt less like an accidental storm and more like an invasion. He'd rounded up any pony he could find and set them to chip away at important doors – like the armoury door, the pantry door and the door to the royal chambers, which he himself was working on at the moment, bombarding the door with offensive spells which could shatter most wooden doors with ease.
After an hour of bombardment, and three reinforced ice doors broken down into slurry and toothpicks, Shining looked in upon his bedroom, where he was disappointed to find, as with all the rooms in his suite, no trace of his wife. Except that there were traces, this time; scorch marks and hurled objects, surrounded and covered by a ubiquitous ice – evidence of a struggle.
The guard in Shining recognized immediately that some terrorist had forcibly taken Princess Cadence. The best thing to do, it reasoned, was to send a message to Princess Celestia and send out search parties. Shocked, lost and confused, the husband in him mutely agreed. “Guards! To me!”
Author's Note
My brother challenged me to write a fan-fiction. Here's my first attempt
Feedback would be nice.
Twilight was out for the afternoon and Spike was cleaning the library when he felt a familiar queeziness coming on. Quickly, so as to not burn anything (goodness knows he wasn't going to forget that escapade anytime soon), Spike turned away from the shelf he was facing and grabbed hold of it to steady himself.
Each note felt different. Like, a note would feel various levels of nausiating depending on how big it was, and lots of them would make him feel very ill, but they also had ... a character to them. Most of the notes felt calm, sometimes he could almost taste Celestia's wry grin of amusement as she sent the missive.
This note, like only one other before, felt dreadful – as in, full of dread. Or rather, heavy anxiety. So it was with trepidation that Spike grabbed the small letter and read it through, and with outright panic that he rushed out in search of his guardian.
"Now, you girls learnt yer lesson? Farm tools are dangerous and should never be used fer givin' mane-cuts!" Applejack oversaw the Cutie Mark Tearaways cleaning out the cowshed. The chore was actually quite an easy one – the cows were generally quite tidy whenever they stayed the night, and all that really needed doing was changing some of the hay bedding.
"Fer the hundredth time, yes! Ah'm sorry we borrowed yer shears! We won't do it again!" Applebloom did look sorry, and they'd been at it for an hour now.
"Okay, y'all can leave now. But Ah'm mighty peeved at this, Applebloom. Ah don't think Scootaloo's parents'll be too impressed with her new mane-style." Applebloom and Sweetie Belle looked a little ashamed at that. Scootaloo seemed to beam, though.
"I think it looks cool," the orange filly reasured her friends, as they all fled.
About a minute of peace was all the time Applejack got before a purple and green blur burst into the cowshed, stopping and panting, bent over, for half a minute when he saw her. "Applejack-I-need-to-know-where" he gasped, "Twilight is."
"Whoa there, partner! What's wrong?" Spike looked like he'd been running all afternoon, and his eyes were wide, panicked, glancing all around.
"Cadence!" he sobbed, the word feeling like a cork popping out of a barrel, "Cadence has disappeared, no-one knows where she's gone." He started blubbering, and Applejack pulled him towards a straw bale to sit down. "I've got to find Twilight and you five and get you to the library. But I couldn't find anyone and I was worried and-"
Sitting down next to the baby dragon, Applejack tried to comfort him, pulling him into a hug. "Hush, now, Spike. Calm down, yer panicking. Panicking won't find Twilight, and it'll just make you more worried. Now, Ah want you ta start from the top. Tell me how ya heard alla' this."
"A l-letter. F-from the Princess. She s-said to gather at the library, and she'd be sending guards to pick us up." Spike seemed to have calmed down a bit now. At least, he'd stopped shiverring quite so much. “But Rarity and Pinkie Pie aren't at their homes. I don't know where anypony is.”
"Okay, sugarcube. Ah think Twilight's out at Fluttershy's place with the others, somethin' about tea with Discord? Ah couldn't attend on account of the Cutie Mark Pain-In-The-Butts sleepin' over here, but Ah think Big Mac'll have'ta handle them tonight. Jump on up," Applejack moved so that Spike could climb onto her back. He clearly appreciated the offer, and climed on with a small "Thanks."
The teaparties were quite fun, when you relaxed into them. Discord would make bad jokes all evening, and sometimes cutlery would rather dance across the table than stick in your hooves, but Discord was surprisingly well mannered when the mood took him, and quite a good conversationalist.
Twilight especially enjoyed hearing Discord's plans for his book. Or books. He was never clear which, and Twilight had thought he was making some convoluted joke she didn't quite understand until a manuscript appeared on her desk one evening. It was ten pages, written in various different scripts – from cursive to gothic – and was a strange mix of prose and poetry. It was... Shocking, to say the least.
It seemed to be about a young unicorn colt who was the personal student of Prince Shineymane Sunbum, and who needed to learn about the magic of friendship before the full moon on Nightmare Night, when Baddreams Skyrock would escape from his prison on a star by crashing it into the moon. Unfortunately, the nameless protagonist is too wrapped up in his studies of children's stories to make friends. The manuscript finished as he arrived in Ponytown and started talking with his assistant, the talking manticore pup Prickle, about the preparations for the town's Nightmare Night extravaganza.
Twilight actually felt flattered, in a way. At least he hadn't called the unicorn Midday Sprinkleflanks.
Fluttershy's cottage door had never seemed so intimidating. Spike stood slightly behind Applejack, fiddling nervously with his claws. They'd decided that Applejack would bring Twilight out and then he'd tell her the bad news. He really wasn't looking forwards to this.
Applejack knocked on the door, three times. Discord's face appeared on it and immediately broke into a beaming grin. “Applejack! And the dragon! What a pleasant surprise! You arrived just in time for desert, you lucky things,” he exclaimed as the door swung open, and bowed for them.
“Darling, hello!” Rarity had left the table and was moving to intercept Applejack as she entered the room, “While I love seeing you, I thought you were looking after the Crusaders tonight?”
“They're bein' looked after by Big Mac. We've got trouble,” all six ponies started paying attention now, “Twilight, could we talk outside fer a bit? You need to hear this first.”
Confused, and a little worried, Twilight nodded, “Yeah, sure.”
Outside, Twilight was surprised to see Spike looking rather worse for wear, and he looked like he'd been crying. Before he said a word, she rushed to him and swept him into a tight hug. “Oh Spike, what's wrong? Why have you been crying?” she lifted her hoof to stroke the spines on his head.
“Cadence,” he started, gravely, “She's... She's missing. They think she was kidnapped.”
“What?” Twilight froze, “H-how? Who could kidnap an Alicorn? Sombra?”
“I don't know, Twilight, but we've gotta get to the library. Celestia's sent some guards to pick us and the other five up from there.” Spike seemed surprisingly composed, but he'd had longer to deal with this than her, so she supposed that made sense.
Twilight sighed, closing her eyes before breathing out deeply to try and calm herself down. I can panic later. Panic won't help right now. Withdrawing from Spike's embrace, Twilight forced herself to take the news in her stride. “Right... Okay. Let's get the others then,” her voice sounded weak, even to her.
Still, Applejack jumped to it. “Ah'll go an' get the others, then.” She headed into the cottage.
After a second, Twilight had a thought. “Spike, can you send a letter?”
“Yeah, certainly. I don't have any parchment, though.”
“That's fine, I've got some,” she always brought paper and a quill to the tea parties, just in case Discord had some important insight into magic or philosophy that she wanted to remember.
As she started putting pen to parchment, two bodies emerged from the doorway. “Ah'm sorry, Twilight, but he wants to come too.” She'd forgotten about Discord. After a few moment's indecision, Twilight figured his powers couldn't be more useful than in this crisis.
“Okay, the Princess will want to talk to you anyway. Could you teleport us all to the library?”
“Why Twilight, it would be my honour to perform magic for you. Everyone, on the count of three. One,” he raised his talon in preparation, “Two-” The world went white.
Author's Note
Alright! Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading the second chapter.
