By InquisitorM
“This is so boring.”
Discord lay on his back, limbs draped off each corner of his personal flying carpet. None of the driving sleet landed on the draconequus – or Fluttershy, for that matter – but Cadance rapidly disappeared under the mountain of ice and snow accumulating on her back.
“Aunty Luna said we do it on hoof, so we do it on hoof.”
The princess trudged one leg at a time through snow that came up past her knees, while Fluttershy strolled casually along in her jaunty red hat and scarf.
“She said it was important.”
“Balderdash. Luna thinks that everything is important. Except perhaps smiling. Or manners. Or wasting my time.”
Cadance narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “Such a shame you don’t mind wasting your breath.”
“Wasting my breath?” Discord appeared directly above the princess. “But that’s the first time you’ve cracked a scowl all day. I shall consider my duty fulfilled. Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t bring Shining Armpit along to keep you warm. Such a pity I missed your wedding. I hear it was a thing of exquisite beauty.”
A small crystal bounced off Cadance’s nose, then another – frozen crocodile tears.
“A catastrophe of chaos and destruction.” Discord released a wistful sigh. “You simply must do it again sometime. I can remove that insufferable simpleton you call a husband, if that’s holding you back.”
Cadance growled and shook herself vigorously, ice and snow flying everywhere, but again, none of it stuck to Fluttershy. She adjusted her snow-trekking whites and pulled the veil down. “Just tell me we’re still going in the right direction.”
“Of course we’re going the right direction.” Discord’s forearm detached, spun in the air until it came to rest with a talon pointing ahead, then reattached itself. “We were going the right way an hour ago, and we were going the right way an hour before that. A draconequus could get the idea that some ponies don’t trust him.”
“Oh we trust you, Discord.” Cadance’s lips twisted into a faint sneer as she surveyed the endless snowdrift in every direction. “We trust you to twist everything around you until—” She stopped and sighed. “Let go, Discord.”
“What?” He released his grip, and her tail unwound itself like an elastic band. “I’m bored. The least you could do is tell me what we’re searching for.”
Cadance shook out her tail, but its colours still mingled into a single, matted mess. “I told you an hour ago, and I told you an hour before that,” she said, a wry grin spreading across her face. “Princess Luna didn’t tell me what it was we were looking for. She only told me that it was important to find it, and to make the journey on hoof, and that only you could find it for us.”
“Only me,” he repeated in a slow drawl, jumping into the air and landing on his freshly re-summoned carpet. “I guess dear Aunty Luna meant for you to trust me after all. Perhaps if you were truly her friend, you’d trust her judgement too. Isn’t that right, Fluttershy?”
Fluttershy frowned at him, but said nothing.
~ ♫ ~
Frostbite stood in the centre of the chasm. A superstitious pony might think there was some grander work ahoof – finding a half-dozen beleaguered refugees in an ice fissure she wouldn’t usually go near – but escorting ponies through the hazards of the ice wastes had honed her senses. She was a day from home when she spotted the tracks.
Given the howling blizzard above, they had to have been fresh; the ponies had taken to the chasm for protection against the winds. There they’d stayed, huddled for warmth exactly where she could find them.
In the cold truth of the wastes, they should have died there, but she wasn’t about to let them go without a fight.
“Hurry up,” she shouted, the echo of her voice distorting as it bounced between the jagged walls of ice. The gap was three or four ponies wide at the bottom and five to six at most towards the top. Entering had been a gamble, but not entering it would probably have killed them as well.
“You said we shouldn’t push too hard,” said the unicorn at the head of the pack. Ice Pick, some kind of geologist, was the brains of the outfit, which explained why they were so hopelessly lost – a passing knowledge of ice drifts and he thought he could lead ponies across days of snow and ice to the salvation of Canonfall Gulch.
They hadn’t made it two days. Turning them back was the only option, no matter how much they hated the idea – and hate it they did.
“I also said we need to get back before another of your idiot friends gets themselves killed or your supplies run out.”
No replies. At first they’d riposted out of fear or desperation, but slowly, she imagined, the truth of the situation buried itself into their hearts and minds. Cold could kill the body with ease, but it was the mind that usually froze first. Ten times, she’d led ponies from the borders of the empire to the habitable tundras of the south; only four times had she made it without losing a pony along the way, and these ponies hadn’t even started with the right equipment or supplies.
This wasn’t going to end well.
“I’m going to press ahead,” she said. They’d already lost the company’s pegasus. She’d howled and screamed at him not to go, but he wouldn’t listen. The moment he crested the chasm’s rim, he just vanished. He was dead – she knew that much. Damned unicorns were just as bad – always thinking that some fancy trick or ad-hoc plan was going to get them out of a tough spot.
The basics: that’s what kept ponies alive. No mistakes. No slacking. No heroes. It wasn’t their fault, in the end, but a bleeding heart wasn’t going to save them.
“I need to find us some shelter or find out where this chasm ends. Keep moving… or die.”
But she knew where it ended, and it could not be climbed without equipment they didn’t have. There was no way she could have left them, so now she just had to save herself and hope the rest would fall into place.
~ ♫ ~
“I’m sorry,” Fluttershy said quietly.
Discord sped back and forth on his carpet now that Cadance had finally stopped gracing his ribbing with replies. Occasionally he’d nose-dive into the snow and pop out somewhere random, even though it was only barrel-deep at most.
Cadance pulled her storm-veil down. Behind it, her face was drawn and her eyes sullen. “It’s okay, Fluttershy. I can handle the cold, and I’m glad he’s protecting you. It actually makes me feel a bit better about all this.”
“It does?”
“I mean, I’m not saying I trust him, but just seeing that he cares about you at all lets me hope that he won’t just leave us to die out here. And… he isn’t the only one that wishes he knew why we were here.” She pouted a little, then gave a weak, lopsided grin. “Not just what we’re looking for, but why Luna didn’t come herself. It’s all very strange.”
Fluttershy smiled back. “He can be really helpful, if you let him. You just have to let him do it his own way.”
“I can’t.” Cadance gave Fluttershy a weary frown. “Luna was very specific: as long as we’re not in danger, we’re to make the journey on hoof. Right now, you’re living proof that we’re not in danger as long as Discord is around. I just hate having to rely on him.” She looked down, watching the ease with which Fluttershy’s hooves cut through the snow, and sighed. “A little of that wouldn’t hurt, though.”
They marched slowly and silently on. Fluttershy’s nose wrinkled as she worked her jaw, deep in thought. Eventually, she stopped.
“Discord?”
The draconequus appeared instantly.
“My dear Fluttershy,” he said, slightly narrowing his eyes at Cadance for a moment. “What can I possibly do to make your journey easier? A hoof rub perhaps? A steaming hot bath?” A metal tub appeared in the snow, vapours rising from inside and out as the snow around it melted quickly. “Perhaps I could, I don’t know, take us all directly to the source of the anomaly without wasting all this time? Ah.” Discord prostrated himself by removing his head and bowing so deeply his neck vanished into the snow.
Fluttershy grimaced and recoiled.
“My apologies for speaking out of turn, Fluttershy,” he said, standing and reconnecting his head. “It seems all this ungratefulness brings out the worst in me.”
“Discord, stop it!” Cadance stood, growling and heaving as her tail unwound again.
With a faint giggle, Fluttershy trotted forward. She reared up and placed her hooves upon Discord’s chest, and when he leant down, she whispered into his ear. A broad grin spread across his maw until that maw had to widen itself to make space for more.
“Well,” he said, stretching his arms out and yawning. “I’ll just be up front waiting for miss goody four-shoes.” He jumped into the air, landed in a large, one-draconequus canoe and started paddling his way rapidly through the snow, leaving a pony-width trail behind him.
Cadance blinked. “How did you do that?”
“I just suggested that he could try tempting you with something to see if you would give in.” Fluttershy stepped into the void left by the canoe and started trotting along. The snow was only ankle deep. “Of course, I don’t think Luna would mind at all.”
Falling in behind, Cadance giggled. “No, I don’t think so either. On hoof is on hoof, right? But I am impressed, Fluttershy.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she replied. “I told you: he wants to help. He just likes to think he’s winning.”
Far in the distance, Discord leant back in his canoe, smiled a wicked smile, and chuckled, the oars still paddling away after he’d released them. “Ahh, my little Fluttershy is learning. It’s such a joy to watch them grow.”
~ ♫ ~
Frostbite couldn’t go far without her little flock of lost ponies disappearing from view. The chasm narrowed as she pressed on, and changes of direction became more erratic. The end would come soon – if not the end of the chasm itself, then the end of where they could walk and the start of where they would climb out.
She hoped it wouldn’t be the latter. A half-dozen refugees already weakened from exposure wouldn’t get far. Maybe a single, inexperienced climber she could account for, but these walls were high enough that a slip could mean breaking something, and that led to much worse. Ponies didn’t react well to broken bones, she found. Somepony would panic, another would freeze up completely, and one would probably insist on staying behind with some brain-dead notion of waiting for rescue.
It’s not that she was against sentimentality – it just had a bad habit of getting ponies killed. Surviving nightfall was already going to be dicey.
Around another sharp corner, the chasm leant to one side and tapered in at the top rather than opening out. Frostbite threw open one of her saddlebags and withdrew a set of crampons; if they were going to climb out anywhere, an almost one-to-one incline seemed to be the best opportunity they were likely to find. She stamped each one firmly into place and tested it thoroughly before affixing the next. The ice was climbable enough, but she’d need to rig up a rope to expect the others to make it.
Spared much of the pitiless weather above, the ice still held a rough surface from when it was hewn. Even without crampons, she could probably have climbed much of it. It was strange to think about how many factors had brought her to this point: a father with a penchant for climbing glaciers, a mother who made sure she grew up strong and independent, and a decade of prowling the wastes before a great shadow settled over all she had ever known and cut her off from both of them.
But there were other ponies here and now that needed her thoughts.
She halted her climb after driving the second of her anchors into the ice and looked back down the chasm. The others. She could barely remember their names. There was Ice Pick, and… Oakleigh? Oak Key? Firelight had been the pegasus’s name; she’d shout that loudly enough that it still rang in her ears even now. But in the end, they were all mere footnotes in her life.
That didn’t matter; she just had to keep them alive. That was all that mattered.
She pressed upwards and pulled out another anchor. A few digs with the back of a crampon to make the start of another hole and she drove it in, deep enough to stand on its own while she took out a small mallet. It was basic gear, but she liked basic. Basic kept her alive. Basic was functional. Basic would keep them all alive.
Further up the climb, she fixed a fourth anchor, but as she drove in a fifth, a mighty crack sundered the space between the peals of her mallet.
She froze.
It could be nothing, but she knew the sound of ice cracking – a lot of ice.
A smaller noise followed it, more like a slowly splintering tree this time – a series of tiny fractures. The sound saturated her, bouncing off ice all around her and making it hard to pinpoint. Another deeper, larger crack rolled through the chasm – a sound felt in her bones more than her ears – and something caught her eye: a sudden discolouration, deep within the ice of the looming overhang.
She watched, her heart hammering in her chest and eyes boring into the ice. Perhaps her hammering had started something – ice was a funny beast like that. Just the right frequency, or just the right amount of extra weight, and whole world could shift in a—
She reached up instinctively as another crack split the air, and a sheet of white, freshly-hewn ice appeared deep inside the outcropping. Her hooves pressed against the glacial wall in front of her. It seemed impossible to think that she could be holding back such a colossal scar inside the ice.
Releasing the pressure slightly, she could pick out the sound of tiny fractures that accompanied the deepening fissure. When she pushed hard, the sound stopped.
A glance to the left. A glance to the right. She was far ahead of the group, and if enough ice broke off, it could seal up the pathway and doom them all.
Of course, she would be safe if she could make it to the top before it gave way. And perhaps even then, the ice could break up and make it more climbable, but that was unicorn thinking – if it wasn’t climbable, her gear would be lost and her flock would likely die.
Father wouldn’t have approved of that. He used to say that being strong and independent was a means to leading ponies forward, not leaving them behind.
“Umm, help?” she said, loudly, but not shouting. The sound echoed through the chasm as she adjusted her position to brace herself properly against the ice.
“Anypony?”
~ ♫ ~
The gouge in the snow ended in a block of ice with a frozen Discord inside it.
Cadance rushed forward and tapped a booted hoof against the smooth wall of the block.
“Discord?”
Fluttershy pulled alongside her and smiled.
“He’s okay,” she said, the smile twisting into a smirk. “We should probably keep going; he’ll get bored of being bored soon.”
The not-so-frozen Discord frowned within the ice block. After a brief nuzzle against the ice, Fluttershy trotted onward with Cadance dropping in behind her, slower now that she was wading through the snow again.
Without warning, Fluttershy upended and fell face-first into the deepening snow, popping up a moment later with a big pile of it on her hat and a smaller pile on the bridge of her nose.
She sneezed.
“Fluttershy? Are you okay?” Cadance lit her horn and brushed the snow from Fluttershy’s hat. “Are you cold?”
After another sneeze, Fluttershy rubbed her nose. “I’m okay. It just tickled.” She brushed a hoof through the snow, which now resisted as it should, and grinned. “I think somepony wants a little atten—”
“Pony?” Discord yelled from atop his ice block, a perfect negative-image left inside it. “Do I look like some kind of—” He froze, somewhat less literally this time, and then clasped his paw and claw to his chest as if gripping invisible lapels. “Well played, Fluttershy,” he said, straight-faced and deadpan. “Well played.”
A snowball struck him on the forehead. Two holes appeared on his snow-covered face as he blinked, and Cadance disappeared under an impromptu avalanche.
“Well,” Discord said as the princess’s head popped out of the pile. “If we’ve all had our fun, I suppose it might be a good time to take a rest.”
The ground rumbled, and Fluttershy backed up, slowly. The snow parted behind Discord, a spire of ice rising up out of nowhere and widening as a whole tower followed it. Then, the tips of eight buttresses pierced the snow, and the draconequus himself soared upwards, carried aloft by the tower’s balcony.
Fully formed, the tower of crystal and ice stood taller than Ponyville’s town hall.
“It’s missing something,” Discord shouted from high above. “Aha!” he coughed daintily and then spread his arms wide.
“Let it snow, let it—”
“Aaaaah!” Cadance screamed, retreating into her snow-pile.
~ ♫ ~
Frostbite adjusted herself again, trying to let as much of her weight take the strain as she could. She had no way of knowing how this would play out. She could doom herself by holding up this oversized ice-cube until she froze, or she could take her chances and hope the wreckage was still climbable.
It would probably shatter, but when you trusted the dice – when you forsook reality and put your faith in luck – you got snake eyes. That was the way of the world.
That was Mother talking: safety first, don’t leave things to chance.
That was before the great shadow fell.
She’d dodged it the first time, but these other ponies hadn’t. She’d dodged it by not setting foot inside the Crystal Empire for years, but they’d lived it. Likely they’d seen – probably experienced – horrors nopony should even know about. Few ponies escaped. Sombra didn’t bother protecting the northern border; it was a death sentence to the untrained.
They should be dead, but she’d found them, and now she was trying to save them. Maybe death out here wasn’t so bad compared to torture and enslavement back there. Maybe rolling the dice made sense – take a chance on a real life and accept death as an inevitable risk for them all. It’s not like anypony would blame her. How many lives had she saved already? How many more lives would she risk by not making it back herself? How stupid would she feel if she got herself killed trying to hold up a small glacier? She had to be a fool to think she could hold all this up for long enough. A healthy, resilient, and strong earth pony she may be, but just a pony, in the end. The harsh wind from above already seared the skin beneath her coat; these things were best avoided, else they would kill you.
All she had to do was remove her hooves and her crampons, plus many years of experience, would carry her to the top quickly enough. She just had to remove her hooves and let go of this ridiculous idea of propping up so much ice.
Remove her hooves.
Any time now.
Frostbite released a long sigh. “Silly mare. You’re getting soft in your old age.”
Old? Hardly. Not old enough by far, but neither were those ponies counting on her. If she were down there, she’d want the pony up here to hold on as long as possible, just in case – in case the alternative was dying in a frozen hell-hole.
In hindsight, maybe the ‘move or die’ routine wasn’t the best way to motivate them, either. These ponies were more afraid of Sombra’s cruelty than dying in the wastes, and she was telling them they had to risk going back. Of course they were afraid. They had every right to be.
Maybe a little less stick and little more carrot might help in future, and maybe she might feel a bit less like a self-righteous brute in the meantime.
Maybe that’s what Dad had always meant: leading didn’t have to be from the front; it could be from the middle, too.
Next time. Right now she’d be happy to do hooficures at each rest-stop so long as there was a next time. At the very least, she had plenty of thinking time to come up with something slightly less ridiculous than her current not-a-plan.
~ ♫ ~
The large hall was warm, and the bed looked warmer still. The bath, however… the bath was steaming.
“No,” Cadance said with an emphatic shake of her head, backing away. “No way. Not until I know what the catch is.”
“The catch?” Discord spluttered and shrugged. “How inconceivably rude to imply that I, Discord, newly recruited into the army of friendship and rainbows and cuddly little bunnies, would need some ulterior motivation to provide warmth and comfort to my dear friends.”
“Fluttershy is your ‘dear friend’.” Cadance narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think I’m much more than your plaything.”
Discord gasped. “Why, Princess, I am deeply wounded by—”
“If only,” Cadance said under her breath, sneering as she lifted an ice crab out from the bath.
“Oh. Don’t worry about him. He was here first.”
Cadance sniffed the water. Cadance dipped a hoof in the water. Cadance swallowed hard and stepped fully into the bath. She hunkered down, tucking her abused tail between her legs and sinking down until her nose was just above the waterline, watching Discord like an alligator. Her eyes held Discord’s gaze for several moments before he turned and skulked off towards Fluttershy.
The pegasus snuggled tightly into her unfeasibly large, pillow-laden bed. The moon was out, but she wasn’t asleep yet.
“Is everything okay?” she asked quietly. “You’re acting very strangely.”
“Strangely?” Discord’s head snaked into Fluttershy’s view from above, then righted itself – or wronged itself, considering his body didn’t follow naturally. “Ahem. Lord of Chaos?”
“You know I don’t like it when you do that,” Fluttershy replied, rolling away from him. “And yes. Friends notice when friends are acting strangely.”
Discord laid himself out, a hoof’s width above the bed. “I see.” He idly rubbed his fang with his serpentine tongue. “I suppose that noticing how you say ‘Cadance’, and ‘Luna’, rather than ‘Princess’, would count as noticing friends acting strangely, wouldn’t it?”
There was no immediate reply, but Fluttershy rolled back over and stared at the draconequus, who stared in turn at the ceiling with paw and claw locked together behind his head.
“I do?”
“You do.”
Her eyes scanned him up and down and she pursed her lips and frowned. She pulled back the sheet and leant up, wrapping her legs around him and pressing her cheek against his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for being my friend. I wish you could be Cadance’s friend, too.”
Discord rumbled, deep down in his throat – a long, musing thrum. “I think she rather enjoys the challenge. She’s not like you.”
“She’s also frustrated that she doesn’t know any more than you do. She wants to get home, but she doesn’t want to fail Luna. It’s important to her.”
“Ahh, yes. Dear Aunty Luna. You know, I think she enjoys being cryptic more than I do – or Celestia, for that matter. I must admit that I have no idea why she didn’t want me to tell you what it was I have been following. I mean, ponies get so fidgety when they find out other ponies are withholding information from them, and if you or Princess Well-Bleached should—”
“You didn’t…”
“—were to find out that Luna knew exactly what we’re out here looking for… Well, a draconequus couldn’t be blamed for that.”
“Tell me you didn’t.” Fluttershy dropped back to the bed and frowned again.
Discord gave her a cheesy grin. “Of course not. I’m being nice. I need to buy some time.”
“I thought you were keeping us here for a reason.” Fluttershy wrapped herself up in the covers again. “It’s beneath us, isn’t it?”
~ ♫ ~
“Help!”
The shout echoed off the chasm walls, rebounding again and again.
“Hurry up!”
A few more cracking sounds emanated from the ice – smaller and crisper than the really big ones, but still worrying. Maybe shouting was harming as much as it was helping.
They should have arrived by now. Even at their most languorous they should have been here. Not that it mattered anymore. Her core temperature had been falling slowly, but now…
The biting cold in her hooves was to be expected, but the warm sensation in her cannons meant only one thing.
~ ♫ ~
“What do you mean, weakened?” Fluttershy sat up on her pile of pillows.
“Since I had my magic returned it just hasn’t been the same.” There was nothing left in Discord’s voice but a hollowness. “There is something below us, and I can’t penetrate it. It’s all rather embarrassing, really. I suppose I deserve that, after everything I’ve done.”
“No.” Cadance’s voice sailed across the hall, clear as polished crystal. Her hooves clinked across the ice towards them, her coat, mane, and tail bleach-white up to her muzzle.
“You got me, and I was mad until I realised you somehow did it without poisoning me, but… you still don’t deserve that.” She flopped her mane to one side and wrung it tightly with her hooves, streams of water running out and splashing on the ground. “I know how it feels not to be able to do the things you’re supposed to do. I’m supposed to be the princess of an empire, but Luna asks me to come out here on hoof like some kind of personal squire and doesn’t tell me a thing about what it’s for. And I get that you want to use the magic you can do, it’s just… I’m tired and I want to go home, but as Princess Cadance, I can’t go home until I’ve found whatever this is we’re looking for.”
Discord pulled off one of his horns and waved it like a wand; Cadance’s coat puffed out, fluffy, dry, and properly coloured. She smoothed her chest-hair with a hoof and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said, walking towards the bed. “I mean it, but I can’t just trust you, Discord. I have obligations. I have subjects. But there was a time when you’d have laughed in our faces because the one time we wanted you to help, you actually couldn’t. That’s not the creature I see before me. You’ve changed, so why don’t we put the masks away and see what we can come up with?” She reached out a hoof and rested it on his midriff. “That’s honesty. Trust comes later.”
Flopping onto the bed, Discord groaned.
“I have no idea. I honestly don’t. There’s a lot of crystal down below and it’s just… dead. It doesn’t respond to me at all – as if it’s simply impervious to change.” He yawned and grabbed the bedsheet, pulling it off Fluttershy and wrapping it around himself as he got comfortable.
“Maybe if I just get some… some sleep I can… in the morning…”
Discord snored.
Fluttershy sat up, still blinking.
“Come on, Fluttershy,” said Cadance, gesturing towards her own bed. “You had it easy on the way here; it’s your turn to keep me warm.”
~ ♫ ~
Frostbite, thought Frostbite. Great. A kingdom enslaved and the world still keeps a fine sense of dramatic irony.
Technically, it was just frostnip, and an early onset at that. Nothing she couldn’t walk off if she wasn’t stuck here trying to hold the lives of six ponies she could barely remember in her hooves. She could just let go, climb to the top, pull her extra layer from her saddlebag, and get her blood flowing again. Maybe a week of rest, at most, when she had the chance.
She could just let go…
She couldn’t just let go.
Sorry, Mom.
It shouldn’t be happening because she should have put the extra layer on before climbing. She should have waited for backup before even starting.
It wouldn’t have happened if she’d stuck to the basics. Of course, it wouldn’t have happened if her wards hadn’t stopped to contemplate their navels somewhere along the way, but… no, she couldn’t blame them for that. Maybe they needed her down there, somewhere. Maybe something had gone wrong, and she was too far ahead to do anything about it.
And that was the truth: she couldn’t let go because she had made mistakes. She’d sacrificed ponies to save parties before, but the truth was that by the time they got here she would be the one slowing them down.
No tents, no blankets, no hope of starting a fire: speed was the only thing that could get them home alive, but that speed had made her sloppy. Maybe that had doomed them all already.
In her haste, she’d left them behind.
Sorry, Dad. I…I don’t think I’m coming home.
~ ♫ ~
Discord sat bolt upright. The sound of pot smashing against pan dulled into a mute thumping as the offending kitchenware turned into pillows.
“He’s awake,” Cadance said with a smile.
“What in Equestria would you do that for?” Discord picked his fang up from the bed and popped it back into place. “And where did you get those from anyway?”
“Never mind that.” She tossed the pillows aside. “Can you amplify my voice so it reaches down into the crystals below?”
“I… well… yes? Are we having a singing contest now? Couldn’t that wait for an eon or two?” Discord rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms wide, and yawned. “Or for someone who cares?”
Cadance frowned, inhaled sharply, opened her mouth… and said nothing; Fluttershy stared at her with a much deeper, more severe frown. She took a longer, slower breath, but still pursed her lips sourly.
“Okay, fine. Discord, I think I know how we can get at the thing below us and… I need your help to do it. I can’t do it without you.”
Slowly, Discord’s face twisted into a grin, but before he could speak, he found Fluttershy’s pointed glare directed his way.
“Well,” he said in a slow drawl. “Perhaps if you were to explain your intentions, I could give you some idea of whether I can help. Ponies are so bad at asking for what they really want and always complain when I give it to them.”
Fluttershy stepped onto the bed and lay down next to Discord, a playful smile melting her frown away.
“Cadance remembered that the last princess of the Crystal Empire, Princess Flute—”
“Technically,” Cadance said, “Empress Flute.”
“—Empress Flute, could make crystals so tough that even magic couldn’t break them unless they resonated at just the right frequency. Cadance thinks that maybe that’s what you can feel below us, or even…”
“Empress Flute herself.” Cadance fell back onto her haunches. “Nopony knows what happened to her after Sombra seized power and hid the Crystal Heart. It was just assumed that he killed her once he’d learned how to corrupt her crystals. It’s the only thing that explains Aunty Luna being so secretive.”
The large, ground-floor room fell silent, save for the muted howl of the wind outside. Discord stared at the floor, eyes vacant, as he sat on the edge of the bed and twiddled his thumbs. Fluttershy crept closer to him and stretched a hoof out to gently brush his side.
“And what makes you think you can find the right resonance?” He set his pawed hand down on the bed where it just happened to brush against Fluttershy’s leg. “How would you even know if it was working?”
Cadance chewed her lip for a moment and rubbed one foreleg against the other. “Well, I’m just guessing, but I had a cutie mark of the Crystal Heart before the Crystal Empire even reappeared, my name is Princess Cadance, and I have a good singing voice – the last ruler used sound frequencies to modify crystal. If Luna does know what’s down here, I’m hoping she sent exactly whom she needed to make it happen.” She inhaled and exhaled loudly. “For once, I’m hoping it’s really that easy.”
Sprouting a long, thin moustache and smoothing it with his claw, Discord rose from the bed. He paced slowly away from the ponies and halted in the middle of the large room.
“Don’t you think it’s possible?” Fluttershy said.
“Possible?” Discord spun on one heel to face them, his expression holding his usual mischievous brightness as he chuckled. “It’s practically inconceivable! The potential for such cosmic coincidence or meticulous predestination is truly tantalising.”
In a blink, he was next to Cadance, craning his head down almost cheek to cheek. “Promise me you’ll never tell Twilight about this, but…” He sprang into the centre of the room, spreading his arms wide and raising his mouth to bellow into the rafters: “Let us all do an experiment, for science!” The room flashed from a nearby bolt of lightning, and thunder rumbled overhead.
When Fluttershy giggled, Cadance shot her a half-lidded stare.
“Seriously. How do you put up with him?”
Before Fluttershy could answer, Cadance was wrested from the ground and stuffed into a large birdcage dangling over a giant megaphone stuffed into the icy floor.
“Discord!” Cadance growled and bared her teeth.
He tutted and tapped the cage with his conductor’s baton. “Didn’t I already say that ponies always complain when they get what they want? You have piqued my curiosity, and now you will sing, my little song-pony!” His voice soared and filled the rafters with his exuberance. “Sing like the potential cosmic improbability you are!”
“Oh boy.” Cadance slumped in her cage, but cleared her throat and inhaled.
~ ♫ ~
As it turned out, it wasn’t the frostbite that was going to get her killed. More likely, it was the means by which she would be crushed by ice.
All four ankles burned at the hoof, and her strength began to fail her. Her lips stung, her face was numb, and she couldn’t hear much beyond the howling winds. They could be at the bottom of the chasm below her, and she probably wouldn’t know it. She did know the ice was cracking, because while she couldn’t hear it, nor feel it in her hooves, she could feel it in her very bones – possibly because they were the only parts of her not seized by cold.
Of all the idiotic ends, to fail in her self-imposed sacrifice would just be… well, perhaps it was something the world was better off forgetting.
No.
“Huh?” The word came out muffled, her mouth barely responding to her will. She strained her ears; either there was someone there or she was finally going crazy.
“M… Mom?”
Do you remember me, little one?
Frostbite shook her head, then raised her bleary, unfocused eyes upwards.
“Empress?”
I have waited inside the Crystal Heart where Sombra could not find me, but it seems the salvation I was hoping for will not come. But don’t worry, little one, the future is bright – very, very bright. It just isn’t for us.
The voice wasn’t on the outside, so Frostbite closed her nearly useless eyes.
“Empress Flute? We all thought you were dead!”
The Empress, a tall, silver-grey unicorn speckled with rainbow light from hundreds of decorative crystals in her golden mane, stood regal and proud in Frostbite’s mind.
“Perhaps I am,” she said, her firm tone already starting to push away the throbbing of Frostbite’s limbs. “Sombra destroyed my body, but the Crystal Heart is made to absorb the essence of the ponies it protects. There is a piece of you in here, from many years ago – that’s how I can join with you. There is some of Princess Luna here, too, and I have learned much.
“Through her, I found the tree from which the Elements of Harmony came. I have touched its magic and seen the future. There is a path that will end this nightmare, but it is not for now, and it is not for us. There is darkness in Luna, and she will not be able to defeat Sombra, even with Celestia’s help. I mean to use the power of the Crystal Heart to seal my kingdom away until the Elements of Harmony are reunited. Equestria will have one thousand years of peace in our absence, and when the time of strife is upon them, our people will be freed. You and I will be long gone, but please let me spare you a little of the Crystal Heart’s power as reward for your service to the ponies I cherish so dearly.”
Her inner world was black, and all Frostbite could see was her Empress. It wasn’t like a dream; she wasn’t imagining herself speaking to the Empress in some other realm. It was as if she were too numb even to imagine herself being whole.
“I’m going to die,” she said quietly.
“I’m afraid so. But you were right. I felt your fears about the futility of your sacrifice, and I can tell you, you were right. So strong. So courageous. You will not survive, but they will, if you let me to help you. I can take your pain away; you do not deserve it.”
“I can’t!” If she’d had a body in her mind’s eye, its legs would have been gesticulating wildly. “I can’t give up now! What happens if—”
“Hush now.” The Empress’s tone sharpened. “Let the Heart turn you into crystal that will hold for all time – a monument to the last hero of our age.”
“A… hero?”
“Yes, child, for that is all I have left to bestow upon you. And soon, when the Empire is gone, I will return to rest with you – the last piece of me in this world.”
~ ♫ ~
The spire reverberated with Cadance’s heavenly voice. Simple scales at first, and then long, slowly rising notes that covered everything in between as Discord probed the floor with a stethoscope.
Cadance’s voice cracked – a twisted staccato note followed by long rasp.
“Cadance?” Fluttershy leapt towards the princess’s birdcage. “Cadance, are you okay?”
The princess hacked and coughed, looking down at Fluttershy with one eye while the rest of her face contorted into a rictus of discomfort. She choked out a few hoarse words: “Should have warmed up.”
“Discord!” Fluttershy’s hooves danced nervously from side to side as she spoke hurriedly. “Please bring her down from there. She’s hurt!”
In a flash of light, everything vanished, replaced by a snowless circle where the spire had been and the blizzard that howled around them against the night sky. Fluttershy pounced towards Cadance and began massaging the princess’s throat with the confidence of a professional.
“I must confess,” Discord said, standing tall and eyeing the back of his claws with a lofty disinterest, “you are quite the surprise, Miss Cadance. I’m also surprised that you two haven’t found an excuse to sing a duet, but your marvellous singing voice cannot possibly unlock the secrets hidden below.”
Cadance slumped under Fluttershy’s ministrations.
“However, it just so happens that my genius can.” He interlocked his fingers and cracked his knuckles, then produced two giant tuning forks from behind his back. As Fluttershy looked up at him, he also sprouted a second head.
“May I?” the extra head said.
“Oh, but of course,” the first replied. “Be my guest.”
“My, my, I do have such wonderful manners. Anyway, it seems that, if your Empress Flute activated these marvellous crystals by merely singing, she must have been able to sing in two voices from only one head.”
“Quite a feat,” the first head said.
The second head frowned.
“Don’t interrupt me. You should know better.”
“Of course,” Cadance whispered, her voice still hoarse. “The Empress could play dual registers with her flute!”
“Exactly!” first head cried. Second head vanished in a puff of smoke. “Never mind. He was too pompous, anyway.” Discord stabbed the tuning forks into the ice at his feet. “Alternatively, the superior mind simply cheats.”
He flicked both forks simultaneously, producing a single, perfect chord, followed by a deep rumbling in the ice beneath them.
“I appreciate your desire to bask in my magnificence, but you may want to stand back a little.”
The two ponies edged towards the border where the storm raged outside, while Discord raised his conductor’s baton and began swishing away in wide, emphatic strokes. A few seconds later, as the rumbling intensified, he bent down and tapped the centre of the cleared ice. It shattered at the delicate touch, cracks running outward in every direction until the centre finally splintered as a piece of crystal pierced the surface.
~ ♫ ~
“What is it, Ice Pick?”
“Well it’s crystal, obviously, but it looks almost organic – like some kind of growth between the ice. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Do you think it’s why Frostbite climbed up here? She must not have had enough anchors and used this as a fall-back point.”
“Maybe. I wish I could study this, though.”
“Ahh, stick it in your pipe. We already lost an hour looking for Barkley’s dumb locket. If Frostbite has gone on without us because of that, I swear… well, you’ll wish you were Sombra’s plaything and not mine.”
“Enough! Corona, Ice Pick, Barkley. Frostbite said we were within a day of the Windstriker Plains, and that this crevice was going in the right direction. If we follow it until the blizzard lets up, we’ll be able to see home before sunset.”
“But there’s a pale blue light inside—”
“Ice Pick! What part of ‘shift your fat rump or die alone with your stupid crystals’ isn’t getting through?”
“Okay! Okay. It’s just… Okay, I’m coming…”
~ ♫ ~
A pale rainbow of colours writhed and flickered within the twisted mass of crystal three ponies high, moving in languid swirls at Cadance’s touch.
“Is it alive? Is it her?” she asked, croaking.
“It’s beautiful,” Fluttershy added, pulling alongside Cadance. She gave the princess a bright smile and then turned to Discord.
“I have no idea.” The draconequus ran a claw along one of the vine-like growths weaved around the core of the piece, but the light inside didn’t respond to his touch. “But I was right. This is the same kind of growth as your ‘Tree of Harmony’.”
Discord took two steps back and leaned from side to side, taking in the expanse of crystal with his eyes. “Observe,” he said, whisking Fluttershy off the ground with a wave of his hand. She squeaked as she was pressed against the central mass of the crystal.
The crystal came alive. The muted colours exploded into a vibrant light-show, and Fluttershy herself reciprocated – unwillingly, if her squeaking and fidgeting were any guide – by sprouting her voluminous, multi-coloured mane and colourful cutie marks from her hooves upwards.
“And that is where I’ve felt this power before.”
Her surprise forgotten, Fluttershy flew back to the ground and strutted a little – beaming a wide, happy smile – then posed with alternate legs stuck out in front and behind.
When she took to the calm air inside the storm-locked clearing and began zooming around, Cadance trotted alongside Discord. “I see you.”
“I can fix that, if you’d like,” he replied, staring upwards at the spinning and soaring Fluttershy. “Although, I fear you’d only complain about the lack of eyes.”
Cadance smiled. “Something Fluttershy said: she said you like to feel like you’re winning. You don’t like anypony to see what you’re really after. You made it look like you were doting on her to get at me, but I’m asking you for the truth now – as much as it drives my instincts crazy – that was just a cover, wasn’t it?”
Discord said nothing, but like a guilty schoolfilly caught red-hoofed, he shifted nervously and drummed his talons together.
Cadance grinned – a wide, lopsided grin.
“So, how quickly can you get us back to my castle?”
~ ♫ ~
“Empress?”
Her return was pure feeling – a warm, comforting sensation that permeated Frostbite’s soul.
“It is done. The princesses could only bind Sombra into crystal, so the Crystal Empire is gone and the future is written. Though we will both fade from this world soon enough, you will be remembered. I promise you this, and I will be here to comfort you until your time comes.”
“But won’t you get lonely when I’m gone?”
A shift. An intensity. She could feel the warmth of her empress’s contentment.
“I am touched by your concern, child, but I can feel harmony in all things, now. Believe me, I will get by with the knowledge that my ponies are safe.”
For a long while, there was only the feeling of warmth – of love – surrounding her, but eventually, Empress Flute spoke.
“Still you are concerned, little one. How can I bring you peace?”
“I just… I wish I knew my parents were safe. I wish they could know that I tried to do what they taught me. I wish I could see them again.”
The swirling aura of warmth tightened around her – held her close.
“They will know, Frostbite. You cannot see them, but they will see you, and they will know. There is but one song left to sing. It is the song of one who used her talents to save many ponies, and who sacrificed herself to save just a few more in the final hours. Its cadence will be the stories of those lives saved, passed down through generations of lives forever altered by you. It will be a song of great courage, and greater compassion.
“Your parents will hear your song, my precious one. I promise you this.”
~ ♫ ~
“Is the abyss staring back yet?”
Cadance looked down. Discord stood beneath her, his blurred image replacing her reflection in the sheen of the polished road. His attention remained fixed on the twisted mass of crystal sitting beneath the Empire’s massive palace. In the near-perpetual shade, it shimmered with its kaleidoscope of faint, swirling colours.
She’d stared into it every day, hoping to stumble upon some deeper meaning to the events of the previous week. Luna had come to visit at first, but even Celestia had failed to get her young sister to speak her mind. Many of the crystal ponies had gazed into its depths, too, but she never once had to ask them to give her space; they seemed to know her mind better than she knew herself.
“Luna said she had a dream about this, long ago.” Discord kept his voice low, despite the lack of listening ears.
“Oooh.” Cadance rolled her head and her eyes with the reply. “So now you’re going to tell me all that stuff that would have been really nice to know a week ago, right?”
Discord scoffed.
“You assume too much. As positively overjoyed as I would be to regale you with the sordid details of whatever secrets Luna keeps in that asteroid-addled lump inside her skull, I’m afraid I only know that she had a vision the day the Crystal Empire vanished. I was the stunning genius who said that there was something interesting in the far north.”
Cadance’s reflection returned to that of her own form, but it didn’t move with her and kept Discord’s asymmetrical red and yellow eyes.
“The question is: how much is the real answer worth?”
Cadance’s jaw clenched tight. Her eye twitched a few times until she took a deep breath and spoke.
“Discord…” She pursed her lips briefly before continuing. “Discord, would you come up here, please?”
Her world flashed white, and everything around became a grey void except for the road under her hooves, through which she could see the underside of her Crystal Castle. The faux-Cadance stood beside her.
“Up is relative,” Discord said.
Cadance’s breath stuttered as she inhaled deeply.
“Discord, I… I meant it when I said I see you. Everypony’s been so focused on trying to make you not be an enemy that I didn’t notice Fluttershy was the only one actually trying to be your friend. She would never, ever hurt you, and I think you know that.”
Her false-self stared her with a hard edge, but said nothing.
“The truth is that I have a wonderful husband that I can talk to about absolutely anything, and he would never, ever hurt me, either. But I also have an entire kingdom that adores me and the best friends anypony could ask for. I’m luckier than most ponies will ever know, so it’s not fair to expect you to be the one taking a risk on friendship. I’m so sorry I didn’t see that before, and I’ll make you a promise.”
Discord’s eyes softened, and she put a hoof to his face.
“I will never, ever, use what I know to hurt you, and I forgive you for everything you’ve done. But more importantly, it hurts to see you mimic me – you know, the ‘catastrophe of chaos and destruction’ that was my wedding? I want you to know that, and I’m going to trust that you won’t use that against me.”
She stepped forwards and wrapped her lookalike in a gentle embrace, which Discord slowly returned.
“I’m also still really annoyed with Aunty Luna, and I really want to know what all this was about. It’s so frustrating.”
She stepped back, and Discord raised a hoof towards her face. But when it came before his own eyes, he sneered, unzipped the Cadance costume, and stepped out from the empty husk.
“Discord, that is really gross,” Cadance said, shying away and scrunching her face up.
“That’s better.” Discord stretched his arms wide. When Cadance giggled, a smile spread across his face.
“Now, where was I? Oh yes.” He extended a talon towards Cadance. Her face twisted slightly and her eyes twitched as he came closer, but with a big gulp, she stood her ground.
Discord tapped her forehead.
The world fell away. Sights, sounds, and feelings flashed through Cadance’s mind: an Empress siphoning the Crystal Heart’s power to banish her own kingdom to the future, where six mares had reunited the Elements of Harmony and Sombra would be destroyed forever; bequeathing the remaining magic to those six mares, a gift of rainbows infused within the Tree of Harmony and hidden away until it was needed most; returning to the tomb of her last loyal subject, fulfilling her final promise and slipping quietly into oblivion. Finally, she saw herself, Fluttershy, and Discord walking in the snow, the vision sent to a princess falling into darkness – the vision that prompted their thousand-year-removed quest to recover the remains of the Empire’s last hero.
Cadance slewed to one side, but a claw grabbed her shoulder and held her upright until her eyes stopped spinning in their sockets like a Las Pegasus slot machine.
“What— how— who…” She shook her head vigorously, and the second eye finally settled. “My Aunts think it was a defeated Sombra who made the empire vanish! Empress Flute knew that he would fall dormant once the Empire disappeared. She gave Aunty Luna a vision but didn’t tell her why. How could she possibly have known that it would take all three of us to find…”
Cadance stepped toward the crystal monument. She raised a hoof, producing the tiniest clink as her golden shoe rested against it. Where the tight mesh of crystalline growths on the outside swirled with rainbows, the core hidden underneath shone with a constant, if faint, blue light.
“Frostbite,” Cadance said, peering through the holes in the mesh. “I know… I know her parents. They’re still here. How did the Empress know...” Her head jerked sharply back to Discord. “How did you know?”
“There are no coincidences, my little song-pony. How could I do anything except untangle the most elaborate fate-weaving I have ever encountered? I do so love a cosmic conundrum.” Discord fell backwards into a large sunbed with a parasol that beamed sunlight onto him like a lamp. With his claw, he picked up a cocktail glass filled with blue liquid and a trio of bendy straws, and with his paw, he donned a pair of sunglasses. “But you can’t expect me to divulge all my secrets, can you? Of course, it would have been impossible for anyone else to have—”
“Thank you!” Cadance leapt toward the reclining draconequus and rested her head against his chest, squeezing him firmly with one leg. “I hope you can tell me someday – when I’ve earned it.” She held him for a several more seconds until he again returned the gesture in kind, then pulled away and stood over him.
Cadance smirked for a moment before turning towards the crystal.
“I’ll call it ‘The Tomb of the Unsung Hero’. Without the Heart to sustain her, the Empress died there. If you’re right, it seems her last wish was for us to recognise Frostbite’s sacrifice, not hers. But I won’t forget what else she’s shown me. She showed me how the three of us can work together. So, how about you, me, and Fluttershy meet up the first day of every month and see how it goes?”
Discord pulled his sunglasses down with a finger and stared at her.
“Do you mean it?”
“Promise.” Cadance held out a hoof. “I was in the wrong; you showed me that. It seems like the Princess of Love has a few things to learn from Fluttershy. Maybe we can learn together.”
“Deal,” Discord replied, shaking the hoof.
Cadance’s smile dimmed. “Now, I have to go and tell some parents that their daughter died the last hero of the old empire.” She scanned the horizon and fixed her eyes on one particular collection of buildings. “And its last victim. But at least I’ll know…” Her smile brightened again. “At least we know that Empress Flute’s legacy lives on in Fluttershy and her friends: a rainbow cast into the future to repay the ponies that saved hers. She didn’t just save the Empire. She saved all of us.”
Discord reclined into his chair and held up his cocktail glass as Cadance plodded away, a wistful smile on her lips as she made towards the crystal city and the two parents somewhere within it.
“To absent friends.”
He started at the now-empty glass and the smudge of makeup on the straw, then at the princess licking her lips and grinning as she picked up her pace.
“How…?”
He released the glass and it floated away like a balloon.
“To new friends,” he said with a wide grin.
~ ♫ THE END ♫ ~
