Guards and Monsters

When Luna made her entrance, she was certainly the center of attention. All the stares, and whispers – Diamond Tiara was eating it right up. I was doing my best to pretend to. Luna looked like she’d set herself against a dragon’s flame and was enduring the blast stoically.

“I hope I haven’t missed the dedication,” she said, as she entered the party proper, which looked even more subdued than expected. The ponies that normally would have been standing around in easy conversation groups were huddled together in bunches all over the room.

“Who cares about the dedication?” said a loud, bitter-looking old soldier. “Haven’t you heard? Tirek is on the loose!”

For a second, Luna’s ears perked up, and she almost smiled. But instead, she remained skeptical. “That is not possible. My sister and I placed wards upon Tartarus to alert us of any further escapes, and they have not been triggered.”

“Are you talking about the magic flu?” I suggested. “I know it looks superficially like Tirek’s drain, but it’s been going on for months in Ponyville, and the ponies that catch it always recover. It’s nothing like what Tirek did to us all last time he was out.”

That just made ponies whisper more, but the soldier shook his head as he approached, to be able to talk in a more normal voice. “We’re talking about a tribe of Diamond Dogs who were found brutally murdered, down to the last puppy. They wouldn’t have been missed – the Guard was planning to evict them anyway, since they’d been threatening to devour ponies –“

“More than threatening, if this is the tribe I believe you’re referring to,” Luna replied.

The soldier nodded. “So we thought, yes. As I said, they wouldn’t have been missed. But when the Guard found them dead, they ran a magical analysis on the bodies, and found that all of them had been drained of their magic before their demise.”

“Oops,” I squeaked.

The soldier nodded at me. “Indeed. Tirek failed to cover his tracks, and now we know he’s out there. If he’s attacking entire tribes, he’s already built up some strength, but –“

“Maybe it was some other magic-draining monster?” I suggested. “A magic vampire bat, or something?”

“Or maybe it’s a masked vigilante, like the Power Ponies,” Diamond Tiara said. “She hasn’t attacked anyone who didn’t deserve it, right?”

The soldier just gave us a look. The look. The Death Glare.

Luna met his gaze, and matched him glare for glare. “I assure you, if any dangerous creature haunts the night, we will ensure that it is dealt with appropriately. Even if it is Tirek returned yet again.”

“Of course, Princess Luna. Your eternal vigilance is legendary,” he replied, turning away with a small smile. “Enjoy the party.”

We did our best! The food was actually quite good, and while most of the attendees were basically nerds, I know how to talk to nerds. I mostly talked about the magic flu, and what made it different than Tirek’s assault, and tried to get them to talk about other magic-draining effects that might be responsible for the Diamond Dogs, since I didn’t want to come right out and say ‘what about that magic-draining spear that Luna apparently has as a keepsake from Tirek’s first attack’? Which was probably a good choice, since none of them seemed to know about it.

I didn’t get much singing done, although I did start playing a minor-keyed suspense theme every time someone started to talk about Tirek. Most of the time they didn’t even notice me doing it, even when they were timing their doom-filled rant to the beat. It was hilarious.

I caught a little bit of Luna tormenting the astronomers. They’d pointed the new telescope at one of the stars, and were showing her the view through the eyepiece. “Ah, the Calf,” Luna said.

“No no, Caph,” a very blue unicorn corrected her. “It’s a Saddle Arabian word meaning –“

“Hmm, no. I’m pretty sure I named this one after a calf,” Luna said, interrupting him. “She was taken by griffon raiders, and her mother was so sad, so I made a star for her to look up into the sky, and remember her lost child. I started writing the names of all the lost children on its surface, once it was obvious that predation was to be a regular part of life. If you’d like, I could bring it closer.”

The unicorn stared at her. “Really?”

Luna continued, with a perfect deadpan expression, “It’s roughly the size of this house, and made out of nickel, so I’d need somewhere to put it where no pony would be crushed.”

He started to stammer. “Ah… this isn’t my estate…”

Luna shook her head. “Probably for the best. Falling stars are said to grant wishes, after all, and we have an unknown creature on the loose. Who knows what she might wish for?”

Just then, there was an ear-piercing shriek. Everypony turned to look at Bon Bon (I hadn’t been keeping track of which bat pony was which, but I recognized the shriek) as she pointed at a random unicorn in the middle of the crowd. “Princess, it’s a changeling assassin! Get to safety!”

Everypony backed away from hapless mare, as Luna frowned in her general direction, and Pipsqueak leapt on her, pinning her to the ground.

“Dearest,” I said to Bon Bon in a quiet voice, as I snuck up next to her, “What exactly makes you think that Moondancer is a changeling assassin?”

“Because Moondancer is dead,” Bon Bon hissed. “When we were fighting those diamond dogs? Her cutie mark was on one of the cook’s aprons.”

“Really?” I blinked. “And I didn’t notice? I would have noticed that, she’s a friend.”

“Wait, you didn’t notice?” Bon Bon asked. “I thought that way why you helped kill those puppies.”

“That was an accident! I was just holding the spear and –“

“And it doesn’t matter, because she’s dead, and this thing is taking her place,” Bon Bon sneered in a louder voice, advancing on the struggling pile where Pipsqueak was trying to hold Moondancer to the floor while she kicked him in the face. He didn’t have one of Luna’s force fields, so it probably hurt.

“Okay, look, I don’t think a changeling would put up that much of a fight,” I said, watching her knock loose one of Pipsqueak’s fangs. “Why don’t we talk to her and get to the bottom of this?”

“Indeed,” Luna said, lighting her horn and lifting the two combatants into the air. “Let us retire to a private chamber, and speak of this like civilized ponies. Even a changeling, if that is what she is, can be reasoned with.”

“I’m not a changeling!”

“If you are not a changeling, then you are a pony, and can most definitely be reasoned with,” Luna replied. “Let us go, and talk.”

===

Like any fancy mansion, the Such-and-Such estate had a million little rooms for ponies to sneak off into and have sex. Or play billiards or whatever. Luna picked one of the billiards rooms, although the table obviously hadn’t been used for billiards in a while, since it had enough dust on the dust cover to build a dust fort and re-enact the battle of Canterlot with dust bunnies.

As soon as the door closed behind us, Luna blasted Moondancer with an anti-changeling spell. She staggered, but nothing happened. “I told you, I’m not a changeling!” she said.

“My guard claims that she saw your corpse,” Luna replied. “Please explain why you yet live.”

“I was rescued,” Moondancer said, walking around behind the table, to keep it as a barrier between her and the princess. Bon Bon and Pipsqueak started to circle to either side, but Luna motioned them back. Diamond Tiara, in case you were wondering, was nowhere to be seen – whatever she’d been involved in must have been more important than a potential assassin.

I think she was in one of the little side rooms having sex. I never actually found out for sure.

“From the Diamond Dogs?” I prompted.

“Yes. The Royal Guard found me and the others, in the cage they’d been keeping us in.” She looked uncertain.

“Do you remember being eaten by Diamond Dogs?” I asked. “Or do you remember being kept in a cage for several days?”

“I – I must have been unconscious,” Moondancer said, looking pretty shaken. “Oh Celestia, what if I am a changeling? Would I know?”

I smiled, and let my lyre play some calming music. “Please, just tell us what you remember. I think I know what might have happened, but I’d like to hear your story before I poison your mind with my theories.”

Moondancer nodded. “Okay, Miss Heartstrings.” she said. “As you know, I’m in service to Princess Celestia. I’m not in the guard, but sometimes she has missions for which the guard is not suitable. In this case, to make diplomatic overtures to a tribe of Diamond Dogs suspected of murdering and eating ponies. I was given a flag of truce and sent to negotiate an end to the hostilities. I approached during the day, without an escort so as to appear nonthreatening.”

“Foolish,” Luna said. “Diamond Dogs respect only strength.”

“Yes. I thought that by appearing without an escort, I could project an aura of confidence that would allow them to take me seriously,” Moondancer replied. “I thought that my magic could protect me if they instead became hostile, and that a demonstration that they could not hurt me would put me in a superior negotiating position.”

“But they burst out of the ground and grabbed you before you could react?” Bon Bon asked.

Moondancer winced. “I never saw them,” she said. “There was just this pain – this horrible pain in my stomach, and then I felt so weak. I looked down, and all my… all my insides…” She closed her eyes. “And then there was something at my throat, tearing at my throat, and it hurt so much, and the next thing I remember… I was in the cage. Unharmed.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like Celestia’s spell.”

“Are you saying my sister brought these ponies back from the dead?” Luna asked.

“No. Ew. Of course not,” I said. Necromancy isn’t forbidden, precisely, but the ponies it brings back aren’t actually the ponies that died, and they usually know it, and go crazy, and rampage all over hurting people and destroying property. “The spell makes it so that they never died in the first place. Except that you remember what actually happened before it goes back and changes the past. Like, I remember falling hundreds of feet onto a bunch of sharp pointy crystals, and bleeding out with four broken legs while staring into Twinkleshine’s dead eyes as her splattered brains gradually congealed, even though what actually happened was that we survived the fall with only minor injuries and found our way out of the caves just in time for the reception.”

“So I’m not a changeling,” Moondancer said.

“No, you’re fine,” I said, smiling. “Although Twilight Sparkle will want to ritually murder you if you ever go to Ponyville.”

After that, I took Moondancer into one of the little side rooms to catch up, while Luna and her guards returned to the party. No, we didn’t have sex – we just cuddled while she talked about death and her future career prospects, since she wasn’t sure if she could keep on putting herself in harm’s way like that.

I may have offered her a position in Luna’s Night Guard, but if I did then she turned me down cold, since dying repeatedly during training was not on her list of life goals. So I’m going to pretend that that didn’t happen, and it was all Bon Bon’s fault that the rumor mill started blaming us for the slaughter of relatively innocent Diamond Dogs, who after all hadn’t really murdered a dozen ponies and made clothing out of their skin.

===

After the party, I wrote a letter to Twilight Sparkle, telling her that there were another dozen or so ponies that needed to be ritually murdered to clear up the timestream, and about the shadow transmutation we were using to let us fight monsters safely, and about Cutie Breaker since I didn’t think Luna would mind her knowing. I was just finishing up when Pipsqueak, naked but still in his bat-pony form, entered the room and clip-clopped over to my bunk.

“Um… I just wanted to apologize for…”

“Murdering a bunch of innocent puppies?” I suggested.

Pip shook his head. “No, for – wait, you’re still on that? Luna said that it was a reasonable interpretation of her orders.”

“And what if they’d been ponies?” I asked.

“That would be different,” Pipsqueak said.

“They might have been ponies,” I continued. “The spell was waiting until it was safe to bring them back. Once the adults were all dead, it should have been safe. But they didn’t come back until after we’d left.”

“I wouldn’t have killed pony prisoners!”

“I’m sure that’s what you’re telling yourself, but our orders were clear,” I said, poking him in the chest. “Nothing. But. Corpses.” I poked him again for each word.

Pipsqueak took a deep breath, then shook his head. “No. My loyalty has limits.”

“I don’t think Celestia’s spell trusts you on that,” I said.

There was a rustle of fur and flesh, and Bon Bon appeared in the lounge. She groaned, and got to her feet, then frowned at Pipsqueak. “What’s wrong? Do you need some help offing him?”

“What, I’m supposed to kill him now?” I asked.

“However you want, and he’s not allowed to fight back. Luna thought he was being excessively cruel when he impaled you earlier, so you get to have your revenge,” she explained.

I’m not really a very vengeful pony, and I hadn’t really minded him being all brutal and vicious. On the other hoof, he was kind of annoying.

On the last two hooves, we were in a castle suspended over a several-thousand-foot drop, and we hadn’t ever really gotten to take advantage of that. So I had Bon Bon and Diamond Tiara help. We dislocated his wings, slashed the membranes just to be sure, and then dragged him up into one of the towers with a balcony overlooking the forest below, and tossed him over the side. I wanted to jump down after him, just to see the look on his face, but Bon Bon pointed out that I didn’t have wings or a shadow transmutation, and that she wouldn’t be surprised if dying by jumping off the side of the castle was actually my destiny.

So I didn’t actually get to see much – it was night, and we weren’t bats, so we couldn’t really make out what happened when he hit. When we got back to the barracks, Pipsqueak said it was actually kind of a fun ride, and the sudden stop killed him so fast it didn’t have time to hurt, so it sort of double-backfired.

This is why I’m not a vengeful pony – I really suck at revenge.