The King of Crystallum

The air was warm, and the smell of dew was thick. The ground was aged grey stonework, with small patches of green that crept out from the cracks, and brought to mind the ancient palaces of Aethonian folklore.

Autumn Sky breathed in, tasting the warm sweet air. The last couple of weeks aboard the Agios was the thinned air of the ship’s interior, their sweat, and the gamey tang of the Dimondian’s musk. She couldn't get out of the ship faster. Each breath drew in a welcoming reminder that they had landed.

It was nothing like Amoria. Powdery pollen in the air, the product of the thousands of flowers surrounding the castle, was already coating their armor as the Hikanatoi stood before the Equestrians. Polished mail and steel lamellar turned a grayish-yellow from the settling pollen. Autumn Sky watched her fellow warriors standing before the foreigners, some shaking off the powdery pollen, while others stood motionless.

‘We stood here, decades ago.’ Bramley approached his kentarch, his violet chlamys yellowed by the pollen. ‘Our ancestors fought alongside the Cloven, pushing barbarians out from our homeland.’ For once, the Cleric of the First Kentarchia said something relevant, making the land seem less alien to his comrades. ‘To think we gave all this up to those beasts.’

Autumn Sky stared out at the verdant terrain, seeing ponies in the distance, the mares and stallions living contently in a forest many feared backed home.

‘I would not know about that,’ she said. ‘My ancestors did not have the fortune to fight alongside Her Majesty.’ The kentarch gestured to the Hikanatoi, though they appeared nearly identical by their armor. ‘Many of us have never been outside Coltstantinople, though I heard stories about our clans traveling alongside the late Empress.’

Bramley nodded. His helmet bore the same mark as Autumn Sky’s: the crescent and snowflake, symbol of a shared brotherhood between Imperials and Arabs. The top of the banner she carried, the standard of the Hikanatoi, was forged in the same shape.

The conversation, such as it was, was broken by another kentarchia coming out from the ship. Usually, the icy chill of the Frozen North would be carried with them. Here, it was taken away by the unnatural weather of the Everfree Forest.

Bulkheads and ramps clanged open. A hundred warriors in the hardened leather of the Themata armies took their first steps into the foreign city. What little formation existed broke almost immediately as the warriors took sight of the Equestrians, struggling to come to terms with what they were seeing. Autumn Sky held the banner close, turning to listen to the new arrivals. These warriors, wearing the colors of Embarr, voiced their breathless disbelief, and whispered prayers to the Goddess. Their dark blue chlamys’ were fastened with the symbol of a waxing waning moon, the sigil of the Hollow Shades.

Autumn Sky offered a quiet greeting. The closest warriors saluted, respecting her status despite herself not being from Embarr. They knew the reputation of the Hikanatoi, first to fight alongside the Emperor. Prestige outweighed prejudice.

‘Do you see them?’ Bramley asked her.

‘They are hard to miss,’ the Kentarch replied. ‘I’d believe it a lie, were I not seeing it for myself.’

Autumn Sky watched the Alicorn’s speaking to their commander, and as she turned to face them, every Imperial nearby turned and got into formation, facing the Equestrian soldiers.

‘This is history in the making,’ Bramley muttered. ‘Steel your nerves, and mind your actions.’

The kentarch had never known Bramely to be the nervous sort. Seeing it now was not helping her own fragile calm.

‘Peace, Bramley,’ Autumn Sky said, holding her tagma’s banner firmly as she moved to her place at the front of the formation. ‘Peace. That is why we are here.’

~000~

Two hundred warriors stood in silence in a foreign land.

Two hundred warriors in perfect formation, their helmed heads raised in pride. Two hundred pairs of eyes stared ahead. Two hundred warriors broken into twenty Kontoubernia, broken into two Kentachia’s led by a Kentarch. One, farmers and artisans called into service by their Strategos. The second, devout soldiers sworn into service by the Emperor.

Standard bearers stood before each Kentarchia, banners held high even if their significance was lost to the Equestrians. Borne by Kentarch Autumn Sky, the Hikanatoi icon rose alongside the banners of the ten Kontoubernia. On a circle of polished bronze was etched the crescent and snowflake, made brighter by the reflecting sunlight. It mirrored the symbol etched onto every one the tagma warriors’ helmets, decorated with a flat plate bearing the words of the Hikanatoi: Eis Aiónas ton Aiónon; Unto Ages of Ages.

Autumn Sky remained still, as the banner waved in the wind, and watched the commander of the tagma walk past, leaving her and her warriors in assembled columns.

Behind them all, the cloud-ship rested, its jaws open and still exuding the icy air of the Frozen North. The edges of its float-stone hull were frosted in places from the cold of the great skies.

One came forward from the ship, and Autumn Sky heard the clanging of his mail as he approached.

In coveted Dimondian armor, the diamond-coated steel still fresh from the forges of Dimondia, Akolouthos Laelaps stood apart from his fellow Garmung, as was his right. In the colors of the Dimondian Guard, he towered above the ponies, clad in diamond-coated steel lamellar, far stronger than the armors worn by the Themata and Tagmata soldiers. He carried no other weapons beyond that of his long-axe, its long and curved head able to sever a draft’s head as though it were threshed wheat. Runes were delicately etched on the wooden handle- pagan script in devotion to the gods and ancestors the Akolouthos revered.

Unlike the accompanying guards, Laelaps wore no helm, and it was fair to say no warrior could ever look upon the Akolouthos without apprehension.

Autumn Sky, along with the other commanders, were called out from formation, leaving the Tagma’s banner with the appointed bearer. As she and Bramley walked through the ranks of statue-still Hikanatoi, she wondered if there was more to fear from this mission that she suspected. She watched Laelaps’s finger-paws clenched around the handle of his long-axe, sniffing the warm flowery air. The Dimondian’s expression was locked in the scowl of a timber-wolf ready to bite the hoof of anypony who approached him, which was the only face Autumn Sky had ever seen him wear.

‘I hate him,’ Bramley whispered. ‘We bear the colors of Amoria, yet his kind are the ones to guard the King and Queen.’

‘I know,’ said Autumn, hoping Bramley would fall silent. She’d heard this from the Cleric many times before, and thought it better not to indulge her friend’s prejudice.

‘They’re not one of us. Depraved mercenaries,’ Bramley growled with fiery passion. ‘They are low born.’

‘This is not the time for that.’

‘Indifference like that is what allows them to spread.’

The bitterness ponies held towards the Dimondian’s was no secret. As the foremost allies to Empress Serena’s campaign against the heretics of the dissolute Southern Empire and personal guard during the years of Sombra’s youth away from Crystallum, the Dimondian’s had helped shape the Crystal Empire in ways few would admit openly. They stood with the Imperial family through the years of sacrifice and conquest, and through the Arab’s incessant holy wars that threatened to break the Empire completely before the ascension of the late Empress Amore.

When Sombra succeeded the throne, there were many who pressured him to break ties with Dimondia, wanting the Manglavites, the personal guard of the Imperial Palace, to assume the role of bodyguards to the Emperor. Instead, through gifts, threats, and rationed kindness, the Dimondian’s were exalted, as recognition for their service that the King felt was long owed to them.

Despite the King’s generosity, they had not ascended to the status of the true-born. Autumn Sky could see it in pony’s eyes, this hatred for things non-pony. She watched Laelaps with genuine respect, even if sorrow filled her heart.

Laelaps and Firefly both returned to the cloud-ship, leaving the accompanying Dimondian’s to stand guard by the ship. Only then did Autumn Sky move to speak with Bramley, keeping her voice low.

‘Are you galled only by their breed? Or is it their devotion to the King, and that their victories eclipse all the Tagamata put together?’

Bramley chuckled spitefully. His censer was strapped to his side, and shined in the daylight.

‘They possess the riches of the Crystal Mountains, and armor and weapons made from the finest materials in the known world.’

‘A warrior is more than his blade and armor, and I have seen them fight without either. You may not like them, but you will learn to respect them, as our Tagma has. They fought alongside us in Coltstantinople when we were just commoners fighting a Janissaries rebellion. Do not underestimate them.’

Bramley’s voice was sterner. ‘Impurity cannot be forgiven.’

‘Only the Goddess decides who is impure,’ the kentarch’s tone grew stonier. ‘Would you dare condemn the Queen as well?’

Bramley fell silent, perhaps realizing his own impetuousness.

‘Stand ready,’ Firefly growled, her hooves stamping down creeping blades of grass as she approached. ‘His Majesty approaches.’

As those words hung in the air, Laelaps emerged from the cloud-ship and the Dimondians moved swiftly in ordered formation along the ramp.

Autumn Sky’s breath became slow and tense, feeling her heart thud faster. Although she wasn’t in battle, her legs shook softly in anticipation.

Two figures descended the ramp, and the Kentarch felt her bare skin prickling with bumps beneath her natural coat. She’d not seen the King since Coltstantinople. To see him now, even in the presence of the so-called Alicorns, was to look upon truly divine royalty. She remained silent as he walked past, thanking the Goddess in voiceless piety.

Eight years. Eight long, long years of fighting in the darkness, she prayed for this moment to come. She knew he lived, as surely as when word reached her in Monoceria. All doubt, all concern, all fear of these foreigners and their Princesses was erased as he walked.

The figure stopped. Only then did she move. A single motion, a gesture of devotion and fealty used only in honor of those who carried the sacred blood in their veins, as they led the Empire through countless periods of prosperity and strife.

Two hundred warriors, in reverent silence, kneeling in a foreign land. Kneeling in the presence of foreign soldiers, their commanders awestruck by their prostration. Kneeling in the presence of the two sisters, who both shared the likeness of their Goddess, loved, and feared by all in the Empire.

Two hundred warriors kneeling to their King, Sombra.