The Hearth's Warming play never said the cold could burn.
Lightning Dust had been cold many times in her life, cold was the pegasi’s element, and the rarified air of the upper skies their birthright. She’d spent many winters daring her little brother, Diamond, to fly ever higher with her into that icy expanse, but the blizzard put to shame the paltry efforts of a clear sky. It howled around her ears, biting and snapping at every exposed bit of fur, tearing away any modicum of heat until the very idea of warmth and safety seemed a distant memory. Snow clung to her coat like a funeral shroud and icicles hung from every frozen feather. She wore nothing to protect herself from the elements, only a silver champron over her head and face.
Still she walked, placing one hoof in front of the other with the grim determination of a pony who knew stopping meant death. At first, she’d sought to dominate the storm that had set upon her so quickly. Then, as the temperatures plummeted, she’d sought to endure it. Finally, she’d settled into a grim plod, her hooves dragging deep furrows through the snow, as she fought with every step to keep moving. There was no destination, just an endless expanse of ice and snow that grew deeper with every passing minute.
“Come on Dust,” she growled. It came as a surprise to hear her voice, the howl of the wind had filled her mind for so long she’d thought there was no other sound. “Would Spitfire just lie down and die? Would Hurricane?”
“Hurricane did,” the stallion observed. Lightning Dust had neither the will nor the energy to question his presence at her side. He was large for a pegasus, cobalt blue with a jet black mane streaked with grey hairs, he wore a heavy set of armour which had frozen solid to his hide. “Die, I mean.”
Lighting Dust kept her eyes fixed on the horizon all of ten feet away. “No. He was the greatest pegasus who ever lived. He mastered the storms and ruled a nation. He didn’t die just because some wind spirit took a swipe at him.”
The stallion growled. “Legends grow in the telling, little pony. They change to fit what the teller wants you to hear and what you want to hear. Was it his legend that sent you chasing after Hurricane’s Champron?”
Lightning Dust stopped dead, clutching a hoof to the helm as if the stallion might, at any moment, snatch it from her. “Who told you about the Champron?” she demanded, eyes narrowing. Around them, the wind howled ever louder.
“Who told you?” He arched a brow at her. The stallion did not stop walking and Lighting Dust had to struggle to keep up.
“It was my grandmother,” Lightning said, and for a moment the wind seemed to still. “She had all these stories about how Hurricane was the finest pegasus who ever lived. He was the fastest flyer, the strongest cloud buster, the best leader. Everything I wanted to be.” Her eyes narrowed and she folded her ears flat. “Everything I should have been, before Rainbow Dash stole my place.”
The blizzard redoubled, ice and slow slamming into Lightning as she fought simply to stay on her hooves. Cold, breathtaking, thought stealing, cold bit into her. Lightning’s mouth became a thin line as she set her shoulders and powered through the howling gale.
“Should?” he echoed.
“Yes, should!” Lightning snarled. “I was the best flyer the Wonderbolts had ever seen! I was the lead pony! I was the record breaker! And she took it all away!” She shivered so hard the icicles on the wings rattled.
“And the Champron will help?”
“It better,” she said, her voice murderous despite her chattering teeth. “Why should unicorns get all the fancy amulets? With this the crowds will be chanting my name. Everypony will be lining up to see my Lighting Boom. The Wonderbolts will be begging me to join them. I’ll be the greatest pegasus the world has seen since Commander Hurricane himself!” The snow was up to her chest but Lightning forged through, rage fueling her exhausted muscles even as ice began to crystalise across her coat.
“Little pony, Hurricane died,” the stallion pointed out.
“Bravely, with an army at his back and trumpets blazing, forging Equestria,” Lightning snapped, muscles trembling as the snow sapped every ounce of heat from her body.
“Pointlessly, terrified and alone in a dark cave, arguing over a rock,” he corrected. “They changed the ending, you know. Once Hearth’s Warming was a terrifying tale, a warning about the depths ponies would sink to when hungry or cold or seeking revenge. They stopped telling those stories, though. Queen Ruby’s hobbling of the slaves. The razing of Terra. The day of broken horns. Hurricane's bloody hail. You don’t hear about those because Hearth’s Warming became a story for foals about how laughter and singing could conquer all. Hurricane died, little pony, they all did; Platinum, Pudding and your precious Hurricane. The windingoes feasted on their hate and froze their hearts in their chests. Ponies don’t survive that kind of thing.”
“I don’t believe you,” Lightning whispered. Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy in her mouth, her lips had frozen and cracked in the crushing cold. “He won. I’ll win. I’ll beat Rainbow Dash.”
“With hatred?” A bitter laugh escaped the stallion and the snow fell ever thicker. “Hurricane tried to win a war with hated and lost. What makes you think you’ll do any better?”
Lighting collapsed, falling snow covering her up to her neck in an instant. She lay there, still, too cold to even shiver. “Because, I’m... I’m the best there is."
The stallion gazed down at her fallen form with utter contempt. "Why?"
Tears froze in the corners of Lightning’s eyes. “I promised... I promised Diamond.”
The howls echoed around her, and at last she realised it wasn’t the wind. The windigos were close, so close in fact Lighting Dust could have reached out and touched them if she had any strength left in her limbs. She’d once played a windigo in a Hearth’s Warming play, but the spirits of rage and cold looked nothing like her construction paper costume. Glittering ice and freezing wind swirled around her head, held in the vague shape of a monstrous pony. They snapped at Lightning as she stared, surging closer and closer as her heartbeat stilled.
“No you’re not,” the stallion said. “But you could be.” Dust looked at him properly for the first time and had to bite down the urge to scream. He was a wraith. The cold had mummified his skin and stretched it taut over wasted muscles. His sunken eyes were blazing pits of rage and hate, as red as the Windigos above. The freezing temperatures had fused the amour’s shining plates to his hide, and great raw wounds, oozing pus, mared his once bright coat.
Lightning Dust’s, through cracked and frostbitten lips, croaked, “t-t-t-the f-fire–”
The Windigos screamed as the first notes of the song echoed across the wasteland, their inequine howls filling Lightning’s ears. The wraith slammed a hoof down next to Lighting’s head, and a wave of frozen snow engulfed her.
It burned.
Lightning couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cry as the spirits sucked away the last of her heat and life. “–of-f-f-f-friendship,” she stammered, voice reedy and week. Her vision swam before her eyes. For a just a moment, Lightning convinced herself that the blazing hate filled eyes were a warm fire in an old hearth. She’d spent many Hearths Warmings curled up in front the fire, listening to her grandmother’s stories about all the great pegasi of the past.
Shivers swept over her, violent spasms that shook Lightning to her core. “Li-i-ives in our heart." She fought to remember those stories, all the times she sat on her grandma’s knee, all the carols shared with Diamond Dust, the applause for her performance in the Hearth’s Warming play. “As lo-ong as it burns we can-n-n-not drift apart.”
The Windigos howled in fury, as life returned to Lightning’s limbs and the snow coating her began to melt. “Though quarrels arise, their numbers are few,” she sang, her voice growing stronger with every word. From deep within she dredged up every memory of warmth and laughter than she could. “Laughter and singing will see us through.” All the races she used to run with her brother and his excitement when she’d let him win. The two day celebration when her college thunderbowl team came second in the league. The tears of pride and joy when she’d told her parents she was going to the Wonderbolts training camp.
She remembered the look of disappointment on Spitfire’s face when Lightning stormed out of the camp, after she heard Rainbow Dash was going to be lead pony.
Hurricane’s Champron tore at her, tendrils of frost leaping from the metal and clawing their way across her head and mane. Lightning choked, her breath stolen in an instant. She tried to focus remembering the party her colleagues had thrown her when she’d told them she was quitting to join the Wonderbolts. She tried to focus on all the ponies she cared about.
“We are a circle of pony friends,” she sang, reaching up with her frostbitten hooves to size the Champron. The Windigos’ howls grew frantic and Lightning cracked open her eyes to see the wraith glaring down at her, the apparition forced back by the light of friendship that surrounded her.
“A circle of friends we’ll be to the very end.” Lightning lifted Hurricane’s Champron from her head. Just for a moment she thought the wraith looked pleased.
She awoke a moment later as cold as the grave, but it was the mortal cold of lying on a stone floor for far long. Her cramped muscles screaming at her, Lightning rolled onto her back and lay staring at the stalactites. The only sound in the cave was her own ragged breathing and the quiet pop of melting frost. She lay in a thin film of slush, perhaps ten feet from where she’d donned the Champron, and just beyond the trio of statues at the cave’s centre.
Lightning rubbed her eyes with her, perfectly healthy, hooves. They weren’t statues, she realised at last, nor even ice sculptures. Three ponies stood glaring at each other, frozen for all eternity in a moment of utter hatred. Groaning, as every muscle in her body protested, Lightning levered herself up onto her hooves. The Champron lay in a pool of ice, the only ice left in the cave and Lightning Dust fancied that she could still hear the Windigos howling, locked deep within the metal.
With a wingtip she picked up the helm and walked up to the large stallion. Even through the ice she could still make out his cobalt blue coat and hate filled eyes. With a great deal more care and reverence than when she’d removed it, she placed the Champron back onto the head of Commander Hurricane.
“Hey,” she said softly, bowing her head before the great hero of the pegasi. “Thanks, but no thanks. I think this is something I have to do myself, you know?”
There was no reply, but Lightning Dust fancied that Hurricane the hero, not Hurricane the wraith, would have approved. She paused a moment, still staring at the helm. Perhaps the second time she could master it. She knew what to expect now, and she’d seen with her own eyes the power of the Champron.
A chill ran down Lightining’s spine. Turning she hurried from the cave, eager to put as much distance between herself and the forgotten cave as possible. The Wonderbolts started recruitment again in the spring, and Lighting had promised her friends she’d be the best flyer in Equestria. She’d need to get training, not wasting her time with cursed artefacts, if she wanted to keep that promise.
Though training would have to wait, at least until after the race she owed Diamond.
Author's Note
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