White as Light (The Over Powered Chapter)
Not soon after Celestia and Luna's departure from the others gathered in the Crystal Citadel did the storm rioting outside took a turn for the worse. Black storm clouds came in droves, pelting the streets and buildings in jagged ice and relentless hail. Icy gales swept in from both the north and south, whipping even the tame white clouds hovering in the crystal square into circling the city. Gone was the the pleasant sunlight and lovely spring day. Gone was the much loved heat and calm skies. Cornflower blue horizons chased away by masses of billowy, clustering pitch-black death and the cruel cold that sought to claim all.
The eternal storm, Boreas, was approaching.
On the winds sweeping in, Celestia caught his scent and tasted his magic. Mint and pine and evergreen leaf. Memory upon memory cascaded together, then came a downpour of emotion and misery and lurid, languid lust- Celestia steadied herself. Banished those fleeting images -her on her knees, pride broken, begging to be allowed to take her ponies home, and him commanding payment- away.
Once more, she reminded herself, Boreas was coming.
And no creature, other than the eternal and divine, could hope to brace against his siege. A foolish mortal would fight, perhaps burn wood and kindle. Wait the storm out. A wise one would flee, rush to their carts and animals. Praying for light and speed. And they both, no matter the decision, no matter the choice, would die in the snow. Names lost. Frozen bodies a curious find for the next generation and the one after that. Always. If she didn't keep them away.
It was amusing how she lied to her ponies. There was no need to settle the Frozen North. A few outpost upon our border, useful, but to expand into towns and villages would be out of the question. When she and Luna shared the throne back then, they told the truth. The land was cursed and they didn't want any part of it.
Funny how superstition became less and less relevant in the later years. That too was her fault.
As history was written by the winners and crowned cowards like herself, Celestia loved to sweep her loathed foes away into folktales and child-talk. Some centuries, she claimed it was a nature preserve. Others, a lost land that was owned by the Crystal Empire and one they had no right to take. Excuses. Lies. Any exploration sent north would not receive favor nor gold from the kingdom. And still they went. And still they didn't return.
Celestia has seen this. Known this. Each traveler found, every settlement 'rediscovered'. Her mistakes, the result of her ego in believing that she could expand Equestria from end to end. No matter the crown nor the armies, the eternal storm would never yield.
And she supposed it had been foolish for her to believe that things could be different this time. Sin upon sin. Boast upon boast. Why did she think that the crystals ponies, people of another time, would have more than one ace against him? Their reliance, her unquestioning belief, on a magical relic prone to being stolen- Now broken. Celestia tried not to tremble.
Keenly, her body ached. Phantom pain shot through the nerves of her spread wings, sensitivity peaking. Old feathers from that time twinged in remembrance. Perked and primed. Under-teats hard and emerging.
So, Boreas has trained her body better than she thought.
Already, the space between her legs felt damp.
Liquid heat trickling ever so silently down her wide thighs. Then trembling hips, faintly freezing before being brushed off. White pussy lips giving way to pink glistening folds. Flying couldn't distract her from the sudden awareness of her body's undesired anticipation. Parts of her rear jiggled, ass-flesh chunky and buoyant in the open air. The wind and hail, like cold hooves, slapped and clapping against her milk-white cheeks. Her hips unconsciously switching to side to side as she tried to brave through the cold that invaded her coat.
Goodness, she was acting like a bitch in heat.
Her hips grinding together, warmth slipping free. Just like before. Her body trying to keep her warm. Alive. And Boreas took her breath anyways. The bastard. Twin cheeks bared to the winds, chunky round flesh briskly battered by the cold climate. Ample flesh discoloring, frost climbing between the bared joints of her wings. Like a crystal-cold tongue sliding between them, swiftly it invaded and claimed. Pushing her limbs as they willed, her wings weakening to the chill and gales. Jolts of strangled prickly pain, of chilling pleasure, ran down her spine.
Her veins froze, metaphorically. Her body broke out in sweat, literally.
It wasn't hard to imagine- Already, the image from before -from that time she was forced to submit- played between each blink of her eyelids. It wasn't hard to imagine Boreas already here and Celestia already lost and bent forward to take his-
Celestia shuddered, her lower pussy lips clenching.
To her ears alone came the squelch of her love spot freshly wet and willing for touch. The excited sigh didn't need to be coaxed from her lips. It came freely. The hot steam of arousal sent into the winds awry. This far up into the sky, she needn't worry about things like embarrassment or shame. And besides, Luna was here and she was the worse of them both.
Her sister visibly panted, white smog streaming from her lips like a well-fed train's smoke-trail. Slender hips swayed down to lanky limbs to tender hooves scraping the air frantically for something that wasn't there. Luna's navy-blue wings skipped every other beat purposely. Flight pattern growing unstable. They flared out, those wings, under-feathers exposed to the sharp cold.
Luna's eyes closed, her face caught in a reverie that had even those dark cheeks flushing to a rare pink.
Another gale was upon them.
And for Celestia, it wasn't the worth the effort to combat. She climbed a little higher, taking shelter in a fading heat draft.
But Luna stayed, her wings even wider. Almost obscenely, Luna rode the gale. Her legs spread, enticing the northern force to slip between them and cool the growing heat. And the gale provided. It lifted Luna up and thrusted through her thighs, pulling her backwards. Her hips buckled, gyrating in small, hypnotizing circles. Gasps now a chorus along with the sounds of her sex being worked and cooled.
Snorting hard, Celestia turned her eyes away.
Her joints stiffened and slowed, the muscles and limbs already attempting to lock in place. Just like before. Celestia flapped her wings harder, coaxing her blood to obey her this time. True, she may lose again. True, she may even falter and fall to Boreas in record time. But her ponies, they will have what they need. Whether it be safe evacuation or time to find a spell. Celestia won't hesitate to put everything on the line.
Cloud upon cloud. Winds gathering strength. Darkness inbound. All were armed with the cruelest weapons; ice, snow and chill- This was to be the greatest maelstrom to hit the Frozen North in a millennium and Celestia, striking forth if only to bide for more time, regretted not.
She and Luna worked in unison. Blasting storm clouds, and with their wings, created fleeting counter gales to disrupt the gathering upon the empire. Celestia took to the front, radiating heat and light as she dug through the cresting cloud banks. Scalding gust upon gust released, the sun princess cut a path and pressed through.
Still within the protection of the eye of the storm, Celestia had a perfect view of the entrapment being built around the slowly freezing city. Rain and snow clouds took turns in slicking the main streets and roads. Brisk winds corralled the drafts of heat and spring. Making bubbles of warmth around the crystal ponies to distract them from the blizzard brewing overhead.
The moment a citizen did, a gale would overturn a flower cart or shatter a pot. More distraction. There would be no warning of Boreas' true arrival. No escaping. No screaming for when he readied his final assault. A pony would be as they were are, enjoying their daily routine, then frozen, forever. He did not only want the warm weather to be vanquished, the city caked in snow. He wanted all of them, the city, the ponies and the land to be made perfect. Unison. White and forgotten and buried.
Celestia scowled, her eyes narrowing in disgust.
Only spite and pettiness drove him to send every single cloud in the Frozen North here. His magic, and that overpowering scent, a sickly sweetness, was thick in the air. Celestia struggled to keep her speed, her lungs growing heavy, her breath faint. It was a game to him. Making ruins out of cities. Freezing creatures into ice coffins. Had she and Luna not been alicorns with enough magic to nullify his tricks upon them, she didn't doubt he wouldn't make them a part of his collection.
For the sake of the roads, she and Luna would have to take a risky approach. Boreas needed to be distracted himself.
Flying forward, Celestia silently left her sister behind. She flew sideways, left wing pointed to the ground with her right to the sky. Celestia closed her eyes and became a thing of light. Feathers incandescent and dowry, like newborn feathers, and forelegs undefined and fuzzy under the intensity of the power she channeled, she struck.
Like an arrow unstrung, her path straight, she boiled the air. The nearby storm clouds crumpled into vapor and heat. The gales scattered, confused. And the chill, unfazed, took her strike head on.
Colliding together, they created a hellish hurricane.
The winds, the gales and her own gusts churned together as heat and cold electrified the sky. Thunder and lightning resounded among the blinding bright cataclysm that tore through the upper strata of the sky and ripped a hole to her veiled sun.
Celestia continued her offensive. Throwing the bulk of her power in preventing the hurricane from touching the city. The tips of the tallest towers were struck again and again by the surge of lightning and frost. Windows cracked and shattered. Mini-floods and tremors struck the city's outer perimeter. Waves of water rushed towards the city's outskirts. Celestia's breath hitched.
What was more of a terrible fate? To freeze or to drown.
Luna streaked along the ground, shots of magic firing faster than the naked eye. The city's walls rose, transfigured into obsidian-black monoliths of stone and magic. Like a spiral, Luna's wings coiled and curled. She dove into the watery upsurf and called out, her cry deafening even the cacophony of nature and wind.
A sight Celestia thought she might have never seen under welcomed circumstances, Luna's moon asserted itself over her sun. The flooding waters were called together, bewitched by the moon's responding call. The waves gushed upwards. Defying gravity and dropping temperatures, they kept their liquid state and spewed into the reaches of space itself. An ocean's worth of water was now out of play and Celestia readied to pick up the slack. Luna's moon moved out of position and the sun's gaze, fiery and unforgiving, released.
Solar flares careened downward, a ceaseless barrage of spheres of fire and wraith quick to enter the battle. Flash fires cooked the warring storm clouds that surged to replace their lost number. Her comets of light dove in and out of the gales, eating up their frost and strength. The air grew hot and heavy, a prelude that set Celestia's teeth on edge. The flares devoured the chill she was still in cross-holds with, and Celestia was free to strike once more without impunity.
Luna flashed on by, her eyes fret with worry. Celestia released the charged form she held, and met Luna's, briefly, with determination. That was all that was needed. In tandem, they pillaged through the remaining cloud banks and battlements that been established around the city. Sunshine poured down, warming their bodies and dissolving any clouds that may try to reconfigure themselves for a sneak attack.
Beyond their space, the slow-to-arrive greater storm clouds packed en mass. Their forms massive and towering like mountains, blacker than the darkest pit in Tartarus. They fell upon the solar flares, their cloud bodies sacrificed to take a chunk out of the flares’ heat with them.
And worse still, the plan was working.
One by one, her comets were extinguished as the clouds cornered the wild streaks of light. Her solar flares, now rocks of crystallized sun, plummeted far, far from her sight. In any other situation, Celestia might have re-lit them but what was the use? Her solar flares were better used against walls and fortresses. Things that couldn't move so easily or pile on. A few of the remainder she sent to the city streets, giving needed relief to the streets now overburdened with snow. Didn’t matter. The snow continued and continued and it looked the same as before. White. Lost.
The young hurricane screamed and howled at its own birth. Like any child, it demanded food and sustenance. And if it couldn't get what it wanted, it threw a tantrum. Airborne and stable, its demands were less of a nuisance to the pair of princesses as it was to the eternal storm. What weather-made warriors it sent to weaken their newly gained hold on the city's skies was cannibalized by the hurricane.
Unrestrained by nothing but its appetite, the young hurricane greedily devoured the winds and rains to fill its form. Born from light and cold, it shone through the arctic skyscape. A beacon of brilliant light and silvery winds that cloaked its enormous figure.
Wishing the young hurricane well, Celestia and Luna was finally able to make a full round of the city's perimeter. They dove in and out of the vicious gales. Struck down any and all clouds positioned to re-apply snow and ice to the city streets. The train station caught her eye and Celestia cursed herself in not hurrying up the extra trains lines to the North she'd planned this coming summer. Supposing they got the trains up and running, how many ponies could they fit before the city fell. A thousand. Two if ponies were willing to sit on the roof. The Crystal Empire sported a population of thirty-thousand and that’s not considering the hundreds of Equestrians that emigrated north.
Luna teleported away. Celestia idly thought of following after her but instead, decided to use those lost solar flares into something useful. Closing her eyes, she coaxed them into awareness, stoking their warmth. Lifting them with magic, she lined the roads with her sun crystals. Then testing their strength, shot beams of heat into the atmosphere. Any snow that fell would turn into warm rain. However, the sun crystals couldn't stop that rain from become ice. Boreas taught her well.
It was a temporary solution, she knew, but it was better than none.
Taking the moment to catch her breath, Celestia thought about their options. The eternal storm was just warming up. That was clear enough. There were plenty of ways Boreas could have chose to end this decisively. He didn't need to beat them. He only needed to make the weathers conditions just so that escape for the crystal ponies would be outright impossible.
Between the four of them, Luna, Celestia, Cadence and Twilight, they could mass-teleport a few thousand ponies. More lives saved than what the trains had to offer. But some would be left behind. A loss unacceptable, no matter the number. And Boreas would simply shroud the city in a hostile blizzard to make any reclaiming of the land a worthless, and most likely, life-costing endeavor.
Luna returned, a crack of thunder gracing Celestia's ears before her appearance followed soon after.
“I've made arrangements in Canterlot,” Out of breath, Luna reported, “The trains will be coming to aid the evacuation. I suppose the only reason you didn't follow me is that you believe in Twilight and her friends. Do you think the trains will be unnecessary?”
Celestia smiled, her lips thin and tight.
“You do, don't you?”
The sun princess spread her wings, shaking off the sheets of snow.
“I can't say I haven't fallen into the habit. They need the experience.”
“The experience,” Luna scoffed, “What a clever way to spin your laziness. Old age made has made you complacent and a coddler. In the old days, we would have finished this in less than a day.” Luna shivered and closed her wings tight to her side. “I did not come to this crystalling to catch frostbite.”
“It is still the same day, sister.” Celestia teased. “And the city and the surrounding lands would be destroyed. Our people would revolt. We'd be cast in chains and asked to explain our crimes. No excuse would be good enough because we are oh so special alicorns that could have saved everybody-” Celestia snorted, “And let's be honest, if we weren't being reckless, we could've. You'd be executed first. I last. And then, we'd have to pretend being dead for a hundred years before we retake the throne.”
Luna sighed. “Just like last time.”
“Just like last time.”
“But we could blame Discord.”
Celestia considered the option.
“Yes we could, but that wouldn't be the nicest thing to do.”
Luna chuckled, a dry and mirthless sound.
“Your student does have a knack about resolving problems in ways we never could do-”
With one wing, she brought her sister close. Under the snow and rain, the madness erupting over their heads, the princesses hugged. Luna's slender body was warm and soft. Her smaller frame still just the right size to cuddle. Her little sister nuzzled her chest, the sensation soothing. Celestia held her closer, the tips of her feathers tapping along Luna's side.
Her sister leaned in, diverting all of her weight onto one shoulder. Luna's vision seemed to waver and less heat, less white smoke, left her lungs. Already, she was beginning to succumb to Boreas' spell. Mint and pine and evergreen leaf. Calming things. Green lies. When one is cold, they wished to sleep and Boreas would creep in, stealing your breath.
Luna's body shivered, skin stony and stiff, and she sought heat which Celestia willfully provided.
Long, long ago, they were equals in every sense of the word. In size, in power and in crown. Now, they were equal only in crown, as Princesses of Canterlot, and even that was something of stretch. Celestia might have had the more of an edge back then. Being the wielder of the sun when fighting Boreas. Heat vs cold. But when they lost, at least they did so together. And from the skirmishes Celestia has had over the centuries with him along, her growing endurance wasn't much welcomed.
“True, sister.” Celestia agreed, chucking as well.
As if sensing her next words, Luna bleated out, “No.”
Celestia blinked.
“Really?”
“No, sister.”
“We're going to have to take the easiest way out.” Celestia murmured. “The safest and secure method for the sake of our peop-”
“No.”
“He's petty but he's not-”
“ Unreasonable. I know what you are about to say. Unreasonable, my left flank! I don't feel like we are out of options yet. Are we?”
“Well-” Celestia sing-songed, “We're not supposed to be fighting the eternal storm. We are supposed to be slowing down the storm for Twilight and Cadence to fix the crystal heart. It would be one thing to technically lose to the storm in the um-” The sun princess sped through the last part, “the most humiliating way possible.” Celestia took a breath. “It's a whole other thing to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good.”
“For who? They're not our subjects. Cadence should be the one to make amends. Her city, his land. I wish to wipe my hooves of this-”
“That's right," Celestia talked right over her, "-we have a duty to protect all living life. Subject or not.”
“No! Never again. We exiled ponies for speaking about our first loss." Luna stuttered. "He makes us his whores and-”
“But that no means yes, right?” Celestia kidded. “You're getting in character, right?”
Luna made a face and flew off.
“Right?” Celestia shouted after her. “That's what you like to say in bed. Right, right?”
“You owe me! You owe me so much!”
Celestia cackled and took to the air.
"Time is always of the essence!"
Without much fanfare, the eternal storm struck through the young hurricane and finished it off. Celestia mourned its loss but made use of the remains. Much needed allies appeared. Humid gray mists. The sun princess directed them northward to protect their backside and rejoined the fighting.
Luna was not far behind. The familiar flap of her wings comforting to Celestia's keen ears. Her magic, a starry blue, shot out to take stray clouds that sought the sun princess' blind spot.
Already the storm had changed targets.
It wanted the city. It always wanted the city but as Celestia knew, it could not resist a challenge.
As the heat she coaxed from her magic became steam, the chill quickly turned it to vapor, then ice. Like tiny glittering daggers, they were fired. Celestia threw up a shield of heat but a gale was upon them. As water drops, the melted ice clung to the shield, drenching it with liquid. Celestia's wings skipped a beat, unsteady from the sudden weight, and that was all the gale needed.
The wintry wind flew right for Celestia, turning her own shield into a prison of solid ice and threw her down, down into the desolate far north. Before she could retaliate, a death-chill passed over. Within seconds, she was frozen in place, a statue. At least, she knew what to expect this time.
The first, oh the first, it had been horrifying.
Worse than just losing, the most frightening thing of that first time was how the eternal storm 'brought' his guests to his home. Frost weaved up and around her throat. And squeezed. Choking the heat out of her skin and sapped her breath. Her wings flapped uselessly, each feather icing together and the frost-tipped edges snapping off in their frenzy to escape the ice trap.
By now, she had exactly fifteen seconds of consciousness left. And in those seconds, Celestia hoped she hadn't made the wrong choice. To 'fight' head on the eternal storm would mean the destruction of the Crystal Empire.
They wouldn't be able to direct their attacks from the city. The ponies below would have suffered for it. So, they would have to defend and by 'defend', they needed to present their plo-
Unconsciousness would have been a relief, one fine well-deserved break, if she didn't hear a second thud right after.
